Mother Nature can do some strange things. She can send us enough heat in August to make us think we’re in the Sahara Desert. She can send us a drought as serious as folks are experiencing now in California; she can drench us with floods that virtually cover lake-side homes and wash out bridges on country roads.It’s in winter, though, …

Thomas FieldsThomas “Tuffy” Fields is an author and regular contributor to The Gazette. He can be reached by email at thelouisianaexplorer@yahoo.com. American is in transition; again. For the puritan that wishes for a world that encompasses what the founding fathers envisioned and the “Devine destiny” of the mid 1850s, they will be happy. For the liberal that wants large scale …

Jim BrownJim Brown is a former Louisiana state senator, Secretary of State, Commissioner of Insurance and a regular contributor to The Gazette. How do you put a dollar value on the worth of a public official? Attorneys working full time for the state are often paid more than $400,000 a year. So how do you justify such large increases? The governor …