Louisiana Marines Heading to Iraq Civil War

The Baton Rouge Advocate reported on Monday that 100 Marine Reservists from the Baton Rouge area shipped out for four months of training before heading to a September arrival in Iraq.

Had anyone in Louisiana's congressional delegation other than Congressman William Jefferson voted against the latest blank check for the Bush administration's war on and occupation of Iraq, those soldiers might not have had to go there, as the cut off for funding in the original bill (which was vetoed by Bush) would have cut off funding for that war/occupation at the end of September.

But, Democrats Mary Landrieu and Charlie Melancon joined other key Democrats to give Bush a victory and continue the ruinous policies that are wrecking our military and spreading Islamic terrorism around the globe.

Had congressional Democrats (and even Republicans) bothered to listen to the troops serving in Iraq, they might well have voted differently. The New York Times on Monday ran a story that included interviews with members of the 82nd Airborne Division, some of whom are on their third deployment in Iraq. Here are some quotes:

BAGHDAD — Staff Sgt. David Safstrom does not regret his previous tours in Iraq, not even a difficult second stint when two comrades were killed while trying to capture insurgents.

“In Mosul, in 2003, it felt like we were making the city a better place,” he said. “There was no sectarian violence, Saddam was gone, we were tracking down the bad guys. It felt awesome.”

But now on his third deployment in Iraq, he is no longer a believer in the mission. The pivotal moment came, he says, this February when soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When they searched the bomber’s body, they found identification showing him to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army.

“I thought: ‘What are we doing here? Why are we still here?’ ” said Sergeant Safstrom, a member of Delta Company of the First Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. “We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.”

His views are echoed by most of his fellow soldiers in Delta Company, renowned for its aggressiveness.

And this:

They had seen shadowy militia commanders installed as Iraqi Army officers, they said, had come under increasing attack from roadside bombs — planted within sight of Iraqi Army checkpoints — and had fought against Iraqi soldiers whom they thought were their allies.

“In 2003, 2004, 100 percent of the soldiers wanted to be here, to fight this war,” said Sgt. First Class David Moore, a self-described “conservative Texas Republican” and platoon sergeant who strongly advocates an American withdrawal. “Now, 95 percent of my platoon agrees with me.”

It is not a question of loyalty, the soldiers insist. Sergeant Safstrom, for example, comes from a thoroughly military family. His mother and father have served in the armed forces, as have his three sisters, one brother and several uncles. One week after the Sept. 11 attacks, he walked into a recruiter’s office and joined the Army.

“You guys want to start a fight in my backyard, I got something for you,” he recalls thinking at the time.

But in Sergeant Safstrom’s view, the American presence is futile. “If we stayed here for 5, even 10 more years, the day we leave here these guys will go crazy,” he said. “It would go straight into a civil war. That’s how it feels, like we’re putting a Band-Aid on this country until we leave here.”

The change in the attitudes of the members of this unit came in an April 29 battle.

On April 29, a Delta Company patrol was responding to a tip at Al Sadr mosque, a short distance from its base. The soldiers saw men in the distance erecting barricades that they set ablaze, and the streets emptied out quickly. Then a militia, believed to be the Mahdi Army, began firing at them from rooftops and windows.

Sgt. Kevin O’Flarity, a squad leader, jumped into his Humvee to join his fellow soldiers, racing through abandoned Iraqi Army and police checkpoints to the battle site.

He and his squad maneuvered their Humvees through alleyways and side streets, firing back at an estimated 60 insurgents during a gun battle that raged for two and a half hours. A rocket-propelled grenade glanced off Sergeant O’Flarity’s Humvee, failing to penetrate.

When the battle was over, Delta Company learned that among the enemy dead were at least two Iraqi Army soldiers that American forces had helped train and arm.

Captain Rogers admits, “The 29th was a watershed moment in a negative sense, because the Iraqi Army would not fight with us,” adding, “Some actually picked up weapons and fought against us.”

The battle changed the attitude among his soldiers toward the war, he said. “Before that fight, there were a few true believers.” Captain Rogers said. “After the 29th, I don’t think you’ll find a true believer in this unit. They’re paratroopers. There’s no question they’ll fulfill their mission. But they’re fighting now for pride in their unit, professionalism, loyalty to their fellow soldier and chain of command.”

