LOUISIANA

“Louisiana’s solar power industry is bringing in a big tea party gun to fight the Jindal administration’s assault on a tax break it says is vital to its survival. The daughter of a Bogalusa preacher who now lives in Atlanta, Debbie Dooley was one of the 22 organizers of the first nationwide tea party protest in 2009.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“Louisiana is one of only 10 states with more structurally deficient bridges in 2014 than the prior year, according to John Olivieri of the United States Public Interest Research Group.” – Shreveport Times

“Gov. Bobby Jindal was asked about a religious freedom bill coming to Louisiana as well as the New Orleans ordinance barring discrimination against the LGBT community on “Meet the Press” Sunday morning (April 5).” – NOLA.com

“When Republican Gov. Mike Pence, of Indiana, drew heavy political fire for signing legislation that was characterized as legitimizing discrimination against homosexuals, a number of Republican presidential contenders leapt to his defense, including Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. The support wasn’t enough.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“State Representative Lance Harris has filed legislation that would allow the Board of Regents to have the first right of refusal on state contracts involving federal funds.” – WAFB

“A new push to scrap Common Core will be launched when the 2015 legislative session begins April 13, and this time, Gov. Bobby Jindal says he plans to make the repeal effort a top priority.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“A few oil and gas bills may surface during the Louisiana legislative session that starts next week, but the industry’s attention is likely to be on the state budget, one industry organization leader said.” – Lafayette Advertiser

“Authorities arrested at least 13 people suspected of driving while intoxicated in East Baton Rouge Parish— including one person on third-offense DWI — and booked them into Parish Prison between 2:30 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, booking records show.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“The steamboat, which docked in New Orleans from 1986 to 2008, left Chattanooga, Tenn., in March, and is being towed to Houma to begin renovations and repairs that could see the Delta Queen cruising under her own power as soon as 2016, said Cornel Martin, president of the steamboat’s new ownership group said Sunday morning.” – NOLA.com

“The Louisiana Department of Education announced the state’s high school graduation rate hit an all-time high for 2014.” – WAFB

NATIONAL

“Forms of government are like a man’s facial hair. We don’t get from clean-shaven to beard overnight, but at some point we’ve got to make a judgment call. I’m looking at what we’ve got now, and it’s pretty hairy. Not that there’s anything wrong with a beard.” – The Federalist

“When you block all normal means of dissent, whether by ignoring the political will of you opponents or using the media to mock and abuse them, you build up the pressure. In 30+ years as an active conservative, I’ve never heard people so angry, so frustrated, so fed up. These emotions are supposed to be dissipated by normal political processes. But liberals are bottling them up. And they will blow. It’s only a matter of how.” – Kurt Schlichter/Townhall

“Rolling Stone magazine retracted its article about a brutal gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity after the release of a report on Sunday that concluded the widely discredited piece was the result of failures at every stage of the process.” – NY Times

“Sunday on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation,’ Obama’s Secretary of Energy, Dr. Ernest Moniz, said ‘hopefully‘ Iran will comply with terms of President Barack Obama’s proposed nuclear deal.” – Breitbart

“Sen. Rand Paul wants to change the GOP from the inside by becoming the party’s standard-bearer in 2016. The Kentucky Republican poised to launch a presidential bid on Tuesday thinks he can capture the Oval Office prize that eluded his father by pulling the GOP in a more libertarian direction.” – The Hill

“Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to launch her campaign for president sometime in the next two weeks and will initially focus on intimate events, rather than soaring speeches to big rallies, as her team looks to put her in direct contact with voters in states with early primaries or caucuses.” – AP

“The success story continues. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the terrorism group that had been the focus of that policy, has taken advantage of the vacuum to grab territory — and begin offensive terror operations around the world. Now that the Hadi government has fled, the CIA can’t do much about it, either:” – Hot Air

“Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and his son Jeb Bush Jr. have responded to a news report that the likely Republican presidential candidate self-identified as Hispanic in a 2009 voter-registration application.” – NPR

“Yet even so, Biden has attained rock-star status in the gay political community. Blunder or not, his announcement had the desired effect: Less than three years after his ‘Meet the Press’ appearance, it’s practically unthinkable that a national Democratic politician would not support gay marriage.” – Bloomberg

“A translation of the Iranian version of the agreement is available and to a great extent one has to question whether the United States and Iran were even attending the same meeting. The critical issue, in my view, is the lifting of sanctions. The P5+1 negotiators apparently decided that they were cool with Iran having a nuke. We currently have no control over their enrichment processes, we don’t know for sure how many nuclear sites they have, we are very certain that both research and stockpiling are taking place in Syria and North Korea. Snap inspections by the IAEA will not be allowed leading to the same buffoonery that enabled Iraq to retain chemical weapons stockpiles until they were captured by US troops in 2003 and 2004.” – RedState