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Signing Off 2008-01-21 18:47:46 Well, I just wanted to let all my readers know that this is going to be my last post- unless sometime in the future I really get the urge to write something. The main reason is time. I just no longer have the time to post as much as I would like to. I don’t think I am permanently going away from the blogging world. You may catch me on other blogs- time will tell. On a technical note, I will keep Majority In Mississippi up and you can search the archives. I own the domain http://majorityinms.com through July and http://majorityinmississippi.com through October. And http://majorityinms.wordpress.com is permanent. Thanks for reading, Brett ...

Al Hopkins Sounds Off 2008-01-18 05:21:26 Republican AG candidate Al Hopkins sent an e-mail to Sid Salter about the scandals that are plaguing Jim Hood’s good friends. Here is what he said: “I read with interest your blognote Jan. 15 suggesting the need for the State to change the counsel law. Before the Mississippi legislature spends its valuable time on new legislation, let me re-suggest something I said to you and your editorial board recently. It is, of course, a novel idea, and untested in Mississippi for some years, but one might correct the situation by having an ATTORNEY GENERAL that is honest to his oath of office and follows the law that is in place. Why change a law before it has been used. It looks like everything I told you about the parties involved will come true. Truth tho driven to the earth, shall rise again.” What makes this interesting is that the man who lost the race for Attorney General has now said more about this that the man who is our attorney general and suppose to be enforcing laws. Even th ...

Abortion Rates At Lowest Level In Over 30 Years! 2008-01-17 18:02:40 Always nice to hear this…although just one is one too many. Data from Mississippi: Since hitting a high of nearly 15 percent in 1997, Mississippi has seen steady decline in abortion rates each year. The rate went from 7 percent in 2005 down to 6.1 percent in 2006 (the last year we have the statistics). These rates are at the lowest since Mississippi was forced to legalize abortion in the mid-1970s. From the Associated Press: The number of abortions in the United States dropped to 1.2 million in 2005, the lowest level since 1974 and down 25 percent from the all-time high of 1.6 million in 1990, according to report issued Thursday. More… According to the Guttmacher data, the number of abortions declined by 8 percent between 2000 and 2005, from 1.31 million to 1.21 million. Similarly, the 2005 abortion rate of 19.4 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 was down 9 percent from 2000. Abortion rates were highest in Washington, D.C., New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Florida, Maryland and Ca ...

Is This The Best They Can Come Up With? 2008-01-17 17:31:28 The easiest way to tell we are about to enter another election season is not necessarily the campaign ads or hyped up rhetoric- but rather the attempt by the national media to try to stir up a scandal among Mississippi Republicans. No it’s not our friend Tim Hamburger at the Bloomberg Press, but rather Matthew Mosk at the Washington Post this time. Here is the best story they could come up with: Sen. Roger Wicker recently secured an earmark in a defense appropriations bill for one of his largest campaign contributors when he was on the Appropriations committee in the House. They then located a new facility in Wicker’s district, bringing about 200 new jobs with them when they hit peak production. So, the end result- we have a Congressman using his influence to bring jobs to his district. Is this not what we send them to D.C. to do? Needless to say, the Democrats were not too happy to hear this. We need to look no further than the administration of Ronnie Musgrove to see Democrats do ...

Andy Taggart Volunteers To Do Jim Hood’s Work For Him 2008-01-16 05:54:20 On Monday, Jim Hood said he would do nothing in terms of prosecuting his campaign donor Joey Langston. Here is his statement: “Since the matter is being handled by the federal government, it would be inappropriate for me to comment any further until all the facts are known. Due to Mr. Langston’s past representation of this office, it could create an appearance of impropriety for our office to participate in a potential state prosecution of this case. It will be up to the appropriate District Attorney(s) to handle any potential state case(s). The resources of my office will be available to them.” Having an “appearance of impropriety” has never bothered Hood before when he was rewarding big donors with state contracts. Jim Hood had Dickie Scruggs on Line 1 the moment Katrina hit land and he brags about being a prosecutor in his previous job. But, we know Hood is not going to do anything so that’s a mute point. After all, Hood’s got bigger issues like what do to with bad c ...

Isn’t It A Small World… 2008-01-15 07:37:03 …The judge who ruled in Jim Hood’s favor for the special election date (Bobby DeLaughter) was the same judge that Joey Langston (who is a big-time donor to Jim Hood) tried to bribe with “favorable consideration” for a federal judgeship. About the ruling, Jim Hood and Democrats aren’t going to get to celebrate long. Haley Barbour has promised to appeal to the state Supreme Court- which will likely rule in the governor’s favor. ...

Jim Hood Top Donor Pleads Guilty To Corruption 2008-01-14 06:58:04 We learned yesterday that Joey Langston plead guilty to corruption charges. This included admitting to trying to influence a judge, with the help of Dickie Scruggs at times. Scruggs and three of his law partners were indicted in November, but have pleaded not guilty. Tim Balducci, an attorney, has pleaded guilty and admitted to approaching Lafayette County Circuit Judge Lackey about a possible bride in exchange for a favorable ruling on a Hurricane Katrina legal-fees dispute. I am not going to talk about all the legal dealings with this, because: 1- I am not an attorney and 2- there is already a ton of good information at Y’all Politics, Insurance Coverage Law Blog, Overlawyered, and FOLO. But, let’s talk about Jim Hood and his connections to this (as the evidence seems to mounting everyday). I think its fair to say that Hood is so deep into a conflict of interest that he doesn’t know what to do. While obvious reform is needed, I seriously doubt Billy McCoy’s House will push a ...

