**C’EST BON
**Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Catherine “Kitty’’ Kimball is on the fast track to recovery after suffering a stroke, according to an update posted on the court’s Web site last week. The first woman elected to the state’s highest court and consequently the first to serve as chief justice, the 64-year-old Kimball was rushed to an emergency room Sunday, Jan. 10, to remove the blockage. Three days later she was out of intensive care and talking “extensively” with family and physicians. Kimball’s stroke came almost a year to the day she was sworn in as chief justice; she had served as an associate justice since 1992. The state Supreme Court said Kimball’s condition “continues to improve rapidly” and that there are “no known remaining blockages.” Her doctors, meanwhile, are excited about her prospects. That’s one tough lady. We wish her the best.
**PAS BON
**What was this guy really up to? A 27-year-old New Iberia man was cuffed and stuffed last week by St. Martin Parish deputies who say they spotted him parked alongside La. 347 in Parks in an SUV bearing official-looking law enforcement decals. The vehicle also had functioning police lights and a siren. And the suspect, identified as 27-year-old Cody Theriot, was wearing clothing common to cops — tactical-style pants, whatever those are, and a reflective “K-9 Search and Rescue Team” jacket. Also in his possession, according to the sheriff’s officer, were badges, handcuffs, a police scanner and a riot baton. The one thing Theriot didn’t have was gainful employment by a law-enforcement agency. This would be sad if it wasn’t so scary.
**COUILLON
**It’s a toss up this week between two characters who played roles in the story of a bomb found planted last week in a portable toilet at a construction site at River Ranch: the malcontent who manufactured the crude bomb, or the dunderhead who discovered it. Sources tell us the bomb was probably a dud, constructed through a poor reading of Cliff’s Notes for Bombers. But a bomb is a bomb. What’s astonishing, according to one of those same sources, is that a plumber discovered the bomb when he stepped into the porta-potty. Rather than alert authorities, he sat down and tended to his own plumbing while handling the explosive device, even cutting one end and pouring the material into his hand, at which time he realized it was indeed a BOMB. His business still unfinished, he remained for a while — bomb now back down at his feet, before finally taking the device to the construction company’s office trailer to show everyone else! Only then were police alerted.