Commentary
Trying to police a discussion of ‘White Rage’ is white rage itself
After complaining that a proposed discussion about the history of the fight for voting rights wouldn’t give voice to “the other side,” most of the members of the Lafayette Parish Library Board decided last month to reject a grant that would have paid for copies of two books on that history and for a pair […]
Rest in peace? Not for many buried in Black cemeteries
Laying Black people to rest doesn’t guarantee their remains will rest in peace. The historical burial grounds for Black people, whether enslaved or free, are always in danger of being bulldozed, desecrated or paved over. In Louisiana, Plaquemines Liquid Terminal, a joint venture of Tallgrass Energy and Drexel Hamilton Infrastructure Partners, has filed plans to […]
When it’s cold outside, it doesn’t have to be cold inside
Our country seems to love nothing so much as a distracting and ill-timed debate, and so it was that during this week’s dangerously cold weather, a new battle in the energy culture war was heating up. Specifically, Big Oil partisans were claiming — incorrectly — that the week’s failures of the power grid proved the […]
Donald Trump’s cult condemns Republicans who aren’t sufficiently obedient
“Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” – Job, circa 6th Century B.C.E., referring to the Almighty – Republicans, Saturday, referring to Donald Trump By dispatching his violent cultists to the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6, President Donald Trump could have gotten U.S. Sen Bill Cassidy killed. It wouldn’t be farfetched […]
As Trump’s mob ransacked the Capitol, a Confederate flag was the least surprising sight
Once you moved past the initial shock of seeing former President Donald Trump’s murderous goons marauding the U.S. Capitol, were you even one bit surprised to see that one guy parading inside with a Confederate battle flag? Of course you weren’t. You know that the people who’d erect a gallows outside the U.S. Capitol and […]
You only have to smell ‘Cancer Alley’ to know how toxic it is
Driving to work from New Orleans to Baton Rouge and back everyday was no easy task. The rush-hour traffic was brutal both ways. To save time and my nerves, I often avoided Baton Rouge traffic by traveling on Louisiana Highway 30. That’s when I came face-to-face with “Cancer Alley,” or, as activists now call it: […]
By objecting to the term ‘Cancer Alley,’ Sen. Bill Cassidy is defending polluters, not Louisiana
“He call himself a doctor?” a fuming Sharon Lavigne said of U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy Thursday morning. “What kind of doctor is he?! A doctor to just let people die?” For the record, the senior senator from Louisiana is a gastroenterologist, a physician who diagnoses and treats disorders of the digestive system, but Lavigne, a […]
We don’t have the data to show racial inequity in vaccine distribution, but we do know Louisiana
Public health professionals in Louisiana have cautioned that spotty data collection makes it impossible to know if the COVID-19 vaccine has been equitably distributed. As of last week, the state only had racial data on 44 percent of people who’d received at least one dose of the vaccine, and it didn’t have ethnic data at […]
Going the way of the Whigs: Zachary Taylor and the current political crisis
by Keith Edgerton for the Daily Montanan Lost in the avalanche of images that has bombarded us since this month’s Capitol insurrection, was one of a small, blood-smeared, white marble bust of our 12th president, Zachary Taylor. Perhaps like many Americans you slept through history class when the course breezed through that brief sixteen-month period when […]
Even as COVID-19 still rages, it’s important that we remember those we’ve lost
The 8,442 people who’ve died of COVID-19 in Louisiana puts us in the neighborhood of eight Hurricane Katrinas. That doesn’t mean we’re at 8 times the number of folks killed by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. That means we’re at 8 times the number of folks killed by Hurricane Katrina in the U.S. It seemed inconceivable then, […]
Violent extremists stand with Donald Trump — as do many of my Marine buddies
We will remember the attacks of Jan. 6 with the same horror as we remember the terrorist attacks of 9/11. While there was far less loss of life at the U.S. Capitol, our loss of national dignity was far worse. We know President Trump incited and encouraged the mob that perpetrated the attack. During the […]
Republican praise of Martin Luther King will sound even more hollow and hypocritical now
There’s a long list of Republicans who ought not part their lips this holiday weekend to praise Martin Luther King Jr., to quote from his most famous speech or suggest in any way that they know anything about content of character. That list includes the 138 Republicans in the U.S. House and the six Republicans […]