Pooyie!

POOYIE! for July 2014

by Patrick Flanagan

It's good, it's bad and it's just crazy

C'EST BON
The turning tide on gay marriage in these United States is becoming a tsunami. That wave swamped Louisiana's shore in late June when U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman decided to turn a limited test of the issue into what could be a major ruling. Charged with deciding whether Louisiana can legally ignore same-sex marriages performed in states where it is legal, Feldman instead decided he didn't want a piecemeal approach and said that he would consider the broader issue of whether gay and lesbian couples should enjoy the constitutional right to marriage in Louisiana. You know where we stand on this.

PAS BON
Gov. Bobby Jindal's flip-flop on Common Core - he was for it before he was against it - has devolved into an unseemly rift with his hand-picked golden boy of education, state Superintendent John White. In an interview with Politico - a favorite mouthpiece of the governor - White said Jindal "breached a constitutional line and broke the law in suspending assessments in Louisiana for reasons that defy the civil rights of our state's citizens." As of this writing the two are at an impasse, but we can imagine, based on the governor's penchant for firing those who disagree with him, that White would be spit-shining his résumé if not for the support he maintains on BESE.

COUILLON
State Rep. Lenar Whitney, R-Houma, found a way to elbow her way up toward the front of an already crowded pack in the race for Louisiana's 6th Congressional District seat: double down on stupid. A businesswoman widely considered one of the most conservative members of the Legislature, Whitney recently produced a nearly five-minute campaign video titled "GLOBAL WARMING IS A HOAX" (all caps hers; see it on YouTube) in which she calls overwhelming scientific consensus on man-made global warming "the greatest deception in the history of mankind" and "proves" it's a hoax with all the debunked "science" of the deniers. The photogenic 55-year-old has chutzpah - we'll give her that - even pinning on "progressives" the phase-out of incandescent light bulbs. (The law she's referring to, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, was signed by George W. Bush.)