Deep South Progressive

Photo Gallery: Mississippians Rally for Marriage Equality

2013-06-17T21:59:00.002-05:00

As the United States Supreme Court hears historic arguments in the Prop 8 and DOMA cases, pro-gay Mississippians hold a vigil for marriage equality on the steps of the Mississippi State Capitol in Jackson, Miss., on March 26, 2013.

The Supreme Court is expected to issue rulings on the two cases by the end of June 2013.

Photos by Ashton E. Pittman.

Deep South Sunday Roundup

2013-06-09T13:12:00.001-05:00

A Peek Into Pro-Life Paradise is a warning of what a Tea Party dominated Mississippi might someday mean for women in our state. If Proposition 26 – which Governor Phil Bryant championed – had passed in 2011, this story of one young woman in El Salvador could have easily become the story of women throughout Mississippi:

There, a woman named Beatriz spent months languishing near death. Her kidneys were shutting down. She has lupus. She's 22 years old with an infant and a husband at home in rural El Salvador.

The problem? A high-risk pregnancy exacerbating her existing health conditions, with a fetus that was anencephalic - meaning it was developing with only a brainstem and no brain, and was unlikely to survive for more than a few hours outside of the womb, if at all. Doctors confirmed that to save Beatriz, they needed to terminate her pregnancy. [...]

Most people would agree that Beatriz is a reasonable exception to abortion restrictions. But El Salvador legally abides by the pro-life manifesto that abortion is murder, and is never medically necessary to save a woman's life. On May 29, the country's highest court agreed, denying Beatriz the procedure - ruling that her death "is not actual or imminent, but rather eventual."

So since Beatriz would likely die in a few days or weeks instead of hours, it was acceptable to do nothing, the court said . . . For good measure, the court added that "the rights of the mother cannot be privileged over those" of the fetus.

Meanwhile, Phil Bryant's abstinence-only policies have done nothing to reduce teen pregnancy in the state with the highest teen pregnancy rate. But now Phil, who last year eschewed the need for comprehensive sex-ed by blaming teenagers ("the problem is teenagers do not care enough" to use birth control), has another brilliant idea that totally avoids doing anything to actually reduce teen pregnancy. Once again, Bryant is proposing a policy that, instead of educating, seeks to punish sex in a way that is invasive to young women:

Mississippi will require doctors to collect umbilical cord blood from babies born to some young mothers, under a new law intended to identify statutory rapists and reduce the state's rate of teenage pregnancy, the highest in the country.

The measure, which takes effect on July 1 and is the first of its kind in the country, targets certain mothers who were 16 or younger at the time of conception. Under the law, doctors and midwives will be expected to retrieve umbilical cord blood in cases where the father is 21 or older or when the baby's paternity is in question.

Samples will be stored at the state medical examiner's office for testing in the event that police believe the girl was the victim of statutory rape. But they will not automatically be entered into the state's criminal DNA database.

Governor Phil Bryant said, "As governor, I am serious about confronting and reducing teen pregnancy in Mississippi. Unfortunately, part of this epidemic is driven by sexual offenders who prey on young girls. This measure provides law enforcement with another tool to help identify these men and bring them to justice."

The Clarion-Ledger writes about the Democratic revival in Mississippi following the party's success in last week's municipal elections:

[T]he Democratic victories were notable. They showed the state party is getting its act together after years of disarray. It’s fielding better candidates and starting to raise money again, and it’s joining the modern century in technology and tactics. And, for the first time in many years, the party appears to be developing an overall strategy and formula to help campaigns. Plus, successful young Democratic mayors can be a “farm team” for future, higher offices, something the party has lacked in recent years.

“I’m not going to oversell it,” said state Democratic Party Chairman Rickey Cole. “Democrats had a great day, but we have a great way to go. It’s an exciting time. There’s never been on the Democratic side any concentrated, organized focus from the state level, at least since I’ve been involved. I think we are seeing the healthy maturation in Mississippi to a two-party system.”

Mississippi is the third deadliest state in the country for teen drivers, but the number of deaths has gone down since the introduction of the texting ban that took effect in 2009. From the Clarion-Ledger:

Mississippi is ranked the third deadliest for teen drivers in the nation and the deadliest among the Southern states.

The leading cause of death for Mississippi’s teens is auto accidents. The next two leading causes — homicide and suicide — combined don’t come close to the numbers.

Yet as damning as those facts are, the number of teen traffic fatalities actually has gone down over the last few years. [...]

Mississippi has seen a decline in fatalities of 15- to 19-year-olds for the last several years, from 103 in 2009 to 52 in 2012. Some highway safety officials have credited the decline to the state’s graduated driver’s license program for youth and the texting ban for drivers with permits or intermediate licenses, both measures that went into effect in 2009.

The Economist has an article examining the rapid depopulation of the Delta, pointing to globalization as a possible source of problem:

THE imposing synagogue on Main Street in Greenville, with its classical portico, raised cupola and shimmering stained glass, was built in 1906 to accommodate several hundred worshippers. In a good week these days, a custodian says, 12 people show up for Friday service, and several of them are in their 90s. The four classrooms for religious instruction now cater to just three children. The rest of the Jewish community has died or drifted away to other, richer parts of the country.

It is not just Jews who have left the Delta, a fertile alluvial plain in Mississippi and adjacent parts of Arkansas and Louisiana. Since 1940, the region’s population has fallen by almost half. In some counties it has fallen by much more (see map). That makes it the most glaring example of a growing trend around the country: rural depopulation. Over the past two years the total population of rural America has fallen for the first time since the Census Bureau began tracking it in the 1970s, albeit by just a fraction. The majority of rural counties—1,261 out of a total of 1,976—had shrinking headcounts. [...]

More recently local factories have been closing, overcome by foreign competition. Greenwood, another Delta town, lost piano, zipper and tyre factories, among others. Chicot County lost several catfish farms, a factory making catfish feed and another making gloves. The advent of several casinos, two on riverboats and one on dry land, brought some hope of revival to Greenville. But one of them recently closed and the others are bringing fewer visitors and less revenue into the city than residents hoped.

The Sun Herald declares that print journalism isn't dead – at least, not in Mississippi:

A study of Mississippi media usage just completed by American Opinion Research for the Mississippi Press Association found seven of every 10 Mississippi adults read a newspaper, either in print or online. That's pretty consistent with national research and reflects the Sun Herald's own documented South Mississippi audience, which has never been larger.

Moreover, half of all Mississippi adults read a printed daily or Sunday newspaper, which will surprise many who thought print was dead.

The Sun Herald has never bought into that notion and remains committed to delivering a print edition every morning to homes across South Mississippi.

Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/2013/06/08/4719741/sun-herald-editorial-latest-research.html#storylink=cpy

I also highly suggest reading The Washington Post's beautiful reporting by Eli Saslow reporting on life after Newtown for the parents of Daniel Barden. It's a terribly heart-wrenching read: After Newtown Shooting, Mourning Parents Enter Into the Lonely Quiet.

That's it for the roundup for today. If you know of any interesting, relevant articles that should be added to this roundup or a future round up, feel free to post a link in the comments or on our Facebook page.

Bryant Allowing Cuts to Drug Courts That Keep Thousands Out of Prison

2013-06-08T14:26:00.000-05:00

Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant (R)

Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant's office has given no indication that it will act to stop massive cuts to the state's drug courts, which provide thousands of adult and juvenile drug users in the state with the opportunity to participate in rehabilitative services instead of imprisonment.

The program costs $7.6 million a year to operate, but saves the state around $38 million a year in inmate housing and related costs. But without action from the Governor or the state legislature, felony drug courts will receive a 25% reduction in funding while juvenile drug courts will be cut 58%. Municipal, Justice, and Family Drug Courts will no longer receive funding, The Clarion-Ledger Reports:

“It is a sad day for juveniles in the state of Mississippi, as the children who need our services the most will receive the least,” [Rankin County Judge Tom Broome] said.

The committee has asked that funding for the drug courts be included in any special legislative session call. But Broome said no one from the governor’s office has indicated that a call for a special session will be made or that drug court funding will be included.

Increased funding for drug courts was attached to two bills this past legislative session, but the legislation didn’t survive, leaving a roughly $3.6 million deficit in the drug court program for the upcoming budget year.

In moral and pragmatic terms, the decision by our Tea Party dominated state legislature and the Governor not to act to save these programs is wrong. Not only do our state's drug courts keep thousands of Mississippians out of our oftentimes barbaric prison system, but they save our state many times what they cost us.

Logically, it makes no sense not to save the drug court program. Unless, of course, allegiance to Mississippi's for-profit private prison industry is more compelling for our "leaders" and lawmakers than keeping our state's youth off drugs and out of prison.

Governor Bryant, if you truly believe in "Christian values" or "family values," you will act to save our state's drug courts. The same goes for our "Christian" legislature.

