• Babies in hiding
Tuesday's Feast of Epiphany was in part about the new year's youngest murder victim, Ja'Shawn Powell, the 2-year-old boy whose body was found in an athletic bag on Jackson Avenue.

• The party's just begun
Christmas is over, the New Year has been rung in, and the rest of the country has wrapped itself in the post-holiday doldrums.

• Why east N.O. doesn't need a hospital
While the battle over rebuilding a state-run hospital in downtown New Orleans plays itself out on Page 1, plans for building another publicly financed hospital in eastern New Orleans are moving forward with barely any notice. The New Orleans health department just released a report from a consulting firm recommending rebuilding Methodist Hospital as an 80-bed facility with $70 million in taxpayer dollars and $100 million in borrowed funds.

• Injustice old, but not forgotten
Before Christmas this year, my daughter asked me what I wanted. I have everything I ever wanted, I thought. I think I have stopped wanting things.

• As police dither, holdup clues grow cold
I read recently that New Orleans was named America's most crime-ridden city, no shock to anyone who reads the paper or to me as a criminal defense lawyer in this town. Like many New Orleanians, I have lost friends to violence and have witnessed extraordinarily violent crimes on our city's streets. So I was not altogether surprised when, on a recent Friday night my wife and I, along with a friend, were robbed at gunpoint and, thereby, became more statistics in New Orleans' crime wave.

• The dance
The Saints have a lot to do in the offseason.

• FIGHTING BACK
To the residents of South Louisiana, recent reports on the alarming loss of Louisiana's coastline are as unwelcome, frightening and difficult to comprehend as a diagnosis of life-threatening cancer. The reports paint a dire picture for the future Louisiana coast due to sinking land and rising seas. But we warn against either denial or despair.