LOUISIANA

“Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has launched an exploratory committee to help him decide whether to run for president in 2016.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“Reps. Steve Scalise (R-LA) and Pete Sessions (R-TX) were instrumental in making sure that the military amnesty was removed from the NDAA,” Rosemary Jenks, Numbers USA’s director of government relations, told Breitbart News. “Without their efforts, our national security and the integrity of our armed forces may have been put in serious jeopardy. More importantly, President Obama’s unconstitutional amnesty could have been ratified by the House of Representatives.” – Breitbart

“The compromise over Louisiana’s use of Common Core in public schools was heralded by supporters and critics of the multistate education standards. But exactly what the deal would mean for Louisiana’s classrooms and its standardized testing is open to wide variations in interpretation. Whether it would ultimately scrap Common Core in public schools is definitely not clear.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“And this is the moment when legislators might force the immediate return of roughly three dozen schools from the state-run Recovery School District to Orleans Parish School Board control? They can’t be serious.” – NOLA.com

“Efforts to build a barrier of coastal land from the west levee in Plaquemines Parish to the east levee in Lafourche Parish continues as sediment is dredged from the Mississippi River and put in place via a pipeline.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“Louisiana’s public colleges and public health care services started the 2015 legislative session in shaky financial shape, facing the risk of deep slashing in the coming months. Now as lawmakers passed the midpoint of their work, those programs face no greater financial certainty.” – NOLA.com

“Baton Rouge restaurateur and philanthropist T.J. Moran died Sunday, according to a close family friend. He was 84. Moran opened the first Ruth’s Chris Steak House franchise in 1976 in Baton Rouge, going on to become its largest franchisee with about a dozen locations. In the late 1980s, he founded TJ Ribs in Baton Rouge.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“W.R. Grace & Co. and Chevron Products Co. will build a $135 million residue hydro-processing catalyst production plant and additional alumina capacity at the existing Grace manufacturing facility near Lake Charles.” – Lake Charles American Press

“Louisiana is home to many things…good food, good music, the list goes on and on. But there’s one thing on that list you might not know about, some very strange laws, and many of you at home may be breaking the law without realizing it.” – KATC

“LSU’s Bianka Bell hit a walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth inning to score Sydney Bourg from second base and give the Tigers softball team a berth in next weekend’s NCAA Super Regional at Tiger Park, 4-3, over Arizona State.” – NOLA.com

NATIONAL

“It is impossible to see how Stephanopoulos could do his job with any integrity in an environment in which the Clintons and their foundation will be central to the political news for the foreseeable future. Certainly not after concealing his relationship with the foundation. ABC News owes it to itself to live up to at least the standards of a small-town weekly newspaper. It owes them a lot more than that, in fact, but it cannot deliver the goods with Stephanopoulos at the desk.” – Kevin Williamson/National Review

“Islamic State militants claimed full control of the western Iraqi city of Ramadi on Sunday in the biggest defeat for the Baghdad government since last summer.” – Yahoo! News

“As Catherine Herridge and Martha McCallum point out, the memo tells a lot more of the story than we knew before. The consulate and its intelligence operation nearby was keeping an eye on weapons transfers to anti-Assad forces in Syria, one of the proposed reasons why the US would have kept a consulate open in that city for so long. This was taking place at the same time that a number of American politicians were demanding more open support for rebels in Syria, a move that had support from Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta at the time according to Panetta’s memoir, but which Obama himself was reluctant to embrace — publicly, at least. Mike Morell insisted last week that the US took no part in that weapons movement, but did we need a consulate just to conduct passive intel on arms trafficking?” – Hot Air

“Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul says he will bash Hillary Clinton over her husband’s record of putting ‘a generation of black men in prison’ if he is the nominee.” – The Hill

“As news reports bring word that Hillary Clinton is still refusing to answer questions from the press, Ramadi falls to ISIS, and things just aren’t going well for the Democrats right now, fear not. The press steps in with its usual ‘The GOP is doomed‘ headlines.” – Erick Erickson/RedState

“Sixteen years of George W. Bush and Barack Obama will leave the next president with a different world: a new Sino-Russian entente directed against the US, and chaos in most of the Middle East. Both are the consequence of foreign policy utopianism. We destroyed the century-long balance of power in Iraq and Syria by forcing majority rule in Iraq, and stood godfather to a perpetual Sunni-Shi’ite civil war. We tried to flip Ukraine to the West, and Putin allied with China. We have scored nothing but own-goals. We are spending a trillion and a half dollar on the Edsel of the air, the F-35, and have allowed China to narrow the technology gap that once made the United States the dominant superpower.” – David Goldman/PJ Media

“Medicaid enrollment under Obamacare is skyrocketing past expectations, giving some GOP governors who oppose the program’s expansion under the health law an ‘I told you so’ moment.” – POLITICO

“Gunfire erupted Sunday among rival biker gangs in Waco, Texas, leaving at least nine people dead, according to police.” – CNN

“As long as you conservatives stay on the sidelines, the left will win the culture and the culture wars. As long as you refuse to build a critical and award-giving infrastructure to celebrate great liberty-loving works, as long as you praise only G-rated films while watching the R-rated ones in secret, as long as you dismiss freedom-supporting art because it’s naughty or contains violence and sex or four-letter words or sympathetic gay characters or whatever makes you wrinkle your righteous little nose — as long as you do those things, the left will continue to use the culture to eat away the free earth beneath your feet.” – Andrew Klavan/PJ Media

“Clip on a nametag, pick up a paper cup of lukewarm water and you can sit down in the audience at a thousand liberal Jewish establishment panels where the likes of Peter Beinart or Jeffrey Goldberg will sanctimoniously lecture their bored audience on the growing gap between American Jews and Israel.” – Front Page Mag