I've mentioned in the past my disapproval of the tendency of some Republicans to emphasize the middle name of Democratic presidental contender Barack Hussein Obama. Like most presidential candidates, Obama does not go by all three names and few of them ever referred to Bill Clinton by William Jefferson Clinton. So I'm left to believe that some Republicans, conservatives, and Obama-haters have decided that it's supposed to be revealing to note that his middle name is what it is.

I would say that it reveals one of the more negative aspects of the Republican Party, but then I see Democrats doing something quite similar in my wife's home state.

Bobby Jindal, most likely the next governor of Louisiana, has run into a potential stumbling block:

WASHINGTON -- Mention the name "Bobby" in Louisiana political circles these days and most everyone will assume you are talking about Bobby Jindal, the popular second-term congressman now running at the top of the polls for governor.

But some Democrats would like to remind voters that Bobby Jindal has another name: Piyush.

In news releases, interviews and small talk, they frequently refer to Jindal by his Indian, given first name. Last week, "Piyush" popped out of the mouth of former Sen. John Breaux, D-La., who briefly considered running for governor.

Democrats say it's a way of throwing back the curtain on what they say is a "manufactured candidate" who has carefully crafted a public image that doesn't measure up to reality.

Jindal brushes it off as a "silly schoolyard tactic." Others, however, say it is a blatantly racist appeal that seeks to score political points by stoking biases many had hoped were on the wane in the Deep South.

"It's making fun of someone's name with a veiled reference to race," pollster Bernie Pinsonat said. "Republicans have played games with this. It's the first time I've ever seen Democrats resort to it."

Many believe that Jindal's heritage cost him the election in 2003. As the Fred Barnes outlined, a surprising number of generally Republican rural voters that went for David Duke several years back inexplicably crossed party lines to vote for Blanco in that contest. As went the Bubba vote, so goes the election.

So is that what they're trying to do here? Well, either they are or they are unfamiliar with how common it is for Americans of non-European heritage to often take on an "American" name. This is particular true of Indian Americans, and interestingly enough both of the examples that come to mind have taken to being called "Bob". I asked one of them about it recently and he said that there wasn't any tradition about using that name in particular, though. In any case, if you have a difficult to pronounce or foreign-sounding name, it makes a lot of sense going with something similar so that it doesn't become a sticking point when meeting people.

But, just as with emphasizing Obama's middle name, calling him Piyush is just slick enough that they can't be tacked outright racists.

Fortunately, whatever it is precisely that they're trying to do, it's unlikely to work.

Reader Smooth Cat pointed out in the comment section below that unlike other states, Louisiana has an open election, meaning that there are no primaries and there is often, though not always, a runoff so that the winner has to get over 50% of the vote to become governor. Several years ago this lead to the infamous runoff election between Edwin Edwards and David Duke when incumbent Governor Buddy Roemer was squeezed out in the open election. It's hard to defend a system that leads to that kind of election.

Then again, my aunt was in town last week and the subject turned to the Texas gubernatorial elections of last year, wherein Rick Perry was sworn in with roughly 40% of the vote that many people thought was the prelude to a runoff. Say what you will about the Louisiana system, but it wouldn't permit that. Then again, it's unlikely that Chris Bell or Carole Keeton Strayhorn would have been able to win in a runoff, so I guess it's just as well.

John Breaux has announced that he will run for Louisiana Govenor if he is legally allowed to. The legal hold-up is that Breaux declared residency in Maryland and Louisiana state law requires that the governor be a citizen of Louisiana for the previous five years. Republicans are already planning lawsuits to keep Breaux off the ballot.

Though I have an arcane belief that election laws matter (whether it means helping Republicans in New Jersey or Democrats in Texas), I've pretty much given up on the notion that they will actually be followed. As such, unless there is some existing loophole in the state law that I don't know about that allows Breaux to run, I think that he ought to be barred from running. The initial decision is up to Louisiana's Democratic Attorney General, who will most assuredly look for any loophole he can find, and if he finds one it will probably end up in the courts where it's anyone's guess as to whether or not they will actually care about the law.

