Free Republic

At the beginning of last week, with the Louisiana gubernatorial run-off election set for Saturday, Republican Bobby Jindal had a comfortable lead in the polls. Though his opponent, Kathleen Blanco, picked up momentum in late polling, many prognosticators (including Larry Sabato, RealClearPolitics, and your correspondent) thought that the 32-year-old, born in Baton Rouge to Indian immigrants and sporting an impressive resume, would still pull it off. He didn't. What happened? A Rhodes scholar, Jindal was Secretary of the state Department of Health and Hospitals at 24; he went on to stints running the state university system and shaping Medicare policy...

A car crash in a town near New Orleans revealed that a building thought to be a home improvement business was actually a white supremacist church, police said on Friday. The vehicle smashed into the brick storefront in Chalmette, Louisiana, after colliding with two other cars and came to rest amid stacks of racist books and pamphlets, including Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf," they said. A sign proclaimed the building the "Southern Home Improvement Center," said Lt. Mike Sanders of the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff's Department, but investigators found out it was the New Christian Crusade Church and headquarters of the...