Edwards imprint fading fast to oblivion soon

Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards’ influence in Louisiana government is fading quickly, with the chances of anybody in power emulating his policies in the future evaporating even more rapidly.

With fewer than six months remaining in his terms. Edwards got a taste of how ephemeral his reach has become when Louisiana’s Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole rebuffed over 50 applicants – essentially the entirety of death row – for clemency this reduction of sentence to life earlier than usual. Normally, the Board requires a time-consuming review of cases but can waive that, which in this instance would have expedited case consideration for resolution prior to year’s end.

This avalanche of requests Edwards triggered when, after dodging the question for his whole political career because of the electoral blowback his answer would invite, earlier this year he proclaimed opposition to capital punishment, noting its finality and calling it contrary to his religious faith (while he professes a belief in Roman Catholicism, at the same time he selectively ignores others of its imperatives, such opposition to abortion for any reason). In turn, this begat an effort by legal services supporting appeals to capital cases to organize inmates under capital sentences to make clemency requests to Edwards, in the hopes of having him grant clemency in mass before leaving office early next year.

Whiny Magee needn't let door hit him upon exit

Let’s break out the handkerchiefs and violins for poor old Republican state Rep. Tanner Magee, who says too many people are holding him accountable for him doing his job for him to do his job.

After the veto session concluded, Magee revealed he would not seek reelection. Magee at present serves as speaker pro tempore, the second-ranked position in the House of Representatives. Last year he ran for an appellate judgeship and lost convincingly. This resounding defeat plus that a new governor, almost certainly a Republican and likely GOP Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry who has clashed with House leaders on some issues, where governors typically have influence in legislative chamber leadership selection when of the same party, also loom as factors that may have played into Magee’s decision.

His publicly articulated reason for letting go is that, he says, “[State legislative politics is] moving more in a direction of a D.C. style and I don’t want to spend the next four years missing my kids and being away from family and not really enjoying the process.” This very much echoes a recurring theme from Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards, who in his two terms typified dissent to his agenda as a divisive “Washington” politics while agreement with it denoted a desire to “unify” and make progress.

LSU firing idiot appropriate, but changes little

Not just on philosophical grounds, but more relevantly on practical grounds Louisiana State University was correct in terminating a graduate student’s assistantship for levying a direct threat of harm against a state lawmaker – and dramatically increasing his employment chances down the road.

Last week, LSU sociology graduate student Marcus Venable, who must have an excitable nature, lost it upon learning Republican state Sen. “Big” Mike Fesi had voted to overturn Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards’ veto of HB 648, which prohibits (from the start of next year) surgical or chemical sex alterations of minors, legislation that correctly understands research shows a significant proportion of children who do this express regrets and that a significant proportion have underlying psychiatric issues that don’t improve even after these interventions or non-medical interventions. The outright ban equips parents to safeguard their children better from attempts outside the family to play to children’s transitory thinking, which because their typically underdeveloped emotional and intellectual capacity is suspect, if not goad them to embark upon irreversible interventions.

The successful override so unhinged Venable that he left, from his campus office phone, a profane message to Fesi full of emotion and absent of any facts. While incredibly boorish, most of it, even a part about celebrating Fesi’s death, legally was harmless – until his last sentence, where he declared the celebration would be resulting from “when we put you in the ground.”

Failed overrides leave kids, families at risk

While Louisianans should celebrate the Legislature’s overturning Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards’ veto of HB 648 that protects children from unwarranted medical interventions, they should mourn the fact that legislators failed in their responsibilities to uphold parents’ constitutional rights to protect children from harm potentially brought about by ideologue educators and politicians.

HB 648 prohibits (from the start of next year) surgical or chemical sex alterations of minors, correctly understanding research shows a significant proportion of children who do this express regrets and that a significant proportion have underlying psychiatric issues that don’t improve even after these interventions or non-medical interventions. The outright ban equips parents to safeguard their children better from attempts outside the family to play to children’s transitory thinking, which because their typically underdeveloped emotional and intellectual capacity is suspect, if not goad them to embark upon irreversible interventions.

HB 466 and HB 81, also vetoed by Edwards, would have afforded other kinds of parental protections to children. HB 466 would have prevented school employees from psychological coaching of students about their gender identity in ways inconsistent with state instructional standards and protect school employees and students from confusion over pronoun use of students, while HB 81 would have covered pronoun usage like HB 466.

Edwards wrong again, LA remap not coming soon

As has so often been the case with the governorship of Democrat John Bel Edwards, wrong again, yet again on reapportionment.

Edwards’ native pomposity and arrogance came out when he commented on his becoming the first governor in the state’s history to have a veto overridden from a regular session in a veto session. HB 648 prohibits (from the start of next year) surgical or chemical sex alterations of minors, and similar bills the highest court to date to have dealt with these has ruled that, because of demonstrated irreversible adverse effects these have on individuals that haven’t developed emotionally or intellectually enough to decide about these, states do show a sufficient burden of proof to be able to regulate such medical interventions.

About the override he said, “The first time I was overridden, on the Congressional district map, I said the bill was illegal and I expected the courts would throw it out. The courts have done so …. I expect the courts to throw out this unconstitutional bill, as well.”

Opaquely, Bossier govts defuse, issue threats

Operating squarely within their histories of lack of transparency, Bossier Parish and Bossier City’s legislative organs recently tackled controversial legal issues differently, one to the benefit and one to the detriment of the citizenry.