I'm actually a little curious as to why Breaux did declare his residency in Maryland. It's safe to assume that he wasn't expecting a gubernatorial bid, but even so it seems like he would want to leave the door open for either that or returning to the senate in the state that will elect him (LA) over a state where he has no ties (MD). I understood Tom Delay's decision insofar as (erroneously thought) it was a way for him to drop out of the race and be replaced, but no such circumstances existed for Breaux.

After the New Orleans exodus, the state of Louisiana is likely to become much more red and the Republicans are going to start enjoying an edge in that state. But John Breaux, Marylander or not, is popular enough to keep the governorship in Democratic hands. So it's not hard to see why Republicans are scrambling to keep him off of the ballot.

The other concern is that the Republican nominee is almost certain to be Bobby Jindal, who lost in a squeaker to Blanco a little over three years ago. Jindal is a great candidate in a number of ways and Republicans are pretty anxious to see him as the first Indian American governor in the country. Unfortunately, there is reason to believe that the whole Indian-American thing didn't go over as well in Louisiana as we might have liked. Jindal managed to score the endorsement of then-popular Democratic Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans, which may have done him more harm than good, possibly costing him the Bubba vote. With New Orleans having been half-vacated, it's possible that the Bubba vote is going to become more important than ever and it's difficult to imagine that they will be less likely to vote for Breaux than they were Blanco.

Whatever the case, it should be the most exciting gubernatorial race next year!

The Houston one was amusing, but this Onion blurb was hilarious:

White Foragers Report Threat Of Black Looters

NEW ORLEANS—Throughout the Gulf Coast, Caucasian suburbanites attempting to gather food and drink in the shattered wreckage of shopping districts have reported seeing African­Americans "looting snacks and beer from damaged businesses." "I was in the abandoned Wal-Mart gathering an air mattress so I could float out the potato chips, beef jerky, and Budweiser I'd managed to find," said white survivor Lars Wrightson, who had carefully selected foodstuffs whose salt and alcohol content provide protection against contamination. "Then I look up, and I see a whole family of [African-Americans] going straight for the booze. Hell, you could see they had already looted a fortune in diapers." Radio stations still in operation are advising store owners and white people in the affected areas to locate firearms in sporting-goods stores in order to protect themselves against marauding blacks looting gun shops.

I've been at odds whether to write a post about New Orleans. A lot of posts on the subject seem excessively self-indulgent or pseudo-intellectual. I'm not sure what I could say that might not come across as one, the other, or both. My thoughts are not particularly original, well-grounded, or profound. But sometimes the art is in the process and not the product. So here's the partial collection of my scattered thoughts:

It usually takes two or three days for large-scale events to hit me. 9/11 didn't hit me - really hit me - until I was on my way back from a trip brief Waco trip. The tsumani took a couple days as well. Prior to that point, most of my thoughts are hypothetical, distant, cold, and possibly inappropriate.

But it's starting to get through. A little ahead of schedule, if for no other reason than the entire thing being somewhat inescapable due to Camille's ties to the city. Also because of literary comparisons.

What strikes me most about this whole thing is how close we are to anarchy. One week ago, New Orleans was a normal city. Since then, it's sunk in to chaos. It took a massive hurricane a couple snaps in the levee, but it only took a few days. And poof, society was gone.

A few years ago DC's Batman titles had a story arch called 'No Man's Land' in which Gotham is abandoned by the federal government, leaving martial law abound. Take out the masks, remove earthquake rubble and add a bunch of water, and the parallels are somewhat interesting. Denny O'Neill, whom I believe was the architect of NML, was also the cheif writer of a series in the 80's called The Question, which over a three year run followed Hub City's descent in to utter chaos.

Gotham and Hub City are, of course, fictional. While stories that feature superheroes are inherently unreal in nature, even accepting that the stories never felt real. They felt metaphorical. They felt hypothetical. But they're not all that different from what is going on right now. It's taking me a while to come to grips with that.