Mississippi's Abu Ghraib: "Barbaric" For-Profit Prison Hit With Lawsuit

2013-06-08T14:00:00.000-05:00

Max Klingensmith/Flickr

The solitary confinement unit of the East Mississippi Correctional Facility is a house of horrors where "prisoners live in barbaric and horrific conditions and their basic human rights are violated daily," according to a class action lawsuit filed last week by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center. In some ways, the transgressions at EMCF dwarf those of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Rats crawl out of broken toilets and into the beds of prisoners. Prisoners engage in extreme forms of self-mutilation, such as ingesting glass shards or electrocution. Feces, urine, vomit, and other wastes cover the floor. Prisoners are forced to use trash bags for months at a time in absence of functioning toilets.

Prisoners with medical emergencies frequently set fires to get the attention of guards, who otherwise ignore them. The frequency of the fires causes black mucous to flow from the noses of inmates. Prisoners who are not already severely insane are eventually driven there, and many attempt or succeed at committing suicide.

Those are just a few of the "gross inhumane conditions" described by the ACLU and SPLC in the lawsuit filed against the EMCF on May 30. The lawsuit alleges that high-ranking officials from the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) have been aware of these conditions for years, but have done nothing to remedy these clear human rights abuses.

The prison is operated by the Management and Training Corporation (MTC), a private, for-profit prison corporation which is contracted by MDOC to operate the facility. Previously, it was operated by another private company, the Florida-based GEO GROUP. According to EMCF Warden Frank Shaw, the facility is a "much better place" under MTC management than it was under GEO GROUP. Plaintiffs find this characterization ludicrous:

“We were there two weeks ago,” said Jody Owens, director of the SPLC’s Jackson office. “This is happening right now.”

[MTC spokesperson Issa Arnita] and Shaw don’t deny that there are present issues at the prison but stand strong with their position that conditions have improved.

“Do we still have issues? Sure. It’s a prison. It’s the nature of the business,” said Shaw. “But we do everything we can to make it better for the offenders and the employees.”

The lawsuit describes a culture of violence that officers allow to fester and even encourage:

[Within 24 hours of arriving] in the zone, [William Eastwood] was met by eight prisoners who escorted him into an empty cell where they beat and robbed him. His assailants told him that if he reported the beatings, they would place him on KOS (kill-on-sight) status. Later, he was taken to a different cell where he was forced to perform oral sex on one of his assailants. He was later anally raped four or five times by an attacker who held Mr. Easterwood captive with a store-bought butcher knife while snorting lines of cocaine between the rapes to help maintain an erection. When Mr. Easterwood attempted to get help from an officer, his assailant intervened and told the officer that everything was OK. The officer left and the violence continued.

And because the very nature of private businesses like MCT includes cutting corners to maximize profit, inadequate medical staff results in patients with obvious medical emergencies going untreated and dying in the facility:

Medical staff has ignored gangrenous wounds. One prisoner's scrotum swelled to the size of a softball before revealing a hard knot in his testicle. He was denied timely proper care for weeks and was later diagnosed with testicular cancer that had spread to his abdomen. Another prisoner is now legally blind after being denied treatment for glaucoma. Last month, staff placed a prisoner with a large, open wound in a cell in a filth-ridden solitary confinement unit. He developed life-threatening infection and required emergency surgery.

The lawsuit describes numerous other incidences of mentally ill patients being forced to suffer in deplorable conditions at the hands of the private for-profit monster with no action from our well-aware state officials.

Correctional News notes:

Shaw also commented in a statement that many of the inmates that are listed on the lawsuit are among the prison’s most severe cases and described them as men who have assaulted staff, been caught with contraband and don’t function well in the normal inmate population.

So, Shaw is saying, the treatment described in the lawsuit is defensible because those particular mentally ill patients "assaulted staff" or "had been caught with contraband." Clearly, Mr. Shaw has no understanding of the meaning of "human rights" nor of the United States Constitution.

"Evil" seems to be the only word that is sufficient to describe the depravity of a system like the one at the corporate controlled East Mississippi Correctional Facility. Where is the accountability, and how can our government continue to allow such atrocities to continue in the name of corporate profit?

Deep South Friday Roundup

2013-06-07T15:07:00.000-05:00

The American Prospect this week began its Solid South series, which focuses on the South's emergent progress majority. In this inaugural entry, the Prospect exams why the South is a ticking time bomb for Republicans:

The final rally of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign took place on symbolically charged ground: the rolling fields of Manassas, site of the first major battle of the Civil War. It was the last stop on an election eve spent entirely in the South: Jacksonville, Charlotte, and finally Northern Virginia. In the autumn chill, an estimated 90,000 people spread out across the county fairgrounds and waited for hours to cheer a new president—and a new South. [...]

That emerging South was arrayed in the dark hills around Obama as he flashed into the spotlight. On soil where whites once fought to the death for the right to enslave blacks, this throng had gathered to hail the soon-to-be first black man to be elected president. The next day, Obama carried all three of his Southern targets—55 electoral votes for the party. For Southerners, the message was unmistakable: The future has arrived. The Solid South is dead.

The Washington Post published an intimate article about Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of slain Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers, following the invocation she gave at the University of Mississippi's graduation ceremony in May:

“We have been linked together through all that has happened in this state of Mississippi,” she says from behind the podium at Ole Miss, her contralto soaring over the multiracial crowd of 21,000. “There are those who worked and who still work to see that Mississippi rises from the very bottom of what people think to the very top of what America can be, and that is what you represent.
. . . I choose to think, [you are] not a part of the problem but a part of the solution because education-wise you are at the top. Emotionally that’s still being worked on. And let’s be honest, we know that. But I believe. I believe in the state of Mississippi, that it can become a better place.”

Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman Rickey L. Cole has called for Governor Phil Bryant to apologize for his sexist comments about working moms. He is also calling for Bryant to start by supporting a Lilly Ledbetter Act for Mississippi:

Just exactly how out of touch with reality does a candidate have to be in order to become the Republican governor of Mississippi? Throughout the two hundred year history of our state, most mothers have been forced by necessity to work as breadwinners for their families. Whether that work took place in the fields, in the logwoods, as domestic workers, as teachers, as nurses, as factory workers, in food service, in retail or in many other fields of arduous work, the mothers of Mississippi have been bringing home the bacon since Mississippi began. The 1950’s “Father Knows Best” picket fence middle-class family myth has never been an option for most Mississippians. A lot more Mississippi mothers have had callouses of hard work than have ever had manicures. The “happy housewife” has always been the exception in hard-times Mississippi, and if Mr. Bryant had been paying attention to most of the lives of most of the people of this state, he would know that.

On behalf of Mississippi Democrats, I salute and express profound appreciation to the generations of working mothers who have done so much to build the economy, society and culture of our state. It has been the working mothers who have seen to the education of their children and the children of many others, as well. It is the working mothers of today who are providing the labor and leadership essential to making Mississippi a better place, when even now working women are making only seventy-seven cents on the dollar when compared to men. The working mothers of our state deserve a state leadership that will fight for equal pay for equal work, instead of allowing this insulting income gap to continue while blaming hard-working mothers for the failures of our educational system.

Phil Bryant owes the working mothers of our state an apology. A good first step in that apology would be for him to support a Lilly Ledbetter Act for Mississippi.

The Daily Beast thinks Mississippi's Governor Has Some Bad Ideas. We can't really disagree there:

By several objective measures, Mississippi is one of our worst states. It has the nation’s highestpoverty rate, its second-highest teen pregnancy rate, and its highest teen birth rate. AnEducation Week report ranks its schools 48 out of 50. Only Louisiana locks up a higher percentage of its people. Its infant mortality rate—9.67 deaths per 1,000 live births, the highest in the nation—is close to Botswana’s. Its life expectancy is the lowest in America and lower than those of Guatemala or Pakistan. Few states invest less in public education or public health. If it were an independent country, we’d consider it part of the Third World.

Bob Wing at the Institute for Southern Studies has an intriguing article on Jackson's newly elected African American mayor, Chokwe Lumumba, whose Civil Rights era activism caused a divide among progressives in the area:

Chokwe Lumumba -- a founder and leader of the Republic of New Afrika, the New Afrikan People's Organization and Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, defense attorney for Tupac Shakur and others, and a first-term city councilman -- is the new mayor of Jackson, Miss.

His June 4 victory is a stirring tribute to the courageous Mississippi civil rights leader Medgar Evers who 50 years ago on June 12, 1963 was gunned down at his Jackson home.

In a stunning turn of events, Chokwe defeated Jackson's three-term incumbent and first African-American mayor, Harvey Johnson; the white Republican-financed young Black businessman Jonathan Lee; and others to win leadership of the city with the second highest percentage of Black people in the United States. [...]

