C'EST BON Freelance sports writer Dan McDonald, a regular contributor to The Independent, was named the Louisiana Sports Writers Association’s Sports Writer of the Year, an overall honor that included two first place awards for his Ind cover story on UL football coach Mark Hudspeth (College Feature) and for his coverage in these pages of the Cajuns’ New Orleans Bowl victory (College Event). He also won third place for his Independent online feature that looked back on the Lafayette Little League’s 2005 Little League World Series run. McDonald’s honors came in Class II competition, which includes publications across the state with circulation below 50,000; the winners were announced over the weekend in Natchitoches. Dandy Dan also garnered a first place award for his coverage in The Daily Advertiser of the Louisiana Open golf tourney.
PAS BON The inaction of Congress so far to halt the doubling of Stafford college loan interest rates from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent has prompted student government presidents from five Louisiana universities — including UL Lafayette — to urge federal lawmakers to take action before the increased rates take effect July 1. Congressional Democrats and Republicans are still trying to reach an agreement on how to fund potential legislation that would keep the current interest rates intact. “If Congress fails to freeze Stafford Loan interest rates, our students take an additional $79 million in total debt as classes start in the fall,” the students’ letter reads. “This means we will spend millions of dollars each year repaying loans rather than buying our first homes and cars, investing in new companies, or starting families in the next decade.”
COUILLON Sen. David Vitter wasted little time in decrying the U.S. Supreme Court’s dismantling of Arizona’s draconian immigration law, issuing a press release within an hour of the ruling in which he complained, “All the Arizona law tried to do was fill the void that the federal government has created by neglecting its duty and letting illegal immigration get completely out of control.” A member of the U.S. Senate Border Security and Enforcement First Immigration Caucus and a champion of tough immigration laws, Vitter doesn’t acknowledge in the press release — it wouldn’t serve his ideological needs after all — that illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America is down sharply in the last few years due mainly to the weak U.S. economy, and deportations of illegal immigrants are at an all-time high. Hardly the “completely out of control” crisis the senator makes it out to be.
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 offer shares of its stock to the public for the first time.
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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