We take things for granted in this country. We take for granted that whatever corruption may exist in government generally and law enforcement specifically that there are laws that we live by. A lot of people get away with a lot of things, of course, but they do so mostly by being sly, tricky, and quiet. The mere requirement that such actions be kept covert (or at least not chargable or provable in court) keeps corruption, on the greater scheme of things, to a minimum.

When we read about Sudanese warlords or armed struggle in Iraq, there is a certain distance we place between ourselves and those events. That's over there, but over here we have Rule of Law and protections both against evildoers and against or protectors. The system may fail, but at least there is a system.

So what's getting me most about New Orleans right now is the utter lack of a system. Not just the chaos, which we've seen before, but the fact that there is no immediate end in sight. There's not a feeling right now that folks out there can just "wait it out." It's the difference between holding your breath to get the ring under water and being stuck under water, not knowing which way us up, and panicking. The light at the end of the tunnel and the knowledge of how it will play out is all-important. And that's what's lacking now.

People are having to leave their beloved pets to die. They have nothing to drink. Nothing to eat. When something bad happens, there is no one to go to and nowhere to escape to. You know you could be killed and there is nothing anyone can do about it. You know anyone around you can be killed and there isn't anything you can do about that. Eventually, I suppose, the busses will take everyone off to Houston, but dammit we're in America and we shouldn't ever find ourselves in this situation. Ever.

But there are, the lesson to me in this, limits to what a society can safeguard. There are limits to what a society can guarantee to its people at all times. Sometimes we're thrown such a curveball that the unthinkable becomes the pragmatic. The dichotomy of chaos and martial law suddenly becomes one that we have to ponder. Whatever chance we might have had to preserve the civility is gone. Whatever notion we had that we, as Americans, were different from those other people from those other places, or that we, as humans, are capable consistently keeping peace without bouts of chaos or a lot of broken glass, becomes much, much harder to maintain.

Beavers Weave Stolen Cash Into Dam:

GREENSBURG, La. (AP) - It was probably the world's richest beaver dam. Beavers found a bag of bills stolen from a video poker casino last week, tore it open and wove the money into the sticks and brush of their dam on a creek north of Louisiana Highway 48. Major Michael Martin of the East Feliciana Parish Sheriff's Office says bills used to build the dam were still whole.

The money was part of 70- to 75-thousand dollars taken from the Lucky Dollar Casino in Greensburg. About 40-thousand dollars was recovered. Authorities expect to find the rest in a safety deposit box at a bank in Mississippi.

They sure are resourceful creatures, aren't they?

A professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette apparently completely lost it in class:

Student Kacie Spears said professor Louis Houston lost control right after class began Wednesday morning and was yelling obscenities.

"Then he told us if we got out of our seats he's gonna kill us. He went on the black board and wrote "911 now", so we were really in fear for our lives," Spears told KATC-TV.

Spears said Houston slapped a student and then told his class he was God.

Bizarre.

The authorities are taking it pretty seriously. The building was evacuated and bomb dogs were sent in. They're talking about involuntary commitment into a psychiatric hospital. It's apparently not the first time he has burst out in class.

One of my favorite professors completely lost it at UH. S/he yelled at us for about ten minutes about how worthless we were (we'd just screwed up) and how we were never going to cut it in the real world.

Incidentally, I actually saw this professor at an Insane Clown Posse concert. One of the reasons s/he was one of my favorite professors.

There is apparently a scandal at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana:

Southern University, the nation’s largest historically black university, began investigating allegations of grade buying in March 2003. Allegations point to a former worker in the school’s registrar’s office who had access to transcripts. That same worker also served as an assistant registrar at the school’s New Orleans campus from October 1997 to August 1999.

Southern University has named 514 students who received diplomas or attended the school from 1995 to 2003 as possibly purchasing their grades without attending the required classes.

Cynthia Richard’s transcript shows the completion of 16 classes and a GPA of 3.571.

