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January 06, 1943 ~ December 21, 2020

ABBEVILLE — A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 11:00 AM on Wednesday, December 23, 2020 at St. John Church in Henry honoring the life of Madeleine Ann Delino 77, who passed away Monday, December 21, 2020. She will be laid to rest at Bancker Cemetery with Reverend Emmanuel Fernandez officiating the services. Pallbearers will be David Delino, Bart Delino, Bailey Meaux, Draik Delino, Bryce Hebert, Jake Delino, Taylor Jett, and Mason Meaux.
Madeleine was a 1960 graduate of Henry High School and graduated from McNeese State University in 1965. Upon graduating college, she taught at Breaux Bridge High School before being accepted as a teacher for the Department of Defense, where she taught one year in Norway, four years in the Philippines, and three years in Japan. She then returned home and finished her career at the Gulf Area Vocational Technical School in Abbeville.
During her overseas career, she visited 34 different countries along with traveling and camping throughout the United States and Canada.
She enjoyed animals, flowers, working in her yard, and many crafts. For Madeleine, Christ and family always came first. Never having children of her own, she was known as Nanny Madeleine to numerous nieces and nephews whom she worshiped as they grew up. She was also a member of St. John Ladies Altar society.
She is survived by two brothers, Val J. Delino and his companion, Gloria Desormeaux of Abbeville, and Samuel C. Delino and his wife Jeanelle of Henry; 11 nieces and nephews; and 25 great nieces and nephews.
She was preceded in death by her parents, Thomas B. Delino, Jr. and Lorena Choate Delino; and a brother, Derryl W. Delino.
The family requests that visiting hours be observed at Vincent Funeral Home - Abbeville, 209 S. St. Charles St., on Tuesday, December 22, 2020 from 4:00 PM until 9:00 PM. A rosary will be prayed at 6:30 PM; Wednesday, December 23, 2020 from 8:00 AM until 10:30 AM when the procession will depart for church.
The family would like to extend a special thank you to Hope Hospice of Lafayette and all their staff who were absolutely wonderful. To Father Emmanuel Fernandez for his heartfelt visits, and her classmate and special friend Lois Primeaux Leleux.
Condolences may be sent to the family at www.vincentfuneralhome.net.
All funeral arrangements are being conducted by Vincent Funeral Home of Abbeville, (337) 893-4661.

In the near future, there will be a few Sheriff’s Office patrol cars around the old post office in downtown Abbeville. Do not panic because it is only the Sheriff’s Office training in the old building.
Six years ago, Abbeville’s N. R. Broussard donated the old post office building to the public school system with hopes the school system could convert the building into something useful.
Former superintendent Jerome Puyau had hopes of updating the building and changing it into a virtual school. But because of the cost, that never happened. At one time, some school board members wanted to try and sell the building.
Since the donation by Broussard, the building has only been used by law enforcement training.
Now, the Vermilion Parish Sheriff’s Office approached the school board and wants to use the building full-time to train its deputies.
Justin Merrit, the school board attorney, informed the board members at Thursday’s meeting of Sheriff Mike Couvillon’s plans.
Merrit told the board members that the Sheriff deputy’s training in the building would benefit the school system.
“It is an active shooter like training,” said Merrit. “They can make it look like a school. They can move walls around. It is a good use.”
The Sheriff’s Office will also pay the utility bills for the old post building, which has been paid for by the school board for the last six years. It will save the school board $11,000 a year.
The sheriff’s office will also have insurance in case an accident occurs while in the building.
The school board approved the agreement to let the sheriff’s office use the building.
The school board members also learned that if the school board wanted to sell the building, it would give the sheriff’s office a 90-day notice.
“Sheriff Couvillon would like to thank Superintendent Tommy Byler and the Vermilion Parish School Board for their assistance in the past use of the old Post Office, and the future agreement between his department and the School Board for its continued use,” said Captain Drew David
“Our SRT unit (Special Reaction Team) continually trains for the worst case scenarios. By having this building at our disposal it is allowing the SRT unit, along with the entire Sheriff’s Office more opportunities to train for Active Shooter situations in our schools, or within the parish,” said Captain David
“Our response to such situations, especially in our schools saves lives. We are in the process of building a shoot house which mimics hallway and classroom deployment. We are also building portable walls which will allow us to imitate the exact layout of school, rooms, buildings or houses. We can never allow ourselves to become complacent in the world today, especially when the safety of our children and teachers are at stake,” said Captain David.

