Free Republic

NEW ORLEANS - Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard is telling council members and staffers that he will step down this afternoon because he doesn’t want to be a distraction to the parish, according to council member Cynthia Lee-Sheng. Lee-Sheng said she talked to Broussard after hearing reports about a possible resignation on TV. “He told me he hasn’t even had a chance to finish his protocol and call his council members before it got out in the press,” she said. “He sounded well. He said he didn’t want this to be a distraction any more for the parish. He said...

Attorneys called it a legal victory for Jefferson Parish homeowners who’re suing the parish over the decision to evacuate pump operators for the storm. It's a decision they said caused their houses to flood, but while the cases against Parish President Aaron Broussard can now move forward, parish attorney's said a resolution was a long way from being found. When Broussard made the decision to remove the pump operators for safety reasons during Hurricane Katrina, attorney Darleen Jacobs said he sealed the fate of her Metairie townhouses. “See the water? That’s right after the flood,” Jacobs said while flipping through...

METAIRIE, La. -- Frank Evans thought the tiny blue-tarped roofs, little toppled fences and miniature piles of hurricane debris he included in the Christmas display he builds every year for a suburban New Orleans shopping mall struck just the right humorous tone. Mall management decided otherwise and told Evans, a landscape architect from nearby Gretna, to dismantle it. "Although most people did enjoy the decorations, a few customers found the display to be in poor taste," said a statement issued Tuesday night by Lakeside Shopping Center in Metairie. Evans videotaped the display before dismantling it. The creation had sat since...

A Louisiana shopping mall is featuring an unusual train exhibit, The Pelican Has learned. The above picture depicts the St. Bernard parish pump station, derisively referred to here as "Broussard Pump Station," named after the parish president Aaron Broussard. We are told that the photo is indeed authentic. As indicated by press reports, parish president Aaron Broussard took quite some flak for evacuating the station. Some people felt that if the stations had not been evacuated soon, there would not have been so much destruction... The mall display in the photo above seems to indirectly poke fun at Broussard.

Now some owners want parish to pay up : When the 17th Street Canal levee crumbled, Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard couldn't go to the Home Depot to buy materials to staunch the flood encroaching from New Orleans. What he could do, under the sweeping emergency authority provided by state law, was raid the Lafarge Construction Materials plant at 3320 Airline Drive for sand, concrete blocks and heavy equipment to build a dam at Airline and Severn Avenue. In the frenzied days after Hurricane Katrina struck Aug. 29, Broussard several times invoked his authority to seize private property when government...

But he still defends worker evacuation: After nearly two months of public vitriol against his decision to evacuate pump operators before Hurricane Katrina, Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard has admitted to "flaws" in the parish disaster plan, conceding that workers were sent "too far away" to be able to restart pumps before flooding ruined thousands of homes. In an advertisement financed with parish money and scheduled to be published in Sunday's Times-Picayune, Broussard again says dispatching 1,100 essential employees, including pump workers, to shelters in Washington Parish was the right call as a "potentially catastrophic Category 5 storm" aimed at...

Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard is going to be frustrated -- and ineffective -- if he spends his time and energy trying to silence everyone who thinks it was a mistake to send drainage pump workers away before Hurricane Katrina struck. East Jefferson Levee District President Patrick Bossetta is just one of those critics, but his comments have, in part, prompted Mr. Broussard to ask Gov. Kathleen Blanco to boot him off the board.

He had blasted parish for storm decisions: Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard said Friday he is moving to sack the head of the East Jefferson Levee District, who publicly questioned the Broussard administration's decision to evacuate drainage pump workers as Hurricane Katrina hurtled toward the Gulf Coast. Broussard sent a letter asking Gov. Kathleen Blanco to remove Patrick Bossetta as levee board president and to install Bobby Bourgeois, one of Broussard's deputy chief administrative assistants, as an interim board member. The request was the latest sign that the Aug. 28 evacuation of the pump operators has become a political powder...

While Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard said he ordered pump operators out of harm’s way as Katrina approached – a decision that some residents have roundly criticized – a small group of employees at the parish’s water treatment plant rode out the storm. Broussard said that all employees were evacuated save for a handful, including himself, who rode out the storm in the parish. He said he didn’t know that the water treatment employees had stayed and he said he’s angry about that. “I didn't know that until today,” he said. “They risked their lives, they're lucky they're alive and...

A sense of outrage and disbelief is growing among Jefferson Parish residents at the decision by Parish President Aaron Broussard’s administration to evacuate drainage pump operators the day before Hurricane Katrina flooded southeast Louisiana on Aug. 29, according to extensive interviews with residents this week. They are frustrated that they didn’t know of the plan beforehand, stunned that the pump operators weren’t returned to their posts for more than 24 hours and anxious that parish officials have been slow, in their view, to justify the decision in light of the ensuing destruction. But mostly they are mad.

Twice now, the President of Louisiana's Jefferson Parish, Aaron Broussard (an ambitious Democrat) has thrown teary tantrums on Meet the Press. Among his choice blubberings, "We've been abandoned by our own Government! Bureaucracy has committed murder! Some people need to be strung up. They need to be burned at the stake!" On national TV Broussard told a tragic story of a parish employee whose elderly mother drowned in a nursing home in a neighboring parish because Federal help arrived too late. "Is someone coming to get me, son?"Broussard quoted the frantic telephone calls. "Yes, somebody's coming to get you, momma,...

Guests: Governor Rick Perry, (R-Texas); Dr. Ivor van Heerden, Director, LSU Hurricane Center; Aaron Broussard, President, Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; Tom Friedman, The New York Times; Maureen Dowd, The New York Times; David Brooks, The New York Times Moderator/Panelist: Tim Russert - NBC News

It seemed for a moment over the weekend that the blogosphere had claimed one more victory over the mainstream media, but reaction to Aaron Broussard’s return to NBC’s “Meet the Press” shows a deep split of opinion over his comments – and the role bloggers have played. You remember Broussard, the president of New Orleans’ Jefferson Parish, from his September 4th appearance on the same show. His weeping tale of the death of a colleague’s mother was among the more emotional punctuations in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and seemed to encapsulate the growing frustration with the government’s response. But...

Tim Russert had a chance to fess up to his viewers on Sunday and let them know that his "Meet the Press" show was used for political propaganda by Jefferson (La.) Parish President Aaron Broussard on September 4 when Broussard embellished a story about a mother of an employee that perished in the flood waters of Hurricane Katrina. Russert failed. Instead, he tried to lay a trap for the Louisiana politician. The story of the first mess is here, but let's review Broussard's unfounded claims about an elderly woman's death in the floodwaters of Katrina: Broussard's accusation was that a...

Jefferson Parish President, Aaron Broussard, meet Tim Russert, Meet the Press and the American public once again. On Sunday's popular news-information program, Broussard engaged in hand to hand combat with the King of Surprise and Interrogation, Tim Russert. To be nice, it was brutal and bloody. Somebody should have told Broussard that his stock around the state and even in his own parish has made a nosedive since Hurricane Katrina and Meet The Press. To think that he would once again allow himself to be abused, make wild allegations, become emotional fodder, be the joke of the town is strong...

Two weeks ago, I wrote about a Louisiana official, Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard, who appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" with Tim Russert. My comments were that he was unhinged and I opined that he lacked the guts and fortitude it takes to deliver as a leader. I took quite a bit of heat from those on the left as they consider him a hero. Turns out I was too easy on him; he's a liar as well. Broussard delivered one of the most offensive and ridiculous unchallenged tirades I've seen. Tim Russert looked like a fool for not...

On Sunday, September 4, Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, La., appeared on NBC's Meet the Press. He broke down as he told the story of a woman stranded in a nursing home who kept calling her son for help, day after day, until she finally died on September 2, ostensibly because the federal reaction to Hurricane Katrina was too slow. Broussard's heart-wrenching story was a major moment in the anti-Bush media frenzy that followed the hurricane. Only it turns out Broussard's story was untrue. NBC has now issued a correction: New details and interviews with the son whose mother...