With all the Jindal-as-VP-buzz surrounding John McCain's presidential bid, Louisiana's 36-year-old governor is receiving a fair amount of national attention he might not otherwise be enjoying. Today's New York Times takes yet another look at Jindal, and notes, not surprisingly, "Mr. Jindal’s spokeswoman did not respond to messages on Friday." (Read "Stonewall Jindal.") The article points out that Gov. Jindal's religious and conservative beliefs seem to be taking hold in Louisiana and are also right in line with the Louisiana Family Forum, where the governor "is seen as practically one of the family."
Still, for a governor whose campaign in 2003 ran radio advertisements extolling the Ten Commandments and attacking liberals, the approach has been studiously low-key and nonideological. Mr. Jindal himself has been nearly invisible at the Capitol, lawmakers and Louisiana reporters say.
Hot-button terms and issues are avoided. Cloning will not get state financing but also will not be criminalized, and Mr. Jindal is nowhere to be seen on the Louisiana Science Education Act, which promotes “open and objective discussion” in the schools of “evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.”
A hearing for the bill last week was packed with Christian advocates — it has already passed the State Senate unanimously — and it was proposed to its legislative sponsor by a Louisiana Family Forum member. Barbara Forrest, a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University and a critic of the bill, testified that it was “designed to permit teaching intelligent design creationism in Louisiana public schools,” though there was no mention of creationism or intelligent design in the bill.
In his election campaign, Mr. Jindal said that “there’s no scientific theory that explains how you create organic life out of inorganic matter,” and that students should “decide for themselves.”
In rendering his ruling, District Judge John Trahan all but called the real estate developer a liar for inconsistencies in his accounts of what prompted him to punch a school teacher unconscious.
Frank’s Casing Crew, now doing business as Frank’s International, will make its final appearance on ABiz’s list of the Top 50 Privately Held Companies in Acadiana this year, and once again, it will likely be at the top with more than $1 billion in annual revenues. The 75-year-old company specializing in tubular fabrication and installation services to the oil and gas industry plans to go public this year.
The defeat, or rather highjacking of House Bill 420 in the final days of this year's Legislative Session, say Reps. Vincent Pierre and Terry Landry, is the result of the propaganda spread by one unidentified local media outlet and an unnamed former state Representative, but nothing to do with the original legislation's lack of checks, balances or details.
City-Parish Council Chairman Brandon Shelvin heaped steady doses of condescending ire on a Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Louisiana executive while failing to reveal his financial ties to a BC/BS rival.
Abbeville native David Primeaux was a popular professor until his death late last year, and while he was successful at camouflaging a dark past, he couldn’t outlive it.
Tehmi Chassion’s failure to recuse himself in the school board’s selection of a group health benefits provider raises ‘serious questions’ on whether he violated state ethics law.
He’s a singer. A songwriter. A piano man. A family man. He’s even got his own Wikipedia entry. He’s David Egan. And he knows ancient secrets about the monolithic stones of Stonehenge that he’s not willing to share.
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