Louisiana Voice

Fuggetabout blowhard Diaper Don Trump’s UFC cage match on the White House South Lawn on June 14. That’s just an ego-driven promotion to celebrate President Inepstein’s 80^th birthday and at best, its only child’s play.

If you want real, honest-to-God bare-knuckled, down-and-dirty, take-no-prisoners fights, one need only take a quick run over to St. Tammany Parish for the grudge match between Sheriff Randy Smith and critic Bobby Couvillon.

Now there is an event worth watching.

And best of all, you get a steak dinner for the price of admission.

Smith, who has been unable to find the killer of NANETTE KRENTEL for nine years now, was able to spot nemesis Couvillon from across across the floor at Keith Young’s Steakhouse in Madisonville last Friday and sprang into action as only cage match fan el Trump-o could appreciate.

Couvillon was seated at the bar with his wife as they celebrated his 59^th birthday when Smith ran up and grabbed him from behind, placing him in a CHOKEHOLD and pulling him backward off the barstool.

FanDuel immediately began taking bets on the outcome, giving 2-1 odds Couvillon would recover and prevail over Smith who was apparently pretty well into his cups.

A little background is appropriate.

You see, Smith and Couvillon aren’t exactly the best of friends. Couvillion has been one of the high sheriff’s most vocal critics (if you consider a computer keyboard as “vocal”) and Smith had had just about enough.

Here is part of Smith’s official post-smackdown—and post-arrest STATEMENT:

“[An] unfortunate aspect of public service is the effect such public scrutiny and criticism can have on one’s family. This too, is accepted and endured by the family…to an extent.

For the past ten years I have ignored hundreds of personal attacks directed at me by an individual who hides behind a computer screen. His actions were direct and intentional. As Sheriff, I have ignored the attacks, threats and lies directed at me. As a husband and father, the continued and worsening public harassment of my wife, the false statements against her and the body shaming of her are not only despicable, but unacceptable. Seeing the frustration and pain caused to your wife and family is something much harder to ignore.

Well, body-shaming of one’s wife ain’t exactly kosher by just about anyone’s definition of fair play.

But perhaps Smith should’ve waited a bit before making his play. After all, he had a pretty impressive bar tab, especially since this all went down about 4:30 on a Friday afternoon when he probably should’ve been out a-sheriffing. Check it out.

$340 is one helluva bar tab.

All of which begs three questions about the sheriff of St. Tammany Parish:

• Was he driving?
• If so, was he in his patrol vehicle?
• Who paid for the hootch (did it go on his office expense tab)?

Asking for a friend.

By Jamie Surura, special correspondent

The St. Tammany Parish Council voted Thursday night to reappoint Pearl River attorney Charles Branton to the parish Library Board of Control (LBOC).  Branton has served as Chair of the LBOC during the past year, his first on the body.

A second candidate for the vacant position, Col. Jason M. Trew of Covington, was also nominated for the position. 

During the lengthy public comment period, two distinct factions offered observations, accolades and, often, sharp criticisms of Branton.  The group commonly referred to as the Library Accountability Project were in full force praising Branton’s leadership of the LBOC.  The Project was founded by ministers and church followers who tried to defeat the library millage renewal two years ago.  When that failed, they mounted a campaign of replacing LBOC members. 

To be clear, what they wanted was to pull books from the shelves and sequester those books containing sexual content.  Speakers such as Devin McGee, Madisonville, said Branton was able to “rein in a circus of antics.”  He called regular attendees of the LBOC local political activists.  He likened the comments made by the public at regular LBOC meetings when Branton often dismissed them, gaveling down dissent as “temper tantrums.”

Speaker after speaker supporting Branton came from the Republican Parish Executive Committee, and religious right-wing citizens such as the Slidell Ministers Alliance.  

Under Branton’s guidance hundreds of books have been placed on rolling carts behind the desks at local libraries because of perceived sexual content.  Sometimes that content involved art works.  Sometimes it was within a story and mentioned on one or two pages of the book in question.  The anti-library insisted these were part of a eft wing conspiracy to indoctrinate young children into the LGBTQIA “lifestyle.”

One right-wing Christian commenter during the Council meeting Thursday night, Fran Smith, of Slidell, claimed the LBOC is protecting the children of St. Tammany.  She said she had a “brother that read books that were obscene and had pornography in them.  My brother was a pedophile.”  She claimed to be a victim of her brother.

Long time library supporter Kevin Marino, Mandeville, said that the community looks to the Parish Council to continue to hold “the public institutions to a high standard of integrity, fairness and transparency that all St. Tammany citizens deserve.”  Marino noted that the Council had been inundated with emails and calls asking for the Council to make a needed change.