To Sergeant O’Flarity, the Iraqi security forces are militias beholden to local leaders, not the Iraqi government. “Half of the Iraqi security forces are insurgents,” he said.

As for his views on the war, Sergeant O’Flarity said, “I don’t believe we should be here in the middle of a civil war.”

“We’ve all lost friends over here,” he said. “Most of us don’t know what we’re fighting for anymore. We’re serving our country and friends, but the only reason we go out every day is for each other.”

“I don’t want any more of my guys to get hurt or die,” he continued. “If it was something I felt righteous about, maybe. But for this country and this conflict, no, it’s not worth it.”

Word has it that by the time those Louisiana Marine Reservists reach Iraq, the Bush administration will be well into a second surge that will bring a record number of U.S. combat troops into the theater there. More lives will be wasted as the Bush administration tries to run out the clock on its tenure without having to admit its failures in Iraq.

It is not just Bush and Cheney's war anymore, though. The Democrats who voted to allow continued funding of the war without any restraints on the administration now own the war, too. And they will have to answer for the lives that will be lost as a result of their votes.

On Memorial Day, the President made his annual pilgrimage to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington to honor the nation's war dead. The Washington Post included this quote in a caption that ran with the photo of him placing a wreath as part of the ceremonies:

"Now this hallowed ground receives a new generation of heroes - men and women who gave their lives in places such as Kabul and Kandahar, Baghdad and Ramadi," he said. "Like those who came before them, they did not want war, but they answered the call when it came. They believed in something larger than themselves. They fought for our country, and our country unites to mourn them as one."

No, they did not want war, but Bush and Cheney sought it. Now Democrats have made it theirs.

Washington Monthly's blog contained a link to a site with a video based on Mark Twain's "The War Prayer." Twain's text is also found there and I found it a lot more powerful than the video, but here's the relevant portion, where God's representative explains to a congregation just what their prayers for victory entail:

"You have heard your servant's prayer -- the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it -- that part which the pastor -- and also you in your hearts -- fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. the *whole* of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory--*must* follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(*After a pause.*) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!"

Who will Congress and the President have die next for this mistaken war?

Smoke, Mirrors and BS

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Governor Haley "Smug" Barbour's speech at the Delta Regional Authority's Third Annual Meeting in which he extolled the virtues of Gulf Coast residents in his state, in contrast to what he saw as demeaning neediness on the part of Louisiana residents (particularly in New Orleans) in the wake of hurricane Katrina.

Well, Chris Kromm and Sue Sturgis, editors of the Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, a project of the Institute for Southern Studies in Durham, N.C., recently published an article in Salon magazine which peels the veneer off Barbour's myth of the Mississippi Gulf Coast's self-made recovery and reveals a much starker picture of life there today. (You'll have to watch a brief ad or pay their premium to go to the Salon story).

Here are a few nuggets:

Today, Hancock County and the rest of coastal Mississippi are 21 months into a recovery that has garnered Gov. Haley Barbour lavish praise. Governing magazine named Barbour its 2006 Public Official of the Year largely due to his supposed post-Katrina leadership and savvy, including his skill in convincing federal lawmakers to channel billions of relief dollars to the Magnolia State. As Billy Hewes III, a Republican official from Gulfport, said: "He is to Katrina what Rudy Giuliani was to 9/11." Outsiders might be surprised to learn then, that despite the plaudits, and despite the fact that Barbour's GOP connections seem to have won him a disproportionate share of relief money from Washington, post-Katrina recovery in some of the hardest-hit areas of the Mississippi coast is moving as fast as molasses in winter.

In Hancock County, Rocky Pullman paints a bleak picture. The recovery is proceeding so slowly that, almost two years after the storm, most of his neighbors still can't get mail. Before Katrina, the majority of Pearlington residents used post-office boxes; but since no post offices -- or any other major city, county or school buildings in Hancock County -- have been rebuilt, they have to drive an hour round-trip to Bay St. Louis to pick up a letter.

