• Candidates need to be better prepared
Re: "N.O. mayoral candidates fumble query at forum: Youth Study Center throws four of them a curve," Metro, Nov. 19.

• Editorial: Culture of corruption
New Orleanians have known that U.S. District Judge Thomas Porteous is unfit for the bench and deserves the boot. Now members of Congress considering an impeachment recommendation are starting to hear the evidence against him, and they should reach the same conclusion as well.

• Editorial: Don't delay new hospital
A Louisiana panel looking for ways to trim the state budget recommended that a study be done to evaluate the cost of building a teaching hospital in lower Mid-City versus gutting and rehabilitating Charity Hospital, but that's not a smart step.

• Is there no end to the shady judges?
Forgiveness may be in order if you're in court one day and ask yourself: "Is the fix in?''

• The future of conservatism
I'm sure I would like Sarah Palin if I got the chance to meet her. We share many things in common. She is still married to her first spouse, as am I. She has a Down syndrome son. I have a brother with Down syndrome. We share the same faith and we both like the outdoors. She is conservative on economic and social issues, and so am I.

• Editorial: Negligent on MR-GO
U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval Jr. was unsparing in his condemnation of the Army Corps of Engineers, handing down a ruling Wednesday that faults the agency's mismanagement of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet for catastrophic flooding in St. Bernard Parish and the Lower 9th Ward after Hurricane Katrina.

• Editorial: Recycling the twin spans
Plenty of ideas have been floated for the storm-damaged Interstate 10 twin spans from using decking for emergency bays on the Causeway to using rubble for artificial reefs, but state Sen. A.G. Crowe sees a different potential: as a bridge.

• Signs of Recovery
Po-boy lovers will flock to the newly renovated Oak Street Sunday for the New Orleans Po-Boy Preservation Festival. The street, which had a major overhaul this year, now has wider sidewalks, and the festival, in its third year, boasts more than 40 food vendors and live music on two stages.

• Tackling bigotry on SEC campuses
I enjoy traveling to LSU road football games, and I have close friends who happen to be African-American.

• Editorial: Fixing the Kenner levee
Metro New Orleans residents were hardly shocked to learn this week that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed to enforce construction standards when a section of the Lake Pontchartrain levee in Kenner was raised in 2000 and 2001. After all, the catastrophic failure of floodwalls and levees during Hurricane Katrina exposed the corps' glaring deficiencies when building our flood protection in years past.

• Editorial: Make dumpers pay
Trash haulers who dump garbage and debris illegally are motivated by greed -- they want to save what they would spend if they used a legitimate landfill -- and that's why it's important to make them pay for breaking the law.

• Jazz and Razz
The city of SLIDELL won a first-place Gold Award for Municipal Excellence from the National League of Cities, the first Louisiana city to do so. Slidell was recognized for efforts to improve quality of life through cultural programs. The city holds 40 free events a year. Mayor Ben Morris pointed to the program's importance after the storm, starting with the Bayou Jam held two months after Katrina. "There was a lot of beat-up, tired, angry and depressed people, and all of a sudden, everybody kind of let loose," he said.

• Editorial: Environmental connection
Gulf Coast residents understand how important their connection to the natural environment is, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said, and she believes that understanding has grown deeper since Hurricane Katrina,

• Editorial: His year abroad
Mayor Ray Nagin is on a world tour courtesy of the taxpayers of New Orleans.

• Editorial: A cry for help
State Police and their local counterparts are catching more child pornography traffickers on the Internet than ever before, and those arrested for seeking out images of children being raped and sexually abused often are engaged in the same horrific crimes that they watch on their computer screens.

• Editorial: Mr. Whitmer's choice
Jefferson Parish Chief Administrative Officer Tim Whitmer has to make a choice.

• Editorial: Photo Caption
42,000

• Editorial: Recipe for turmoil
The political crisis in Honduras seems to have no end even as presidential elections scheduled for Nov. 29 loom closer. That has some international observers worried about potential violence affecting the balloting.

• Editorial: Thou shalt be civil
An interfaith group of clergy in East Jefferson is focusing on the level of acrimony in public debate and will urge members of their congregations to show basic respect for people with whom they disagree.

• Pelicans take wing
When I moved to New Orleans in 1980, I was somewhat puzzled by the prevalence of pelicans in local iconography given their absence in reality. Pelicans held place of pride on the state flag and the state seal, and scores of businesses and places had "pelican" as part of their name. But in my daily drives across Lake Pontchartrain I saw only gulls, herons and egrets. Pelicans were notably missing from the skyscape.