Vindication For Eli! 2008-01-14 06:22:06 Hey Dallas, How ‘bout those Giants? I grew up hating New York teams, but that changed the day former Ole Miss QB Eli Manning went to the New York Giants. Over the past four years, Eli has taken his fair share of bumps and bruises along with media criticism I haven’t seen for any other quarterback. But last week, Eli won his first playoff game by beating Tampa Bay and last night he defeated the top team in the NFC- the Dallas Cowboys. Congrats, Eli…now lets hope there isn’t a foot of snow on the ground in Green Bay next weekend. As for an interesting side note- we will have two Mississippi quarterbacks. Eli, of course, went to Ole Miss, while Brett Favre is a Kiln native and attended Southern Miss. ...

Cochran’s Competition- Don’t Lose Any Sleep Fellow Republicans 2008-01-12 10:15:28 I guess you could say its bad for democracy to only have one candidate; on the other hand there should be a limit to the number of races you could lose. From the Associated Press: Two Democrats have signed up for their party’s Senate primary - former state Representative Erik Fleming of Clinton and perennial candidate Shawn O’Hara. Both have lost statewide elections after failing to raise enough cash to run effective campaigns. ...

Here’s The List- Of 1st District Qualifiers 2008-01-12 10:09:01 Here is the final list of the ten candidates to qualify for the open First District seat. I believe the Independent and Green candidate are running in the November general election only. Democrats- Steve Holland of Plantersville, a State Rep.; Brian Neely of Tupelo, attorney; Travis Childers of Booneville, Prentiss County Chancery Clerk; Marshall Coleman of Calhoun City, a restaurant owner; Ken Hurt of Verona, a political consultant Republicans- Greg Davis, Southaven mayor; Glenn McCullough, Jr, former Tupelo mayor; Randy Russell of Oxford, an ophthalmologist Independent- Wally Pang of Batesville, a restaurant owner Green- John Wages, Jr. or Tupelo, Itawamba Community College professor (go figure, a college instructor who supports the Green party- who woulda thunk it?) ...

What Is Holland Going To Do? 2008-01-11 17:21:16 The Daily Journal is reporting that long-time Democratic legislator Steve Holland (better known as Billy McCoy’s puppy) has qualified to run for the open First District seat. This is interesting. The special election (as well as the primary) will be held in March (probably). The winner of the special election will have the upper hand headed into the November general election. Holland has a powerful seat in the legislature, whose 2008 session has just begun and runs through the end of March. Since Holland will be in Jackson that time, how is he going to campaign and run for an office while he to perform his full-time day job? Is he planning on giving up his current seat- I wouldn’t think so. ...

It’s Dowdy and The Dems Who Should Be Asking Wicker For Advice 2008-01-11 05:49:11 The Mississippi Democratic Party sent out a press release today titled “Democrats Urge Wicker To Pay Attention As He Tours Mississippi.” It is basically their attempt to portray Roger Wicker as out-of-touch with Mississippi. After reading this, I thought it would be a good idea to look at the record of the Mississippi Democrats compared to Roger Wicker- by record I means wins and loses- so we can see who is more “in-touch” with voters. First, Wicker- 1994- Elected with 63 percent of the vote 1996- Re-elected with 68 percent of the vote 1998- Re-elected with 67 percent of the vote 2000- Re-elected with 70 percent of the vote 2002- Re-elected with 71 percent of the vote 2004- Re-elected with 79 percent of the vote 2006- Re-elected with 66 percent of the vote And now, lets look at the Democrats in the last 16 statewide elections (2003 and 2007). Going into the 2003 election, Democrats controlled seven of the eight statewide offices. After that years election, the number was down ...

The Wicker Bus 2008-01-11 05:34:15 The Wicker Bus, from the WickerForSenate website. ...

When Will Ike Brown and Co. Go After The Espy’s? 2008-01-10 06:37:11 They may have already, and I am just not aware of it. The Espy family has long been associated with Democratic politics in the Delta. Mike Espy served three terms in Congress representing the Second District before being appointed Secretary of Agriculture by then-President Clinton in 1993. His brother, Henry Espy, has won multiple terms as mayor of Clarksdale. The two men have been political forces for decades. Henry’s son, Chuck Espy, has followed the political path and is now serving his third term as a Representative from Clarksdale. Despite their longstanding ties to the Democratic Party, I wonder how long before some party purists try to push them aside. The Espy’s are certainly not conservative (in the traditional sense of the word), but they have gone against the wishes of the LBC and other Dems- especially of late. Last fall, Mike Espy endorsed Haley Barbour’s re-election bid. And then on Tuesday, Chuck Espy was one of two Black Caucus members to support Jeff Smith for Sp ...

Steve Holland: You’re Either With Us or You’re Against Us 2008-01-09 07:38:14 I guess we know how the next four years will go. From the Clarion-Ledger: “We’re going to govern with a consensus, and that consensus starts with 62 Democrats (who supported McCoy),” said House Health and Human Services Committee Chairman Steve Holland, a Democrat from Plantersville. “Our tent’s big, if someone wants to join it,” Holland said. “But we’re going to remember what brought us (to partisan division.)” Four more years of the old backward Democratic leadership that has governed Mississippi since Reconstruction. Aren’t you excited? ...