The runoff campaign quickly got nasty, as Lee choked the airwaves with claims that Lumumba was an "un-Christian" (read Muslim) "militant" non-Democrat who would "divide the city." Lumumba regularly introduced himself as "the Christian brother with an African name" and claimed a track record of fighting for change in the "militant" tradition of Dr. King and Medgar Evers. He called himself a Freedom Democrat in honor of Fannie Lou Hamer.

That's it for the roundup for today. If you know of any interesting, relevant articles that should be added to this roundup or a future round up, feel free to post a link in the comments or on our Facebook page.

Hattiesburg Election Debacle Brings the Racism Out

2013-06-06T16:28:00.001-05:00

Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny DuPree

For weeks leading up to the Jackson mayoral election, the city was embroiled in a highly polarizing race that pitted even white progressives against their black counterparts (see an excellent piece from Tom Head on that at this link). But that isn't supposed to happen in the Hub City. We're the home to the University of Southern Mississippi, whose student body is a melting pot of diversity and acceptance. We're supposed to be above race politics, right?

Well, no, not exactly. While Jackson's Jim Crow history is far better known, Hattiesburg has its own history of racial strife. We may feel like we're the enlightened hub of Mississippi, but really, we've just done a better job of sweeping it under the rug than the rest of our state.

At the tail end of the campaign between black Mayor Johnny DuPree and white challenger Dave Ware, some of that suppressed racial tension came bubbling to the surface, despite DuPree and Ware both having run honorable campaigns, and despite the fact that most of the supporters of both men had good intentions and supported their candidates on the basis of policy, not race.

After Dave Ware led the race for much of the night Tuesday, the final precinct – a mostly black precinct – cut his lead down to a mere 148 votes. And after two grueling days spent counting absentee and affidavit ballots, Johnny DuPree appears to have won re-election with a razor-thin 37-vote victory.

But some Hattiesburg residents who were apparently more excited about the prospect of returning a white man to power than they were about Dave Ware – and who certainly weren't representative of Dave Ware's supporters – have taken to the Facebook page of Hattiesburg Patriot – which seeks to be Hattiesburg's own Fox News – to express their anger and dissatisfaction.

One commenter wrote,

Doesn't matter what the new totals are. We, The People, demand a re-election! These votes have the possibility of being tampered with with them being unsecured last night and we demand the true voice of the people be heard! [Hattiesburg City Hall was left unlocked last night with ballots still inside, but it was confirmed that the ballots were not tampered with.]

So, since DuPree won, it "doesn't matter what the totals are." "We, The People" demand a re-election. And in case four years of Tea Party rhetoric hasn't taught you anything, "We, The People" in the context of a black leader is now codeword for "white people."

Another commenter wrote,

You can bet if it had turned out for Dave Ware, Jessie [sic] Jackson, & Al Sharpton, or how you spell his name, would have already been in Hattiesburg!!! Tell the truth, & put the reverse spin on it!!!

Because, you know how black people are! They've all sworn oaths of allegiance to Jesse and Al! In reality, until Barack Obama came around, Jackson and Sharpton were the only black leaders that your average white Mississippian knew about. In Mississippi, reference to Jackson and Sharpton is codeword for the more archaic phrase, "uppity niggers."

(And every white person who uses that code language will be outraged – outraged I say! – that a liberal writer dared to spell out the "n-word" without even using an asterisk! Hey guys, I'm just quoting the word you're actually thinking since you don't have the guts to say what you actually mean. See Lee Atwater.)

Another commenter wrote,

As most of you know, blacks vote for blacks regardless of who or what they are. It is time the Hattiesburg citizens take another look at the local politics.

And, by "citizens," she means "White Citizens." Because all the black citizens who voted for Johnny DuPree aren't really citizens, right?

I won't dispute the commenter's observation that, oftentimes, "blacks vote for blacks." That was certainly true in this election. But let us not pretend that black people in Hattiesburg are voting on the basis of skin color while white people, judging solely based on the content of character, all just happened to break for Dave Ware. Most of Dave Ware's supporters were genuine and not racially motivated. Let's not misunderstand what I'm saying. But it's also true that the Hattiesburg electorate was racially polarized.

Fellow white people: As long as some of you vote against black candidates simply because you fear the idea of black men in positions of leadership over you, black people will continue to stand in solidarity with other black people. If we are going to bring an end to electoral polarization, it has to start with white people confronting racism instead of comfortably pretending it no longer exists.

The racial intolerance that has come out of this process is shameful. Neither Johnny DuPree nor Dave Ware ran that campaign; they both ran honorable campaigns and I believe that both men were qualified candidates with good ideas for the City of Hattiesburg. Neither Ware nor DuPree sought to exploit racial animosity, and there were plenty of legitimate reasons to support either man on the basis of policy – and I believe that most Dave Ware supporters did so. But in the final days of ballot counting for what may be the closest mayoral election Hattiesburg has seen, the underlying racial tension reared its ugly head on social media. That isn't representative of the city I know.

Republicans Upset at Phil Bryant for "Going Off Message"

2013-06-05T11:52:00.000-05:00

Already, the thinking members of the Mississippi Republican Party (yes–surprise!–they exist) are reacting negatively to Governor Phil Bryant's comments yesterday that the problem with education in America is that "mom is in the work place." No, conservatives aren't upset at Bryant for being a woman-hating misogynist. They're upset at him because his misogyny threatens more immediate Republican causes, like ensuring that 300,000 poor Mississippians continue to not have healthcare.

Saying that now is "Not the Time for Bryant to Go Off Message," Frank Corder at right-wing Y'all Politics writes:

A snippet of Bryant's statements at a Washington Post live event on the importance of children reading by the end of third grade caused the blogosphere and liberal groups to go ballistic, opening the Governor up to criticism on something that's not even really on his current political agenda.

So, you see, the problem here is that Bryant "opened himself up to criticism" by delving into misogyny. And really, Phil, woman-hating isn't even currently on the priority list! Stick to the program, man. We'll get around to explaining why Mississippi women are the root of all our problems later.

Mississippi has had a tremendous session and there are lots of great things to highlight about the changes that Mississippi (and particularly the new Republican majority) are putting in place - that's the message.

Yes, the "great things" that Republicans are doing in Mississippi is the message. You know, like denying poor Mississippians access to healthcare that the federal government will soon be providing providing to citizens in almost every other state in the country. Or like violating the separation of church and state and reminding non-Christian Mississippians that the Christian majority hates them. Or like re-affirming the right of Mississippians to "eat 20 Big Macs" and guzzle "1,000 sodas" if they so choose. You know, important, great achievements like that!

The political reality for Bryant is that this simply is a distraction he didn't need... He's fought hard not to expand Medicaid and continue the efforts to stall Obamacare. All of that is good policy and good politics.

Yes, leaving Mississippi's uninsured to die without access to 21st Century healthcare even as millions of other Americans gain access is considered "good policy and good politics" in these circles. And if there's any place where the Republican willingness to spread misogyny stops, it's at the point where misogyny threatens to impede their efforts to keep the poor uninsured, uneducated, and unable to rise above poverty. Because, as much as women need to know their place and stay in it, it's even more imperative that the poor know and stay in theirs.

Bubba Bryant Blames Mississippi Moms for His Own Doing

2013-06-04T18:33:00.000-05:00

No matter how hard the national Republican party tries to "rebrand" itself, there will always be a Republican politician from Mississippi to foil their efforts. It's almost as if Governor Phil Bryant couldn't help but outdo his fellow Republican, Tennessee Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, who declared Sunday that women "don't want equal pay laws." Phil Bryant wasn't going to be out-sexisted by a sexist woman. No ma'am. So, he said something that was so stupid and sexist that, by Tuesday afternoon, Blackburn's stupidity was almost forgotten:

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) said Tuesday that America's educational troubles began when women began working outside the home in large numbers.

Bryant was participating in a Washington Post Live event focused on the importance of ensuring that children read well by the end of third grade. In response to a question about how America became "so mediocre" in regard to educational outcomes, he said:

"I think both parents started working. And the mom is in the work place."

His comments, which were a response to the Washington Post's female moderator, were prefaced by him saying, "I'm gone git in trouble. You want me to tell the truth?" While most thinking people would know to stop the moment they realize that what they're about to say is "gone git" them "in trouble," Bryant was speaking "the truth."

In Southern speak, "the truth" usually refers to a sexist, homophobic, or racist thought that the speaker knows will not be popular with his "politically correct" audience. But because he knows he is corroborated by the Good Lord Jesus, he feels emboldened and justified in declaring "the truth" anyway.

Aside from being a blatant misogynist, Bryant is being a hypocrite; his wife has worked at St. Dominic's Hospital for 37 years, even as he spent his days working valiantly to become Mississippi's Dumbass-in-Chief. Is he implying that his children suffered because he and his wife were working?

As the Cottonmouth blog points out, Phil Bryant has hired plenty of female staffers, making it difficult for them to perform their God ordained duty to stay in the kitchen and change diapers. "But don't worry," Cottonmouth's Matt Eichelberger adds, "none of the women make more than the highest paid men."