Barbour, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee with close ties to the Bush administration, has definitely proved more successful than his maligned Louisiana counterpart, Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco, in one respect: lobbying Washington for cash. In fact, Barbour's ability to steer a lopsided share of Katrina money to Mississippi has touched off a firestorm of outrage in Louisiana, which suffered considerably more destruction from the storm.

Consider the Gulf Coast housing crisis, one of the key issues that has kept nearly half the population of New Orleans from returning to the city since Katrina. More than 75 percent of the housing damage from the storm was in Louisiana, but Mississippi has received 70 percent of the funds through FEMA's Alternative Housing Pilot Program. Of the $388 million available, FEMA gave a Mississippi program offering upgraded trailers more than $275 million. Meanwhile, the agency awarded Louisiana's "Katrina Cottage" program, which features more permanent modular homes for storm victims, a mere $75 million.

It's not just housing. Mississippi is also slated to get 38 percent of federal hospital recovery funds, even though it lost just 79 beds compared to 2,600 lost in southern Louisiana, which will get 45 percent of the funds. Mississippi and Louisiana both received $95 million to offset losses in higher education, even though Louisiana was home to 75 percent of displaced students. The states also received $100 million each for K-12 students affected by the storms, despite the fact that 69 percent resided in Louisiana.

The disparity between the states' needs and the funding they received from Washington has been so glaring that even disgraced former FEMA director Michael Brown recently charged that politics played a role. "Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking we had to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor and we have a chance to rub her nose in it," Brown told students at Metropolitan College of New York in January.

You know it's bad when even a cronyism legacy like "Brownie" grasps the partisan nature of the recovery 'effort.'

Think about this for a minute in the context of what we've learned in recent weeks about the Bush administration's efforts to politicize the operation of the General Services Administration, the Department of Education, the Department of Justice, FEMA — well, suffice it to say that the list goes on. Given that context, it should come as no surprise that the recovery process has been politicized, as well,and that Louisiana (and Governor Blanco) have paid a high price for that.

As anyone living in New Orleans will tell you, while this blatant partisanship has been the hallmark of the federal effort, Republicans in Louisiana have been quick to proclaim their commitment to a non-partisan recovery (at least until the statewide election season opened Bobby "The Opportunist" Jindal decided to make the Road Home Program funding his issue).

So, back to Mississippi Governor Smug:

For the residents of Hancock County, Barbour and Mississippi's ability to capture the lion's share of Katrina relief dollars makes the slow progress in their area all the more demoralizing. The county's 911 system still operates out of a trailer. Damaged wastewater and drainage systems frustrate hopes of a return to normalcy; earlier this month in Waveland, 16 miles east of Pearlington, a 9-and-a-half-foot alligator was found swimming in a drainage ditch next to a bus stop at 8 o'clock in the morning. Mayor Tommy Longo says the creatures freely roam throughout devastated residential areas.

Indeed, Hancock County was one of three Gulf Coast areas recently singled out as having "severe problems" by the Rockefeller Institute on Government and the Louisiana Public Affairs Council, with the towns of Waveland and Bay St. Louis flat-out "struggling to survive."

Most important, Hancock leaders say, Mississippi leaders and their federal allies have failed to use their clout to tackle some of the most obvious barriers to rebuilding.

One of those barriers was the Stafford Act requirement that local governments put up a 25 percent match for disaster relief money. Governor Blanco and Senator Landrieu made getting Louisiana communities exempted from the Act their top personal priority. They succeeded. Mississippi communities will now benefit from their efforts. No doubt, Barbour will claim the credit.

Barbour continues to ignore the plight of struggling communities, while taking credit (at least in the speech he gave to the DRA) for the state government surplus and the economic surge that is taking place in other communities in the state:

Parts of Mississippi are doing much better than Hancock County. The Rockefeller Institute report found that recovery "is well underway" in Biloxi, Gulfport and Pascagoula, and that there's actually been a post-Katrina economic boom in Jackson, Hattiesburg and Laurel.

And thanks to the economic boost in certain areas, Mississippi is now looking at a windfall in tax revenues. For the first six months of the 2007 budget year, general fund revenues were up 12.7 percent, and the Mississippi Legislative Budget Committee and the governor recently increased the estimate for the 2007 budget from $4.5 billion to nearly $4.7 billion, which means the state has an extra $192.7 million thanks to higher-than-expected tax collections largely from Katrina spending.

