CenLamar | Est. 2006

  • The Single Question That Could Destroy Bobby Jindal’s Political Future

    The Single Question That Could Destroy Bobby Jindal’s Political Future

    Last Friday, against the vehement and public urging of his own Attorney General and nearly one hundred of the nation’s most respected legal experts, Governor Bobby Jindal signed Senate Bill 469 into law. Quoting his press release (bold mine): Governor Jindal said, “This bill will help stop frivolous lawsuits and create a more fair and predictable legal environment, and I am proud to sign it into law. It further improves Louisiana’s legal environment by reducing unnecessary claims that burden businesses so that we can bring even more jobs to our state. The bill will also send future recovered dollars from CZMA litigation…

  • If You Care About Louisiana, This Should Make You Livid

    If You Care About Louisiana, This Should Make You Livid

    “A lot of people mentioned to me how omnipresent BP lobbyists were, more than the other major oil companies were (though all of them showed plenty of interest), so much more that it got a lot of people wondering, `What’s in the bill for them?’ It certainly got us wondering.” – John Barry, June 5, 2014 “As our analysis shows, SB 469 fails to protect the local governments whose concerns your letter concedes are at issue and puts at risk billions of dollars of local government claims against BP. And, here, it should be noted that BP heavily lobbied for the…

  • A Note on Religious Liberty and State-Sanctioned Bigotry

    A Note on Religious Liberty and State-Sanctioned Bigotry

    In 1967, in a landmark decision, the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck down the State of Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law as unconstitutional. Loving v. Virginia (known, poetically and appropriately, as simply Loving) is hailed as one of the most important civil rights cases in American history, but it’s not merely a civil rights case or a case about racial discrimination; at its core, Loving is about the institution of marriage. Twenty years later, the Supreme Court decided another case about marriage, and although it may not be as well-known as Loving, Turner v. Safely is just as important. In Turner, the Court held that laws preventing prisoners from…