Whew. That's a relief.

But when it comes to poor women who aren't on his staff, what does Bryant think they should do? He has consistently opposed any measures that would make it easier for moms. He has constantly preached down to the poor, telling them that they must embrace "hard work" and stop expecting "handouts" from the government (like the healthcare law that could save thousands of lives in Mississippi that he's opposed to because, you know, the Black Socialist Muslim Kenyan President).

Maybe, Governor Bryant, more moms would be able to stay home if not for old men like you. Contrary to patriarchal myth, more women aren't working today because of some widespread feminazi conspiracy to destroy male supremacy and shatter our fragile male egos. More women are working today, for the most part, because they have no other choice. Dads are still working their asses off, but because of rich-coddling, poor-hating jerks like Phil Bryant, dads can no longer solely bear the burden alone, and many moms have been forced to intrude on your once-male-dominated workforce.

Men like you, Governor Bryant, have been instrumental in dismantling the very traditionalist power structure you so adore. You seem to be at a crossroads. Are you more frightened by the idea of empowered women, or are you more compelled by your desire to keep the poor in their place? Essentially, whom do you hate more – women, or the poor?

Tick, tick, tick.

CNN Opinion: Young and Out in Mississippi

2013-05-09T23:16:00.000-05:00

CNN is featuring this short clip, which highlights the voices of several young LGBT Mississippians:

Mississippi Supreme Court Issues Stay of Execution for Willie Manning

2013-05-07T16:26:00.001-05:00

With only hours to left before his scheduled 6 p.m. execution today, the Mississippi State Supreme Court voted 8-1 to issue a reprieve for Willie Manning. His execution will be delayed while new DNA testing of previously untested evidence is examined. Justice Michael Randolph dissented.

The Innocence Project released a statement shortly after:

"Hopefully, Manning, who has spent 20 years on death row maintaining his innocence in the deaths of Jon Steckler and Tiffany Miller, will now have the opportunity to do DNA testing that could prove his innocence. This past week, the FBI notified the state that there were flaws in both the hair and ballistics evidence that was used to convict Manning."

Today, Mississippi Could Put an Innocent Man to Death, Despite New Evidence

2013-05-07T07:16:00.000-05:00

In mere hours from now – at 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 7, 2013 – Willie Manning will be put to death for his role in the 1992 murders of two white MSU students, John Steckler and Tiffany Miller. At the time, forensic evidence matching hairs at the scene, a jailhouse "whistleblower"'s testimony, and the testimony of Manning's former girlfriend all seemed to seal the deal; Manning was clearly guilty. And so, to Death Row he went, with constant attempts for a new trial dismissed.

Willie Manning (Source: MS. Dept. of Corrections)

But doubt surrounds the case even now, as new evidence, technological advancements, the recanting of one witness, and the collapse of the credibility of another threatens our understanding of what happened on that December night in 1992.

Manning's case, it turns out, is part of a broad review of the FBI's handling of thousands of cases in the 80s and the 90s. The Justice Department sought to correct errors in forensic hair analysis done during cases at the time. The DOJ believes that there may have been many cases where the so-called hair "matches" were erroneous. Since there was no evidence directly linking Manning to the crime scene (and since fingerprints found in the car of one of the victims were not his), the "African American hair" that was found inside the car was of utmost importance in convicting him.

In April, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against allowing Manning's lawyers to reexamine a rape kit, fingernail scrapings, hair, and fingerprint evidence in the case; DNA testing was never done to see if they could link Manning to the killings, or if they could possibly point elsewhere. The Mississippi Supreme Court's argument was that that, even if Manning's DNA wasn't present, it wouldn't overturn his conviction.

It is true that there is plenty of circumstantial evidence against Manning. There is plenty of testimony, too.

A Flimsy Case

Earl Jordan, a jailhouse informant, testified that Manning had admitted to him that he killed the two white victims. The Prosecutor, Forrest Allgood, even sought to boost Jordan's credibility by announcing that Jordan had offered to take a lie detector test. What Allgood failed to disclose, at the time however, was that Jordan had already passed a previous lie detector test while claiming to have seen a separate suspect with the victims.

Today, however, Jordan says that Manning "never said he killed them" and that, at the time, he thought he would receive "consideration" from the prosecutors for incriminating Manning.

There was also Paula Hathorn, who provided circumstantial evidence indicating that Manning may have been in possession of, and tried to sell, items stolen from the victims like Steckler's watch and class ring, just days after the killings. She also pointed to a tree where she said Manning had used for a target practice; the type of bullets were said to match those used in the killings. But Hathorn, it turns out, seriously misrepresented herself under oath. She claimed she received no favors for her incriminating testimony. But it was revealed later on that she was given, in exchange, a favorable plea deal on previous fraud charges in addition to an $18,000 reward in money for testifying. None of that was disclosed to jurors at the time.

Another witness, Manning's cousin, also testified that Manning had confessed to the killings. But he offered several versions of this story. In the first telling, the cousin claimed that Manning had committed the crimes accompanied by two other men. In the re-telling, the cousin said Manning had confessed to committing the crimes with only a second man.

If Allgood was happy to have the cousin's testimony, he certainly wasn't interested in pursuing a possible second or third suspect in the killings; once Manning was the target, there was never any interest shown in apprehending anyone else – not even an accomplice.

But there's also the fact that Manning was convicted of another double homicide, in the killing of two elderly women in their apartment in Starkville, Miss., in 1993. But even in that case, evidence was circumstantial, and Manning could not be directly linked to the crime. A bloody shoe print at the scene has never been connected to any suspect; the size of the bloody print was an 8, but Manning wears a size 11 1/2. It may seem even more incriminating to consider that Manning has been convicted of two double homicides, but remember, Forrest Allgood was the prosecutor in that case, too.

And from the beginning, Allgood had settled on Manning as the purveyor of the crimes.

Years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court case Batson v. Kentucky ruled that any sort of racial discrimination in jury selection violated the Equal Protection Clause. But when Allgood was selecting jurors for the Manning trial, he ensured an all-white jury, striking down jurors simply because they read "black magazines" like Jet. But even black perspective jurors who gave similar answers to white perspective jurors were given peremptory strikes by the prosecutor, who clearly sought to ensure that there would be no one on the Manning trial jury who looked like him.

If Forrest Allgood's reputation told a better story, we might be able to forgive a few oddities here or there. But Allgood has a history.

A Tale of Two Innocents

In 2008, the Mississippi Innocence Project was able to help procure the release of two men who had been wrongly accused of very similar murders and sentenced to death.

One of those men was Levon Brooks, a black man, who was convicted in 1992 of the rape and murder of his ex-wife's child. Courtney Smith was taken from her home and her body was later found in a pond. With the assistance of "bite expert" Dr. Michael West, a dentist from Hattiesburg, the prosecution was able to prove that Smith bore the bite marks of Levon Brooks, and Brooks was convicted for her rape and murder.

Then, in 1995, Kennedy Brewer, another black man, was convicted of a nearly identical crime that took place 18 months after the murder of Courtney Smith. Brewer's girlfriend's three-year-old daughter, Christine Jackson, was kidnapped, raped, and murdered.

Courtney Smith, the victim of a vicious 1990 murder. (Source: Screenshot / NPR)

Once again, the prosecutor brought in the same medical examiner who had performed the autopsy on Smith's body. Hayne, collaborating once again with the dentist West, found bite marks on the little girl's body. This time, West concluded that the bite marks were made by the teeth of none other than Kennedy Brewer.

And so Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, in the span of just a few years, were convicted of identical crimes on the basis of Hayne and West's "forensic" examination. At this point, it's worth noting that, thanks to a system West had helped set up, Hayne was netting over $1 million a year at the time time, working for prosecutors across the state, performing six-times the number of autopsy "examinations" per year that a single examiner should.

But Hayne and West had such a strong working relationship with the lead prosecutor for the Brewer and Brooks cases – with District Attorney Forrest Allgood – that it didn't matter if their work might be less than in-depth.

In 2001, while Brewer was on death row, new DNA testing proved that the semen in the little girl's body was not his, meaning that he couldn't have been the one to rape her, making it highly unlikely that he was the one who killed her. Brewer's conviction was vacated and he was taken off death row, but Allgood signaled an intent to retry him for the murder and seek the death penalty yet again.

So for five years, Brewer sat in a county jail while Allgood twiddled his thumbs.

detector test; failed to disclose that Earl had previously passed such a test when claiming to have seen another suspect with one of the victims.

Then, the Innocence Project changed everything when, in 2007, it sought to represent Brewer in a new trial. Soon, the Innocence Project was aware of the strikingly similar sister case, the Brooks case. And through new examination, it was revealed that the "bite marks" on the girls' bodies weren't bite marks at all – at least, certainly not bite marks that could be traced back to any single man. They were marks consistent with two bodies that had been dragged, scraped, and left in the water with fish, turtles, and insects. Suddenly, the biggest part of the evidence used in trial against the two men was defunct.