• Caught at the trough
Jefferson Parish was still under an official state of emergency in October 2005, and Tim Whitmer was a very busy man.

• Editorial: Jazz and Razz
Marrero jockey JOE TALAMO won his first Breeder's Cup victory last weekend, riding California Flag to victory by 1 3/4 lengths. It was the fifth Breeders' Cup race for the 19-year-old, who was the leading rider at the Fairs Grounds as an apprentice in the 2006-07 season and has ranked among the leaders in Southern California since then.

• Editorial: Making choice easier
Trajoan Solomon, a sensitive child who had shown signs of autism, needed a school that would be nurturing and allow him to thrive.

• Great schools fail if kids can't get in
Once upon a time in New Orleans, parents had a hard time enrolling their children into a good public school because a good public school was something of an endangered species.

• Jeffersons can stop fretting over reputation
Mose Jefferson, convicted brother of a convicted former congressman, recently asked a federal judge to delay his Dec. 10 sentencing for one crime so as not to prejudice potential jurors in his Jan. 25 trial on allegations of another, which is related to neither his nor his famous sibling's prior indictment.

• Deficit grows, and buck stops nowhere
The good news: Both parties finally agree on an important element of public policy.

• Editorial: End to oyster overreaction
The Food and Drug Administration has seen reason on raw oysters, backing away from a draconian plan to require all Gulf Coast oysters intended for raw consumption during warm months to undergo post-harvesting treatment.

• Editorial: Jefferson's judgment day
Former U.S. Rep. William Jefferson was sentenced to 13 years in prison Friday for the 11 counts of corruption for which he was found guilty in U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III's courtroom last summer.

• VA counting on new hospital
As a wounded Army platoon leader returning from combat in Vietnam, I was happy to get home to New Orleans in 1971, after spending six months recuperating at Fort Polk. After marrying my high school sweetheart, I took full advantage of vocational rehabilitation, and I went on to receive my law degree from Tulane. At that time, the VA hospital was there for me -- and for tens of thousands of veterans of World Wars I, II, Korea and Vietnam.

• Editorial: An exciting Prospect
When Prospect.1 opened a year ago, the citywide contemporary arts extravaganza was billed as a biennial event, and that promise is coming to fruition with this week's announcement that Prospect.2 will be bringing art and art lovers to New Orleans next November.

• Editorial: Curbing truancy
Students who skip school are much less likely to succeed and have a greater chance of dropping out. That hurts those students individually, but it also affects their schools' scores in state performance measures that take into account attendance and dropout rates.

• For Jefferson, the day of reckoning is here
Dollar Bill will have had a pretty good run for his money -- or maybe we should say other people's money -- even if U.S. Judge T.S. Ellis orders him taken from the courtroom and locked up today.

• Signs of Recovery
Seven-day cruises will depart from New Orleans again, with the arrival of the Carnival Triumph. The cruise line had planned to introduce the 2,758-passenger vessel in 2007 but postponed the move because of slow bookings. Now, Carnival says demand for cruises out of New Orleans requires a larger ship than the 2,056-passenger Carnival Fantasy, which this ship replaces.

• Toxic insurance
Their insurance company doesn't intend for the Thomas family to win.

• Editorial: A life cut too short
In a family photograph made public this week, Paige DeJean is just another bubbly 7-year-old, smiling next to her Hanna Montana-themed birthday cake.

• Election recommendations
JEFFERSON PARISH

• Good as gold
One of the many television commercials exhorting viewers to buy gold says solemnly that it is an asset whose value "has never dropped to zero," a boast that surely sets a record for minimalism. Still, the world's appetite for gold as an investment option is intensifying. Last month, India purchased 200 tons of gold at $1,045 an ounce, before the price topped $1,108 on Monday. China, too, may increasingly diversify from paper -- i.e., bonds -- into gold, the price of which, some experienced investors believe, could soar to $2,500 an ounce in three to five years. One reason for all this is U.S. behavior.

• James Perry: Candidate touts change
You might know James Perry from his work as executive director of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, where he regularly made news by filing suit over things like the Road Home's housing grant formula, and St. Bernard Parish's ban on new multifamily housing and its attempt to prevent homeowners from renting to non-family members.

• Jazz and Razz
JOHN CURTIS and Catholic League champion ARCHBISHOP RUMMEL are the only metro area high school teams that are No. 1 seeds going into this week's bi-district round of playoffs for the 2009 football state championships. Rummel finished the regular season undefeated, edging West Monroe for the Class 5A top berth. Curtis, which also finished the season undefeated, is in the top spot for Class 2A.

