By: Clancy Dubos

The New Orleans City Council, in a rebuff of the Nagin Administration and its city attorney’s office, has hired the local law firm of Herman, Herman, Katz & Cotlar to be the council’s legal advisor. The firm is well known in plaintiff law circles, having played a major role in class action suits, including the recent $4.85 billion settlement of Vioxx cases.

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By: Allen Johnson

New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast apparently have a common problem — unruly “Katrina kids.” A new study by the University of Southern Mississippi at Hattiesburg examined the records of 17,000 Mississippi students and found that hurricane-displaced youths were more apt to get in trouble than nondisplaced students, especially those who were already struggling academically and who came from underprivileged backgrounds. “The increased incidence of disciplinary problems suggests that psychological issues for some students have not diminished in the time following the storm, and in fact may have intensified,” says USM researcher Dr. Mike Ward, a former North Carolina State Superintendent of Public Instruction. “We have always had a few that were daring enough at a very young age, but it seems to be more now than in the past,” Police Chief Warren Riley said recently, after a rash of armed robberies by children as young as 12.

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A recent survey of New Orleans voters shows Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu easily winning the next mayor’s race, which is still 21 months and a presidential election away. Landrieu, however, is not getting overly excited about the numbers — for several reasons.

The results remind me of statewide post-Katrina polls showing Bobby Jindal easily beating Kathleen Blanco in a rematch of their 2003 gubernatorial runoff, which Blanco narrowly won.

In the case of Blanco and Jindal, it was a massive case of post-Katrina buyer’s remorse. Reading the recent survey of New Orleans voters, one is tempted to reach the same conclusion with regard to Landrieu and Mayor Ray Nagin, who narrowly defeated the lieutenant governor in a May 2006 runoff. Read the rest of this entry »