What follows below is a classic example of what happens when Sen. John Kennedy smells a good issue he can sink his teeth into and bleed a political adversary with. Kennedy took to KEEL Radio in Shreveport Tuesday to unload on the administration running the city of New Orleans for the failure of the Sewerage & Water Board to protect the Big Easy from the Aug. 5 flood, and it was seven minutes of quintessential Kennedy.

The Sewerage & Water Board issue, and the failure to keep all of the city’s pumps running and the storm drains clean, is actually a relatively fertile topic for Kennedy. There has been a mountain of federal dollars spent on pumps and drainage in New Orleans in the past decade, and Kennedy sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee – which, as he notes, means it’s invariably going to be his burden to make the case for more federal money for New Orleans sooner or later, and that burden is a lot heavier when it looks for all the world like the last batch of federal dollars were all stolen and wasted rather than spent on putting a proper drainage system together. Not to mention when it also looks for all the world like the mayor was either grossly negligent or in on the scam.

All of that is unassailable. Kennedy’s likely to get a bit of sniping from Landrieu and his pals, though, for the rest of his statements – in which he subtly trolls New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu for his having spent a lot of time bashing Donald Trump, crusading to take down the confederate monuments in the city, defending New Orleans’ sanctuary city status while denying he’s running one, and most recently pontificating about climate change. The Senator dryly observes this is a free country and Landrieu is welcome to gibber on about any topic his heart desires, but as a member of the Senate committee he’ll depend on to keep the federal trough full, he’d just like the mayor to “do your day job first.”

Listen below for a bit of dry comedy…