But under Barbour's leadership, the state has been unwilling to use its good fortune to help debt-ridden towns -- and some are at risk of going under.

Yep. Communities in Mississippi are at risk of going under. Listening to Barbour talk, you'd have thought that this kind of thing could only happen in Louisiana.

That's his story and he's sticking to it. Just like Republicans in Louisiana are claiming that the problems with the recovery in the Katrina and Rita affected areas are Blanco's fault.

Nothing like folks who won't let the facts get in the way of a good argument.

Blood Money

The new blank check that Democrats in the U.S. House and Senate gave to the Bush administration this week to continue the occupation of Iraq contains money and write-offs for storm-affected areas of Louisiana and the Gulf Coast. Members of Louisiana's congressional delegation would have us believe that this is some great victory for the state.

It is not.

It is blood money.

It is the craven attempt of two of Louisiana's three congressional Democrats to provide some semblance respectability for their assumption of joint-ownership of the national disaster that is the occupation of Iraq. Democrats who voted for the supplemental appropriation for the war are now co-owners of the policy choices that are wrecking the Army.

Republicans like Senator David Vitter and Congressman/compulsive candidate Bobby Jindal took ownership of this war long-ago. Democrats in Louisiana ought to have expected more out of Senator Mary Landrieu and Congressman Charlie Melancon on this war; after all, Louisiana has paid a very steep price for this war in terms of lives lost in this war that was based on lies. That does not even bring into account the cost storm-ravaged Louisiana paid in 2005 when so much of our National Guard's equipment was in Iraq instead of being put to use in rescue and recovery efforts here. It also was revealed this week that the Bush administration had been warned by the CIA about the hazards of invading Iraq.

For the first three years of this war and occupation, the Republican-controlled Congress did nothing to hold the Bush administration accountable for its policies in Iraq. With this vote, many Democrats have demonstrated that they are no more committed to accountability than the Republicans were.

It has become clear that the Bush administration has used the pretext of this war of choice as the basis to subvert constitutional law in this country, to violate civil liberties with impunity, and to abandon the rule of law. Democrats who voted to allow this occupation to continue without restraint have signed on to this process. Like the President, they have now violated the Constitution that their oaths of office committed them to defend and protect.

With this vote to continue funding the occupation of Iraq without any restraints on the administration's policies, Democrats have spent whatever moral and political capital they had won by posing as strong opponents of the administration's policies in Iraq. If Democrats cannot stand up to this administration now when nearly 80 percent of the country thinks we're on the wrong track, when almost 2/3 of the people believe going to war was a mistake, when will they have the courage and conviction to do so?

Democratic voters need to wise up. This vote demonstrates that the presence of a "D" behind a candidate's name cannot be sufficient justification for support. Senator Landrieu and Congressman Melancon will run in party primaries in 2008. I hope members of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party will have the courage to challenge Landrieu and Melancon in those 2008 primaries in order to force them to account for the votes they just cast in support of this war.

Ask Landrieu and Melancon how they can justify asking our men and women in the armed forces to continue dying for a mistake.

The Gospel According to Governor Smug

I went to Tunica, MS, this week for the Third Annual Meeting of the Delta Regional Authority. I had attended a meeting of theirs (held in conjunction with the Southern Technology Council) in January '06 in Jackson, MS. At that meeting, sewerage backed into the hotel, the Health Department shut down the kitchen between breakfast and lunch and Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi addressed the gathering.

He was back on the agenda in Tunica and, in talking about the new Toyota plant his state just won (in the Tupelo area), Barbour blamed New Orleans' response to Katrina (at least as compared to Mississippi's) with helping the state win the manufacturing plant.

Barbour told the 250 or so people gathered for the DRA luncheon that Mississippi had borne the brunt of a great natural disaster, but "the people on the coast did not complain, did not seek to blame anyone; they just picked themselves up and went to work helping each other."

Barbour said that he'd heard people wonder why the media wasn't covering the Mississippi coast as it was New Orleans. He gave this explanation: "The media does not cover the story of a plane landing safely on time." He added that the media were attracted to New Orleans because of the slow recovery there.

