Today Shelley Midura bravely repeated her call for Eddie Jordan to resign. Only this time Mr. Jordan was right there and he answered back.
Jordan said she was trying to make him a scapegoat.
I understand where Jordan is coming from. After all, there’s plenty of other people screwing up in our government. Why is he getting all the pressure?
The answer is because he’s screwed up so badly and so publicly that his removal has seemed to become a possibility, however remote.
I still believe Jordan could be pressured to resign if other elected officials follow Midura’s lead and present a united front. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be happening. Perhaps citizens can still unite to the same effect. Perhaps it will require another massive bungle on Jordan’s part.
If and when that happens, if Jordan is forced to resign for his glaring incompetence, then I don’t think he should be considered a scapegoat. I think he should be considered an example.
Perhaps that’s why politicians are afraid of calling for his resignation — they’re afraid of the precedent. They’re afraid they might be next.
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I very much agree. It seems that the local politicians will tend to protect each other before they protect the citizens.
I’ll hear their silence on election day.
I agree with you, but also, Jordan still holds considerable power. He could start prosecuting politicians who come out against him.
If, for the sake of argument, Cynthia Hedgehog comes out against him. Jordan could start an investigation into her SUV shenanigans and get her into some serious doo-doo.
I like your idea about not setting a precedent, though…
I wasn’t at the meeting, but reading Brian Denzer’s email and today’a Picayune account was extremely disheartening. As long as people are willing to defend incompetence along purely racial lines, the we will all reap the whirlwind.
I saw it on the news, when Jordan said he was being used as a scapegoat, the crowd cheered. Looks like he brought some friends with him. His excuses had so many holes in them. I want to see him go.
I believe I was sent a “we know where you live” message at that meeting. Since the guy I sat next to didn’t know me until I introduced myself, and since I have not been affiliated with that place for an entire Friedman unit, and since no one else was there from that place, I am furious. I’m so glad there’s a record of the proceedings on Cox, because I aim to be taping that in case there are any further intimidation attempts.
There were a lot of Eddie Jordan supporters there. You need to be careful about this or you’ll get people digging in to defend him. There are a lot of people who did not like Connick.
“They’re afraid they might be next.” I think you’ve nailed it there.
Can someone who was there explain Midura’s comment about the Duke rape case? From the TP’s account, it sounded like she derailed the discussion. The TP account was sketchy, though, so I’d be curious to hear another perspective on what happened.
[…] convicted, Senator David Vitter and Congressman William Jefferson. They are portray themselves as scapegoats. I’m afraid that outrage does not have the staying power of […]
There seems to be a great deal of the Jefferson/Feilds political machine trying to protect Mr. Jordin. Anyone have any insight into this?
I disagree with Gwen. She has more experience with City Council than I do, but I feel that there was no way to call for his resignation. It was the wrong place. You can’t imagine how a room feels, even after you’ve left it, you can’t remember, but City Council Chambers did not feel like Eddie Jordan’s Waterloo.
There were to many Jordan supporters in the chambers to go through with it. If people wanted Jordan to resign, they should have been at that City Council meeting. Gwen’s article says that Cedric Richmond and Rep. J. P. Morrell were going to ask for Eddie Jordan to resign, but chose to work with him instead. I don’t blame them for backing down, the climate was horrible.
If we had more than 24 hours we could have showed with enough people who want to save the District Attorney’s office from mismanagement. I sat with the Jordan supporters and talked with them. They were not so many that you couldn’t bring the conversation back to the miscarriage of justice.
Murder is for a jury to decide, not for Eddie Jordan to decide.
The scape goat stuff is annoying. It’s a pitiful ploy. If he was doing an admirable job, he wouldn’t even be in a position where scapegoating were an option. It isn’t scapegoating when 90 percent of a population wants you out.
It may be a pitiful ploy [and a wrong one based on his actions up to this point], but it is working, I am sad to say.
Ray Shea posted the NOPD report that Karen Gadbois managed to find somewhere. It’s at ThinkNOLA.com and also at Ray’s blog…
http://www.moronosphere.com/rayinneworleans/archives/lee_brown_crime_report.php
Hey. I reread my comment. There was no way to call for his resignation at that City Council meeting. It doesn’t mean that Eddie Jordan would withstand continued scrutiny. People who want to hold Eddie accountable just need to know that it will take some direction as well as outrage. I hope not. When are we going to have a meetup? Does anyone want to get together over the weekend to discuss this?
Jordan is just like Vitter, and just like Jefferson, they are all too selfish and indignant to resign – the kicker is they are supposed to serve the public and not their personal agendas – guess they forgot that important fact along the way
To Frolic, the Nifong comment was not out of place — it’s just that Shelley sometimes makes leaps of logic without carrying her audience along. Nifong, too, made statements which compromised the integrity of the case, in the same way that Jordan compromised the witness by saying that she wasn’t truthful. That’s an unprofessional statement which could be used, and most likely will be used, to undermine her authority as a witness on the stand. It isn’t apples and oranges — as Richmond (or Morrell) said, it’s more a matter of degrees of misconduct — more like apples and bigger apples.
The next time …
If there’s anything we’ve learned, there will be a next time. Jordan will try to explain why charges are being dismissed due to uncooperative witnesses, bad police reports, Hurricane Katrina, decades of mismanagement and societal decay, not enough money, poverty, racism, bad cops, the tides of the moon, the lack of flouride in the city’s water since Hurricane Katrina … blah blah blah.
I’d love to FOIA the phone records and emails of the D.A.’s office to see how many calls are made to NOPD phone numbers, and compare these to other jurisdictions.