LOUISIANA

“New Orleans police are investigating a shooting on St. Charles Avenue while the Krewe of Muses parade rolled Thursday night.” – WDSU

“Vitter displayed his skills set again this week during confirmation hearings for proposed Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Lynch will probably get the nod, eventually, so it’s not fair to call her ’embattled.’ But new questions, many raised by Vitter, have delayed the vote at least two weeks.” – James Varney/NOLA.com 

“Year after year, Louisiana didn’t have enough money to cover its expenses, yet Gov. Bobby Jindal refused to roll back income tax cuts or ever-increasing corporate tax breaks. Instead, he raided reserve funds and sold off state property.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“Gov. Bobby Jindal’s name is not first on most people’s list of candidates for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, but maybe we should at least start paying attention to him. If one’s political enemies are any indication of potential strength, Jindal of Louisiana may be a more formidable force than some people realize.” – Cal Thomas/Fox News

“Education Superintendent John White said Louisiana will move forward with the Common Core test scheduled to take place March 16-20, in spite of reports that some students may ‘opt-out’ of the assessment. ‘We are not changing a decade’s worth of policy overnight based on hypothetical situations,’ White said.” – NOLA.com

“In the latest round of midyear budget cuts, Gov. Bobby Jindal is taking a deeper carving knife to the spending of his fellow statewide elected officials than to most agencies under his control, including his own office.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“The Save Redemptorist High School Committee along with supporters of the Catholic school had to meet in a Baptist Sunday school room to discuss their dwindling options for keeping Redemptorist open. The group says they weren’t allowed to meet on the Redemptorist property.” – WAFB

“Georgia receivers coach Tony Ball is expected to become the new receivers coach at LSU, according to multiple reports. Ball confirmed the news through a text message, Rivals.com and The Athens Banner-Herald reported, and Georgia’s 247Sports site had the news first, citing anonymous sources.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“Nine years ago, Ed Orgeron wanted to fight me. Three men and eight feet stood between us, and Orgeron, a former Division I defensive lineman who even today is considered the toughest coach in college football, wanted to close that distance in a hot second.” – SB Nation

“LSU played with one hand tied behind its back in 2014, and that one hand happened to belong to its quarterback, which made for some trouble for the Tigers.” – Bleacher Report

NATIONAL

“Five years ago this month (maybe even this week), I was at al-Asad air base with four other comics doing a show. The place was still a war zone but the Americans and Iraqis were very much in charge. The show was packed, the troops were ready to go home and leave things in what seemed to be capable hands. Heck, the other comics and I hit the base store for souvenirs before we choppered out of there. Now ISIS is trying to overrun some Americans there.” – Stephen Kruiser/PJ Media

“This passivity — strategic, syntactical, ideological — is more than just a reaction to the perceived overreach of the Bush years. Or a fear of failure. Or bowing to the domestic left. It is, above all, rooted in Obama’s deep belief that we — America, Christians, the West — lack the moral authority to engage, to project, i.e., to lead.”

“Thursday on Fox New Channel’s ‘America’s Newsroom,’ Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) explained in November the Treasury Inspector General reported that it had recovered almost 80,000 missing emails from the seized IRS disaster recovery tapes. Upon investigation it was found approximately 80 percent are duplicates, which leaves roughly 16,000 recovered, unique Lois Lerner emails.” – Breitbart

“In spite of government’s best efforts to encourage innovation by solar energy companies and encourage Americans to rely more heavily on solar electricity, solar power continues to be a losing proposition,” the report said. “American taxpayers spent an average of $39 billion a year over the past 5 years financing grants, subsidizing tax credits, guaranteeing loans, bailing out failed solar energy boondoggles and otherwise underwriting every idea under the sun to make solar energy cheaper and more popular. But none of it has worked.” – Washington Free Beacon

“The case, King v. Burwell, will decide the legality of ObamaCare subsidies in 34 states. Without the billions of dollars provided to help people pay for insurance, the president’s signature healthcare law would have to be fundamentally reshaped. Most experts said the new evidence against the plaintiffs is likely not damning enough for the case to be dismissed outright. The case could still proceed if at least one of the plaintiffs could argue that ObamaCare would injure him or her.” – The Hill

“This is no accident. Rather, it is the product of an increasing tendency among college-educated Americans to regard the letters after their names as a distinguishing mark that renders them as part of a special, exclusive class. By willfully conflating their established educational achievements and their presumed intellect or societal worth — in Dean’s words, their ‘education’ per se — these people extract every last ounce of social value from their investment, and make it appear as if the only way to compete with them is to join them. Sure, the clerisy concedes, you might be acceptable within your own field, but you will never be able to compete with us for the jobs that we prefer. Why? Well, because we have decided that they require a college degree, and you have an unfortunate background in trade. Sorry, Mr. Walker, you have the wrong colored dot on your forehead to run for higher office.” – Charles C.W. Cooke/National Review

“It’s a tweet that ultimately fell on deaf ears: ‘#ServicioPublico Infalgan solution of 10 Mg for injection is needed for Vanessa Chacón.’ Sent from San Rafael del Piñal, a small town in Venezuela near the border with Colombia, the tweet was sent on behalf of Chacón, 22, who needed the medicine to survive a severe coronary condition.  Unfortunately, it’s simply not available there — and isn’t likely to be anytime soon.” – Ozy.com

Read more: OZY – Smarter, Fresher, Different

“NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope recently discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star within the habitable zone of our galaxy. Kepler-186f is approximately 500 light-years from Earth in the Cygnus constellation.” – The Mind Unleashed

“The state’s Republican-led legislature has launched an ideological drive against the state’s publicly funded academic institution, the University of North Carolina system. In 2013, Gov. Pat McCrory (R) instructed the university’s Board of Governors to identify some $15 million in budget cuts to university research centers — a move in line with Pope’s desire to slash the higher education budget. Pope was named the state’s deputy budget director soon after the tea party seized control in the state.” – Huffington Post

“Not every political scandal is Watergate, even though we have been sticking a ‘-gate’ suffix onto every other scandal ever since then to pay homage to it. The scandal in Oregon surrounding Governor John Kitzhaber doesn’t have much resemblance to Watergate, either; it’s a scandal of personal connections and personal exploitation of access to power that mainly centers on Kitzhaber’s fiancée, and bears more resemblance to Bob McDonnell than Richard Nixon. There is one parallel, though, that evokes the final days of the Watergate — the long walk of the executive’s allies to tell him that it’s time to go. This time, though, that means Democrats had to deliver the bad news:” – Hot Air