Barbour said his wife had been down to the coast "on about 50 of the first 90 days after the storm hit, serving as my eyes and ears." Apparently, only photo ops with the President could draw the Governor down there.

The Governor's smug attitude about Mississippi's recovery versus that in New Orleans conveniently (for him) overlooks several relevant facts that he may or may not know.

First, the disaster in New Orleans was turned into a catastrophe through the combined actions and inactions of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the people who built the defective levees that failed the city) and FEMA was was infested by the kind of rank cronyism that has come to be recognized as the hallmark of the Bush administration.

Second, for almost 60 days after Katrina hit, water that entered the city through those breached levees stood in the streets of New Orleans (about as many days that Barbour could get his wife to go to Gulf Coast, only consecutively).

Third, Louisiana's recovery effort was being deliberately sabotaged because of the fact that we have a Democratic governor (that fact was revealed in emails between the White House and FEMA and in testimony by former FEMA head Michael Brown). This is a particularly relevant fact in the wake off the revelations about the partisan nature in which the Justice Department has been run. Add to that the fact that Barbour is a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and the whiff of crony-driven favoritism enters into gagging range.

Pete Johnson, federal co-chair of the DRA, called Barbour "the best governor this state has ever had." If so, no wonder Mississippi is such a mess.

This is a governor who has twice vetoed legislation over the past two years that would have raised the tax on cigarattes while eliminating in whole or in part the sales tax on food in a state that ranks among the poorest in the country. Did I mention that Barbour was a lobbyist for the tobacco industry between the time he ran the RNC and the time he was elected governor of Mississippi. One has to ask if he's still being paid by them or has been promised a job by them once he leaves office to veto legislation that is so clearly in the interests of a large segment of his state's population.

So, this smug defender of corporate interests at the expense of the health of the people he allegedly serves thinks Toyota is going to his state because the people on the Gulf Coast didn't complain after Katrina. Well, perhaps if the Governor would have gone down there, he'd have heard the outrage about the insurance companies not paying on losses. Imagine how mad they'd have been and how loudly they would have complained if the federal government in the form of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had failed them like they failed New Orleans.

No doubt if Barbour would have been around during the flood of 1927 he'd have 'tutt-tutted' the folks in his state who lost property, prosperity and lives when the Corps' levees failed on the Mississippi. Governor Barbour's attitude exemplifies the arrogance of ignorance that typifies so much of the conventional wisdom about New Orleans and Katrina. He's got his story and he's sticking to it, let the facts be damned.

Ironically, Barbour's comments preceded an address by Tom Piazza, author of the book "Why New Orleans Matters." Tellingly, Barbour did not stay to hear Piazza's speech.

Fox News Louisiana: Cog in the Republican Slime Machine

Well, isn't that convenient?

Fox stations across Louisiana have suddenly decided to get into the 'news' business just as Louisiana gets set to enter its statewide election cycle.

It's particularly interesting here in Lafayette where the Fox affiliate has been mired in bankruptcy proceedings but somehow managed to add the cost of a news bureau to its balance sheet.

The parent of these efforts — Fox News — has proven itself to be a propaganda machine that has no credibility as a news organization.

Guess it's just a coincidence that Fox decides to launch a news operation across the state at the same time that other national Republican organizations have targeted Louisiana as fertile ground for takeover.

Yep. Just a coincidence. Sort of like all those emails of Karl Rove being erased from the Republican National Committee's servers, no?

X Fest in Baton Rouge

Saturday, I took my daughter and a friend of her's to Baton Rouge to "X-Fest" — a six-band concert promoted by a Baton Rouge radio station (104.5/104.9 "The X") at the River Center (formerly The Centroplex).

The bands we saw were: Sayosin, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Pappa Roach, Jet, AFI (A Fire Inside), and The Killers.

The sound system was tuned for The Killers, but the only band among the opening bands that was even a bit interesting was Jet. The sound was too muddy to make a real assessment of what Jet show might sound like, though they are heavy on guitars, use a keyboard player sparingly, and generally know how to play.

