The CBS News 48 Hours episode on the murders of Helen Hill and Dinerral Shavers and the breakdown of New Orleans’ criminal justice system has been nominated for a news Emmy Award. In case you missed the initial airing,  you can watch the first part here, and the rest here (part2,part 3,part 4,part 5,and part 6). You can also read a synopsis of the episode.

State lawmakers are burning up their cell phone minutes talking about the possibility of a veto override session in response to Gov. Bobby Jindal’s line item budget vetoes. The political fallout from the vetoes is intense, but I’m not sure it will last. For one thing, most of the fallout is among legislators rather than voters. More important, having a veto session brings on additional risk for lawmakers, who might do well to heed the old wisdom, “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”

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I went to Gov. Bobby Jindal’s press conference today at Handelman’s on Dryades Street, where he announced the signing of Act 775, the so-called “No Wrong Door” law. The act sounds like a good thing. It aims to cluster state social services agencies under one roof so that people in need of such services don’t have to run all over town trying to get help. The concept started in Louisville, KY, as “The Neighborhood Place.”

Some of us couldn’t help but notice the irony, however, of Jindal coming to Central City to ballyhoo the signing of a social services law a few blocks away from the Dryades YMCA — practically in the shadow of the Y, in fact. Jindal vetoed two legislative appropriations for the Dryades YMCA in the past two weeks — roughly $1.15 million worth. Why?

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The urban blogosphere was abuzz throughout the weekend with conflicting reports that Hollygrove’s hottest son (at least these days) had gotten himself in a dust-up in the club last Thursday night that resulted in getting tossed in OPP. By Saturday morning, multiple blogs were in disagreement across cyberspace as to when (Thursday night?), where (the Club Dream - now Club Hush - on Lower Decatur, or Austin, Texas?) and who (an “up-and-coming” rapper called Lil Dee?) was involved in the alleged incident.

Always one for gossip, I holla’d at Bob Young, the officer in charge of public affairs for the NOPD, who had apparently already fielded a couple of calls trying to confirm the theoretical lack of love in the club. Monday afternoon, Young confirmed that one Dwayne Michael Carter, D.O.B 1982 - a.k.a. Weezy F. Baby - hadn’t seen the inside of a NOLA lockup since 2005. And considering he was onstage as planned by Friday night in Dallas, the odds of a Texas arrest seem low. (A search of Travis County, Texas’ inmate population found no Weezy behind bars.)

The moral? Haters will be hating. Fly free, Li’l Wayne. Fly free.

(Note:  This has been slightly revised and updated from an earlier post. Note one correction: the start date of a veto session would be Saturday, Aug. 2, not Monday, Aug. 4, as previously posted. That gives lawmakers only 13 days to decide whether to have such as session.)

Gov. Bobby Jindal’s “record-breaking” 258 vetoes seem contrived to give him some cheap headlines while actually having a miniscule impact on the overall state budget. The political backlash from lawmakers, however, could be huge. There is open discussion among lawmakers — including some of Jindal’s top legislative allies — about the possibility of a veto override session.

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File this one as either one of the most inept excuses ever, or as sheer genius. When Gambit Weekly called New Orleans Affordable Housing (NOAH) http://www.noahinc.org/ and requested information about a contract they have with the city and records for the work completed, the interim director explained she didn’t remember the exact amount of the contract and that some of the records would difficult to locate.

     Why?

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Photo by Cheryl Gerber

Jim Bernazzani has a way of making people listen. I met him about a month ago at the bar at the Columns Hotel. Wearing blue jeans and a white pique polo shirt with an FBI patch embroidered on it, he was sitting alone having a cocktail. I knew very little about the man at the time, but from the first words he said —— he had me rapt. At first I was listening to see if I could figure out what it was about him that made me want to listen to him — maybe it was his “exotic” Boston accent or the way his words sometimes dipped into a near whisper, making you lean in to hear or ask him to repeat what he just said — but then I just gave in and let myself become engrossed in what turned out to be a memorably stimulating conversation in a small group at the end of the bar for over an hour.

Bernazzani may have a reputation for being “tough talking,” but he can also be vividly expressive. He told some amazing stories about his experiences working for the FBI in the days immediately following Katrina. He talked about the city — as it was and as it is — and about all of the places in the system where it’s all gone wrong. But since he made it clear, to me specifically, that he was speaking off the record, I cannot divulge the details of that exchange, and until now, I had no reason to write about this encounter at all.