With the help of the Attorney General's investigative team, the Innocence Project found evidence that pointed instead to 51-year-old Justin Albert Johnson. At the time of both of the murders, he had lived near the house of the victim. He was a predator with a history of attacking women and young girls. And he had been a suspect in both cases, but was ignored each time when Allgood decided to singularly pursue other men – Brooks and Brewer. Finally, DNA testing on evidence from the Brewer case matched Johnson's DNA profile, and in 2008, investigators from the Attorney General's office moved to arrest Johnson. Johnson then confessed to having been a lone actor in both murders.

Soon, with over thirty years of prison time between them, both Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer were set free from crimes they knew they had never, and would have never, committed. They were absolved of those heinous crimes.

And Allgood's response to all of this? "At least nobody died," he said. Well, no. Even if you ignore the fact that two innocent men had decades of their lives taken, a second little girl died who would've never been killed if prosecutors had gone after the right man the first time. If Justin Albert Johnson had been arrested and tried for the 1990 murder of Courtney Smith, he never would've had the chance to murder Christine Jackson years later. But because Allgood (a name dripping with such Rowling-esque irony that it shouldn't even be real) had locked in on a "bad guy" and staked his claim on Levon Brooks, a known sexual predator who lived right in the neighborhood was never seriously considered as a suspect.

But hey, "At least nobody died." Nobody, Mr. Allgood, except Christine Jackson.

Christine Jackson, who was a victim of a vicious murder in the early 1990s. (Source: Screenshot / NPR)

But Allgood's blood lust wasn't yet sated. With Brooks and Brewer still alive, he wanted to seek the death penalty, now, for the third man to be prosecuted for the murders. But when the families of the victims sent him letters asking him not to seek the death penalty for Johnson, he relented:

"My personal opinion is that anybody that rapes and kills a small child deserves the death penalty," Allgood said. "...Quite frankly, I would have preferred to have tried him and sought the death penalty."

Yes, Mr. Allgood, we know you would've. We know that you would love to fry anyone, guilty or not guilty, and if you make a mistake or two along the way, well, "Oops!" --At least nobody died, except, of course, the little girl who did die and the two men who had decades of their lives stripped from them.

Manning's Last Hope

Ultimately, the Willie Manning case does seem to have a lot more circumstantial evidence that points to his guilt. The evidence against Manning is certainly more compelling than it ever was against Brooks or Brewer. But even so, if there's even a chance that he's innocent, aren't we obligated to run those DNA tests? Aren't we obligated to reexamine those "Native American hairs" that were used in the trial against him to see if Allgood's "hair" evidence" is of any more forensic worth than his "bite mark" evidence? And, if there's any truth behind claims by Manning's cousin that there was someone else involved in the crime, shouldn't we be testing that evidence to ensure that, if anyone else was involved, they also see justice?

This isn't just about Willie Manning. This is about how we do justice in this country. This is about the thousands of others who could be wrongly imprisoned or put to death just because we didn't want to be thorough. What do we have to lose? If Manning is guilty, the evidence will show it. If someone else is guilty, then there's a strong possibility that, somewhere, another killer is running free. Are we really willing to send this man to his death amid all these doubts?

The only salvation for Willie Manning now is if Gov. Phil Bryant orders a stay of execution so that the testing – offered by the FBI – can be completed. As of Monday, Bryant was reviewing the case, but had yet to make a decision.

In a new post, the ACLU called on Bryant to make the decision to allow the testing to go forward – and to keep Manning alive until its results come forward:

"In the face of the evidence of innocence discovered since the trial, the Supreme Court of Mississippi failed to uphold its duty to serve justice. The Court decided that it would not stop Manning's execution to allow new DNA testing. Now, only a decision by Governor Bryant is likely to permit this crticial testing. Executions are not the place to act first and ask questions later. These grave questions of innocence should be answered before it is too late."

Whether or not Bryant will act remains to be seen. But with mere hours left, we'll know Manning's fate – and perhaps, in some part, the fate of our justice system – very soon. It's Allgood, you say? Hardly.

The following is an NPR report on the Brewer and Brooks cases:

Palazzo: Gays Have Bullied the Boy Scouts "Worse Than Any Group Has Ever Been Bullied Before"

2013-05-07T04:58:00.001-05:00

U.S. Congressman Steven Palazzo (R-MS) appeared on a Family Research Council webchat to speak out against attempts to remove the Boy Scouts of America's ban on gay scouts. Palazzo accused gays of "bullying" the Scouts and working to "corrupt" the organization. (Source: Screenshot / RightWingWatch)

With the possibility that the Boy Scouts of America might finally discard its ban on gay scouts, anti-gay groups like the Family Research Council are fighting back. The Family Research Council, which is a Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) designated hate group, held a "Stand With Scouts Sunday" web chat, where participants called the repeal of the ban a "sign of the end times" and warned it will cause America to "self-destruct."

Among the participants were Texas Gov. Rick Perry as well as U.S. Congressman Steven Palazzo from Mississippi's 4th District. Palazzo, who has fought for anti-gay policies in the past, expressed that he felt the Boy Scouts were victims of "bullying" worse than "any group or organization had ever been bullied." See for yourself:

"I'm not leaving any stone unturned on what I can do personally to protect the Boys Scouts from this popular culture, this liberal agenda that is being crammed down their throat. I feel like, in a large sense, that the Boys Scouts are being bullied, worse than any group or organization has ever been bullied before. They've been intimidated... They're being harassed, and at the end of the day they're also being ridiculed by some in the liberal media."

"If America cannot support the Boys Scouts of America, and telling them to stand strong, then what do we stand for as a country? And it's not just to defeat the policy that they're proposing, but also to remove the agitators that are trying to corrupt the Boys Scouts of America and bend to the popular culture."

Notice that Palazzo could not bring himself to say the word "gay" or even the colder "homosexual." The topic is so unsavory to him that he opted instead to allude to... them with "liberal agenda," "pop culture," and "agitators" (It's not an anomaly – he does this all the time when referring to gay people). So uncomfortable with gay people, Palazzo is, that he could not even bring himself to recognize them as people with lives, emotions, dreams, and yes, hearts. For him, gay people must remain a distant collectivized threat, a symbol of evil and, yes, corruption. Because if we admitted that gay people were actually people and not some scary cabal from the underworld, well, that might undermine our efforts to deny them the same God-given rights to justice, equal treatment, and basic human dignity that we recognize real people as deserving.

Because if gay people really are "people," then maybe we would also have to admit that they've endured far worse bullying than the organization that actively discriminates against gay kids will ever know. While the BSA tells gay kids that they are not worthy of joining unless they deny who they are, all anyone is asking the BSA is that they stop discriminating against gay kids, and that they stop crushing their hopes, their dreams, and denying them equal human dignity that every kid deserves.

There are bullies here, for sure. But it's not coming from the unmentionables. It's coming from cowards like Rep. Palazzo who don't have enough moral fiber to stand up for the weak and the outcast. Shame on you, Steven Palazzo.

See the shameful video of the cowardly Congressman below, courtesy of RightWingWatch. After the jump:

Photo Essay: This Clinic Stays Open

2013-04-30T23:52:00.000-05:00

Photo Essay by Ashton E. Pittman.

This photo essay is the result of several months of photo documentation at Mississippi's last abortion clinic, the Jackson Women's Health Organization in Jackson. My goal in producing this essay was to tell the story of the daily conflict that takes place between the sidewalk, the parking lot, and the front door of the clinic. Women who arrive for health services are often met by loud yells, preaching, and singing from pro-life protestors who stalk the sidewalks, waiting for the chance to dissuade patients as soon as they arrive. Police cars, videographers and photojournalists (like me) are a common sight outside the clinic. While a fence alongside the front of the clinic helps women avoid some of the protesting, clinic escorts are also readily available to help navigate women from the parking lot to the clinic entrance.

I began this endeavor in January 2013, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling, which legalized abortion nationwide. From January through April, a flurry of activity surrounded the clinic. There was the "40 Days for Life" event held by protestors nationwide during the Lent season, during which pro-life activists vowed to keep protestors at clinics nationwide every day (not a problem for the protestors in Jackson). Then, of course, there was the question over whether or not Gov. Phil Bryant's TRAP (Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers) law would result in the clinic being shut down as early as April (a court ruling in April provided that it the clinic would not be forced to cease operation so long as a legal challenge to Bryant's law was underway).

Because this is a debate that really should've ended long ago – on January 22, 1973 to be exact – I decided to shoot the essay using the same medium that was used at that time: black and white film. The photos were shot using a Canon SLR loaded with Kodak film. Because, really, I shouldn't even have the opportunity to shoot protests like the ones seen here – not in the digital age.

