What the judge basically told us to do was move forward with the elections under the current regime.

If the state says there's a plan, that's an overstatement.

The simple request was this: the people who are displaced, let them vote from wherever they are located. Don't force them to come all the way back to New Orleans or to some other city in Louisiana to vote.

If we can't win the battle in court, we'll find every voter we can touch and make sure they have every piece of information needed to participate.

If nothing else, the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 have shown us that merely increasing the turnout of our base Democratic vote is not enough. With three conservative voters for every two liberals, the sheer arithmetic truth is that in a polarized electorate effectively mobilized by both major parties, Democratic candidates must capture upwards of 60 percent of the moderate vote. A candidate that cannot win south of the Mason-Dixon and west of the Mississippi is only destined to repeat the heartbreaking losses of the recent presidential elections.

I remember one game we played and the team was pressing us and I had him bringing the ball up the court. A fellow coach, a friend of mine called me and said, 'Either you're a genius or you're crazy. How do you have a 6-10 freshman bringing the ball up the court? Don't you realize that every NBA team will see that?