Alter legal presumption to reduce clergy scandal

Running afoul of legalities, Louisiana’s attempt to bring serial sexual predators to justice may be revived in a different way, as an unfortunate instance of this crime reminds.

This week, Florida authorities on a Texas warrant arrested Anthony Odiong, charging him with illegally possessing child abuse imagery depicting unclothed children. Until last year, for a several years Odiong had been pastor of St. Anthony’s in Luling, in the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Although his home diocese technically is in Africa, Odiong had spent many years in the Diocese of Austin during the time of then-Bishop Gregory Aymond who when assuming the archbishopric of New Orleans eventually transferred Odiong there.

Odiong in 2023 was removed from his position by the Archdiocese apparently on complaints from women about sexual improprieties as well as for financial irregularities attached to his ministry. Since then, he ignored his Nigerian bishop’s call to return and instead holed up in an expensive home in Florida. He complained his removal, which included revoking his ministerial authority, was in response to his complaining that Church policy under Pope Francis was too lenient that validated homosexual liaisons.

Caddo commissioner non-apology shows unfitness

The sickness that has pervaded the political left in recent years that, displaying an authoritarian ethos, declares its opponents as twisted if not evil, a Democrat Caddo Parish Commissioner put on full display in reacting to the unsuccessful assassination of Republican former Pres. Donald Trump this past weekend.

At a rally on Saturday, while making a speech Trump suddenly halted after popping noises rang out and blood appeared running down the right side of his face as Secret Service personnel took him to the ground and huddled over him momentarily, then hauled him off stage. A bullet from nearly 150 yards away had pierced the top of his ear, and others wounded and killed spectators before the would-be assassin was located and shot dead by snipers.

Anybody viewing the incident, whether afterwards from recordings, could tell immediately what had happened. Agents don’t dogpile on their charge and rush him away if they aren’t highly suspicious that bullets are headed his way, and it’s not firecrackers or children’s popguns or a Bidenesque stumble if blood is so visible on the intended target. Two plus two always should equal four, even to student journalists much less to so-called professionals.

LA buffer zone law in some form should prevail

An upcoming Louisiana law will draw a law suit. Whether that will succeed may depend upon the U.S. Supreme Court and the state’s persistence.

This past regular legislative session, lawmakers passed and Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed HB 173 by GOP state Rep. Bryan Fontenot. The bill creates a new crime, approaching a peace officer lawfully engaged in law enforcement duties, by prohibiting approaching peace officers – most notably, police – within 25 feet of them so long as they legitimately are performing their assigned duties, they warn those encroaching, and the warning is delivered in a manner understood by those encroaching.

The law takes effect at the start of next month. Special interests have declared the law is unconstitutional, which means as soon as they can find – or perhaps engineer – a situation where a person receives such a warning, they will sue on the basis of infringement of First Amendment rights. They argue that such a law prevents public oversight of police actions, stopping observation of potentially illegal behavior by law enforcement.

Authoritarian Monroe Council set for conflict

If the first Monroe City Council meeting of the new term for it and independent Mayor Friday Ellis conveys any indication of the next four years, that would flash plenty of conflict ahead as well as a more authoritarian tack taken by the new Council majority.

In his first term, Ellis didn’t encounter an inordinate amount of resistance to his agenda, despite being only the second white non-Democrat ever elected in the city’s history by an electorate that these days is majority black and Democrat. The two white Republicans on the Council, Doug Harvey and Gretchen Ezernack, almost always supported his initiatives and budgets, and usually on important items he could count on a vote from black Democrats Carday Marshall and/or Kema Dawson. Only black Democrat Juanita Woods consistently opposed him on these.

But in this spring’s elections Marshall and Dawson fell to black Democrats Rodney McFarland and Verbon Muhammad, both of whom essentially ran against the direction Ellis was taking. Their first meeting extended that theme.

New laws too late to fix left's fatal errors

If only some parts of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s and his legislative allies’ crime package had been in place prior to this year, likely at least one more person would be alive today, along potentially with reductions in many other crimes committed.

At the end of June, a woman who worked as tour guide was found shot dead early in the morning in the Vieux Carré. The next day, New Orleans police arrested Joshua Bonifacio-Avila, 19, Jerben Albarec, 17, and Kevin Nuñez, 15 for the robbery/murder with Nuñez as the alleged triggerboy.

That unhappy circumstance reflects poorly on Democrat Orleans Parish Juvenile Court Judge Candice Bates-Anderson’s decision-making, as Nuñez – despite his not being old enough to operate legally a vehicle – already had a record of seven counts of aggravated assault, illegal possession of a handgun, and domestic battery at his latest appearance earlier this spring. Bates-Anderson nevertheless sentenced him to home arrest and monitoring. Yet in another system failure, for some reason his ankle monitor was deactivated in May, allowing him to roam the streets that led to his alleged role in the robbery that escalated to murder.