University of Southern Mississippi to Play Major Role in Boston Response

2013-04-16T15:03:00.001-05:00

Screenshot from the Boston Globe footage as the first bomb went off at the Boston Marathon.

April 15, 2013 / Credit: Boston Globe

The University of Southern Mississippi may not seem like an obvious place for counter terrorism operations, but in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, one on-campus institute is gearing up to play a major role in the response. The National Center for Spectator Sports and Security, known as NCS4, is a Department of Homeland Security linked institution that operates out of the Trent Lott Center on the Southern Miss campus in Hattiesburg.

It is the only institution in the country that focuses primarily on fighting against terrorist activity at sporting events through research and training initiatives.

Calling Southern Miss "a leader in the the area of sports safety," NCS4 Director Lou Marciano expressed response plans when I spoke to him last night:

“The University of Southern Mississippi will be a facilitator of the best information that facilitates the best practices and training,” he said. “Our role is to digest this issue, work with the field, work with those that manage these events and first responders, and gather all we’ve learned from this tragedy so that in the future people can feel free to go to events like this and feel safe.”

In 2010, I wrote a piece for the USM student newspaper, the Student Printz, that examined the institutions inside the Trent Lott Center in response to complaints that the building was a just a "$28 million paper weight" that housed no significant activities. At the time, of course, few people on campus knew what NCS4 was. While the rest of us were busy focusing on threats to airports and transportation, NCS4 was already highly concerned about the potential for terrorist attacks at sporting events. From the 2010 article:

"We cannot see any case except sports games where there are so many people in one place at the same time," said Young Lee, a visiting professor [and security expert] from Daebul University in South Korea. "So that's why terrorists are very interested in sporting events, because our airports are very secure right now."

Stacey Hall, the associate director for NCS4, wanted to make it clear that NCS4 looks at more than just international terrorism. "When people think terrorism, they think 9/11; they think international terrorism. But domestic terrorism is also a problem.

"For example, you have the bombing by Eric Rudolph in the ‘96 Olympic games, you have Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombings, and even in 2006, at the University of Oklahoma, a student with a bomb strapped to his body prematurely detonated a bomb outside the stadium. Fortunately, nobody was injured, but he died. Those kinds of things are our concerns."

I didn't realize how prescient the concerns expressed in that article would be when I wrote it in 2010, but others at NCS4 did.

Obviously, Marciano said, NCS4 hadn't managed to prevent the Boston bombings. That's partly because, while NCS4 was concerned about open air attacks, their main focus had been on stadiums and sports arenas, where such an explosion could feasibly kill hundreds if not thousands. But when the fourth annual National Sports Safety and Security Conference is held in July this summer, NCS4 will come with renewed discussion about sports safety, with a heavy emphasis on preventing attacks like the one yesterday in Boston.

For Now, Mississippi's Last Abortion Clinic Will Stay Open

2013-04-16T13:58:00.003-05:00

Diane Derzis, the owner of the Jackson Women's Health Organization in Jackson, MS, places a pro-choice placard outside the clinic.
January 22, 2013 / Photo by Ashton Pittman.

Mississippi's last abortion clinic, the Jackson Women's Health Organization (JWHO), will remain open – at least for now – after a federal judge in Mississippi issued a temporary restraining order Monday blocking enforcement of Governor Phil Bryant's anti-abortion regulations.

The law signed by Bryant would've required clinic doctors to have admitting privileges at a local hospital in order to perform abortions. Here's the catch: In order to get admitting privileges, doctors must live in state. The doctors at JWHO come in from out of state to perform abortions. Practically, that would've meant it would be impossible for JWHO to continue providing abortion services.

In January, Bryant admitted that the law was intended to shut the clinic down:

“My goal of course is to shut it down,” Bryant told a group of pastors in video captured by WJTV on Thursday.

Last April, Brayant told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins that Democrats had tried to kill the abortion clinic bill because “their one mission in life is to abort children, is to kill children in the womb.”

TRAP laws like this one, or "Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers,"are intentionally designed to make it difficult for clinics like JWHO to continue operating.

The judge's ruling Monday means that the law will not be enforced – at least until a future decision. Clinic supporters had feared that the clinic could be forced to cease offering services to patients as soon as this week.

"I was teary eyed when I heard the news," Laurie Roberts, a clinic escort who helps patients avoid harassment protestors as they enter the clinic, wrote on her Facebook. "If you had seen the worry on the faces of women today who thought that maybe Thursday there would be no clinic – or even tomorrow – they wouldn't be able to get their procedures, you would know why."

It's only a temporary reprieve, but at least for the moment, supporters and patients of the Jackson Women's Health Organization can breathe a sigh of relief.

On Marriage Equality, Mississippi Among the Most Supportive Southern States

2013-04-11T15:10:00.000-05:00

Support for marriage equality, state-by-state, in 2012. Credit: Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law

Mississippi may not be known for moving speedily if it all (or ability to move forward when it does move), but at least on the issue of marriage equality, Mississippi is one of the fastest moving Southern states.

A new report from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law indicates that support for marriage equality for same-sex couples has more than doubled since 2004, when Mississippians voted 86%-14% in favor of a state constitutional amendment to ban gay couples from marrying. Today, 34% of Mississippians favor marriage equality – a rise of 16 percentage points in the past 8 years, the Clarion Ledger notes.

Nationwide, according to Gallup polling, that puts Mississippi at about where the nation was in 1999, when just 35% of Americans supported legalizing same-sex marriage. It puts Mississippi ahead of where Americans were nationally when the Defense of Marriage Act was signed into law in 1996; at that time, only 27% of Americans supported legalized same-sex marriage.

According to the Williams Institute, Mississippi is the most supportive southern state for marriage equality after Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida. But Mississippi is outpacing even those states, whose support for marriage equality grew 15%, 15%, and 12%, respectively.

At current trends, a majority of Mississippians could support marriage equality within a decade. Even the slowest moving states could have majority support within the next 20 years:

Yet, all states are presently experiencing a trend reflecting increasing popular support for marriage for same-sex couples; the rates of change across states averaged 1.7% per year and ranged from 1% a year to 2.6% a year. Therefore, even the two states with the lowest levels of support in 2012, Louisiana and Arkansas at 31%, if accorded even the lowest rate of present change, 1% a year, are still only slightly less than 20 years from each having a majority on this issue.

Mississippi's 16-point jump is above the national average of 13-points.

Thatcher Was Far More of a Socialist Than Barack Obama

2013-04-08T21:58:00.002-05:00

Margaret Thatcher was far more liberal than modern Republicans, and more of a socialist than Barack Obama ever could be. Consider:

She supported the National Health Service, a truly socialized health care system in the United Kingdom. Unlike the conservative "Obamacare," NHS was truly socialist, and Margaret Thatcher was "genuinely proud" of the system.

She believed in climate change and believed that all nations should take part in combatting it. At the time, she said that "no one" was disputing the causes of it. Today, a majority of GOP voters believe Global Warming is a hoax.

She announced support for gun control policies after a deadly rampage and, a year later, the government passed a law banning semi-automatic weapons, changing gun ownership requirements, and banning other firearms.

She also believed in evolution. It's sad I even have to put this, considering science isn't really something we have the luxury of "believing in" or "not believing in."

She bragged about raising the amount of money devoted to the UK equivalent of Social Security.

She lowered the top income tax rates to 60%, and then to 40%. Even at Thatcher's lowest rates, it is still higher than "socialist" Obama's top income tax rates of 39%.

She also raised taxes.

She also had no interest in meeting the American conservative "Grizzly Mama," Sarah Palin, in 2011:

One Thatcher ally told the Guardian: "Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts."

So please, conservatives. Unless passing anti-gay laws is enough to make you consider someone a "true conservative," Thatcher really doesn't fit your definition. By some counts, she is far, far more of a "socialist" than Barack Obama ever will be. But maybe that says more about American conservatives than it does about Obama or Thatcher.

If that upsets conservatives, they need to just wait til I give them the rundown on the real Ronald Reagan.

Magazine Capacity Matters, Even if America Doesn't Think Dead Children Do

2013-04-07T20:04:00.001-05:00

In Tucscon, Arizona in 2011, Jared Lee Lougher shot 18 people (including Rep. Gabby Giffords) and killed 7 using a semi-automatic pistol with a 33-round magazine. In the time he was attempting to load another 33-round magazine, a bystander was able to take the magazine from him while another bystander clubbed him in the back of the head with a metal folding chair, stopping him. Imagine if he had been limited to 10 rounds and those citizen had been able to stop him after only 10 shots. Would young Christina-Taylor Green still be alive?

In Aurora, Colorado in the summer of 2012, James Holmes injured 58 people and killed 12, shooting with, among other weapons, a semi-automatic rifle with a 100-round drum magazine. With the lethal combination of highly destructive weapons and high capacity mags, Holmes fired as many as 50 shots a minute during the massacre. Before the 1994 assault weapons ban was allowed by Republicans to expire in 2004, it would've been extremely difficult for Holmes to get, not only an AR-15, but such a high capacity magazine.

