Free Republic

Two years after voting against a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., is reassessing her position with a key procedural vote scheduled for today.

This winter, FEMA put up over 300 Hurricane Katrina evacuees in New York City hotels. Almost all of them have gone back to their lives, their jobs. But not Theon Johnson. He’s currently sprawled out watching Halloween 5 on one of the two full-size beds in his room at the JFK Airport Holiday Inn. He is one of four evacuees still living in a hotel in the city.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson launched a get-out-the-vote campaign in New Orleans on Tuesday, appearing at the Guste public housing complex in the first stop of a three-city tour through the state to rally voters leading up to the city elections. "We will vote in protest," Jackson said of the Saturday's mayoral election. "We will vote for the right of our families and our neighbors to return and rebuild this city." Jackson, joined by community leaders, ministers and a few local politicians, said the shame of this state and country will be broadcast loud and clear if evacuees spread across the...

New Orleans has long been pivotal in the struggle for black voting rights. During the Civil War, free blacks there demanded suffrage; their efforts resulted in Lincoln's first public call for voting rights for some blacks in the final speech of his life. Once these rights were won, New Orleans blacks took an active part in politics, leading to the establishment of the South's only integrated public school system. But rights once gained aren't necessarily secure; after Reconstruction, blacks in New Orleans lost the right to vote. As Thomas Wentworth Higginson wrote at the time of the Civil War, "revolutions...

NEW ORLEANS — Vowing to address unresolved absentee voter issues at a special session next month, a joint legislative committee Monday approved Secretary of State Al Ater’s emergency plan for New Orleans’ hurricane-delayed elections for mayor, City Council and other local officials. “It is not a perfect plan. It is a work in progress,” state Sen. Charles “C.D.” Jones, D-Monroe, co-chairman of the Joint Committee of the Senate and House Governmental Affairs committees, acknowledged in asking his fellow lawmakers to approve the plan.

It's impossible to gauge the extent of the damage that Mayor Ray Nagin's "chocolate city" and "God's punishing America for invading Iraq" remarks inflicted on New Orleans last week. Suffice it to say that we survived Katrina, but I'm not sure if we can survive Nagin. His apology the next day notwithstanding, Nagin has become a cancer on the city's fledgling recovery. His political and governmental incompetence was bad enough before his MLK Day rant; now he has become an international embarrassment, another post-Katrina blight on New Orleans' reputation. (snip) Sadly, the fallout extends far beyond the damage to Nagin's...

Peggy Wilson couldn't believe what she was hearing on the radio. Addressing a crowd on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Mayor Ray Nagin was claiming that God wanted New Orleans to remain majority black. "This city will be chocolate at the end of the day," he said. "I don't care what people are saying Uptown," referring to a mostly white area of New Orleans. Nagin also suggested that God unleashed last year's hurricanes because he was "mad at America"—and particularly at the black community, for failing to take better care of itself. "I was shocked," recalls Wilson. A Republican who...

If FEMA could distribute the fortune spent on trailers directly to those in need of housing, the recipients might find a much nicer place to live, and even have money left over for home repairs. But there's a catch: That's illegal Those displaced by Hurricane Katrina and seeking a temporary trailer don't get to kick the tires or discuss financing plans, but a look at the ultimate sticker price might make them wish they could: $59,800.

On this much, there is general agreement: The destruction of the Lower 9th Ward started with a series of earthshaking explosions. Preliminary evidence shows shoddy engineering, poor maintenance and politics led to the massive failure of the levee system that was supposed to keep New Orleans dry. But long before the evidence was pulled together, another theory had taken root, and it probably won't go away any time soon: that the explosions were caused by dynamite set by someone deliberately blowing up the levees.

WASHINGTON -- Four African-American New Orleans residents told a House committee Tuesday that they felt a sense of abandonment from all levels of government when Hurricane Katrina hit three months ago and believe more lives and homes would have been saved had the victims been predominantly white and wealthier. "People were allowed to die," said Leah Hodges, who told the panel she still doesn't know if her brother survived the hurricane. She likened what happened to New Orleans, and many of its black residents, to "genocide and ethnic cleansing."

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, the entire City Council and a host of other local elected officials likely will remain in office beyond the four-year terms scheduled to end May 1, after Gov. Kathleen Blanco agreed Friday to postpone the city's Feb. 4 municipal elections. Fulfilling a pledge she made weeks ago, Blanco accepted a recommendation to delay the elections handed down earlier in the day by Secretary of State Al Ater, the first time a mayoral election has been deferred in the city's modern history. Ater did not recommend a make-up date but said logistical challenges presented by Hurricane...

BATON ROUGE -- Secretary of State Al Ater said Monday that he is working with federal officials on a compromise to get information to New Orleans voters who have evacuated out of state because of hurricanes Katrina and Rita so that citywide elections can be held Feb. 4. "I think we are headed in the right direction," said Ater, who is meeting today with Federal Emergency Management Agency officials. "I feel we are working toward a compromise." Ater lobbied members of the congressional delegation and FEMA officials last week to get them to reverse an agency decision that prevents him...

WASHINGTON -- U.S. District Judge Samuel Alito's career "raises questions" about whether he would put legal principles ahead of partisan ideology as a Supreme Court justice, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said Monday. "As I have said before, Justice (Sandra Day) O'Connor should be succeeded by a justice who, like her, will inspire our nation and embody the fundamental American values of freedom, equality and fairness -- someone who will put the principles of law ahead of partisan ideology," Landrieu said in a statement released shortly after President Bush announced Alito's nomination. "Judge Alito's career of accomplishment speaks to his experience,...

BATON ROUGE -- If tens of thousands of voters who evacuated New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina are still away from their homes early next year, the city may have to hire extra workers to deal with absentee ballot applications for Feb. 4 elections, officials said Thursday. Secretary of State Al Ater said almost 300,000 registered New Orleans voters left the city after Hurricane Katrina. "We don't have enough personnel now," he said. "We have employees scattered in Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi." The comments came as a task force assembled by Ater started looking at possible ways to reach New...

Temporary polls are possible out of state Storms took $2.5 million toll on voting equipment By Ed Anderson Capital bureau BATON ROUGE &150; Louisiana voters could vote in special out-of-state voting precincts under a plan suggested by Secretary of State Al Ater. Ater said he probably will ask a special session of the Legislature to give him the authority to open such out-of-state precincts if large clusters of Louisiana voters are living in those areas and still want to vote in Louisiana elections.excerpt