[Note: Congressman Boustany's campaign manager, John Porter, tells IND Monthly that his boss did appear jointly with Landry at a forum in Franklin in August and might join Landry at an event in Crowley in a couple of weeks. So, we'll qualify this blog by wondering if the two will appear together in the largest city in the district, Lafayette?]
U.S. Reps. Charles Boustany and Jeff Landry will not attend a League of Women Voters forum for the 3rd Congressional District scheduled for Oct. 9 at the South Regional Library in Lafayette. The two major Republican candidates, who are vying for the new, expanded 3rd CD that resulted from a loss of one of Louisiana’s seats in the U.S. House, are likely to end up in runoff, yet there seems to be an increasingly fair chance that voters won’t be afforded a side-by-side comparison. The LWV forum in October will feature three outlier candidates, none of whom has a realistic chance of unseating de facto incumbent Boustany.
Dr. Robert Buckman, a longtime journalism professor at UL Lafayette, reached out to the campaigns in August to schedule an on-campus forum, providing the campaigns with several dates. “Landry was willing and Boustany isn’t — not on the dates that I wanted and he wouldn’t come up with any alternate dates,” Buckman says.
Local ABC affiliate KATC is also trying to arrange a televised forum with the campaigns. New Director Letitia Walker tells IND Monthly via a Monday morning text message the station is hopeful “because all parties say they want to.”
We’ll be surprised if Boustany, especially, agrees to a forum with Landry. The former is the established candidate. He’s running ahead of Landry, by all appearances. He has nothing to gain by “debating” the Tea Party candidate.
JUNE 17 If anyone ever wonders why Saints fans hate Atlanta with a capital H, here's a good indication. Radio "professionals" at an Atlanta station created an entire segment around making fun of former Saints player Steve Gleason, who is now paralyzed by ALS. Listen, nobody's ever accused DJs of being rocket scientists. But how could someone think it is amusing to pretend to ask a man with a degenerative, fatal disease if he will be alive next week? The DJs have been fired, and are now whining about how gutless their former bosses are. Wow.
JUNE 18 Here's the latest from the Advocate on the fatal hit-and-run accident allegedly involving the president of the Livingston Parish School Board. He's accused by police of hitting a 21-year-old man on a highway early Sunday and driving away. The man died at a hospital later. On Monday, police seized the president's truck and towed it away. But he's available for board meetings: apparently a $500 bond is sufficient for this type of thing over in St. Helena Parish.
JUNE 18 Former broadcast journalist Griffin Scott has posted this plea on his blog for financial assistance from his readers. Scott, who says he was fired after he wrote something fairly innocuous (for Facebook) on his wall, is suing a media giant for his job back. He's framed himself as David going after a bloated media giant, and he's probably not far off.
JUNE 18 Here's a fairly absurd column posted on DIG Magazine about the completely absurd practice of naming killer storms. Tornadoes don't have names. Blizzards don't have names. But hurricanes do, and there's a big process to bestow them, Jacques Cormery writes. He's right about the crazy assemblage of names -- this year, there's everything from Tanya to Humberto -- and his idea that we don't waste good names on killer storms is a good one.
JUNE 17 Political columnist John Maginnis has some advice for Louisiana Republicans: grow up. After the schism that occurred in this past session - fiscal hawks teaming up with Democrats to spank the Republican "majority" and hand Gov. Jindal his, er, aspirations for continued solon control -- they need to figure out how to get along with each other, Maginnis writes.
JUNE 17 Here's the Picayune's obit story for Dorothy 'Miss Dot' Domilise, the lady who made poboys at the uptown restaurant that bears her name. Miss Dot moved to New Orleans during World War II, where she met and married her husband Sam. When she passed away Friday she was 90, and had spent more than 60 of those years working at the restaurant on Annunciation Street.
JUNE 17 This editorial in the Advocate speaks in favor of the consent decrees that have federal judges overseeing police operations and the sheriff's parish prison in New Orleans. Mayor Landrieu and Sheriff Gusman can't get along, so outside forces, like the Inspector General and the judges, are needed to make sure things run right, the editorial opines.
JUNE 18 Here's a post from Manny Schewitz on Forward Progressives that is good for a chuckle. Manny had an epiphany back in November, and is sharing it with us today: he believes that Fox "News" is killing the GOP by pandering to right wing nuts. Now, don't get it twisted: Manny's not broke up about it. He says he enjoys watching the downward spiral with a shot of whiskey and "a schadenfreude chaser."
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