LOUISIANA

“This week lawmakers will begin public hearings on how to deal with the state’s $1.6 billion budget deficit.” – WWL-AM 

“Touted as a way to restore voter confidence, a key House panel Monday morning approved a bill that would gradually slash the transfer of $65 million per year in state road and bridge funds to State Police. The measure, House Bill 208, won approval from the House Appropriations Committee without objection.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“At 10:57 on Saturday night, the phone rang behind the bar at Snake and Jake’s Christmas Club Lounge. A bartender picked up, mumbled, put the phone down, and turned to Dave Clements to report the news: the caller wanted to know if the bar still allowed smoking.” – NOLA.com

“Five years after the nation’s worst offshore oil spill, the industry is working on drilling even farther into the risky depths beneath the Gulf of Mexico to tap massive deposits once thought unreachable.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“The strategy involves a repeal of the inventory tax — which the business community already despises — that will help legislators avoid Gov. Bobby Jindal’s veto pen. If the inventory tax is scrapped, then lawmakers will have more freedom to raise revenue in other ways, such as clamping down on motion picture tax credits or raising cigarette prices.” – NOLA.com

“The East Baton Rouge recreation and park system will ask its governing board for a property tax increase at the end of May, one that won’t require the approval of voters.” – WBRZ

“The leader of an Arizona-based charter school network announced Sunday evening that the organization plans to open schools in southeast Louisiana. Top-ranked BASIS Schools Inc. operates 25 schools in the U.S.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“Republicans and Democrats in the Louisiana Legislature faced off Sunday (April 19) in a flag football matchup at LSU’s Tiger Stadium. The event benefitted families of four Louisiana National Guardsmen who were killed last month in a Black Hawk helicopter crash.” – NOLA.com

“A 29-year-old Dow Chemical Co. salt cavern sits so close to Texas Brine’s property that new state safety regulations — created after the 2012 Bayou Corne sinkhole disaster — now prevent the Houston company from mining any new caverns on its property, a federal lawsuit alleges.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“With a second straight SEC road sweep in the rearview mirror and the biggest SEC series of the season on deck, LSU is back in a familiar spot. The Tigers climbed to the No. 1 spot in three of the five updates polls Monday, flip-floppping places with West Division rival Texas A&M in two and moving from No. 3 in another.” – NOLA.com

NATIONAL

“Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, and 21 other members of Congress are demanding the Government Accountability Office conduct a formal audit of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services out of growing suspicion that money is being improperly used to fund President Obama’s unilateral immigration actions in violation of court order.” – WND

“Last week Nate Cohn wondered why a guy like Rubio with obvious ‘breakout potential’ hasn’t broken out yet, early though it may be. No one expects him to run away with the nomination, but no one expected he’d be stuck at five percent either. As a conspicuously electable center-right candidate, why hasn’t he at least joined Jeb Bush and Scott Walker by polling in the mid-teens? If you believe CNN, he’s on his way. For the moment.” – Hot Air

“Marco Rubio’s campaign is premised on the idea that he’s the candidate best suited to bridge the divide between conservatives and the GOP establishment — if he can stay in the race long enough to make that case against better-funded opponents like Jeb Bush. Enter Norman Braman , an 82-year-old self-made billionaire with a fondness for Rubio and an equally intense distaste for Bush.” – POLITICO

“Watching the ‘inevitable’ Hillary Clinton campaign across Iowa reminded me of another profoundly flawed human being whose nomination was also seen as inevitable 18 month before Election Day: Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1967.” – American Thinker

“I have referred to the Clinton Foundation as ‘Hillary Clinton’s Bain Capital’ on the theory that it will connect her to unsympathetic figures and entities who behave badly in something like the way Bain Capital was said to connect Mitt Romney to bad corporate behavior. But now, with word of Peter Schweizer’s new book (to be released on May 5) ‘Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,’ I should probably just call the Clinton Foundation ‘Hillary Clinton’s Bane.’” – Power Line

“The hedge fund co-founded by Bill and Hillary Clinton’s son-in-law suffered losses tied to an ill-timed bet on Greece’s economic recovery, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.” – WSJ

“One of the most damning traits of the left, a trait that would actually be humorous were it not so pernicious, is the attempt to frame whatever fad they wish to inflict upon the rest of us as a ‘reinterpretation’ of history where ‘manufactured out of whole cloth’ would be a better description. The underlying impulse here is two-fold. First, they try to gaslight you into believing that they are describing the way things have always been. Secondly, it is a re-emergence of the political version of the ancient Christian heresy of gnosticism, i.e. of having special knowledge.” – RedState

“A video purportedly made by Islamic State and posted on social media sites on Sunday appeared to show militants shooting and beheading about 30 Ethiopian Christians in Libya.” – Washington Free Beacon

“In what will likely be the first of a global transition to digital radio, Norway has announced it will switch off its FM band, becoming the first country to do so. Norway will start turning off FM radio on January 11, 2017, and plans to stop transmission of the last FM signal to the country’s northernmost regions by Dec. 13 of that year.” – Hollywood Reporter

“It turns out that women enjoy a greater degree of sexual freedom than men do. For instance, survey takers thought it was okay for a woman to choose either a dominant or a submissive role in sex, but considered it abnormal for men to experiment that way. And so on down the line through a variety of sexual opportunities, including using sex toys, playing with food during sex, and having sex with more than one partner at the same time.” – Men’s Health