The Police Jury appoints a member to the Cypress Black Bayou Recreation and Water Conservation District, and that current term expires at the end of the month. Held at present by Robert Berry, controversy arose when, two terms back, Berry and his fellow commissioners appointed him also as executive director. This eventually caught the attention of the state’s attorney general as a violation of dual officeholding, and after a protracted legal battle this spring the Louisiana Supreme Court instructed lower courts to rule along those lines.

Even so, the district’s Board of Commissioners petitioned for Berry’s reappointment. Perhaps one reason was, according to public comments made at their meetings, it had become dependent on Berry to make and execute decisions on its behalf, and another maybe being that state law would force Berry if leaving the Board to resign as executive director, as a former member generally of a state board can’t be employed by it until two years pass after end of service, so commissioners wanted to keep him in that job.

But that wish simply didn’t comport to legal reality. At the meeting, a parade of Berry’s and the District’s lawyers (it’s uncertain to this point how many taxpayer dollars they have burned on trying to fight the state’s case, but it’s certainly into six figures and probably a tenth or more of all District expenses annually over the last two or three years), other commissioners, his friends, and family spoke about how great of a guy he was and how great of a job he had done and how the decision hadn’t actually kicked him out of office, all arguing for reappointment.

RINOs, strategic Democrats dilute history-making

The Louisiana Legislature made history in the 2023 Veto Session, in the process giving some Republicans a chance to display their middle fingers to Louisianans and some Democrats to gamble on fooling enough voter to gain successful reelection.

Louisiana's most remarkable legislative passage ever occurred when HB 648 by Republican state Rep. Gabe Firment crossed the finish line. This was a bill rogue GOP state Sen. Fred Mills (aided by some stupid planning by Sen. Pres. Page Cortez) killed in committee, only to have it resurrected through rarely-used parliamentary procedures, killed again by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards, only to have the veto session reanimate it into law, representing the first time ever a regular session bill had its veto successfully overridden.

The bill prohibits medical interventions, whether chemical or surgical, to alter a minor’s sex. It simply became a litmus test that even the most shallow Republicans and Democrats endangered for reelection had to support because it so self-evidently was needed. In their remarks carrying the bill in their respective chambers, Firment and Republican state Sen. Jay Morris demolished the evidence-free and weak argumentation of opponents to establish that children didn’t have the maturity to make such an irreversible decision, that many who in their haste did later regretted it, that such procedures often addressed a symptom of an underlying disorder and wasn’t the disorder, that these didn’t stop suicidal ideation for many, and that worldwide (within the last year country after country has placed similar bans on these actions) medical opinion supported such bans while further research occurred.

Bossier jurors display reelection vulnerability

This week, Bossier Parish police jurors can choose whether to dig their political gravesites a little deeper when they decide who to represent them on the Cypress Black Bayou Recreation and Water Conservation District.

The agency has been mired in controversy for years with the ongoing dispute over whether the Jury’s two-time appointee to five-year terms, Robert Berry, also can serve as the district’s executive director. This spring, the Louisiana Supreme Court answered that question definitively by ordering lower courts to rule that Berry’s continued service in both positions violated the state’s dual officeholding statute.

Nonetheless, with Berry’s term ending in a couple of weeks, the agency’s Board of Commissioners (with his recusal) inexplicably asked for his reappointment despite no evidence that he intended to resign as executive director, which is the only legal way he could continue. Unless the Jury wants its slot on the Board, its composition filled with area parish government agency representatives, to go vacant, it must decide in this week’s meeting either to reappoint Berry to a third term, appoint somebody else which would allow Berry legally to stay on as executive director, or leave the spot unfilled.

Many worthy bills begging for veto override

Several obvious reversals are on tap for Louisiana’s upcoming veto session, but the balloting that affirmed this regathering of the Legislature provides clues as to what other worthy legislation should be resurrected, and why these bills might be, after their attempted murders by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards.

 

This marks the third year in a row a veto session will have convened – previously for the 2021 Regular Session and for the First Extraordinary Session of 2022 – but the first with better-than two-thirds supermajorities attached. Only 31 of 105 representatives and 12 of 39 senators sent in ballots requesting cancellation.

 

That distribution didn’t quite fall along partisan lines. With no party state Rep. Joe Marino sending in a ballot, Democrat state Sens. Katrina Jackson and Greg Tarver essentially switched places with Republican state Sens. Fred Mills and Rogers Pope. Among other representatives, Democrat state Reps. Roy Daryl Adams, Chad Brown, and Robby Carter all withheld ballots.

BC offers wasting money to thwart popular will

Perhaps coming as no surprise, Bossier City doesn’t appear ready to want to make history and desires to waste more taxpayer dollars in the process.

Earlier this month, organizers of a charter change that would place term limits on city elected officials, three for all past and present mayors and councilors, successfully completed the petition drive. The city charter says a third of the amount of votes cast from the previous mayoral election, of valid registered city voters at the time of petition submission to the parish registrar of voters, may ask for this, which was verified by her – a first in the city’s history.

The city charter in Chapter 5 outlines the process. After successful submission, the Council must pass an ordinance in favor of each of the propositions within 30 days of reception – practically speaking, during this week’s or the Aug. 1 meeting. If not, it must call an election for the public to weigh in within 90 days. That would force the election on Nov. 18 (the Oct. 14 ballot having closed out earlier this week), along with other parish and state runoff elections.