“Mr. Branton has run the library board very one sided,” he said.  “He’s unequally enforced the meeting rules.”  Marino gave examples of Branton allowing some attendees at the LBOC meetings to speak longer than the allotted time while cutting off others quickly.  “He’s offered up policy changes that have needed to be pulled…likely because they have legally questionable sounding and don’t work well.”

Former Covington Mayor Keith Villere spoke in favor of the nomination of Col. Jason Trew.  Villere spoke of Trew’s character and said that Col. Trew’s interest in serving on the LBOC was based on a “desire to make St. Tammany a better place.”

Villere elaborated on Col. Trew’s military service and his dedication to his church and family.  Trew is a retired Colonel and has a PhD.  Villere ended his comments by saying he’s known Jason Trew for a long time and knows him to be a consensus builder and someone who he fully supports for the LBOC.  “I urge you to vote of Jason Trew.  And I just want you to know, I’ve known Charles Branton for a long time, too.”

Following more than an hour of public comments, the Parish Council, as expected, voted 9-4 to place Charles Branton back on the LBOC.  This time for a term of five years.

By Paul Spillman, guest columnist

The Senate has begun hearings on the Protect College Sports Act, their version of legislation designed to address the wild, wild west show that is college athletics. The bill is co-sponsored by Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA). Even though hearings have just begun there is already tremendous pressure on lawmakers to pass the bill as it is seen as the last best chance to reform college sports given the complete collapse of the SCORE Act in the House.

The Protect College Sports Act differs from the SCORE Act in several meaningful ways. Where the SCORE Act would have granted the NCAA broad antitrust exemptions to make and enforce rules, the Protect College Sports Act grants only a limited antitrust exemption to enforce rules covered by this legislation only.

The legislation still permits students, athletes, and institutions to sue the NCAA for injunctive relief which critics claim will do nothing to limit the current morass of litigation. But it also permits universities, conferences, and associations to recoup attorney fees and legal expenses from student athletes who lose in court, which will limit litigation as the prospect of owing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs will have a chilling effect on student athletes’ willingness to sue. With this provision only the most egregious of violations will be challenged.

The Senate bill defines a period of college eligibility as beginning upon high school graduation or the athlete’s 19^th birthday, but list several exceptions and allows for the NCAA to determine others. The bill also allows for one transfer without penalty, but imposes a loss of one year of eligibility for any additional transfer. Should the legislation become law both these provisions could be challenged in court.

There is language mandating equal conditions and facilities for men’s and women’s sports. There is also protections for women’s sports and Olympic sports conditional on pooling media rights. More on that in a bit.

Notably the bill does not cap name, image, and likeness compensation nor make any reference to how coaches are paid or prevent entities such as the Tiger Athletic Foundation from playing its proper role. But it does adopt the “Lane Kiffin” rule preventing member institutions from hiring a coach while the season is on-going and penalizing any coach who accepts such an offer.

Interestingly the NCAA just released it’s schedule for the 2026 football season. The championship game is scheduled for January 25, 2027. Under the Protect College Sports Act no school would be able to hire a football coach until after that date. But in 2026 the transfer portal opened on January 2 and closed on January 15, and spring semester classes began at LSU on January 12.

If this rule had been in effect in 2026 LSU would have found themselves beginning a new season (transfer portal open and closed, students enrolled) without a head coach. Even if there had been an illegal, backroom agreement had Ole Miss miraculously made the championship game or even won it all Kiffin might have changed his mind. Leaving LSU where? This provision, if included, is also likely to be challenged in court.

But all that is Title I. What has everyone stirred up is Title II, Sports Broadcasting. This section of the legislation amends the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 for application to the college game and permits the “voluntary” pooling of media rights if 75% of the membership votes for it. If that should happen language in the legislation requires establishing a fund smaller and less profitable schools could tap to provide required benefits such as medical coverage and to help fund women’s and Olympic sports. The NCAA divides Division I into the Bowl subdivision (FBS) and the Championship subdivision (FCS).

As an example of how the NCAA seemingly desires to be woefully outdated both subdivisions have had a championship playoff since 1998 but continue to use outdated labels. Currently there are 138 schools in the FBS. The sixteen SEC schools, the eighteen Big Ten schools, and Notre Dame can form a voting block of 25.4% of teams in the Bowl subdivision and prevent the “voluntary” pooling of media rights. But adding two more teams to the Bowl subdivision would keep those schools from forming a voting block equal to or greater than 25% of membership and thus permit the pooling of media rights.

