Free Republic

Marcus Williams missed the important tackle in the New Orleans Saints’ season, allowing Stefon Diggs to score a miraculous touchdown and send the Minnesota Vikings to the NFC Championship Game next week. After the game, the amateur editors at Wikipedia had their say. Pro Wrestling Walrus @RasslinWalrus Oh my god, the Wiki trolls already got poor Marcus Williams of the #Saints. 🤣🤣 8:16 PM - Jan 14, 2018 “Easiest tackle in football history?” We’ll leave that to your opinion, but Williams did have the chance to send the Saints to the next round of the playoffs. The Saints’ second-round draft...

[British General Edward] Pakenham delayed his main assault until Jan 8, when he had brought up nearly 10,000 men, and planned to attack with about 5,500, keeping the rest in reserve. [snip] The men on both sides knew an attack was planned on the 8th. Jackson, clearly felt that some sort of night attack was coming . Jackson, was awakened by a messenger who arrived from Morgan across the river, requesting more troops. Morgan and Patterson could see some activity by the British on the river and feared they were going to send a large force across the river to...

HOUSTON - U.S. Coast Guard officials are trying to make contact with a Texas-bound, single-engine plane they say is missing. Officials say the plane took off from Oklahoma City Wednesday and was headed to Georgetown Municipal Airport but diverted at some point and headed south. Coast Guard officials say they lost contact with the pilot after the plane flew past Freeport. The New Orleans Coast Guard is sending a plane to make communication with the aircraft. Officials have not said at this time whether the plane crash. They are labeling the incident an "aircraft emergency." It is unknown at this...

A Morgan City man is suing the New Orleans Saints for a refund on his season tickets because some players have disrespected the national anthem before games this season. Lee Dragna filed a lawsuit Monday in 24th Judicial District Court in Gretna seeking a refund for the tickets as well as attorney’s fees, claiming the protest by some players against police brutality and racial injustice has prevented him and his family from enjoying the games. Dragna said he hasn’t attended a game since the first home game of the 2017 season against the New England Patriots, on Sept. 17, when...

In the annals of governmental incompetence and venality, this case is hard to top. Back in October, 2015, Mr. and Mrs. David Garrett bought some property from New Orleans. The city had owned the property since 1998, when it had acquired the land and building from its tax-delinquent owner, Charles Jett. During the following 17 years, the city let the building (a townhouse) deteriorate. The Garretts purchased the property for just $7,000, intending to refurbish it. Over the years, New Orleans officials had initiated several code violations against Jett for the bad condition of the townhouse, failing to recognize that...

Commuters who take the Interstate 10 high-rise bridge over the Industrial Canal should be ready for continued delays, with two eastbound lanes shut down out of concern for the span's structural integrity, the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development said Friday. Following a large tire fire Wednesday under the bridge on the east side of the canal, crews have shut down two of the three eastbound lanes on the bridge, and the work could continue into early next week. The westbound lanes are open. An overhead traffic camera operated by WWL-TV on Friday showed heavy traffic on the eastbound approach...

The New Orleans Saints have a wonderful 50 year relationship with long suffering fans that have supported the team through mostly losing seasons. Unfortunately, the team is putting that relationship in jeopardy with their asinine position on the National Anthem controversy. For some unknown reason, the team’s management and coaching staff have decided to support the right of disgruntled players to protest alleged social injustice during the National Anthem. In week 3 of the season, ten players sat for the Star-Spangled Banner and since that time multiple players have been kneeling prior to the anthem being played. These stunts have...

The New Orleans Saints released a statement Thursday saying it is "unfortunate and disappointing" that a retired Navy commander who declined an honor at Sunday's game has been telling media outlets he no longer supports NFL football because of player protests throughout the league before and during the national anthem. "We will not allow Mr. [John] Wells' decision and subsequent media appearances to distract our players and organization from continuing to honor and support our military and veterans," the Saints said in their statement, which stressed the organization's "unwavering 50-plus year commitment to honor, support and recognize our servicemen and...

Forney Police Department was dispatched to the road rage report. The caller reported that while traveling on US 80, a person in another vehicle fired a gun at them... After a short pursuit, the driver wrecked in the median of I-20 and mile marker 512. Gilbert exited the vehicle and told the deputy that there was a body in the trunk of the car. Gilbert was also found to be in possession of handguns and ammunition... During the unclothed search, two items fell out of his body. The first of the two items was a bag containing a leafy substance...

Antoine "Fats" Domino Jr. died early Tuesday morning (Oct. 24) at age 89. He was New Orleans' premier rock 'n' roll star, as much a pioneer of the genre as Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, or Jerry Lee Lewis. Unlike his peers, Domino had a mellow, restrained style. As he sang, the syllables flowed with the sweet slowness of cane syrup. Quint Davis Jazz Festival producer Quint Davis said that Domino was, like Louis Armstrong before him, an entertainer who changed American music. His death, Davis said, left "a hole in the world." Davis agreed that Domino was not...