But over the weekend, I saw him in an interview on WWL’s “Sunday Morning with Dennis Woltering.” And once again, Bernazzani got and kept my attention — this time not because of the tales he told, but because of the plans he is making.

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Jambalaya, red beans, Zapp’s chips and Hubig’s pies were among the things a group of employees from East Jefferson General Hospital brought to victims of the recent floods in Iowa. Read about it here and here.

If money is the fuel that drives political machines, then incumbent U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu still has a full tank. Although the Democrat isn’t releasing preliminary numbers, it’s likely that she out-raised her main GOP opponent, state Treasurer John Kennedy, since Jan. 1. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s never surprising when Democratic or Republican spin machines fire shrill volleys at one another’s candidates, but it’s unusual to see a party’s attack dogs going after a member of the media. That happened in Baton Rouge last week when the state Republican Party fired off a news release dissing TV station WBRZ for allegedly going easy on new Democratic Congressman Don Cazayoux. Read the rest of this entry »

In this morning’s T-P, Frank Donze writes about Mayor Ray Nagin’s displeasure with the recent UNO poll results. The poll showed hizzoner with just 31 percent “favorable” ratings among New Orleans voters. No surprise there, except to the mayor.

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The father of modern heart surgery, Louisiana native Dr. Michael E. DeBakey, died last night in Houston. He was 99.

The New York Times has a full obituary of the Lake Charles native and Tulane graduate, who completed his training at Charity Hospital in 1935. According to the Times, by the time Dr. DeBakey retired from surgery in his eighties, he had performed 60,000 operations.

Also in the Times: a fascinating story of how last year, at the age of 98, Dr. DeBakey became the oldest patient to undergo the heart surgery he devised:

As his health deteriorated and he became unresponsive in the hospital in early February, his surgical partner of 40 years, Dr. George P. Noon, decided an operation was the only way to save his life. But the hospital’s anesthesiologists refused to put Dr. DeBakey to sleep because such an operation had never been performed on someone his age and in his condition. Also, they said Dr. DeBakey had signed a directive that forbade surgery.

As the hospital’s ethics committee debated in a late-night emergency meeting on the 12th floor of Methodist Hospital, Dr. DeBakey’s wife, Katrin, barged in to demand that the operation begin immediately.

In the end, the ethics committee approved the operation; an anesthesiology colleague of Dr. DeBakey’s, who now works at a different hospital, agreed to put him to sleep; and the seven-hour operation began shortly before midnight on Feb. 9.

The late entry of School Board member Jimmy Fahrenholtz in the Sept. 6 Democratic primary is bad news for former TV newscaster Helena Moreno. She’s still the only female in the race, but she’s no longer the only non-black candidate. That means she will not have a lock on white votes, if she ever had one in the first place. Just as Bill Jefferson and his African-American challengers will have to slug it out for black votes, Moreno now will have to run against Fahrenholtz among whites. This changes the dynamics quite a bit.

The only person less happy than Moreno to see Fahrenholtz join the fray has to be Jefferson, whose best shot at re-election is getting a white opponent in the runoff. Depending on turnout, he may not even make the runoff himself, although he probably starts out with the largest bloc of committed votes.

Despite facing 16 federal criminal counts in the Northern District of Virginia, Congressman Bill Jefferson has to like his re-election chances after Day 2 of qualifying for Congress in Louisiana’s Second District.

Jefferson faces six opponents in the Sept. 6 Democratic Primary, but as far as Dollar Bill is concerned, the more the merrier. (I discount the rumor that he will pull out of the Democratic primary at the last minute and run as an independent on Nov. 4. With no Republican in the race, he’d surely lose on Nov. 4 to the Democratic nominee, who almost certainly will be a well-known African-American. He fares much better running as a Democrat against a crowded field, which is what we’re seeing already.)

Why?

Simple mathematics.

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State Sen. Derrick Shepherd couldn’t get it done on a statewide level. The town of Delcambre, La., did get it done on a city level. And now the town of Flint, Mich. is going after it in a big way. The crime? Sagging pants:

Flint residents now have to watch their butts because Police Chief David Dicks is on the lookout.

Dicks, who took over the department last month on an interim basis, announced that his officers would start arresting people wearing saggy pants that expose skivvies, boxer shorts or bare bottoms.

