“He said for me to go to New Orleans and rest there, and go on a vacation if I wanted to,” Landry added. “He said something about all of us going on a vacation soon, just as soon as things in Baton Rouge got settled. If only I had stayed with him I might have been where I could save his life! But the one thing that never came into my mind was that anybody would try anything in Baton Rouge. Not in Baton Rouge, where he was always surrounded by some of us ... not in Baton Rouge where you’d think he’d surely be safe....” 5 ---- SEPTEMBER 3 TO SEPTEMBER 7 “_There is nothing more difficult to undertake, more uncertain to succeed, and more dangerous to manage, than to prescribe new laws._” ----MACHIAVELLI Tuesday far into the night, throughout Wednesday, and again Thursday until well past noon, Long labored with attorneys, officials, secretaries, and typists, going over and over the measures to be introduced when the forthcoming special legislative session was convened. The streamlined rush with which such bills were speeded to final enactment in less than five days did not allow for delays to correct them once they had been dropped into the hopper. The system that made this possible was not original with the Kingfish. It had been devised by two astute parliamentarians, Oramel Simpson and George Wallace, to meet the exigencies of a flood crisis in 1927. By convening the legislature late at night, with all bills whipped into final shape before the lawmakers assembled, having one member introduce all the bills, suspending the rules to have them all referred at once, and all to the same committee, regardless of content, what would otherwise be delayed by being parceled out on two separate legislative days could be accomplished in a matter of minutes. Then, immediately after midnight, or even the next morning, the committee could meet, gallop through the dossier, give all administration-sponsored measures a favorable report, and turn thumbs down on all anti-administration proposals (the record was forty-four bills thus “considered” in an hour and seven minutes), report them back to the House, and order them engrossed and put on the calendar for final action the next morning. That would be another legislative day. On the morrow the House would then pass the bills as fast as the clerk could mumble a few words of the title and the members could press the electric-voting-machine buttons. Immediately thereafter the bills would be rushed across the corridor to the Senate, where the same routine would be followed. Thus the third legislative day in the House would also be the first legislative day in the Senate, so that a few minutes after the fourth midnight, the governor could sign the bills into law, each measure having been read “in full” on three separate days in each house.