LA needs to have day made on Hutson obstinance

Democrat Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson is asking for someone to make their day on her, so the state of Louisiana should oblige.

Republican incoming and former Pres. Donald Trump has served notice he intends to have his administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency much more aggressively track and cue up for deporting illegal aliens, and the New Orleans area ICE office has kvetched about OPSO’s uncooperative attitude in this task. But on this issue Hutson recently told those demanding greater cooperation from her office to look at her hand with its index, middle, and ring fingers extended to read between the lines.

By law, ICE can ask local law enforcement agencies – who refer about 70 percent of all illegal aliens for prosecution and deportation – to notify as early as possible before they release a removable noncitizen and to hold the noncitizen for up to an additional 48 hours beyond the period a suspect may be held without being charged with an offense under state and local law in order for ICE to evaluate and potentially take possession of the alien. However, this only is a request that LEAs don’t have to follow.

Biden reminds LA to restart capital punishments

Downplaying a heinous New Orleans crime from three decades ago provides added emphasis as to why Louisiana needs to deter crime by aggressively enforcing capital punishment.

At the end of last year, outgoing Democrat Pres. Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life imprisonment. There are few crimes under the federal penal code that qualify for capital punishment (which Biden, ironically, helped to expand three decades ago), with the overwhelming majority of such cases tried for crimes under state law in the 27 states that have the death penalty as a punishment option.

Biden didn’t commute the sentences of three convicted of murder in a terrorizing manner. That moral and intellectual inconsistency – so, blowing up or gunning down people as an expression of some political ideology is qualitatively worse than having someone killed because she saw a police officer physically harass a youth and reported it, as corrupt New Orleans police Len Davis, a beneficiary of Biden’s leniency, did – aside, signaling by this action that getting a certain kind of ideologue into a chief executive’s office will convey free lifetime room and board to those who forfeited their lives will cause more crime, including homicides.

LA Ten Commandments law set up for victory

What may end up frustrating the anti-religious Louisiana left is that, as any First Amendment scholar or practitioner will tell you, it’s not so much the law but its application that matters, a viewpoint the U.S. Supreme Coury likely will ratify.

Last week, Republican Atty. Gen. Liz Murrill issued guidance for Act 676 of 2024, what the mainstream media has nicknamed the “Ten Commandments” law. It expands to educational facilities a 2006 law that allows for posting a version of the Decalogue in courthouses and other public buildings as a means of informing about the origins of Louisiana’s laws.

The new law itself specifies text and formatting, and that each classroom must have a document of the Commandments meeting the criteria posted as of the start of this year. However, it doesn’t obligate any educational institution to purchase copies meeting the criteria, nor is there any punishment associated with not following the law.

"Uneducated" W. Monroe voters might give lesson

On a tax measure, West Monroe elected officials hope that the second time is the charm through an effort that this time doesn’t feature too many “uneducated” voters.

In November, the Board of Aldermen cued up a 4.50 mill new property tax accepted for the ballot by the State Bond Commission in its December meeting. As that was previous to the Jan. 2 deadline for such items to reach the Secretary of State, it’s officially on the Mar. 29 ballot. The roughly $800,000 raised annually for the next ten years would go towards capital purchases for public safety.

It doesn’t look too much different from the 4.75 mill effort that narrowly failed last spring. That one would have funded the same kinds of things plus public works. A 1.63 mill tax to support public works the city didn’t try to renew before it expired in 2022.

NO must get serious about vehicle terror attacks

It’s worse than was thought: New Orleans officials didn’t even plan to have a serious security system in place to prevent a terrorist attack such as the one inflicted upon the Vieux Carré early last Wednesday, providing yet another indictment of the unserious Democrat Mayor LaToya Cantrell and of incuriousness of city councilors who seemed to have other priorities.

This space recently criticized Cantrell and city councilors for poor planning concerning the security bollard functioning on Bourbon Street that had a presumed upgrade not in place for, at the very least, college football bowl season and New Year’s Eve. It assumed that the replacement system would have been one designed to thwart a heavy vehicle at middling speed from crashing through and careening down Bourbon during a heavy of heavy pedestrian use, such as during New Year’s Eve and into the wee hours after in this particular instance.

Instead, it seemed the contemplated system the installment of which began in the middle of football season is not designed with security in mind, but rather with slow-speed typical vehicle encounters more like from inattentive or drunk driving, rather than intentional attempts to kill as many people as possible. Perhaps this is why elected officials after the incident played down the fact that the system had yet to be installed (with its target completion date early February to stand up before the Super Bowl and Carnival) in saying it couldn’t have prevented such an attack.