Louisiana Voice

Irony wasted no time in rearing its ugly head in the 2026 regular session of the Louisiana Legislature.

Tuesday was only the second day of the current 60-day session and already certain legislators have shown their determination to put their fealty to an accused CHILD SEX PREDATOR on full display.

The House Transportation, Highways and Public Works Committee on Tuesday, by a 12-2 vote, reported favorably HB 221 by State Rep. Michael Echols (R-Monroe) that would name a proposed new Mississippi River bridge to connect LA. 1 and LA. 30 after Cadet Bone Spurs, Donald J. Trump himself.

Rep. Michael Echols

The irony, you ask? Well, if you go to 31:26 of this video of Tuesday’s committee hearing, you will see Echols pitching his bill to the committee as Rep. Kellee Hennessy Dickerson (Inset) hangs eagerly onto every word just before she made the motion to report the bill favorably.

The thing is, Dickerson sent an email last Aug. 4 to a Louisiana citizen who had been swindled by an unscrupulous baby adoption agency in which she said she would be unable “to move forward with a bill [to address the problem of baby-selling] for [the] 2026 session.” Here is that email:

From: Dickerson, Rep. Kellee Hennessy (District Office)
Sent: Monday, August 4, 2025 12:55 PM

Subject: Baby Selling

Unfortunately, after researching the baby selling topic our office will not be able to move forward with a bill for 2026 Session.

So, on Aug. 6, I emailed Dickerson to inform her I was researching the issue of child trafficking for a book I was writing at the time (which should be out within the next week or so) and to pose several questions for her:

Rep. Hennessee:

I have taken the liberty of copying the email below (in red typeface) that your office sent on August 4 to [an individual] who has personally been adversely affected by the lack of regulation of the practice in Louisiana.

My questions are these:

• To what extent did you or your office “research” this issue?
• As a former television news reporter (presumably trained and educated to have an eye for such things), did you not recognize this as a legitimate “hot-button” issue?
• How did you come to the determination that you/your office “will not be able to move forward with a bill for [the] 2026 session”?
• Why do you not think this issue is not of sufficient importance to pursue (especially since you were so diligent in the recent session in protecting the interests of elected officials under ethics investigations)?

That prompted yet another email from Hennessee-Dickerson to the victim of the baby-selling scam in which she said she was “going to meet with Senator [Valarie’ Hodges (R-Denham Springs) and Senator [Beth] Mizell 9R-Franklinton) on this matter to potentially co-author a bill… on human trafficking.” That email was sent on Jan. 6 of this year but here we are in the session’s second day and there has been nothing pre-filed to address baby-selling or adoption scams.

On the other hand, it was Hennessee-Dickerson who made the motion to report the Echols bill favorably, which means (and there’s really no other way to say it) the legislator who was counted on to address child trafficking in the form of bogus adoption agencies instead chose to endorse an admitted child sex PREDATOR by naming a damned bridge after him. I believe you can fill that under “H” for hypocrisy.

Two of the four Democrats on the committee—Ed Murray of New Orleans and Joy Walters of Shreveport—voted no on the bill while two other Democrats—Tehmi Jali Chassion of Lafayette and Chasity Martinez of Plaquemine—joined the Republicans to move the bill to the full House for a vote.

Voting in favor of posting tributes to con man/predator Trump, besides Chassion and Martinez, were Republican members committee chair Ryan Bourriaque of Abbeville, vice chair Bryan Fontenot of Thibodaux, Doyle Boudreaux of Carencro, Chad Michael Boyer of Breaux Bridge, Reese Broussard of Jennings, Dickerson, Rodney Schamerhorn of Hornbeck, Annie Spell of Lafayette and Jeffrey Wiley of Maurepas.

Echols, of course, has an ulterior motive for paying homage to Trump. He is a candidate for the 5^th District House seat being vacated by Julia Letlow who is challenging Bill Cassidy and State Treasurer John Fleming for Cassidy’s Senate seat.

Echols’s bill is calling for the placement of commemorative plaques at each end of the proposed bridge but he might do well to remember that a lot of buildings and bridges once bore the name of former Gov. Richard Leche but after Leche was carted off to prison in 1940, all but one of those plaques were promptly removed. That one surviving medallion may be seen on the north exterior end of the east side of Strawberry Stadium on the campus of Southeastern Louisiana University.

Dickerson, meanwhile, should be remembered as one of 58 House members and 35 senators who co-sponsored a bill last year to fight what they called “chemtrails” but which are really contrails left behind by jet airplanes (chemtrails implies chemicals while the more accurate contrails refers to condensation). The upshot of SB 46, which became Act 95 (if you can believe that nonsense) was to ask Louisiana citizens to notify the Department of Environmental Quality when one of them thar poisonous chemtrails were spotted over Louisiana skies. Just what DEQ is supposed to do with those notifications is yet unclear.

When push comes to shove, members of Congress, regardless of party affiliation, can be counted on to put aside their philosophical differences long enough to circle the wagons against the diabolical threats of accountability and transparency.

And that is precisely what 357 members of the House—including every single one of Louisiana’s six members—did last Wednesday when they CAME TOGETHER for the common cause of self-preservation to beat back an effort from Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina) to make public all reports on file with the House Ethics Committee on investigations into allegations of sexual hanky-panky on the part of members.

