Pass bill that eliminates heckler's veto tactic

A bill heading to the finish line in the Louisiana Legislature that vetoes a heckler’s veto not only will protect law enforcement officers from abuse but also will increase the safety of the abusers.

HB 132 by Republican state Rep. Brian Glorioso would add a third part to the state’s definition of battery, joining using intentional force on another and throwing a poison or noxious liquid on another: directing sound at an injurious volume reasonably knowing that at somebody else. It only has to garner a favorable Senate vote to head to GOP Gov. Jeff Landry’s desk.

Free expression should have maximum latitude, when possible, but the judiciary recognizes limits to this First Amendment right. Colloquially called “time, place, and manner” restrictions, as long as a government restriction is content neutral, narrowly-tailored serving a significant government interest, and permits alternative communication channels, courts don’t perceive this as a constitutional violation.

Fleming bests Letlow in LA GOP Senate debate

The U.S. Senate Republican primary debate was informative, combative if cordial, and displayed how the candidates tried to play to their strengths.

The debate, sponsored by the Moon Griffon Show, featured only Treas. John Fleming and Rep. Julia Letlow. Incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy, despite numerous invitations, didn’t attend.

The math, as most recently evidenced by the latest independent poll, has these two running neck-and-neck with Cassidy several points back. Polling suggests that if Cassidy were to make the inevitable runoff he would lose decisively to either, so it was in the interests of both candidates to attack each other in the hopes Cassidy could crest over the opponent.

Landry map swap looking more likely to pay off

It’s been over two years, but Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s reapportionment gamble looks to be paying off, bigger and bigger and wider and wider.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Louisiana v. Callais that the 2024 congressional map drawn in a special session at the very start of Landry’s term unconstitutionally used race to create two majority-minority districts out of the state’s allotted six. The decision placed guardrails on the use of race, reaffirming that it does not have preferential treatment over other traditional principles of reapportionment in the absence of observable intent of racial animus in mapping.

That 2024 map came after a district court voided a 2022 map with only one M/M district without a trial on the merits, saying it violated the law. The Court enjoined any further action pending an Alabama case it resolved in 2023 that largely but not directly tracked the Louisiana case that also addressed the Voting Rights Act which ruled against the existing map, although the resulting judicially-drawn map eschewed doubling M/M districts to two and instead created two opportunity districts (where blacks had a plurality but not majority).