[BITList] Local legislators so busy

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      Louisiana legislators keep busy with the serious stuff.
      ct


      What the shell? Louisiana Legislature's new official gemstone and other small stuff wastes time: An editorial
      Published: Wednesday, June 22, 2011, 8:22 AM 
       By Editorial page staff, The Times-Picayune 
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      The Louisiana Legislature surely has more important things to do than deciding whether to honor a custom that amounts to a kind of food fight.

      House members adopted House Concurrent Resolution 193 Tuesday, which designates Avoyelles Parish as the "Egg-Knocking Capital of the World.'' Lawmakers even engaged in a little demonstration of egg-knocking, which involves tapping hard-boiled eggs together to see which one will crack first.

      Rep. Robert Johnson of Marksville, author of the bill, staged the tournament, which Rep. John LaBruzzo won.

      It's one thing for people to gather at the Marksville courthouse on Easter Sunday to knock boiled eggs together. It's another for lawmakers to engage in such frivolities during the waning days of a legislative session in which critical issues like the state's budget are still being resolved.

      There's even some question as to whether Avoyelles Parish can really claim world dominance when it comes to knocking eggs. Rep. Nancy Landry said the custom also exists in Bulgaria and other countries.

      Elevating the status of egg-knocking isn't the only time-wasting exercise that House members undertook Tuesday. Lawmakers also honored "Billy the Exterminator,'' a Shreveport-based cable television personality, and Troy Landry of Pierre Part, who stars on the cable television show "Swamp People.''

      The Senate also spent some of the session's final week on marginal matters, voting to boot agate as the state's official gemstone in favor of the "cabochon-cut gemstone derived from the Crassostrea virginica mollusk.'' That's not a very a catchy name, but the creators of the commercial product -- which is what this is -- call it LaPearlite.

      The Senate demoted agate to the state's official mineral so the gemstone designation would be available to jewelry made from Louisiana oyster shells.

      Lawmakers didn't just let these measures sail through unexamined. They debated whether egg-knockers cheat in the contest, and questioned whether oyster shells can, in fact, be considered gems. Such debate might be diverting for lawmakers at the end of a long session, but they're hardly the most pressing issues facing the state.






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