Lousiana's Governor with what I would also call a self-own here, by defending the Republican bill with a colorful comparison. "I’ll give you a great example, when you go to a restaurant, do you go over there and watch the cook make everything he serves you? No, you just walk into a restaurant, those restaurants you that you think serve a great meal and you order that great meal. You don’t want to know how, what the cook put in there."

I'll assume he was going for sausage-making, the cliché that politicians often resort to when they don't want the public to know what they've been up to.

Jeff Landry was briefly a U.S. congressman, coming in on the tea party wave in 2010. Washington didn't suit him much, as he basically represented the oil and natural gas industry anyway, and not Louisiana while he was there. When his district was redrawn, however, he lost out in a bitter primary fight with Rep. Charles Boustany and came back to Lousiana where he became Attorney General. Landry won the Gubernatorial election in 2023 and assumed office on Jan 8, 2024.

Someone might want to remind Governor Landry what James Madison wrote in 1787:

Since the founding of the United States, the public's right to know the affairs of their government has been foundational democracy. James Madison wrote during the United States Constitutional Convention, "The right of freely examining public characters and measures and free communication, is the only effective guardian of every other right."

Source: WVUE

BATON ROUGE, La. (WVUE) - Governor Jeff Landry questioned whether Louisiana taxpayers have the right to know how their governments make decisions.

FOX 8 questioned him about a bill which would decimate public access to government records.

In the interview, he compared the right to public records with going to a restaurant when asked if taxpayers have that right.

“Well I mean listen, that’s a great question. Do they? They elect us with full confidence that we’re going to go out there and solve those problems. When we make that decision, those decisions are public, it becomes the policy of the state,” he said.

“But all of the pre-decisions, you don’t go into the, I’ll give you a great example, when you go to a restaurant, do you go over there and watch the cook make everything he serves you? No, you just walk into a restaurant, those restaurants you that you think serve a great meal and you order that great meal. You don’t want to know how, what the cook put in there, where he got the ingredients, how many people were involved in cooking it, all you care about is a good meal. That’s what people of this state are looking for, they’re looking for elected officials to go out there and to solve their problems. This bill helps us to do that.”

The bill, filed by Sen. Heather Cloud (R-Turkey Creek), would allow governments to withhold records on how it makes decisions. That could include emails, texts, calendars or any other record connected to the decision-making process.

Critics have called the bill an assault on transparency.

Jeez, ya think? But maybe making Bobby Boucher our governor wasn't a great idea after all.

And a young woman who says it's her job to keep records in Lousiana begs to differ as well.