In Newtown, Connecticut in December 2012, Adam Lanza killed 20 school children and 6 adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary. Using 30-round magazines and a semi-automatic rifle, he fired 154 bullets in the less than 5 minutes in which the shooting occurred. 154 bullets--That's more bullets than many gun owners and hunters ever shoot in their entire lifetime. There were only two people hit who survived, and every single victim was shot multiple times.

One child, 6-year-old Noah Pozner, was shot 11 times. Reports indicate that one child's face had nothing left of it but his eyes and curly brown hair; the lower half was obliterated by the force of Lanza's multiple shots. Lanza carried 10, 30-round magazines. In the time it took him to reload once, 11 children were able to escape from the room at one point, according to Nicole Hockley, whose 6-year-old son Dylan was killed by Lanza. Now, imagine if the 1994 law had remained in effect and Lanza had been limited to 10-rounds, forced to reload at least 6 more times.

There's a common thread in all of these massacres. No, it's not necessarily assault rifles; Loughner used a semi-automatic pistol. It's magazine capacity.

None of these shooters were stopped by a "good guy with a gun," despite the fact that the U.S. has the best armed civilian population on the planet with an average 89 guns in the United States per 100 civilians. That's far ahead of second place nation, Yemen, which has 55 for every 100 civilians, and Switzerland, which has 46 for every 100 civilians. America sees far more gun violence than any civilized nation, with 60% of homicides committed using guns. Yet Wayne LaPierre and the NRA says that the solution is more guns, because "the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

Yet of the 62 mass murders (not spree killings) that have taken place in the last three decades, none were stopped by armed civilians ("good guys") with guns. Of the the three massacres highlighted in this post, the only time a massacre was stopped, it was stopped, not by a good guy with a gun, but by a good guy with a metal folding chair--which was smacked against the back of Jared Lee Loughner's head as he attempted to reload.

Oh, and of those 62 mass murders over the last 30 years? Nearly half have taken place in the 9 years since the assault weapons ban expired in 2004, lifting the 10-round magazine cap. In the shootings since 1982, 85% of killers obtained their weapons legally.

Clearly, something has gone seriously wrong since the assault weapons ban expired in 2004. Something has been wrong for 30 years, but it's getting far, far worse. Of those 62 cases of mass murder, 7 took place in 2012 alone.

And America, seduced by the fear mongering and lies of the PR wing of the gun manufacturing industry--the NRA and its rodeo clown Wayne LaPierre--is letting the issue slip away, until the next made-for-TV mass murder grips our short attention spans again, at least for a little while.

It's just too bad that the parents of Newtown don't have the luxury of forgetting the way the rest of America does.

Former Mississippi Governor Endorses Marriage Equality

2013-03-21T15:12:00.002-05:00

This certainly isn't a headline you see every day. The Clarion Ledger is reporting that former Mississippi Governor Ronnie Musgrove (a Democrat, of course) has endorsed marriage equality nine years after leaving office in a piece for the Huffington Post. Now, he says, he not only believes that was wrong, but he believes LGBT families deserve equal treatment in all respects:

Former Miss. Governor Ronnie Musgrove

In my own upbringing, my family lacked the ability to provide a stable, nurturing environment. After my father died when I was seven and my mother entered into an abusive relationship, I shuffled between houses -- staying with friends, families from church, and relying on the kindness of teachers and people throughout my community to help me grow up essentially without parents.

As I thought about this issue, I came to understand that in order to do everything possible to keep another child from growing up like I did, we cannot continue to blindly disqualify people from becoming parents -- just as we should not deny an entire group of people the basic civil right of marriage -- simply because many of us fear what we do not understand.

Like a majority of Americans in recent years, I came to understand that fear of homosexuality was leading our governments -- including the one I ran as Governor of Mississippi -- to deny the equal rights to an entire segment of our population that are afforded all of us under the Constitution.

Like Sen. Portman, my evolution on LGBT adoption came from intensely personal reflections on my own life. What is sad to me is that my understanding of this issue did not come until after I had left office and no longer had the power to right this wrong. This reality weighs heavily on me to this day.

Musgrove reminds readers that he was the governor who once supported a law in Mississippi that made it illegal for LGBT couples to adopt. He obviously deeply regrets that decisions.

Thank you, Governor.

Read more here.

Crystal Craven Has Died. Her Family Needs Your Help.

2013-03-13T01:23:00.002-05:00

Jessica Powell (left) and Crystal Craven (right) hold hands on their wedding day in Laurel, Miss.
Crystal wore a cowboy hat to conceal her surgery scars. Photo by Cassidi Bush.

In February, Crystal Craven married the love of her life, Jessica Powell, in Laurel, Mississippi. They celebrated their love in a wedding ceremony in front of family and friends, just like any other couple dreams of doing. Even the local controversy their wedding caused couldn't stop them from celebrating their love. But a month later after Crystal married the love of her life, Crystal would die from the stage 4 brain cancer she'd been battling for over a year. Crystal passed away Monday, March 11.

When I first blogged about the hateful backlash the Laurel Leader-Call received after the initial story about Crystal and Jessica's wedding, so many of you came forth with an awesome outpouring of love I can't even describe. You donated to the Laurel Leader-Call in droves, people from all over the world payed for subscriptions of a small Mississippi paper a world away just to say, "Thanks." Emails and physical letters poured in from around the world, so much, in fact, that in days the letters of love outnumbered the hate mail 500-1. You all did the global gay community – and the global love community – proud. Oh, and, did I mention, the Leader-Call is going to be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for the bravery they showed in covering this story? The Laurel Leader-Call thanks you so, so very much, as do I.

But now, the Laurel Leader-Call has another request – this time for Crystal's family. From Laurel Leader-Call writer Cassidi Bush, who followed Crystal and Jessica's story:

"Crystal was only 34-years-old and she didn't have insurance, so her family will have a hard time paying funeral expenses. We really appreciated the new subscribers supporting us, but we would love to share that support with Crystal's family. Donations can be made to Colonial Chapel Funeral Home in Laurel, Miss."

You can send gifts, flowers, and cards through the funeral home page here. But what Crystal's family really needs are monetary donations to help cover funeral costs. You can do this by calling Colonial Chapel Funeral Home at 601-649-3342 or by contacting them at the address: 4593 Indian Springs Road, Laurel, MS, 39441.

For now, you can read a selection from this beautiful followup article written by Cassidi Bush earlier this month. In the article, Jessica explained why Crystal had made the choice to stop fighting her cancer:

Crystal Craven, 34, and Jessica Powell, 24, had a wedding ceremony in downtown Laurel on Feb. 2. Even though they're in a state that doesn't legally recognize same-sex marriages, they wanted to have a public celebration of their love. Craven, who has Stage 4 brain cancer, wore a cowboy hat to cover scars from recent surgeries and treatments.

About a week later – as an article about their "Historic Wedding" was on local newsstands – Craven was feeling weak on her left side and continued to have headaches. The couple went to the hospital and Craven's surgeon ordered a CAT scan. The results came back with bad news. The tumor on Craven's right side had come back, and there is a new one on the left side.

Craven had a decision to make: Should she try chemo again or live out her remaining days at home? The decision has been tough on both women.

"Crystal told me that she was tired of hurting, tired of being sick and tired of fighting," Powell said. "Of course we cried about it, but she decided not to do chemo again, and I have to respect that." [...]

"We have so much support from other states," Powell said. "The world can't get better unless change is in it."

"Powell said she and Craven were not trying to make a political statement – they were just trying to make a public expression of their love. [...]

Powell said she doesn't want to think about life without Craven, but faced with the realities of cancer, she knows she has to.

"After this is over, I'm going to do me and hang out with my son," Powell said. "I've already been with the person I was supposed to be with, and some people never get that chance. I'm grateful for the time I have spent with her."

She recalled their wedding day: "My vow to her was forever, not until death do us part."

How could you not cry? Please, if you have anything to spare – and I already know that many of you have huge hearts – please, one more time, help them out. They've been through a lot, but through it all, they shined a light in a state full of darkness. Let's shine our light right back at them as they go through this dark time.

Hospital's Chief Medical Officer Roasts Bryant Over Medicaid Expansion

2013-03-09T15:46:00.002-06:00

Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant.

Forrest General Hospital's Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Joe Campbell, wrote a blistering op-ed in today's edition of the Hattiesburg American, blasting Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant for refusing to agree to the Medicaid expansion that, as part of the Affordable Care Act, would allow many poor and uninsured Mississippians access to healthcare at little cost to the state.