The rest of the bands (except The Killers, which I'll get to in a minute) seemed to be covering ground between speed metal and, well, speed funk metal (like they might try to sound like Red Chili Peppers if only they knew how to play better).

I was familiar with at least one song from every band that played, because I listen to KLSU and to The X stations when I'm in the Baton Rouge area, which is frequently.

Very little dynamics in the music, but the kids (and there were a lot of them there, parents in tow) loved them, equating aerobic stamina with energy and skill. I tried explaining to my daughter and her friend how the bands were good in their own ways, but that — for the most part — they weren't good musicians. I didn't think they could play anything but what they were playing. I tried explaining this a couple of different ways and, I think, they kind of got it after the second (or maybe it was the third) try.

The Killers, though, are for real! I have a couple of their songs from "Sam's Town" and have heard a good bit of them on the radio. They can play AND they put on a good show. Light on the aerobics though. They had a five-piece lineup. The lead singer plays a little bit of keyboards (primarily some synthesizer, with a couple of piano intros and segments on a couple of songs). He also played bass on one song. The primary bass player played guitar on the song that the singer played bass on. There was a drummer and a lead guitarist, plus a guy who played guitar and keyboards, but hung back in the shadows.

I don't think I've ever heard/felt as much low end as I did over the seven-plus hours (uh-huh!) we were there. It was loud, but not painfully loud, primarily because so much of the power was in the low end and thanks in part to the fact that no one played really piercing guitar solos. It would have been interesting to have been outside the arena to see if it sounded like it felt — like being inside one of those cars with the massive sub-woofers rattling hood ornaments and dental bridges within a multi-vehicle/multi-lane range.

It was an interesting evening from a sociological standpoint as the age mix at the event was pretty broad. Clearly, the younger kids like the neo-headbanger stuff and their parents didn't want to send them off on their own to a concert on their own for what amounted to a full day. I know that's how I ended up being there for the entire show.

But, I would pay to see The Killers again and would encourage you gents to do so if you have the chance. I think they're going to be around for a while (at least by industry standards).

The Baton Rouge Advocate had a story on the concert, but I don't have that link.

Bruneau imitates Tauzin

Apparently, being a so-called 'conservative Republican' in Louisiana means standing up for the divine right of kings. OK, at the very least hereditary (read that 'dynastic') claims to political power.

We this courtesy of Friday's blatant attempt to manipulate the election process and calendar by long-time Republican state Representative Emile 'Peppi' Bruneau. Peppi, it seems, has grown weary of using his position at representative of the Lakeview area of New Orleans as a podium to flog whatever administration happened to lead (and that term must be used loosely) New Orleans. But, rather than serve out his term and let the electoral process run its course (Yes, we do have state elections this year), Peppi has announced his intention to resign effective the first day of the next session of the state Legislature.

The reason for this abrupt pull-out is that Peppi wants to help his son 'Jeb' get elected to succeeed him.

Apparently Peppi is afraid that Jeb might not be able to hold is own in a regular election, thus the early resignation which will necessitate a special election that will have a very short run-up time to the primary and run-0ff (March 10 primary; March 31 run-off).

Peppi is tearing a page out of the Billy Tauzin, Jr. play book. It was Tauzin Jr. who tried to get his son Billy Tauzin III elected to Congress from Louisiana's Third District in 2004. Big "Tauzin Congress" billboards filled the district, giving the distinc impression that incumbent Congressman Billy Tauzin was seeking re-election, rather than his boy (and BellSouth lobbyist) Billy III seeking election.

Funny how these Republicans can spout paeans to democracy and use that as justification for just about any action in some other part of the world but they appear to be deathly afraid of the real thing at work in their own back yards.

What is kind of shocking about this is that for 30 years in the House, Bruneau earned a reputation of railing against alleged manipulation of the political process by those he considered his opponents. He also railed against 'big guv'ment'. Yet, as he tries to ensure his son's succession, Peppi Bruneau has resorted to political manipulation and acting in a way that reflects nothing so much as one of the more recent big government boondoogles: No Child Left Behind.

Peppi! Who knew that for all these years you've just been impersonating a good government conservative. Certainly not your House District 94 constituents!