Over the last five years eight schools have moved up from the Championship subdivision to the Bowl subdivision. With the pooling of media rights creating a fund less profitable schools can tap the incentive to add two more schools to the FBS will be tremendous. Proponents argue pooling media rights will increase the total dollars, which may be true, but not for the SEC, the Big Ten, and Notre Dame who will all see some of their media dollars doled out to less profitable schools. The SEC and Big Ten have released a joint statement adamantly opposing the Protect College Sports Act.

Congress is under some pressure to pass this legislation. With the collapse of the SCORE Act in the House and no other legislation in the works this bill is seen as the last chance to rein in college sports since the NCAA refuses to take any steps on its own to do so, except to wait for Congress to write it a “get out of jail free” card. But no legislation is going to adequately address all issues to everyone’s satisfaction. That’s the flaw of Congress compromising on law. Worse though is that Congress becomes the rule making body for college sports. One would be hard pressed to name a more cumbersome, slow, fractious, and clueless rule-making body than Congress.

In this writer’s humble opinion the best solution is for schools that want to live in the 21^st century to break away from the relic that is the NCAA and form a new organization willing and capable of addressing the modern world. Initially this would have its greatest impact on the post-season, with only a limited number of schools involved. But a new organization headlined by the SEC, the Big Ten, and Notre Dame is where the money would be and most other schools would soon follow allowing a new organization to eventually stage post season championships similar to what the NCAA has today. Otherwise The Law of Unintended Consequences will have a field day with college athletics.

Last July, LIVINGSTON PARISH LIBRARY BOARD OF CONTROL President Jonathan Davis, installed on the board as a puppet of Citizens for a New Louisiana Chairman Michael Lunsford, declared, “A DEGREE IS A DEGREE” (he’s the dude with the beard. Turns out he doesn’t know much about conducting a public meeting. More on that later) in justifying his position that a special Master’s degree was not needed to qualify for the position of parish library director.

That was right after he’d led the charge to fire the incumbent director against whom no complaints had been lodged except by Davis’s small group of self-appointed overseers of public decency and censorship (I used lower-case letters because the title, while appropriate, is still unofficial).

Davis obviously had his own candidate in mind and let that slip by suggesting that the new director could be “especially former principals that have managed schools and know exactly how to do a job very, very similar to this.”

It turned out, of course, it was all done illegally because one member (she’s the one on the far right) left prior to the board’s voting not to renew incumbent director Michelle Parrish, leaving the board without a quorum. Attorney General Liz Murrill subsequently sued the board for conducting an illegal meeting at which official action was taken.

Well, now it seems this particularly confused and dysfunctional board is almost a year into its rumbling, bumbling, stumbling mismanagement of the business of appointing a new library director and there is still no decision on that touchy little matter.

In fact, just today, I received in my email inbox a posting of available jobs at the Livingston Parish Library. There was only one job opening. Want to guess what it was?

Yup, the good ol’ Livingston Parish Library Board of Control, those fabulous five who probably know about as much about the true needs of a public library as I know about cross-stitching is soliciting applications for a …(wait for it)…library director.

The position begins in the early fall of this year and applicants, the announcement says, “are subject to public interview processes.”

That last time they tried that—you know, that meeting that was deemed to be illegal—an acquaintance did apply and he got a response the very next day politely rejecting his application. Did I mention it was the next day? That, my friends, was one helluva fast interview process.

But get this. Among the required qualifications are:

• A Master’s degree in Library Science. (Uh oh, I guess a Master’s degree is necessary, after all.).
• Four years of progressively responsible experience in professional library work.
• Certification by the Louisiana Board of Library Examiners—to be achieved within the first year of hire.

Here is the library board’s solicitation in full:

Davis, with egg all over his face, looks rather inept, uninformed and unqualified in retrospect—much like the other four members.

Folks, if it seems I’m being a tad harsh it’s because it’s time parish councils get the hint that we don’t want them or uninvited outsiders like Michael Lunsford sticking their noses into operations they know nothing about and that is precisely what is occurring here and around the state with the hysteria over literary content of classics like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men and 1984. I ask in all earnestness: what is happening to us?

These people constitute a minority in our communities. A couple of years back, Livingston school librarian Amanda Jones stood up to these do-gooders and paid a price she should never have had to pay.

She was brutally (and I do mean brutally in the truest sense of the word) attacked and libeled by online trolls. One of those went a little too far and she sued him, winning a judgment and a public apology.

But that’s what happens when narrow-minded people allow their imaginations and fantasies to run amok and allow themselves to believe any propaganda they are spoon-fed.

