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Good Times with Recio & the Gang
Michael Recio was big and hulking and provided decent cover for a reporter who wasn't used to walking up to people's homes unannounced in the middle of the night. I may have looked SWAT-chic, in the bulletproof vest the mayor loaned me, my black pants and those chocolate-brown Skechers I bought at Stein-Mart for just this occasionbut I still needed a bodyguard. And this one carried that long MP5 slung over his vest.
Oh, No: Not An ANGRY Woman!
This is pathetic; the GOP is going to have to do better than playing the angry-woman card. If not, they're going to p!ss off a lot of already-perturbed female voters, and they really ought not do that. The Associated Press today:
Pro-Life Mississippi: 'A Moderate Will Not Do'
July 1, 2005/verbatim: In light of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's resignation announcement, Terri Herring, president of Pro-Life Mississippi, writes:
Who's Got the Biggest Fallacy?
The MississippiforMcCain Web site is truly acting like a cyber-moron at the moment. We just turned up this general swipe at "another lefty"—who, it turns out, is a guy with radical, inconsistent (at best) views at best who wrote a letter to the Ledger the McCain crowd doesn't like. George Lambus wrote to the Ledger complaining that:
JUST IN MONDAY: Key Witness Turns Self in to Melton
Monday, 9:30 p.m.: According to Mayor Frank Melton tonight, Christopher "Smiley" Walker turned himself into the mayor tonight and is now in custody. Melton refuses to publicly disclose Walker's whereabouts, telling the JFP tonight, "I arrested him to protect him. They're trying to kill this kid." More details as they develop ...
Let the Big State Races Begin
As the dust settles on last night's primaries, one huge issue looms as the big statewide races begin in earnest: the Katrina effect. Get ready for a populist debate on insurance reform—not to mention health care, tobacco taxes and education—like this state has never seen as attorney John Eaves challenges Haley Barbour for governor; Rep. Jaimie Franks takes on Phil Bryant for lieutenant governor (and control of the Senate); and Gary Anderson battles Mike Chaney for insurance commissioner.
Fear is a Four-Letter Word
Harvey Johnson is not the only one who lost the mayoral primary last week. So did fear. Yes: fear suffered a resounding loss in Jackson.
Barbour's Cross to Bear
In 1968 in Yazoo City, Police Chief Ardis Russell Sr. arrested a black mother, LeBertha Owens, for trying to take her young daughter, Gloria, to the public library for materials to complete her school assignments. Her daughter was left behind, as she watched the sheriff take her mother to jail for trying to help her get a decent education.
My Story on Melton in Reason Magazine
Read the piece.
The libertarian Reason magazine today published a piece they asked me to write about Frank Melton and his shenanigans to date. Check it out here (note that a couple of factual things happened in editing, like saying that my ride-alongs were this year, instead of 2006. I've asked them to fix those things; let me see if anyone sees anything else.)
Christopher Hitchens on Katrina and Bush's Response
The neo-cons' favorite Brit did an interview with Austrailian Broadcasting Corp. yesterday that won't fly so well with Bush supporters. Here's an excerpt, but read the whole thing:
The Death of Conservatism (As We Know It)?
Conservative columnist David Brooks rethinks today's Republican Party in the cover story of this week's New York Times Magazine: "Democrats may imagine that the G.O.P. is an amalgam of fat cats and conservative ideologues, but things feel different inside Republican circles. Inside there are, beneath the cheering and the resolve, waves of anxiety, uncertainty and disagreement. You hang around Republicans, and you begin to hear all sorts of discordant things. Jesse Helms recently remarked he wouldn't have voted for the tax cut if he'd known how bad the deficit would become. Three of the senior right-wing columnists -- George F. Will, Robert Novak and William F. Buckley Jr. -- have come out, in their different ways, against the war in Iraq. I had lunch recently with a senior Republican official who said his party had succumbed; it was ''defeatist'' about reducing the size of government. As Will himself has observed, under President Bush, American conservatism is undergoing an identity crisis."
Palin's $50,000 Office Makeover ... into 'Bordello' Red
Salon is reporting that Sarah Palin shocked Wasilla when she spent $50,000 from a city highway fund to re-do her mayoral office:
ABC Disgraces Itself During Debate
The world is talking today about how poorly ABC's George Stephanopolous and Charles Gibson handled themselves during last night's Democratic debate. Over on The Root, Marc Lamont Hill writes:
Melton Resolves (Again) to Implode King Edward
Mayor Frank Melton laid out his immediate resolutions Friday afternoon:
New York Times Honors Casey Parks
The Jackson Free Press is proud to announce that our very dear assistant editor emeritus Casey Parks—who departed in December for graduate school at the University of Missouri—is the one student journalist in the country who has been selected to accompany Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to Africa this fall, to blog about her experiences and write pieces for the Times, and be covered by MTV along the way. This is a breathtaking honor for Casey, a Millsaps graduate who remains our contributing editor from afar and did so much to make the JFP what it is today. We salute Casey, whose application was chosen from 3,800. We are proud of you, Little Miss Ironfist. And thank you for representing Mississippi, and the South, in such a remarkable, dramatic way.
After Killen: What's Next For Mississippi?
A common, and easy, response to race-dialogue efforts today in Mississippi is that there is racism everywhere, so why should Mississippians keep apologizing, or be constantly under the microscope.
Wyatt Explains Wealth, Equality and Liberalism to Us
Wyatt Emmerich crawled out from under his Northside rock long enough this week to pen this priceless column, which appears in one of his Delta newspaeprs:
Day 3: Stokes Testifies; Defense Rests
Reporting by Brian Johnson
The defense elected to call only one more witness this afternoon—Councilman Kenneth Stokes. Under direct questioning by Melton attorney Dale Danks, Stokes said he had lodged complaints about drugs in the Ridgeway Street area. "We were asking for help, from the mayor's office especially," Stokes said. He said he had discussed the duplex at 1305 Ridgeway Street "a couple times" before Aug. 26, 2006. Stokes said he first discussed it with Melton on April 4, 2006, as well as Michael Recio and Marcus Wright. He said that it was his opinion that it was a "crackhouse."
Feds Allege Melton's Past 'Crimes,' Including Bribery
See U.S. v. Melton filings here.
Scary Burbs
<i>Urban Flight May Shorten Your Life</i>
Last spring, during the media frenzy over crime in the city, I interviewed a Brandon woman who had been the victim of an armed robbery in Jackson. She wasn't physically harmed, but she clearly had been terrified by her experience, and understandably so. But to hear her tell it, life in Jackson was a sheer every-day hell where you put your life on the line every second you spend in the city. And life in the suburbs, she seemed to think, was the most safe and healthy alternative to big city.