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The FBI raid of the Hammond Police Department and a Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff's Office substation Thursday (Dec. 15) is part of a wider investigation into the work of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration task force whose members are alleged to have sold narcotics and tampered with witnesses, several news agencies reported. The investigation involves the DEA, the Justice Department and the department's office of inspector general. DEA agent Chad Scott, who was leading the drug task force, was suspended earlier this year. Two members of his task force -- former Tangipahoa sheriff's deputies deputies Johnny Domingue and Karl Newman --...

<p>Officials are executing a controlled breach of a dam in Mississippi this afternoon to prevent it from failing, and local authorities in Louisiana have ordered the mandatory evacuation of as many as 60,000 people downriver as a precaution against potential flooding.</p>

A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long. "I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else." Bardwell said...

TICKFAW, La. -- Investigators in Tangipahoa Parish said they arrested three suspects wanted in connection with a home invasion robbery in Tickfaw on Jan. 4. Sheriff Daniel Edwards of the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff's Office said the robbery occurred in the early morning hours at a home at 46440 Drake Road. Authorities said witnesses at the residence were awakened to the sounds of gun fire and raced into the living area and saw at least two men wearing black clothing and facemasks wrestling with the homeowner.Witnesses told deputies that one of the intruders shot the homeowner at least three times with...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A divided federal appeals court panel issued a ruling that may allow the Tangipahoa Parish school board to open its meetings with a nonsectarian prayer, and opened up a new chapter in a long dispute between school officials and the American Civil Liberties Union. The three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the school board should be treated like other elected bodies, which are allowed to invoke nonsectarian and non-proselytizing prayers at their meetings. But the panel upheld a district judge's view that the Tangipahoa board's previous practice of prayer violated...

AMITE -- Nearly 200 Christian activists attended the Tangipahoa Parish School Board meeting Tuesday night where they prayed and protested the fingerprint scanners at two schools that some liken to the biblical end of the world. Despite a thunderstorm, the activists gathered in front of the School Board office before the meeting for a half-hour of group prayers and to circulate petitions to remove the scanners from schools. Network news crews, one from ABC "World News Tonight" and another from the Fox News Channel, recorded the prayers and protests as part of news stories addressing the American Civil Liberties Union-sponsored...

"Anything short of actual imprisonment would be ineffective..." -- ACLU of Louisiana “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew5:10 In their latest attack on Christianity, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a motion to hold Tangipahoa school board officials in Louisiana in contempt of court, asking they be jailed for praying in schools. The Tangipahoa school board and the ACLU of Louisiana entered into an agreement, made public in an August 27, 2004, District Court Consent Judgment, which required school officials to prohibit “invocations given prior to athletic...

ACLU Wants Some Tangipahoa School Officials Jailed in Prayer Case May 19, 2005, 06:57 PM WAFB Baton Rouge,LA Frustrated leaders with the American Civil Liberties Union say they have seen enough. They want some Tangipahoa teachers and administrators in jail for apparently violating a court-imposed school prayer ban. This is the fourth time in less than two months that the ACLU has formally notified a federal judge that school officials are dismissing the prayer ban that was imposed to imposed to settle a lawsuit filed by the ACLU in 2003.

By MICHELLE MILLHOLLON mmillhollon@theadvocate.com Capitol news bureau Gov. Kathleen Blanco is stepping into the fray over whether prayer should be allowed at Tangipahoa Parish School Board meetings. The governor issued a statement Sunday to express her unhappiness with last week's federal court ruling that school boards can't open their meetings with a prayer. Blanco urged the School Board to appeal and offered to file a brief in support of the efforts. "I believe that such prayers are entirely appropriate, constitutional and in keeping with a practice in our nation that dates back to the Continental Congress," Blanco said in a...