David Duke

Inside the towering State Capitol building at Baton Rouge, the Louisiana legislature had gotten down to the business of raising taxes. In the House chamber, more than 100 members, plus assorted staff and lobbyists, milled around noisily as speech-making continued from the podium. Huddling in the aisles between their crowded two-by-two desks, legislators clad in Sears and Sans-a-belt slapped backs, slurped colas and munched on peanuts.

Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke was sentenced Wednesday to more than a year in prison and given a $10,000 fine for bilking his supporters and cheating on his taxes. Duke pleaded guilty in December to tax and mail fraud; the sentence was the same one agreed to in his plea bargain. U.S. Atty. Jim Letten said Duke must report to prison by April 15. Federal guidelines require that he serve at least 85% of the 15-month sentence.

David Duke--former Ku Klux Klan leader, anti-Semite, smut peddler, fabulist--does cosmetic surgery on his face and his past and gets 60% of the white vote in Louisiana in a U.S. Senate race. Louisiana is sending a message but you have to listen hard to get it right. Don't confuse the message with the messenger. Racial scars still run deep in this society. Racial fears are easy to fan when times are hard and people are scared.

The final batch of tickets for today's affirmative action debate at Cal State Northridge was snapped up Tuesday, as a last ditch legal challenge by Proposition 209 proponents failed to block the debate. More than 100 students were lined up outside the CSUN Student Union when the ticket office opened at 9:30 a.m. By noon, all 430 tickets for a closed-circuit television viewing of the debate--which pits ex-Klansman David Duke against civil rights activist Joe Hicks--were gone.

The 1992 Republican Convention is likely to be held in San Diego, primarily because the White House is nervous about political fallout surrounding Gov.-elect Ann Richards in Texas and former Ku Klux Klansman David Duke in Louisiana, key GOP sources said Wednesday.

Robert Namer, conservative voice of New Orleans talk radio and owner of WASO-AM has a problem. His name is David Duke. * Namer, an Orthodox Jew, hired Duke to host a morning chat-fest on WASO-AM, where Duke holds forth five mornings a week on homosexual deviants, welfare cheats, liberal socialist Commies and Hillary Rodham Clinton's new bob. Anti-Semitism? Racism? Bigotry? Those are not Namer's problems with David Duke.

Saying the governor has unfairly targeted welfare mothers, two state Democratic leaders Saturday called Pete Wilson's annual budget message racist, sexist and more befitting former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke than a moderate Republican. Wilson's speech Thursday "pilloried welfare recipients and people who were out of jobs," state Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) told 300 activists attending the quarterly meeting of the Democratic Party's executive board at the Grand Hotel.

Groups that favor Proposition 209 lost a court battle Monday to keep ex-Klansman David Duke from appearing as an opponent of affirmative action in a debate Wednesday at Cal State Northridge. As the university stepped up security measures for the debate, which is expected to draw a large crowd, lawyers from the conservative Individual Rights Foundation said they will be back in court today to try again to stop the debate between Duke and civil rights activist Joe Hicks.

On the day when budgetary gridlock closed the Washington Monument, angry catcalls from the visitors' gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives echoed resoundingly a thousand miles away in the voting booths of Louisiana. There, Democrat J. Bennett Johnston Jr., running for a fourth term in the U.S. Senate, saw a substantial lead--predicted by some optimists to be as high as 50 points--melt to 12 points virtually overnight.

It is now, for all practical purposes, a done deal. Patrick J. Buchanan, the blustery right-wing columnist, has decided to challenge President George Bush in the New Hampshire primary and has authorized his sister, former U.S. Treasurer Angela (Bay) Buchanan, to get out the word. The formal announcement is expected around Thanksgiving. "It's a go," Ms. Buchanan chirped Wednesday night. "He's so excited." A great many other right-wingers must be giddy as well.