According to court records, Southern University found that in spring 2000, she “only enrolled in two classes, failed both and never enrolled for other classes listed on the transcript.”

The leadership at Texas Southern University (Texas's most prominant historically black university) in Houston was an absolute mess several years ago. It was bad enough that Jesse Jackson came down and (very unproductively) got involved. Then-governor George W. Bush arranged the release of the university's president. I don't know if things have gotten better or not, but I haven't been hearing the sheer multitude of problems since.

All indicators in Louisiana are that this was done by a select few employees and was not done with the approval or knowledge of the administration. Unfortunately historically black universities already have a pretty negative reputation education-wise. Both Southern and Texas Southern law schools are just about dead last in every category and I've heard more than once (about each university) that a degree there represents an education not very much better than a high school diploma. This will certainly not help.

For reasons I won't get in to at the moment, I was looking around at law schools across the country and came across a cool website that has a database of law schools. I was looking at various law schools in various states such as Idaho, Texas, and Louisiana. When looking at Louisiana's, I immediately knew something was missing.



It took me only a second to realize that it didn't list Tulane! How could any law school database not list Tulane?! So I ran it by alphabetical order and it turned out that Tulane was, in fact, there.



New York?! I know two people that attend Tulane law school (Eel's sister and Heidi) and both, to my knowledge, live in Louisiana.

So I clicked on Tulane

Tulane University

6329 Freret St., John G. Weinmann Hall
New Orleans, LA 70118
(504) 865-5930

That sounds right. New York?!

Bar Exam Statistics** 2002 2001
State in which most graduates took bar exam: NY LA

And so the mystery was solved!

Sort of. Why are people from Tulane taking their bar exams in New York?

It reminded me of something that Heidi recently said on a recent post about law school rankings:

Heidi wrote:
Tulane took a dive from first tier (45th, I think) to second (56th, I think), and we students are none too pleased. (Particularly those who intend to work in already flooded markets outside Louisiana--NY, L.A., etc.--because the rankings, for better or for worse, often determine how far down the student ranks employers will look when selecting for interviews and such. Top tier schools=top 50 students, plus ~20%, are "worthy" of interviews; second tier schools=only the top 50, if that. Or so I've heard.)

So how does this effect my day-to-day life?

Well, for one thing, on the slow modem connection here it took roughlyfifteen minutes out of said day-to-day life in order to track down the information.

As near as I can tell, that's about it.

In the recent Louisiana governor's race, Democrat Kathleen Blanco pulled an upset on Indian-American Republican Bobby Jindal. That much political geeks like me know. Fred Barnes fleshes out a convincing case as to where Blanco got some of her support from:

Both Blanco and Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu, re-elected in 2002, won with 52 percent of the vote. "The geographic pattern of the Landrieu vote was very typical for a Democrat with a correlation of .98 with the average Democratic vote in the1996 and 2000 presidential elections," Skinner and Klinkner found. For Blanco, the correlation was .60, "indicating that Blanco was drawing support from a different set of voters."

Indeed, she was. In the 26 parishes where Duke won a majority, Blanco averaged 10 points better than Landrieu, who defeated a white Republican. The pattern was especially striking in northern Louisiana, Bubba country. In parishes where Duke got more than 55 percent, Blanco averaged 17 percentage points more than Landrieu.

The question I have about this is how much of the overall vote did that give Blanco? If it was greater than the margin of victory, then it's safe to conclude that Blanco was elected based on the Bubba vote.

Blanco - to her credit - did nothing to court this particular vote, so this is not a blight on her personally. Jindal may have done himself a disservice by openly courting the black vote (and winning the endorsement of New Orleans's black Democratic mayor), so if anyone is to "blame" for this it all falls back on Jindal anyway.

Whatever the case, it's tragic that Jindal's race may have cost him the election. As someone who'd like to see more minorities in higher positions (preferably Republican ones, naturally), it's disheartening. The good news is that the Bubbas are dying off and more and more of their kids see things differently in that area.