CT Blue

Every once in a while I'm surprised at the reach of this humble blog. A few days ago I sounded the alarm about the need to keep Texans out of the country in order to protect us from the Ebola virus. Well, when I came upon this story I could only assume that the attorney general of Louisiana somehow stumbled on my efforts, embraced my reasoning, and decided to go me one better:

Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell has a plan to stop Ebola: File a restraining order. Caldwell, a Republican, called the proposal to dispose of Dallas Ebola victim Eric Duncan's incinerated belongings at a Lake Charles landfill “absurd” and pledged to use the legal process to stop the transfer. WBRZ Baton Rouge reports:

“We certainly share sadness and compassion for those who have lost their lives and loved ones to this terrible virus, but the health and safety of our Louisiana citizens is our top priority. There are too many unknowns at this point,” Caldwell said. The Louisiana Attorney General's Office is in the process of finalizing the application for temporary restraining order and expects it to be filed as early as Monday morning.

Additionally, the office is sending a demand letter to Texas state and federal officials, along with private contractors involved seeking additional information into the handling of this waste.

via Mother Jones

Some might say, indeed have said, that there is zero chance that this garbage could pose a threat to anyone in Louisiana. But I say that at this point anything emanating from Texas poses a threat. And, as the Louisiana AG says, the state of Louisiana feels that any public health risk to its citizens is not worth taking. Quite laudable really.

Now, you might wonder why Texas is sending its garbage to Louisiana in the first place. Well, it turns out that Louisiana has sort of marketed itself as the garbage dump of the nation, though I'm sure it takes pains to make sure that the garbage it imports poses zero threat to its citizens:

But Caldwell's stance is especially bizarre in light of the great lengths Louisiana lawmakers have gone to position the state as a repository for every other kind of waste. Fracking waste disposal, for instance, has become a $30 billion industry nationwide over the last decade. Much of that wastewater has been dumped into old wells in Louisiana. Louisiana may also soon begin accepting thousands of tons of other states' shale wastewater, which will be shipped down the Mississippi on barges. In Louisiana you can even store radioactive materials in an abandoned salt cavern, and then, after the salt cavern collapses, creating a massive sinkhole and forcing hundreds of people to permanently relocate, pour wastewater directly into the sinkhole. Just don't try to truck the ashes of an Ebola victim's belongings across the Sabine.

Those radicals at Mother Jones seem to think that Louisiana's being at least a mite inconsistent here, but I just don't see it that way. After all, there is no conclusive, 100% sure, ironclad evidence that sinkholes full of a mixture of radioactive waste and wastewater pose a threat to public safety, whereas everyone agrees that if you get Ebola you could die, and, besides, there is no conclusive, 100% sure, ironclad evidence that burning a person's effects to a crisp actually destoys the living Ebola causing organisms that might be in those effects. So it's perfectly obvious that there's no inconsistency here, at least going by the standards normally applied to Southern Republicans.