Sen. Mary Landrieu is in danger of becoming the poster child for earmark reform. Yesterday, the senator once again found herself under scrutiny for a questionable earmark she obtained, this time for an organization linked to her brother, Martin Landrieu. A New York Times article raised questions about the $190,000 earmark, slated to go to a now-defunct Lake Area Community Center. Martin Landrieu, an attorney, helped incorporate the New Orleans nonprofit behind the project. Landrieu insists she did not know her brother was involved with the project until after the fact. In a story in today’s Advocate, Landrieu says she is trying to redirect the earmark request due to the fact that the community center failed to obtain other necessary funding.
While no ethics laws have been violated in the request, the publicity certainly isn’t welcome for Landrieu, who has a reputation as one of Capitol Hill’s biggest pork barrel abusers. Last year, Landrieu came under fire for abusing the system after The Washington Post discovered that one of the biggest benefactors of a Landrieu earmark threw her campaign a major fundraiser soon afterward. The issue helped land the senator on D.C. watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s annual list of the 20 most corrupt members of Congress. More recently, Landrieu was identified by the nonprofit Taxpayers for Common Sense as the senator with the second largest amount of pork projects in Congress' recently passed spending bill.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
Philip deMahy Sr., a once respected New Iberia ad exec, was sentenced May 2 to spend the next two years (he faced up to 100 years) in a state penitentiary after state and federal investigators found dozens of images depicting children engaged in lewd sexual acts on his personal computer.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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