Jefferson sister pleads guilty in money skimming scam
A guilty plea by Brenda Jefferson to concealing knowledge of her relative’s phony charity scam comes on the heels of an announcement by her brother, indicted U.S. Representative William Jefferson, that he will run for a 10th term in office . The youngest sister of the Congressman will cooperate with a federal investigation that is probing a scheme by her older sister, 4th District Assessor Betty Jefferson, her brother, Mose Jefferson; and Angela Coleman, her niece. The Jefferson family is charged with creating charities to aid inner city youths in New Orleans, then pocketing more than $600,000 in federal grants.
While having his family making headlines for alleged criminal behavior should not bode well for the lawmaker, Jefferson fended off challengers for the 2nd Congressional District seat in 2006 although he was under federal investigation himself for bribery. Rep. Jefferson pled not guilty to the bribery charges. Fall congressional elections will take place several months before Jefferson’s trial, which is scheduled for December 2, 2008.
Is it a crime for citizens to photograph, video, or take notes of a police officer in the line of duty, or a right protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? Locally, such activity, as witnessed recently, will at the very least result in a night spent behind bars.
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
At Thursday's State of the Economy luncheon, LEDA President and CEO Gregg Gothreaux said PXP has already quietly hired 180 people for its Broussard expansion.
Episcopal School of Acadiana’s Dr. Joshua Caffery, chair of the school’s English Department, is headed to Washington, D.C., and the Library of Congress as the latest winner of the Alan Lomax Fellowship in Folklife Studies.
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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