Inside the Carnival: Unmasking Louisiana Politics

In the popular American imagination, Louisiana may come closer than any other state to offering the experience of a foreign culture -- a Spanish-moss-draped netherland filled with friendly but somewhat mysterious Cajuns, seething creature-infested swamps, the whirling masked chaos of Mardi Gras, seductive N'awlins cadences, and most vividly, even pruriently, the train wreck of Louisiana politics: cash-under-the-table shenanigans, fat-and-sassy environmental polluters, devil-and-the-deep-blu...