Speaking of bleeding Louisiana dry. . . .

Add New Orleans' racist and incompetent district attorney, Eddie Jordan, to the list of wretched politicians who not only embarrass Louisianians everywhere but bleed their constituents like nuclear leeches.

In Jordan's case, he's going to be bleeding tax money from a city that literally can't spare a dime.

But now because Jordan decided to replace a bunch of white people in the DA's office with a bunch of African-American political cronies -- for no other reason than the canned staffers were white . . . and not cronies -- either the city of New Orleans or the Louisiana Legislature is going to be on the hook for $3.5 million federal jury award. Thus sayeth a federal appeals court, as reported in today's New Orleans Times-Picayune:

A federal appeals court Wednesday upheld the verdict that Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan violated civil rights law by firing dozens of white employees after taking office, marking the final automatic appeal of a jury award that now tops $3.5 million after accruing interest for two years.

In 2003, days after becoming the city's first black district attorney, Jordan fired dozens of longtime employees -- including clerks, typists, investigators and other support staff -- to make room for loyalists and others who worked on his campaign.

While Jordan said he was applying his political prerogative to build his own staff after taking the helm of an office led for decades by Harry Connick, a federal jury in 2005 found him liable for employment discrimination for firing all white people and replacing them with black people.

Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judges Will Garwood, Emilio Garza and Rhesa Barksdale heard Jordan's appeal in April and ruled against him Wednesday, finding that the jury had enough evidence to determine that race was a motivating factor in firing the 43 people who later sued him. Forty-two were white and one was Hispanic.

"This was a complete vindication of the jury's verdict," said attorney Clement Donelon, who led the plaintiffs to a victory at trial. "And we are ecstatic over the decision of the 5th Circuit, which is a complete affirmation of the judgments of the trial court. Mr. Jordan's options are very, very few at this point."

The jury in U.S. District Court two years ago awarded $1.9 million in back pay and damages to 35 of the 43 former workers who sued Jordan. But interest and attorney fees, which Jordan must pay, have accumulated during the appeals process.

Unless Jordan persuades the 5th Circuit to review the case yet again, or it becomes one of the rare cases that the U.S. Supreme Court picks up in its limited scope of purely constitutional issues, the bill comes due in about three months.

Jordan was sued as the district attorney and not personally, so he must request the money from either the state Legislature or the New Orleans City Council.

"When a race discrimination claim has been fully tried, as has this one, this court need not 'parse the evidence into discrete segments,' " Barksdale wrote for the court, quoting case law. Instead, the court needed only to review whether the jury had sufficient evidence to make its decision.

The court also ordered that Jordan pay the plaintiffs' attorneys -- Donelon, Vaughn Cimini, Lisa Brener and Richard Leefe -- for the appeals process.

Jordan, through his spokesman Dalton Savwoir, said he is disappointed with the decision and will review his "appellate options."

But this was his last appeal afforded by the legal system.

At the April hearing before the 5th Circuit, Jordan enlisted two of his staff attorneys, Donna Andrieu and Graham Bosworth, to argue the case instead of the Chaffe McCall law firm's attorneys who represented him at the federal jury trial. Jordan's lead attorney at that trial was Philip Shuler.

During the hearing, Barksdale repeatedly told Jordan's prosecutors that they could not simply rehash the arguments given to the jury in 2005. The jury had already weighed and decided the racial discrimination question, the judges told Jordan's team.

Despite Jordan's insistence that he did not consider race when replacing the staff, the jury was convinced of discrimination in part by the sheer numbers presented by the plaintiffs. Within 72 days of taking office, Jordan's staff changed from 77 white people and 56 black people to 27 white people and 130 black people.

Fired along the way were 53 white people, one Hispanic and two black people. All except one investigator were replaced by black people. Of the 20 white investigators who had worked under 29-year incumbent Connick, Jordan fired all of them but retained five black investigators and hired 10 black people into the jobs.

The point was to staff his office with those who supported him, Jordan repeated throughout the case, and most happened to be African-American.

AND YET THIS CLOWN REMAINS in office, continuing to suckle at the taxpayer teat, continuing to not convict criminals, continuing to drop charges against murder suspects, continuing to point the finger of blame at anyone but himself.

Just how far gone is an electorate that's utterly incapable of getting sick and tired of being sick and tired?

Louisiana . . . a place where sociologists can make their careers.