LOUISIANA

“A coalition of 15 local health care providers, government agencies and higher education institutions unveiled ambitious plans for a Baton Rouge Health District on Thursday afternoon in a proposal that covers everything from building several new roads in the Essen/Bluebonnet/Perkins corridor to establishing a nationally recognized diabetes and obesity treatment center.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“Shouting, jeers and even a few threats marred a public hearing held Thursday (Dec. 10) to hear opinions on the proposed removal of several New Orleans monuments related to the Confederacy.” – NOLA.com

“Gov.-elect John Bel Edwards’ rolled out his sixth transition committee Thursday, asking this group of advisers to identify ways to fully staff and fund the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services.” – Shreveport Times

“Despite some gains, black students in Louisiana and nationally continue to score below their peers on key education tests, according to a national report issued Thursday.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“With the promise of another $1.2 billion in financial assistance to New Orleans to fix its crumbling streets and cracking water pipes, FEMA’s assistance to public agencies in the state for rebuilding infrastructure and hazard mitigation grants related to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita now totals more than $13.8 billion, according to figures released by the agency in August.” – NOLA.com

“The GOP hierarchy will apparently never accept anything either Edwards or Dardenne has to offer. They don’t like Dardenne because he has never fit their description of what it means to be their kind of Republican.” – Jim Beam/Lake Charles American Press

“When a private firm went to Warden Burl Cain in 1992 with a proposal to build a recycling plant in his prison and use inmate labor to staff it, Cain did everything he could to help.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

“Two more of the suspects in the Bunny Friend playground shooting that injured 17 people have turned themselves in to police.” – WWL-TV

“The disposal of military munitions will take place next year at Camp Minden. Those munitions — approximately 16 million pounds of volatile M6 explosives used in firing heavy artillery — currently are stored in underground bunkers which date back to the 1940s and 50s. Clean Burning Igniter, about 320,890 pounds of it, also will be destroyed.” – KATC

“John ‘Hot Rod’ Williams who overcame involvement in a point-shaving scandal at Tulane to have a 13-year career in the NBA, died Friday of cancer at Our Lady of the Lake Hospital, not far from his home town of Sorrento.  He was 53.” – Baton Rouge Advocate

 

NATIONAL

“We’re now in month eight or so of Trumpmania. He has a core of support, and the media can’t get enough of him. The effect he has on people is fascinating. But it’s also remarkably annoying. Every casual utterance by Trump leads the news cycle until the subsequent outrage. And everyone flips out. Trump flips out. His fans flip out. His enemies flip out. The media flip out.” – Mollie Hemingway/The Federalist

“Reacting to this argument, we often hear advocates of gun control propose that the Founders’ observations are irrelevant because they could “not have imagined the modern world.” I agree with the latter assertion: They couldn’t have. As well-read in world history as they were, there is no way that they could have foreseen just how prescient they were in insisting on harsh limitations of government power. In their time, “tyranny” was comparatively soft — their complaints focused on under-representation and the capricious restriction of ancient rights. In the past century, by contrast, tyranny involved the systematic execution of entire groups and the enslavement of whole countries. The notion that if James Madison had foreseen the 20th century he would have concluded that the Bill of Rights was too generous is laughable.” – Charles Cooke/Washington Post

“Haney claimed in an interview with Megyn Kelly last night that he had traced foreign Islamist terror networks to the mosque which Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik attended — but that his work got stopped by DHS and State for “profiling” Muslims.” – Hot Air

“Ben Carson, citing reports that Republican Party leaders are discussing the prospects of a brokered convention, threatened Friday to leave the party if there are signs that the nomination process is being manipulated.” – USA Today

“Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told conservative radio host Mark Levin on Thursday evening that establishment GOP politicians will ‘never’ listen to the American people.” – Breitbart

“Trump’s nationalism has far more in common with the conservatism of Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front, than with the conservatism of Ronald Reagan. Support for a “Muslim ban” is par for the course among European nationalists—by calling for it here all Trump has done is confirm how closely American politics resembles European politics. Reagan was an immigration advocate who signed the 1986 amnesty law.” – Matthew Continetti/Washington Free Beacon

“Foreigners have no right to emigrate to the United States. How many immigrants we want to take in, and who those immigrants should be, are issues decided by us in our sole discretion, through our political process. This has always been the law, and has always been the fact. But there are ominous signs that the Democrats may be trying, surreptitiously, to effect a radical change in these basic principles of American sovereignty.” – Power Line

“French authorities have closed down three mosques since the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, and there are many more to come. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve will show no mercy toward radical mosques as long as France is in a state of emergency. The third mosque was shut down Wednesday after police found “jihadist documents” during a raid east of Paris.” – Daily Caller

“Yesterday, YouGov and the Huffington Post released a poll showing that large majorities of Americans — and pluralities across every political demographic — have an ‘unfavorable opinion’ of the Islamic faith.” – National Review

“An investigation by the Ohio Attorney General’s Office revealed Friday that three Planned Parenthood clinics in the state allegedly illegally disposed of aborted fetuses in landfill sites.” – The Blaze