CenLamar | Est. 2006

Dear Mr. Terrell, I am writing to urge you to immediately cancel the upcoming seminar for local law enforcement officers titled Understanding and Investigating the Jihadi Movement. With all due respect, your office has been deceived into believing this seminar is objective, informative, important, and potentially life-saving training about the existential threats posed by radical jihadists, and I imagine this misunderstanding is why you stated that you were “surprised at the objections” leveled by the Southern Poverty Law Center and many others over the last few days. Unfortunately, you are not hosting a credible and respected anti-terrorism expert. You are…

Less than a week ago, I announced something audacious: A plan to transition from this personal blog, which I’ve been publishing for eleven years, onto a newly-created, first-of-its-kind website for Louisiana, a non-profit news organization that specializes in issue advocacy and in-depth, quality reporting about progressive causes. Only six days later, 121 people have, already, contributed a total of $15,000 to help turn that concept into a reality. I never once had to pick up the phone or send a single letter or e-mail. I never asked anyone individually or personally for a contribution. Each and every person who has contributed…

For nearly 11 years, I’ve been publishing CenLamar, which began as my personal blog and became something much bigger and much more influential than I had ever anticipated. Working by myself, without the luxury of an editor or a support staff, I broke major stories about the good, the bad, and the ugly of Louisiana politics: A US House Majority Leader who attended a national conference of white supremacists, a US Senator who billed taxpayers, in his capacity as a medical doctor, for thousands of dollars of work with LSU for which he could not fully account, a broken school…