LOUISIANA

“Sources tell LaPolitics that the Louisiana Democratic Party will move to have Edwards endorsed at the March 28 Democratic State Central Committee meeting. Many New Orleans players are on board, which may suggest something about Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s flirtations with the race. The Louisiana Association of Educators may take an endorsement vote as well in early April. Two nods came through last week from the Louisiana Federation of Teachers and the state AFL-CIO.” – Baton Rouge Business Report

“Gov. Bobby Jindal is less responsible than some others for the state’s $1.6 billion budget gap, and his frequent absence from the scene does not absolve the Legislature of responsibility for solving it. If legislators show just a modicum of courage, the gap is quite bridgeable.” – Quin Hillyer/Baton Rouge Advocate

“All anyone will remember is how the No. 9 seed Tigers choked away a sure victory – again – by missing their last 18 shots – 12 field goal clanks and 6 free throw clunks. And when Jordan Mickey missed a short bank shot with 21.3 seconds left that could have given the Tigers a 3-point lead, you knew what was coming.” – NOLA.com

“I don’t know how LSU fans watch their football or basketball teams play. I really don’t.” – Clay Travis/Twitter

“Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman flouted city and state laws when he approved an incompetently negotiated $80 million contract for inmate health care at Orleans Parish Prison, according to a motion recently filed on behalf of New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu.” – NOLA.com

“An organization that oversees programs to nurture the French language in Louisiana is on the chopping block in state budget negotiations. The Council for the Development of French in Louisiana received $300,000 from the state this year for its work to recruit and train teachers for public schools.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“A member of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s cabinet said Louisiana’s film tax credit program costs the state money and should be altered, even though the governor has not proposed any changes to the program himself.” – NOLA.com

“They’ve won the battles, now on to the knockouts. All five Louisiana contestants on NBC’s “The Voice” have advanced to the next level in the reality singing competition series, and will vie in the knock-out rounds starting Monday night.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“Sparked by the controversy online, festival board members held an emergency meeting to discuss what’s next. They’ve decided they’re keeping the poster.” – WWL-TV

“A painting of two black children that appears on posters for the Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival has drawn comparisons to pickaninny stereotypes and other racist depictions of black people. Festival leadership unveiled the poster Tuesday night and posted photos to Facebook the following day, where many users said they found the painting distasteful.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

NATIONAL

“Of all the idiocies uttered in reaction to Benjamin Netanyahu’s stunning election victory, none is more ubiquitous than the idea that peace prospects are now dead because Netanyahu has declared that there will be no Palestinian state while he is Israel’s prime minister. I have news for the lowing herds: There would be no peace and no Palestinian state if Isaac Herzog were prime minister either. Or Ehud Barak or Ehud Olmert for that matter. The latter two were (non-Likud) prime ministers who offered the Palestinians their own state — with its capital in Jerusalem and every Israeli settlement in the new Palestine uprooted — only to be rudely rejected.” – Charles Krauthammer/Washington Post

“Those statements are reconcilable — a peaceful Palestine is still many years away, and since Bibi won’t sign off on anything less, it means his career will end without one — but let’s be real. He needed to consolidate the Israeli right behind Likud for the election so he hinted that a Palestinian state is off the table; a few days later, safely reelected, his big problem is Obama trying to jam him up at the UN with a formal resolution endorsing a Palestinian state or by letting Palestine join the International Criminal Court. Today’s kinda sorta conciliatory remarks are either Netanyahu’s version of an olive branch or (more likely) an early bid to shape the inevitable PR war in the U.S. and Israel when Obama starts playing hardball with him.

“The Obama administration on Friday is expected to issue long-awaited regulations setting new standards for hydraulic fracturing in the oil and natural-gas industries, people familiar with the matter said.” – WSJ

“Obama’s hear-no-evil-approach marks the latest instance of the incessant, and seemingly unambiguous, ‘Death to America‘ chant getting lost in translation. Western fantasies projected upon the Islamic Republic are as old as the Islamic Republic itself.” – American Spectator

“Federal crop insurance subsidies went to billionaires, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).” – Washington Free Beacon

“A television network owned by Yemen’s Shiite rebels says a total of 137 people were killed and 345 injured in quadruple suicide bombings that hit a pair of mosques controlled by the rebels in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital.” – AP

“Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) is attempting to do a ‘Carter’ in 2016. Yes, I am fully aware that there is one very enormous name in the game: Hillary Clinton. O’Malley is positioning himself to be there if Clinton decides not to run, or to just pick up the pieces if she fails. O’Malley is 52 years old but looks much younger. He’s lost only one election (for state Senate). It was his first try. (So did, by the way, Presidents Obama, Clinton and George W. Bush.)” – Mark Plotkin/The Hill

“The first few minutes of the speech is the kind of stuff I don’t like from Marco Rubio, the sort of soft feelgoodery that might play well with old ladies (such as Eldercare Camping enthusiast Hillary Clinton) but which I find boring. Then, at 2:55, he starts getting mean, documenting Obama’s critical statements about Israel, and his constant slighting of it.” – Ace of Spades

“Just as it is at the ballot box here in America and Israel, leftism undisguised is dying in cable news. According to a Politico report, MSNBC is sinking fast and prepared to throw everyone overboard not named Joe Scarborough and Rachel Maddow. The new apparent plan is to move the failing cable news channel to the political right, and in some cases not even stopping at the center. It looks as though MSNBC is looking for a conservative host.” – Breitbart

“Camille Paglia sits with Reason TV’s Nick Gillespie to discuss the failings of contemporary feminism, specifically in relation to the contemporary feminist obsession with gender politics which Paglia dubs ‘gender myopia.’ Tagging the culture’s current obsession with viewing the world through the lenses of ‘race, class and gender’ (what Gillespie titles ‘the holy trinity’) as a ‘distortion of the 1960s,’ Paglia, a self-described atheist, explains that ‘Marxism is not sufficient as a metaphysical system for explaining the cosmos.'” – PJ Media