“Some people call it a fad,” Dicks told the Free Press this week while patrolling the streets of Flint. “But I believe it’s a national nuisance. It is indecent and thus it is indecent exposure, which has been on the books for years.”

On June 27, the chief issued a departmental memorandum telling officers: “This immoral self expression goes beyond freedom of expression.”

The crime, he says, is disorderly conduct or indecent exposure, both misdemeanors punishable by 93 days to a year in jail and/or fines up to $500.

As the Columbia Journalism Review points out, Chief Dicks’ edict inspired one of the greatest newspaper graphics in history, by the Detroit Free Press‘ Moses Harris:

Scott Jordan, who worked at Gambit from 1998-2003 before assuming the helm of the Independent Weekly in Lafayette, La., announced this morning that’s he’s leaving the paper (and journalism) to become communications director for the Louisiana Democratic Party:

“This fall’s elections, both statewide and national, promise to be historic,” says Jordan. “And after 15 years of working as a journalist and editor, I’ve decided I want to be directly involved in politics in a different role.”

Congratulations, Scott. We look forward to giving you hell when necessary…and we hope never to have to write “Scott Jordan, spokesman for the state Democratic party, did not respond to a request for comment.”

Cynthia Owen, a longtime star of the New Orleans stage, died Sunday in Las Vegas. She was 44.

Owen spent her life in the theater, starting from an early age working in children’s theater. Equally talented as a singer and actress, she played starring roles such as Sally Bowles in Cabaret, Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun, Charity Hope Valentine (pictured 2004) in Sweet Charity and Eva Peron in Evita. She was to appear in Pal Joey recently at Tulane Summer Lyric Theater but was unable to do so due to illness.

Owen was beloved by local audiences and the theater community. Over the years, she performed in dramas and musicals across the city. She won four Big Easy Entertainment Awards, three times for best actress in a musical – Sweet Charity (1993), Funny Girl (1994) and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (2000). She won best supporting actress in 1996 for her role in Oliver.

Owen is survived by her mother Lyla Hay Owen, her husband Jim Holmes and her sister.

After the public uproar that erupted in Terrebonne Parish when a school valedictorian spoke a sentence of her commencement speech in Vietnamese, the Terrebonne Parish School Board is now considering a policy, which would require that English only be spoken at high school graduations.  The board will also look at requiring school prayer at graduations.

Enter the Dragon; or, in this case, the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana.

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Two candidates named Carter will run for Congress against Bill Jefferson — again — this season, but this time one of them is not Rep. Karen Carter Peterson. Sources say that current District C City Councilman James Carter as well as former District C Councilman Troy Carter both will announce soon. James Carter’s announcement will come out any minute now, in fact.

This adds several strange new twists to the campaign.

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Remember last month’s media dustup over the Massachusetts high school with the high teen pregnancy rate, and the conflicting reports over whether there was an actual ‘pregnancy pact’?

Flash forward to last weekend in the neighboring community of Beverly Farms, which stages an annual 4th of July “Horribles Parade” that’s apparently satirical. Among the floats were several that made fun of the baby bump epidemic in nearby Gloucester, and suddenly this year’s Horribles Parade is just too horrible for local sensibilities:

Allowing insulting floats in the annual Beverly Farms Horribles parade - including one tossing condoms with candy - has taken the baby bump to a new low, said Gloucester Mayor Carolyn Kirk.

“I’m deeply offended, and there but for the grace of God go your daughter or daughters in any community,” said Kirk when told of the salacious satire.

Even after three Beverly Farms judges walked off, the July 4th pregnancy-pocked parade marched on with men in diapers crawling from between a woman’s legs propped in birthing stirrups and a giant phallus sprayed the crowd as parents and their tots were confronted with signs like, “GHS Girls Went to Band Camps, Came Back Pregnant Tramps.”

What the story doesn’t make clear is if this is a traditional event for “parents and their tots,” or whether it’s, like our own Krewe du Vieux, a raunchy satire for consenting adult spectators. (Yeah, I’ve seen kids at Krewe du Vieux, too, and they don’t belong there, either.)

In either case, it seems like a lot of folks around Gloucester are more upset by drag queens with fake baby-bellies than they are by teenage girls with real baby-bellies…and that’s a damn shame. Either way, they should probably steer clear of the Marigny a couple weeks before Fat Tuesday.