President Barack Obama was criticized for making a brief visit to New Orleans last week, but John Maginnis says it’s a good thing the president didn’t stay in Louisiana too long. “Had the president stayed overnight, he would have awoken to the headlines of the yahoo justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish who refused to marry interracial couples out of concern for the children of those unions,” says Maginnis. Besides, the president’s visit was overshadowed by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan’s decision to release $600 million in additional grants for homeowners who faced a gap between Katrina/Rita Road Home grants and the inflated costs of repairing and rebuilding their houses. “That’s how it works: presidents visit, cabinet secretaries bring checks,” Maginnis says. Read the column here.
(John Maginnis publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com.)
