Former Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for taking bribes. You remember Dollar Bill. He was the one who had $90,000 in cold hard cash tucked away in his freezer. The Associated Press reports that it's "the longest term ever imposed on a congressman for bribery charges."

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said public corruption was "a cancer on the body politic."

"There must be some sort of greed virus that attacks those in power," said Ellis, who lamented that so many other congressmen have been convicted on similar charges.

But the other punishments weren't quite as severe. For example, former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., was sentenced to more than eight years in prison after pleading guilty in 2005 to taking $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors. Former Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for taking bribes from lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and ex-Rep. James Traficant, D-Ohio, served a 7-year sentence after being convicted in a 2002 trial of bribery and racketeering.

In its latest move to consolidate its operation in Louisiana, Gannett has announced that it will no longer print The Town Talk in Alexandria. Instead, it will be printed down here in Lafayette. Read more from Editor & Publisher, which notes that Alexandria is 90 miles away.

... them dragging the dead horse out of the field?

Remember Lindsey Evans? Sure you do. She was the 19-year-old Miss Louisiana Teen USA who was stripped of her title. But it was the way she lost her title that made such a great story. After Evans and her friends dined and dashed at a Bossier City restaurant, the group of rocket scientists returned to retrieve her purse, which had her ID and her bag of weed. She was arrested for theft and possession of marijuana.

But Evans' brush with the law hasn't kept her from seeking out her fame and fortune. The Shreveport Times reports that Evans appears in the October issue of Playboy as the Playmate of the Month.

"It is pretty surreal right now," the Blanchard native said Thursday as she relaxed in a pool at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles. "I can't wait for this issue to come out. This is something I can’t believe is happening right now."...

Evans said her parents are 100 percent supportive of her decision to bare all for the magazine. "My mom says if she had the opportunity to do this when she was my age, she would’ve jumped aboard. And that’s exactly what I did."

Here's a great piece by The Advocate's Marsha Sills about the Labor Day "rally" yesterday in Girard Park to protest the Lafayette Parish School Board's ban on cell phones. Apparently a couple of students showed up, along with a third participant (the mother of one of the student protesters) who agrees with the ban.

Who has the time these days to worry about things like whether a newspaper headline has anything to do with the article that follows? Is this supposed to be about a missing woman who was found or about health care for musicians?

Update: Apparently someone got around to correcting the headline.

How does it take awhile to identify a woman who walks into a grocery store and stashes a case of beer under her dress and then walks out? The Associated Press reports:

Grocery store cameras caught the woman taking a 24-can case of beer from a cooler, stashing the 20-pound case between her thighs by pulling up her housedress, pulling her dress back down, and waddling out of the store. But it took a while to identify and find her.