Reforms may depoliticize future coastal plans

A faux ruckus raised over a recent reorganization of Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority illustrates just how uninformed – aided naturally enough by oversimplistic if not mendacious publicity by special interests and subsequent stenography by news organizations – is the public about climate change and how it relates to the state’s management of coastal lands.

Last month, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed into law HB 806, which alters membership on the CPRA Board (note that the CPRA is divided into a policy-making arm, the Board, and an implementation arm, called the Authority which typically is denoted by the acronym). It removed six of the 23 and added three more.

This may be the first step in Landry’s planned overhaul of the CPRA as a whole. A transition committee of his recommended integrating it with the Department of Energy and Natural Resources. A bill to do that stalled in the past legislative session, perhaps over the perception that this attempt to make coherent a patchwork of quasi-independent entities that make coordination of conservation policy difficult instead somehow would deemphasize that function, if not degrade it.

Petition submission pressures BC establishment

It’s no accident that the collapse of Bossier City’s Charter Review Commission coincided with the successful conclusion of a citizen initiative to petition a city charter change introducing term limits. It leaves the political establishment, especially the elected officials part of it who would be devastated with subsequent enactment, clinging to lawfare as its only remote chance to derail an almost-assuredly ratification of term limits prior to next year’s city elections.

Heading into a scheduled Jun. 18 meeting after the previous meeting had seen the four Commission representatives generally favorable towards limits take advantage of two absences of establishment representatives, who were against the idea, to gain commission approval of a term limits measure like the one on the petition – three terms retroactively applied immediately – the establishment commissioners faced some tactical considerations in trying to reverse that outcome at the meeting, which would depend upon how many of their numbers they could muster. Apparently, they couldn’t maneuver enough to have presumably the last meeting of substance before forwarding all approved items to the City Council as they appeared to boycott without warning the scheduled meeting, leaving in attendance just three of the reform commissioners (one had announced previously his intended absence) and no quorum. (Determining whether the boycott was planned is now subject to a contested public records request.)

The non-meeting devolved into an acrimonious exchange between then-Chairman Preston Friedley and Assistant City Attorney Richard Ray over the agenda-setting process – an important point because what appeared on it would affect the numbers needed by the establishmentarians to try to overturn a past vote. Of particular concern to that faction was the past typical absences of one of them, Paderina Soumas, that if repeated would deprive them under most scenarios of the votes needed for the overturning.

LA judiciary could use paring, reorganization

A recent decision made by a little-known panel of elected Louisiana judges illuminates how with reorganization of the state’s judiciary taxpayers could save around $100 million annually.

Last month, the state’s Judicial Budgetary Control Board voted to give stipends in most instances representing almost 8.5 percent of a judge’s salary, out of an internal fund not dependent on taxpayer dollars that has accumulated a significant surplus, to judges on the bench as of Jul. 1. With this decision, which doesn’t appear to follow legislative intent to dole out periodically to active judges this bonus it authorized, if a judge does not serve the entire fiscal year he still receives the whole amount, even as this appears to be an unconstitutional donation of public funds.

The stipends came from the judiciary appropriation bill, following on pay raises in recent years recommended by the special panel created to evaluate these and legislative approval. It had been conditioned upon completion by a district or appellate judge of a workload study, but Republican Gov. Jeff Landry cast a line-item veto on that requirement, stating that the judiciary should evaluate its own members and the study would be completed with over half the fiscal year over.

NO officials enable politicized police missteps

Increasingly it seems necessary for the gutting and reconstitution of the New Orleans Police Department, given the escalating rogue behavior it exhibits throughout itself, but that might require accomplishing the more difficult task of exchanging city political elites.

The ongoing saga involving a member of the department once assigned to Democrat Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s security detail on the surface seemed isolated to the officer involved. Both are under federal investigation potentially for defrauding taxpayer resources. That officer was suspended in April and since has filed to retire from the department.

But a twist to the apparently sordid affair, which includes alleged assignations between Cantrell and the officer on the taxpayer dime as she lived unauthorized on city property, a privilege recently revoked by the City Council, Cantrell filed for a protective order against a neighbor at that location supposedly out of pique that the woman had provided video recordings of Cantrell at a public venue that ended up in media reports and possibly as evidence in the looming federal indictments that could involve Cantrell. According to the woman, almost the entire filing was bogus, to which a civil court judge agreed in tossing the entire thing.

Independence Day, 2024

This column publishes every Sunday through Thursday around noon U.S. Central Time (maybe even after sundown on busy days, or maybe before noon if things work out, or even sometimes on the weekend if there's big news) except whenever a significant national holiday falls on the Monday through Friday associated with the otherwise-usual publication on the previous day (unless it is Thanksgiving Day, Independence Day, Christmas, or New Year's Day when it is the day on which the holiday is observed by the U.S. government). In my opinion, in addition to these are also Easter Sunday, Memorial Day and Veterans' Day.

With Wednesday, Jul. 4 being Independence Day, I invite you to explore the links connected to this page.