Bobby Jindal tries to save Confederate monuments with nonexistent law
LatestWhen he’s not polling at one percent in the Republican presidential nomination race, Bobby Jindal is working hard to save Confederate monuments in New Orleans.
His office announced last Thursday that he opposed a local committee’s 11-1 recommendation to take down monuments to Confederate-era leaders. The Adovcate reported Jindal’s spokesman as saying the governor would look into using the state’s Heritage Act to prevent the public statues of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and P.G.T. Beauregard, as well as a monument to the city’s White League, from being taken down.
You may ask why Jindal would try to save monuments to a 150-year-old war to save slavery, to say nothing of a group that calls itself the “White League.” A better question would be, “Does Louisiana have a Heritage Act?”
No, it does not.
The Advocate reports Jindal walked back the comments halfway on Friday after it was revealed there is no such law on the books in Louisiana.
The governor and his staff may have been thinking of South Carolina’s Heritage Act of 2000, which prevents anyone from changing a Confederate monument in the state without a two-thirds majority of the state General Assembly. And in case you’ve been asleep all summer, that law has turned out to be really popular in the last few months.
Now that New Orleans’ Historic District Landmarks Commission has recommended removing the statues, the measure heads to a city council vote. Mayor Mitch Landrieu has previously spoken in favor of taking the monuments down.
Sounds like local control in action, a sentiment I’m sure Jindal can get behind.