One wonders where the late Gov. Earl Long would have placed online communications in his descending order of how not to send a message. He once sagely advised, “Don’t write anything you can phone. Don’t phone anything you can talk,” and so on down to “Don’t nod anything you can wink.” My guess is that email and anonymous comments on newspaper websites would go straight to the top of Uncle Earl’s list, once he figured out what the hell one was talking about. Had David Petraeus, for instance, declared his affection for his paramour via the postal service instead of by email, he might still be running the Central Intelligence Agency instead of spending more time with his family. Then there is U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, who has used wiretaps to send loose-lipped pols to prison but now finds his own career imperiled by the injudicious comments his top assistants posted on the Internet. Under the cloak of pseudonyms, they disparaged defendants, targets of investigations, judges, police officers, even colleagues in the New Orleans-based Eastern District office. Now the deepening scandal could lead to the replacement of Letten himself, who, having secured the convictions of former Gov. Edwin Edwards and a platoon of thieving politicians, is Louisiana’s most famous crime fighter since former State Police Superintendent Francis Grevemberg busted up the slot machines in the early ’50s, in between Earl Long’s terms as governor. Read the full column here.
(John Maginnis publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com.)