By Robert Romano

President Donald Trump has threatened to veto the National Defense Authorization Act if Congress does not also repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that shields interactive computer services like social media from civil liability for what their users post.
On Dec. 8, Trump tweeted, “I hope House Republicans will vote against the very weak National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which I will VETO. Must include a termination of Section 230 (for National Security purposes), preserve our National Monuments, & allow for 5G & troop reductions in foreign lands!”
Here, President Trump wants to remove the legal protection that is at the heart of every social media company’s business model, citing national security concerns. On Dec. 1, the President made a similar case, explaining, “Section 230, which is a liability shielding gift from the U.S. to ‘Big Tech’ (the only companies in America that have it – corporate welfare!), is a serious threat to our National Security & Election Integrity. Our Country can never be safe & secure if we allow it to stand.”
In the past, the President has also blasted these companies’ tendency to remove conservative users’ content, demonetize them, engage in shadow-banning and sometimes even suspend accounts permanently.
Most recently, Facebook set up post-election content restrictions on doing any political ads in the aftermath of Nov. 3, and YouTube has threatened to remove content that dares to question the legitimacy of the election by calling attention to irregularities. The intent is absolutely to stifle dissent, and these moves have already had a chilling effect on speech in the post-election environment when there are real legal challenges being waged by the Trump campaign that are certainly newsworthy and a legitimate part of the public discourse we all engage in.
Now, outlets and organizations have to question weigh the public interest of reporting these legal disputes versus the potential immediate impact on their social media platforms which will be punished for siding with the Trump campaign.
Social media manipulation of the elections also came up during the election, when Facebook and Twitter suppressed a New York Post story about former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter’s financial dealings with Ukrainian oligarchs, even when there was a real-life whistleblower making the claims.
Corporate control of the news is a very real threat to the functioning of our two-party system.
To attempt to solve this ongoing corporate censorship of our democracy, many Republican lawmakers, like President Trump, have for years threatened these companies’ liability protection via Section 230. After all, so the argument goes, without liability protection, big tech giants like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube would be unable to host large user networks with the ability for everyone to upload and post their own content.
Creating a penalty for removing content then is viewed as a means of keeping the Internet open as a free speech platform that fosters our two-party political system with dialogue and diverse commentaries.
Here’s the problem. Competitors to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, like Parler and Rumble — but also any website with a forum for posting or a comments section including newspapers — all depend on the Section 230 liability shield to survive.
When asked on C-Span on Nov. 18, “Are there any pieces of legislation connected to Section 230 that the company is supportive of or open to?” Parler Chief Policy Officer Amy Peikoff replied flatly, “No,” adding, “I think the best thing to look at is whether the interpretations of the current language are correct and insofar as people are dissatisfied with the ways that companies are exercising the latitude that they have under Section 230, then the true solution to that is a free market solution: go find a competitor who is providing exactly what you want.”
Peikoff added, “I don’t think that Section 230 should be revised.”
47 U.S.C. Section 230(c)(1) forms part of that liability shield, stating, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
Subsections (c)(2)(a) and (c­)(2)(b) form the other part of that protection, stating, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described…”
This simultaneously grants a broad liability exemption from whatever users happen to post on social media, and grants the companies power to remove items at their discretion they find objectionable. Removing the liability protections would render sites, including alternatives like Parler and Rumble, potentially subject to liability of millions of users.
It would effectively destroy the Internet with mutually assured destruction, since nobody would be willing to assume the risk of hosting somebody else’s material that might be defamatory. The same could be said of email providers. Everything we all take for granted in this modern, technological society would suddenly be restricted.
Instead, Congress should leave Section 230 alone and could perhaps consider alternatively narrowly expanding the franchise of protected groups under civil rights law to include political affiliation, excluding employment hiring for exclusive organizations like political parties and organizations, and defining interactive computer services as public accommodations so that social media services cannot be denied on the basis of partisan differences.
While they’re at it, Congress could throw in banking, DNS resolution, web hosting and email services as public accommodations for good measure.
To be clear: Repealing Section 230 is a mortal threat to Parler and Rumble. As conservatives, we cannot say we want alternatives and then advocate destroying the legal framework those alternatives and the entire internet depend on. These two things are not the same. We have to choose.

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.