• Muslim heroes
A sampling from the Web: "Why are these Muslim invaders allowed to carry on freely in this country ... protected by outreach, Obama, and PC mental illness?" "Simply put, most Muslims in non-Islamic countries have an evil axe to grind and a scurrilous hidden agenda." "Muslims should be deported from this country! They offer nothing to Americans!"

• Find solutions on jail
St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain and Parish President Kevin Davis have gone from bickering over who should make up a $2 million budget shortfall for the parish jail to tattling on each other, with both officials going to the state legislative auditor with accusations that the other has misspent sales tax revenue.

• For a wartime president, oddly bloodless
The decision on President Obama's Afghanistan strategy -- expected during the next few weeks -- finally seems close. After a process attacked as dithering and praised as deliberative, all the serious options appear to include a larger American commitment. America's best military minds have argued that rescuing the situation in Afghanistan requires a decisive shift in strategy and an increase in resources. The Afghan population needs more protection, which would make local leaders more secure and cooperative, which would produce more actionable intelligence. It is the virtuous cycle that succeeded in Iraq. But, as in Iraq, it requires more troops.

• Outside review warranted
Members of the West Jefferson Medical Center board of directors took the right step Monday by voting to cancel a contract with insurance agent Wally Pontiff Sr., who has been secretly splitting the deal's commissions with Parish President Aaron Broussard's top administrative aide.

• Patronage of the arts
Amateurs. Rank amateurs. Old-style politicians must despair over the crowd in charge of City Hall.

• State looks more ethical from a distance
On his frequent fund-raising trips out of state, Gov. Bobby Jindal enjoys telling small groups of very wealthy people about how the new ethics laws he signed are now ranked best in the nation.

• Army failed to act on shooter's signals
There's a difference between sensitivity and stupidity. If there were indeed signs that Maj. Nidal Hasan, the alleged Fort Hood mass murderer, was becoming radicalized in his opposition to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army had a duty to act -- before he did.

• Demolition is a reminder of our loss
Monday morning, my husband felt our whole house shaking.

• Did Meffert really take a cut in pay?
During a long and reportedly high-temperature July 2003 meeting, the New Orleans Civil Service Commission deferred a vote approving a $25 million technology contract proposed by Mayor Ray Nagin's administration.

• Editorial: Eight isn't enough
The Saints' eighth victory in a row Sunday was especially sweet.

• Editorial: Keep predators off the force
A Jefferson Parish Sheriff's deputy and a New Orleans Police Department officer are both facing charges that they used their authority as law enforcement officers to rape women in their custody, and their respective agencies need to make sure they are doing everything possible to keep potential predators off the force.

• Editorial: The Jay Leno state
Television host Jay Leno owns a large collection of vintage vehicles, a costly hobby the millionaire Mr. Leno can clearly afford.

• Party or district, Cao doesn't quite fit
It's been quite a year for U.S. Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao. Twelve months ago, he was still largely unknown in the congressional district he would soon be elected to represent, under the most flukish of circumstances.

• Editorial: Editorial: Go away, Ida
The best headline about Hurricane Ida over the weekend was: "Ida looking unimpressive, for now."

• Editorial: Removing Judge Benge
Jefferson Parish residents, who deserve an honest and corruption-free judiciary, have long been waiting to add the word "former" to state Judge Joan Benge's title.

• In gratitude
By the time my cousins and I came along, William "Son" Freeman was a somber presence in the family. He was my grandmother's brother, the baby of the family and the only boy.

• It figures
$50 million

• Editorial: Jazz and Razz
Lusher Charter School writers took all of this year's Faulkner Society High School Short Story awards. The top writers were ELIZABETH LILLY, winner; MARIS JONES, first runner-up, and M'BILLIA MEEKERS, second runner-up. Honorable mentions went to JEANETTE DE VEER and ADAM GNUSE. The school's writing program director is BRAD RICHARD.

• Editorial: The Mefferts' indictment
As revelations mounted about former New Orleans technology chief Greg Meffert's dealings with a city contractor, most metro area residents had wondered whether Mr. Meffert would find himself on the severe end of a federal indictment.

• HANO tries to get its housing in order
The Housing Authority of New Orleans, you may have heard, doesn't function very well.

• Insurance deal tarnishes Jeff's image
West Bankers Tim Coulon and Tim Whitmer are very close.