FRIDAY: John Wirt, David Diamond, John Bel Edwards

HOUR ONE: 

Film writer from the Advocate John Wirt comments on the nominees for the Academy Awards on Sunday night.  Wirt feels that Selma was not presented to enough film critics to gain the proper traction for a nomination.  He says the Imitation Game was the best film of the year.  Though he thinks Michael Keaton will win best actor, Wirt says it should got to Benedict Cumberbatch.  Wirt says, "Alan Turing was a hero in his own right."  

"I think Brian Williams got kind of carried away with his own celebrity," Wirt says of the recent misrepresentation scandal.

Reverend David Diamond and Investigative Journalist John Camp discuss the Jimmy Swaggart scandal on its 27th anniversary.  The tape of Jimmy Swaggart's confession to the world about his sex scandal is played.  

"I think he <Swaggart> was somewhat surprised with how kind I was to him," Camp says.

"I was there in the back rooms with him... you'd be surprised what goes on in some of those back rooms," Diamond says.  

They each comment on the wide reach Swaggart's ministry reaches through direct television.  

HOUR TWO: 

Representative John Bel Edwards shares his plan for Louisiana should he be elected governor.  He also comments on the campaign finance report.  

Edwards begins, calling the Louisiana budget a "hot mess."  He says, "Cutting higher education... we would be a generation trying to overcome the damage that would do to this state."  He comments on the recent comments that Governor Jindal should abstain from a salary.  

He comments on Medicaid and the amount of money hospitals need to be reimbursed.  

Louisiana has the lowest cigarette taxes in the region and the third lowest in the country.  Edwards says, "I would support a reasonable increase in cigarette taxes... such as the Texas average."  

Edwards did vote for the pay raise in 2008.  

"We really need to figure if TOPS Is a program we can continue to have," Edwards says.  "The one thing that everyone should understand... every year unless we do something different the deficit is anticipated for $1 billion." 

The representative calls David Vitter, "Jindal on steroids," and he calls Scott Angelle, "Jindal Incarnate." 

"I'm going to have the resources I need to wage a very good and competitive campaign," Edwards continues, "I'm running because dammit it's time we had a governor that put Louisiana first... Do we want a third Jindal term?"  

Representative Edwards graduated from West Point.  "When you jump out of airplanes at 2 in the morning for a living, it prepares you for things in life."