Our libraries are for the public and that right must not be revoked in the interest of any person’s puritanical idea of propriety and decency. If you allow that to creep into our standards, we will quickly find that we will no longer have standards, but a set of arbitrary rules instead, enforced by those few who appoint themselves as police, prosecutor, judge and jury. And once they taste that power, we must ask ourselves, what they will demand next—because there will be a next. And a next and another next…

The unbridled hysteria over books in our public libraries thought to be corrupting and rotting the brains of young people continues to ramp up with adults acting like children in efforts to protect youngsters from books like To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men and Slaughterhouse Five.

There are others, many others. In fact, in the state of Tennessee, the number of banned books jumped from 350 to 1,252 in 2025. Texas had a more modest increase but still saw its list grow from 1,469 to 1,512—and I would bet everything I own (including my ample book collection) that the critics leading the charge for “decency” haven’t read 10 percent of those books.

But back to those mentioned in the first paragraph. In case you didn’t notice, each and every one of those titles deals with racial injustice, war, anti-feminism and dystopian societies after the despots seized control. To Kill a Mockingbird, for God’s sake! The do-gooders tsk-tsk and say it makes young readers uncomfortable. Hell, that’s the damn point, you idiots! It’s supposed to make us uncomfortable—and angry—over what people are capable of doing to those they consider beneath them (not exactly what Christ meant when he said “What you do for the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40).

And by the way, it’s called empathy, a characteristic the Bible teaches us but which few evangelical preachers devote their messages to these days. Instead, it’s all about “saving souls” (numbers), increased memberships (numbers) and more money for the building fund (more numbers). And empathy, in case you haven’t connected the dots, is a big part of what has come to be called WOKE. So, if you are anti-woke, I guess the logic would necessarily dictate that you’re not a true Christian, no matter how much you drop into the collection plate.

That is precisely what is happening in St. Tammany Parish, beginning in May 2024 with the REMOVAL of all existing members of the library board of control and replacing them with puppets—exactly the way it’s been done in Lafayette, Livingston and other parishes, thanks to the meddlesome efforts of one Michael Lunsford and his Citizens for a New Louisiana.

One library supporter wrote to LouisianaVoice today to say, “I feel I can safely assert that we have the most restrictive policies, the most censorship, of any peer library in the state  (I polled those close in size to us and close geographically, including: Livingston, Lafayette, Calcasieu, Terrebonne, Caddo, EBR, Orleans, Jefferson, Tangipahoa, Washington and Rapides)—and on the 63 books recently (at its April meeting) put permanently into a “restricted section,” no other peer regional libraries had any in a restricted section and several of the titles were held in teen collections at libraries in states such as Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Missouri.”

The driving force for censorship policies for the St. Tammany Parish Library Board of Control is its president, Charles Branton (Charles.branton@stpl.us). And lest you think I’m doxxing Mr. Branton, please know his email address is posted on the board of control’s web site for all to see.

Branton’s term as president ended on Monday and the board is scheduled to either reappoint him or appoint a successor in the person of COL JASON TREW, described by our writer as “a very impressive nominee.”

“Mr. Branton has been the absolute ringleader for censorship policies, told falsehoods concerning what the law is, squelches voices that do not align with his and consults with MS. CONNIE NICHOLS PHILIPS (seen here assaulting a library ally for which she later was charged and paid damages)..

“Ms. Philips sparked the chaos by submitting over 150 book challenges on books she had not read (in fact, she does not even have a library card!). Mr. Branton allowed her to create the job description for our new (as of 2/23/26) library director without one edit.”

Last month, she received an annual award from the East St. Tammany Republican Women for her library activism.

Attending that ceremony were the parish’s new library board chair and vice chair and of course, an original library activist-turned-parish-council-member, David Cougle. Cougle is the same parish council member who attended a parish council member last year PACKING HEAT.

But it’s all those library books that are polluting the minds of the youngsters, not the gun-totin’, rootin’-tootin’ parish council members and certainly not those who don’t even own a library card.

“Library allies are asking the council NOT to reappoint Mr. Branton for these and other reasons (see letter in letter-writing campaign at next link),” our reader wrote.  “We have a  PETITION AND LETTER-WRITING CAMPAIGN HERE.  We are hoping our parish council will listen to our voices and concerns about our library [and not] only the taxpayers they choose in our tax-funded libraries. We feel certain Col. Trew will be not only a better choice to serve the parish, but has the resume’ to be outstanding in public service. We are not convinced our council will make the wise and best choice based on past votes on appointments.”

The board’s meeting will be a t 6 p.m. on Thursday (June 4). The meeting is not shown on the parish government’s website but will be uplinked HERE.

“It’s hard to make any sense of all this, but it seems to be symptomatic of the times we live in,” she wrote.