Miss Sydney Richardelle of Erath, LA, and Mr. Zachary Begoun of Metarie, LA, were joined in marriage during a ceremony held at the St. Thomas Aquinas Chapel on the campus of Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, LA, on Saturday, December 19, 2020.
Reverend Andre Melancon officiated the 2 p.m. nuptials. Reverand Melancon was assisted by altar server Mark Atzenhoffer, a friend of the bride and groom.
The bride is the daughter of Darryl and Lisa Richardelle of Erath, LA. Paternal grandparents of the bride are Katherine Richardelle and the late E. J. Richardelle of Cut Off, LA. Maternal grandparents are the late Lloyd and Theresa Comeaux of Erath, LA.
Parents of the groom are Mike and Jackie Begoun of Metarie, LA. Paternal grandparents of the groom are Sherwin Begoun and the late Ina Begoun of Chicago, IL. Maternal grandparents are the late John and Mercedes Randazza of New Orleans, LA.
Music for the ceremony was provided by Neil Simon, trumpeteer, Claire Boudreaux, organist, and the bride’s cousin, Lindsay LeBlanc, who sang “Ave Maria.”
Readings were given by Donna Moore, godmother of the bride and Lori Randazza, godmother of the groom.
Gift bearers were Brenda Hulin, aunt of the bride and Robert Bertucci, godfather of the groom.
Ushers were Joshua Moore and Blythe Hulin, cousins of the bride and Nicholas Bartholomew, family friend of the groom.
Escorted by her father, the bride wore a beautiful illusion cutout gown. The sleeves accented this sleek and classy Chardon crepe wedding dress; complete with a bateau neckline and sheath silhouette and finished with rhinestone buttons trailing down the back over the zipper closure. The gown had a custom beading with Swarovski crystal and pearls.
The bride’s ballet length veil of illusion was her “something borrowed” from her godmother and was also worn by the bride’s mom on her wedding day. It was accented with lace appliques and fell from a crown of silk Venice lace.
The bride’s shoes were Michael Kors liv mid-top leather sneakers with gold and rhinestone accents.
The bride’s bouquet had a winter season theme made of ice frosted green sprigs, clusters of natural, white cabbage roses embellished with snow frosted berries and crystals. Inserted into the bouquet were pine cones from the groom’s maternal grandmother, the bride’s maternal grandmother’s rosary and pictures of her late grandparents.
The bride’s “something old” was her handmade christening cap she carried as a hanky. “Something new” was her dress and her “something blue” were her socks.
Danielle Downey, sister of the bride, served as matron of honor. Kelcie Thomassee, friend of the bride, served as maid of honor. Bridesmaids were Annelise de la Houssaye and Holly Duhe’, friends of the bride, Carlee LeBlanc, cousin of the bride, and Alyssa Markowitz, cousin of the groom. Alex Downey and Kenzie Davis, godchildren of the bride, served as flower girls. Kathryn Touchet, cousin of the bride, served as a greeter.
The bridesmaids each wore a David’s Bridal origina, high-neck chiffon bridesmaid dress with a keyhole and a ruched waistline in the color mystic. The flower girls were wearing an off-white dress with a tulle skirt and silk top with flower and pearl embellishments throughout the skirt. They wore Kate Spade gold sequin shoes that matched the bride’s shoes. Bridemsaids and flower girls carried a floral ring decorated with natural white, cabbage roses and frosted green sprigs, berries and crystals.
Rayce Silva, friend of the groom, served as best man. Groomsmen were Eric Begoun and Adam Begoun, brothers of the groom, Jake Ahern and Drew Bourgeois, friends of the groom and Beau Dwoney, brother-in-law of the bride.
The groom, groomsmen, ushers, father of the bride and father of the groom were dressed by Squires Formal Wear in a David Major navy suit paired with a white shirt with cognac brown shoes and greyish blue jewels. The groom wore a cork bowtie made by TVHEAD Company with the center wooden piece in a white wash color, while the groomsmen, ushers, father of the bride, and father of the groom wore cork bowties with the wooden piece in a weathered grey color.
Following the ceremony, the reception was held at LaPatinoire The Rink in Schriever, LA. The venue was decorated by Tapestry Linen and Decor of New Orleans, LA, a company owned by the groom’s aunt.
The wedding cake was designed by Chef Nicole Dugas, family friend of the bride. The groom’s cake table consisted of three cookie cakes each depicting the various Krewes he’s ridden in during Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The groom’s table and decor consisted of purple, green, and gold theme to depict his love for Mardi Gras.
The rehearsal dinner was hosted by the groom’s parents at Fremin’s Restaurant in Thibodeaux and was decorated by Tapestry Linen and Decor of New Orleans.