The 357-65 vote (with a sole member voting “present,” but casting neither a yea nor nay vote), the House, in a rousing display of bipartisanship certain to bring a tear to the eye of every patriotic American, moved to refer the matter to the House Ethics Committee, which effectively kills the measure dead in its tracks, thus assuring the preservation of the American Way in the People’s House.

Who says it’s impossible for Republicans and Democrats to work together? This is what the Founded Fathers envisioned: working across the aisle in unison and harmony to display to the world how our leaders protect one another from potential harm.

We should not concern ourselves with charges or sexual harassment by beleaguered staff members or even of sexual relationships with members of their staffs. After all, there is insider trading to be done and wars to be fought.

This, by the way, is the same House membership that voted to release the Epstein files, underscoring once more—in case additional evidence was necessary—the willingness to wax all sanctimonious and indignant with outsiders are targets but much differently when the spotlight is turned inward.

To see a complete vote tally, CLICK HERE.

It was no big surprise that each of the four Republicans—Julia Letlow, Steve Scalise, Clay Higgins and (yes) even pious Mike Johnson—voted to kill the measure. After all, parties are guilty of the occasional dalliance, but if you’re keeping score, the Republicans have a huge lead in hypocrisy. But it was surprising to see the two state Democrats, Troy Carter and Cleo Fields join in sending the measure to purgatory.

But then again, there’s this thing called bipartisanship…

Remember how we were lied to about those weapons of mass destruction (WMD) squirreled away in Iraq, just waitin to be unleased against democracy, freedom and American football?

Well, maybe not football, per se, but certainly the ideals Americans held dear. So, it was off to war with an ill-timed “mission accomplished” boasted by George W. Bush in the first days of that incursion.

Except for two minor points, that is: First, W’s “mission accomplished” morphed into Afghanistan at an eventual cost of 20 years, $1.06 trillion and 4500 American military and 200,000 civilian dead. Second, it turned out there were no WMD. Another 32,300 American service members were wounded in Iraq—and we know what tends to happen to our wounded fighters these days: they’re conveniently forgotten and tossed aside. Could be a coincidence that an estimated 33,000 veterans in this country are homeless?

Can you wrap your brain around what $1.06 trillion could mean to those 33,000 and the other 740,000 American homeless?

Now, let’s fast-forward from May 20, 2003 (the day we invaded Iraq) to today. We’re being told by yet another Repugnantcan administration, one that is an inestimable number of times more dishonest and deceptive than that of George W. Bush, that Iran posed a threat to the U.S., that we-feared-they-might-strike-back-if-we-launched-the-first-strike- so-we-launched-a-preemptive-strike-as-a-precaution or we wanted to thwart Iran’s building nuclear capabilities (the latter reason after Trump tore up an Obama-era anti-nuke agreement with which Iran was in compliance at the time). Truth is, no one know why we’re at war—other than the fact that Cankle Ankes, Pete Hogsbreath and Little Marco acquiesced to the wishes of Yahoo Netanyahu.

As we enter into this special edition of Trumpian Diplomacy, it’s important to remember he was the candidate who harped for years on end—even before he ever ran for president—about the U.S. allowing itself to become entangled in “endless wars.”

It was Trump who proclaimed himself as the candidate for peace.

Likewise, it was Trump who initiated the so-called “Board of Peace” ($1 billion membership fee: please pay before entering) with himself as the chairman.

And it is that same Trump who continues to claim that he has “ended eight wars,” while simultaneously, he has literally attacked eight separate sovereign nations—all without the advice and consent of Congress which, constitutionally, is charged with approving all wars.

Yet, when Democrats and a couple of stray Repugnantcans attempted to force votes to enforce the War Powers Resolution of 1973 (a federal law intended to check the president’s power to commit the U.S. to armed conflict), votes failed this past week in both the House and Senate.

Now, this is the part I hope you will all remember. Of Louisiana’s six House members and two U.S. Senators, precisely two are Democrats. Both of them, Reps. Troy Carter of Louisiana’s 2^nd District and Cleo Fields of the 8^th District, voted in favor of enforcement of the resolution.

The rest, all Repugnantcans, voted against the measure, in effect, taking way their own power of checks and balances.

Here’s the House vote:

And the Senate:

Ten, twenty years and a couple trillion more dollars and an as yet unknown number of dead and injured American Gis, remember the names of U.S. Reps. Steve Scalise, Mike Johnson, Clay Higgins and Julia Letlow, along with Sens. John Neely Kennedy and Bill Cassidy for ceding their responsibility by bending over and greasing up for the Earl of Mar-A-Lardo.

Of course, Cassidy will be history by that time. So, too, will Agent Orange. But the sorry legacies of each of Louisiana’s Repugnantcan delegation will endure as the ones contributing to the plunging of the U.S. into yet another Viet Nam-Iraq-Afghanistan quagmire that only served to enrich the munitions manufacturers, war speculators and the oil companies while fueling further inflation back home.

Don’t believe me? Well, just sit back and see who gets rich–and who suffers–off Trump’s sweet little war.