LOUISIANA

“For as much as this current crop of legislators has in common, they’ve never appeared as far apart as they do now. Corporate-style team building, like a flag football game and basketball practices, are helping with morale, but aren’t creating badly-needed alliances. The late-night cocktails and parties at the Pentagon Barracks are bringing them together, too, but aren’t serving to galvanize the bunch at the Capitol.” – Jeremy Alford/Baton Rouge Business Report

“I have bad news for those complaining: if you ever want economic and cultural improvements in your community, you need money, and the less money your neighborhood has, the more of that monetary grease that needs to come from outside. The St. Roch Market sat empty and decrepit for nearly a decade. A decade in which no one in the community had the follow through to get a loan, build a coalition, get a grant, or otherwise make a move to improve it. A decade in which it sat rotting, gathering trash, rats, and badly scribbled tags until someone finally took hold of the property with the intention of turning it into something clean and new.” – Deep South Daily

“Former LSU offensive lineman La’el Collins will meet with some familiar faces when he visits with the Miami Dolphins on Tuesday. A source told The Advocate on Tuesday morning that Collins will meet with former LSU teammates and current Miami players Jarvis Landry, Anthony Johnson and Kelvin Sheppard — along with coach Joe Philbin — in Baton Rouge.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“Former Louisiana State University football star La’el Collins was questioned by police Monday in connection with the fatal shooting of a pregnant woman who he was once romantically involved with, reports the Times Picayune. The 21-year-old Collins is not being called a suspect in the case, but authorities had said they wanted to speak with him to see what he might know.” – CBS News

“Despite massive hurdles, a House committee Tuesday approved a $675 million per year state sales tax hike for roads and bridges. Moments later, the same panel approved a plan — House Bill 777 — that would increase Louisiana’s gasoline tax by 10 cents per gallon, which would raise another $300 million annually.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“A New Orleans judge on Monday dealt what looks to be a decisive blow against Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s hopes that the city could continue to put off paying a $26 million judgment in favor of the firefighters’ pension fund.” – NOLA.com

“But with some $100 billion or more worth of projects possibly on the way in south Louisiana, Ninemile 6 won’t be enough. Entergy expects to spend billions to build new plants, buy existing ones, and establish new infrastructure to meet the demand in the Lake Charles area and along the Mississippi River industrial corridor.” – Baton Rouge Business Report

“Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has another book due out this fall. Jindal is slated to release American Will: The Forgotten Choices That Changed Our Republic in October.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“It’s not hard to get LSU students excited about their football team on a fall afternoon, but they were having some difficulty getting worked up about the threat of huge funding cuts to their university. That changed last week when hundreds of students marched on the state capital to fight for their future.” – WAFB

“The centerpiece of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s plan to address the state budget crisis has been altered so significantly that it’s likely to only produce a fraction of the revenue it was intended to generate.” – NOLA.com

NATIONAL

“Non-judgmental subsidies of counterproductive lifestyles are treating people as if they were livestock, to be fed and tended by others in a welfare state — and yet expecting them to develop as human beings have developed when facing the challenges of life themselves.” – Thomas Sowell/National Review

“Two days before the Baltimore police department concluded its investigation into the death of Freddie Gray, Marilyn Mosby, the Maryland state’s attorney for the city, gave a fiery speech in which said she planned to ‘pursue justice by any and all means necessary.’” – Daily Caller

“What is taking place in Baltimore is about black racism. What continues to be described as white racism is most often the projection of black racism onto white people. It’s an unacknowledged tribal conflict in which millions of black people remain certain that they are being shut out by white people no matter how much affirmative action or special privileges are thrown their way. Their tribalism leads them to apply racial readings to everything from crime cases, like O.J. Simpson to Michael Brown, right up to criticism of Barack Obama. They project their own tribal prejudices onto white people and use them to confirm their worldview. These prejudices are reinforced by the left which assures them that white supremacism, at whatever quantum micro-institutional level, still defines their lives.” – Daniel Greenfield/Front Page Mag

“There are hundreds of police shootings each year that do not result in riots. If ever a shooting deserved a riot it was killing of 12 year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland. But there wasn’t one. The riots that the liberal commentariat are focused on are those in Ferguson, MO, and Baltimore. What those two riots have in common is that the person killed was a low level street hood. In Ferguson, if the grand jury report is to be believed, he was desperately in need of killing. So these riots have not been a response to police brutality or to institutional racism or to a crappy school system or to a lack of jobs. They have, at their most essential level, been a retaliation by a criminal element against the killing of one of their own. This gets to the point of why Baltimore (and Ferguson and before that Los Angeles) doesn’t matter.” – RedState

“It would be easy, in our preening gentility, to look down our noses at a Mohammed cartoon contest. But we’d better understand the scope of the threat the contest was meant to raise our attention to — a threat triggered by ideology, not cartoons. There is in our midst an Islamist movement that wants to suppress not only insults to Islam but all critical examination of Islam. That movement is delighted to leverage the atmosphere of intimidation created by violent jihadists, and it counts the current United States government among its allies.” – Andrew McCarthy/National Review

“In the wake of an attempt to murder Pamela Geller and those who attended her ‘draw Mohammed’ contest in Garland, Texas, lots of commentators are blaming the intended victim. The Washington Post, usually more sensible in such matters, joined in this morning with an article by its ‘social change reporter,’ Sandhya Somashekhar, headlined: ‘Event organizer offers no apology after thwarted attack in Texas.’ In response to which, Geller herself tweeted: ‘WaPo: JFK offers no apology after Lee Harvey Oswald shoots him in the head: It is unimaginable.’”

“The new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows Hillary Clinton maintaining her lead … in a race of one. Absent any other realistic choice, Democratic primary voters still support the only option they have. Still, the polling shows her unfavorables rising significantly, and she’s not exactly wowing in head-to-head matchups against much lesser known Republican rivals:” – Hot Air

“Declaring Tuesday that he can bring ‘the kind of change that truly can get America from hope to higher ground,’ former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee announced his Republican candidacy in the hometown he shares with former President Bill Clinton.” – AP

“Mike Huckabee made a strong play for social conservatives on Monday, launching his presidential bid by declaring that the United States has lost its moral path.” – The Hill

“The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judge who previously dismissed terror charges against one of the Garland, Texas shooters has a connection to the controversial activist group, National Council of La Raza.” – Breitbart