When Tropical Storm Nate formed and forecasts put New Orleans in its projected path for this weekend, one big question loomed for residents and business owners: Will the pumps work? "That's now a thought in everybody who lives in New Orleans," said Devin Shearman, a manager at Katie's restaurant and lounge, which flooded during an unexpected rainstorm Aug. 5. It was one of two flash floods this past summer that led to revelations about personnel and equipment problems at the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board, the agency that runs the pumping system that drains the city. Some pumps weren't...

Tropical Storm Nate has formed in the western Caribbean Sea and is increasingly likely to pose a threat to parts of the U.S. Gulf Coast as a strong tropical storm or a low-end hurricane this weekend, after tracking over Nicaragua and Honduras today. It is now likely that Nate will make landfall along the northern Gulf Coast, somewhere between Louisiana and Florida, Sunday. It remains too soon to tell where exactly this landfall will occur. The uncertainty in Nate's forecast track is higher than normal. Most guidance also suggests this landfall will most likely be as a low-end hurricane. However,...

A New Orleans man was booked with felony theft Wednesday (Oct. 4) after FBI security cameras and security guards spotted him stealing copper from a construction project at the FBI New Orleans Field Office, according to a local FBI spokesman. Michael Bailey, 39, is accused of taking the copper from a construction zone on federal property, specifically the new visitor center being built at the FBI New Orleans Field Office at 2901 Leon C. Simon Blvd. The theft occurred about 6 p.m. Sept. 22, according to the FBI New Orleans Field Office. Through video surveillance and eyewitnesses, including security guards,...

Ever since the tragic shooting in Las Vegas Sunday night, legions of celebrities who have very little knowledge of guns, criminal psychology, mental disorders, or any helpful information. Have taken to Twitter or gone on television to offer their “solutions,” to the problem of mass shootings in America. The latest such incident of ill-informed advice, in the sports world, comes from New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton. On Tuesday, Payton responded to the heinous Las Vegas attack by tweeting claims that, since 1968, more Americans have been killed by guns than have been killed on all battlefields throughout the whole...

A Slidell-based Carnival krewe has uninvited a pair of New Orleans Saints players to serve as grand marshals for the krewe's 2018 parade after the players participated in a protest during the national anthem prior to Sunday's (Sept. 24) game, WVUE-Fox 8 reports. The Krewe of Poseidon took back invites to players Kenny Vaccaro and Alex Okafor, who had already agreed to serve as grand marshals, after they sat during the anthem in Charlotte, according to the news station. Vaccaro and Okafor were among 10 Saints and 150 professional football players around the National Football League who refused to stand...

A journalist from the New Orleans Item trailed a patrolman for a full day in the winter of 1917, providing reporting on what amounts to a century-old police ride-along -- perhaps the first by a newspaper reporter in the city's history. The move came on the heels of several widely publicized police scandals, including the suspension of several officers who pawned their service weapons in 1916 and the killing of police Superintendent James Reynolds by one of his subordinates on Aug. 2, 1917. And questions were being raised publicly about whether rank and file police officers were doing enough to...

People in New Orleans, Louisiana, have been voicing their discontent about the intrusion of the Interstate 10, or I-10, Freeway in their lives ever since it was completed in 1990. After years of debating and studying, they are ready to repair the damage it has caused with what they are calling a Cultural Innovation District. The community will not remove the Interstate since the city cannot afford it, and in the end, the cost of removing it wouldn’t measure up to its value, according to studies conducted. As a result, the city and designers decided to meet halfway and resurrect...

Rabbit Hole Wednesday again…so soon? It’s beginning to feel like we live here.For starters we drop our jaws as ex-Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco criticizes Houston for their lack of an adequate evacuation plan:   “You have to have a coordinated effort so that people have confidence in Government getting them out of harm’s way, in a sensible way.” I guess in her mind the evacuation of New Orleans after Katrina went smoothly.I’ve got a plan! Everyone to the Superdome! Former Governor Kathleen Blanco says she’s curious to why Houston never developed an evacuation plan like Louisiana had in 2005.“We developed...

The Louisiana Center for Children's Rights has a graph on its website that shows that in 2013, 96 percent of the juveniles who were arrested in Orleans Parish were black. If you think that's outrageous, then you should look at the statistic from 2014 when 97 percent of the juvenile arrests in Orleans Parish were of black children. But, wait, there's more. In 2015, the last year that's on the LCCR's graph, 99 percent of the juveniles arrested in Orleans Parish were black. Those statistics bring to mind a point that author Michelle Alexander makes in "The New Jim Crow,"...

The popular trend of taking down Confederate statues and the resulting controversy and violence was put on steroids by New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu. And now this tactic has predictably attracted mentally-disturbed white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, Antifa anarchists, and outright communists. However, Mayor Landrieu's virtue signaling only goes so far. For example, when will the mayor issue a formal apology to Italian Americans, who were the victims of one of the largest lynchings in U.S. history in 1891? Of course he won't, because that runs counter to his leftist narrative. Italians are now grouped in with "white oppressors," but in the...