Campbell says he was no fan of the Obamacare, but argues that it makes no sense to refuse to accept the Medicaid expansion. In fact, he says, Bryant's actions will be highly detrimental to, not only the poor, but to the state's healthcare facilities. From the Hattiesburg American:

By deciding not to expand Medicaid here in the poorest and highest uninsured state, your tax dollars will be sent to Chicago and California among other places to fund their Medicaid program expansions.

Gov. Bryant must be proud.

He says that all of our poor working folks who have no insurance can get their “health care” in the emergency room.

While this may be true (we never turn anyone away) ... He doesn’t talk about who pays for this “care,” your local hospital.

He also doesn’t bring up the fact that these folks don’t show up in the ER until their problem is so bad that the cost to treat them is multiplied many times over.

Since I don’t think poor uninsured citizens of Mississippi are going to leave the state in large numbers, this will result in many smaller facilities closing and loss of services at the larger ones.

At a time when we have a severe doctor shortage in Mississippi, UMC and Forrest General Hospital (the two hospitals in the state with the most Medicaid patients) are facing many millions of dollars of cuts, which threaten the viability of the two medical schools in the state and the future supply of physicians here. (Read more)

Hopefully, as more medical professionals in Mississippi begin to speak out, the idiots running our state will start to listen to all that talking money. It seems to be the only thing that can ever get their attention – especially when proving how much their hate President Obama is their number one aim.

Girls Say Accused Killer of Marco McMillian Claimed Rape Defense

2013-03-09T15:04:00.000-06:00

Lawrence Reed, who is accused of killing

gay Clarksdale mayoral candidate Marco

McMillian last month.

Days after it was first revealed that the defense team for Lawrence Reed might be planning to use a "gay panic" defense in the killing of Clarksdale candidate Marco McMillian, two unidentified witnesses are now claiming that Reed told them he killed McMillian because he thought he was going to be raped:

However, the sisters say Reed told them everything. Just after midnight on February 26, their youngest sister received a panicked call from Reed. One sister says, "He called at 12:11am and he told her that the dude (McMillian) was trying to rape him. He was exposing himself to him, playing with himself, telling him to do things and then he'll take him home."

He told the girl he was on a back road and couldn't get away. A few minutes later a bruised, bloody and broken Reed showed up at their back porch. "He just looked like he had been through war..." one sister describes, "He was standing in the back, back here, telling God to forgive him. He didn't mean to do it, and he was saying that he just wanted to die."

She says when Reed couldn't get away from McMillian, he used the chain on his wallet to choke the 200 pound politician. "He was shaking real hard, he was crying real hard, he was circling, begging for somebody to talk to him."

The sisters say Reed was inconsolable and, they believe, suicidal. "When he left out, he just drove out, sped up and hit a white truck head on."

New details also emerged regarding a more accurate description of the condition of McMillian's body than previously reported:

On Sunday, McMillian's family released a statement saying the politician was dragged, beaten and burned. A source close to the investigation told abc24.com the family's description of the death was inaccurate. His face was swollen. He had a black eye, he was dragged by hand a few feet and there were burn marks on small areas of his skin.

Theoretically speaking on the basis of these reports, it's hard to imagine a scenario where a person who is faced with rape decides that, instead of attempting to escape, it would be easier to choke his "attacker" with a wallet chain, beat him, apparently burn him in some way, steal his truck, drag and dump his body, run cry to some friends, then leave again in his "attacker's" truck only to wreck it.

It seems that, if someone had the ability to do all of that, that person should've also had the ability to get away and call 911. Certainly, being in the same room as someone who might have been "playing with" himself isn't the same as being helplessly attacked by a rapist, and it wouldn't be any more of a justification for kill someone than, say, whistling at a white woman.

The story, as told by these two girls, simply doesn't add up. It'll be interesting to see if the story from the Lawrence defense team bears any resemblance.

Rand Paul Supported Use of Drones for Border Enforcement

2013-03-08T02:18:00.000-06:00

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) led a 13-hour-long filibuster over the drone program on March 6, 2013.

While I've commended Sen. Rand Paul for taking a stand and finally getting answers from the White House on the topic of drones, and for standing against many of his Republican colleagues, I do now have a question for Rand Paul myself: If you are against the use of armed drones on American soil – and I believe you sincerely are – then why, in 2011, is it that you supported the use of drones as a border security enforcement measure? Uh oh:

That worry about drones is not universal for Paul, however, as he’s less concerned when it comes to enforcing border security via drone. Laying out his stance on comprehensive immigration reform, Paul published an op-ed in the Washington Times making clear that he felt that border security had to be addressed before a path to citizenship could be enacted:

"Border security, including drones, satellite and physical barriers, vigilant deportation of criminals and increased patrols would begin immediately and would be assessed at the end of one year by an investigator general from the Government Accountability Office."

Though he did not make it clear, it can be assumed that Paul was referring to drones of the unarmed variety, rather than advocating launching Hellfire missiles at immigrants attempting to cross the border.

Looks like somebody in Kentucky has got some explaining to do. I wonder if Mr. Paul would be willing to send over to Deep South Progressive an Eric Holder style response? I won't hold my breath.

No Healthcare for Poor Mississippians, Phil Bryant Insists

2013-03-08T02:05:00.002-06:00

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R)

As the debate over Obamacare and Medicaid expansion rages on in Mississippi politics, Gov. Phil Bryant has taken a page from the national GOP playbook. When Democrats offered a compromise on the Medicaid expansion, Bryant chose instead to dig his heels in even deeper, the Hattiesburg American reports:

If the Obama Administration cuts payments to hospitals for treating the indigent, Gov. Phil Bryant says he won’t cave in on expanding Medicaid — he’ll sue.

“The first thing I’d do is sue (the federal government),” Bryant said Wednesday after state House Democratic leaders offered what they call a compromise to the governor and House GOP leadership on Medicaid expansion.

As some other GOP governors are backing down on their stance against expanding their states’ Medicaid programs as part of Obamacare, Bryant appears to be digging in.

“I do not see expansion of Medicaid in Mississippi as it exists today, with all its waste, fraud and abuse,” Bryant said. “Republican governors are looking at other alternatives — medical savings programs … other options. The Supreme Court said they can’t punish states for not participating in Obamacare. That’s exactly what (cutting indigent care payments) would be doing, punishing us. ”

The Mississippi Legislature is in a standoff over Medicaid. House Democrats want to expand it to cover hundreds of thousands of the working poor in the state, per Obamacare. The GOP leadership opposes expansion. Each side has killed measures to reauthorize Medicaid to operate for the coming year. Each side at this point lacks the number of votes to win the day.

Democratic lawmakers said Wednesday they want to craft a bill that would have a “trigger” mechanism for Medicaid expansion. If the federal government cuts hospital payments for treating the indigent — as was the initial plan with the 2010 Affordable Care Act — then the state would expand the Medicaid program. The hospitals and other medical lobbies, fearing the loss of millions in federal funds, are pushing lawmakers to expand Medicaid.

Democratic Rep. Steve Holland

When you're Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, it is your duty, after all, to ensure that your citizens suffer the most. It's your duty to make sure they know that life is really, really, really bad under the Kenyan, socialist, secret-Muslim, also known as President Barack Obama. I mean, what else could we expect? Laws actually aimed at improving the lives of Mississippians? Ha. Perish the thought.

This all comes days after Rep. Steve Holland (D-Plantersville) responded to the Medicaid debate, writing to Bryant: "I think you're a fool for turning your back on the poor. Plus, you're a hypocrite to promote medical economic development and not have this means to pay for it. This is simple minded on your part. Get a life. :-)"

I love you, Steve Holland.

Because Christians Are So Persecuted in Mississippi, House Passes Prayer Bill

2013-03-08T00:51:00.004-06:00

Rep. Kevin McGee (R) supported
a school prayer bill because, he
said, "We all need to pray."

No one is stopping Mississippi schoolchildren from praying. But that isn't stopping the Mississippi House from passing another iteration of the "anti-discrimination" school prayer law that, not only "legalizes" activities that are already legal thanks to the First Amendment's guarantee of religious liberty, but also introduces very questionable language into law because, as one legislator said last year, "We all need to pray." The text of SB 2633, which is now headed to Gov. Phil Bryant's desk after it passed the House 108-6:

"An act to enact the 'Mississippi Religious Liberties Act of 2013'; to provide for voluntary student expression of religious viewpoints in public schools; to provide that public school districts shall allow religious expression in class assignments; to provide that public school districts shall provide students with the freedom to organize religious groups and activities; to provide that public school districts shall provide a limited public forum for student speakers at non-graduation and graduation events; to provide a model policy for voluntary religious expression in public schools; and for related purposes."

First of all, while gays, lesbians, transgender people, black people, Hispanic people, Native Americans and women face actual and structural discrimination in Mississippi, evangelical Christians most certainly do not. It's quite disingenuous for these people, who often advocate for and uphold discrimination against real minority groups, to pretend that Christians – of all groups – need some sort of special protection against discrimination in Mississippi. Sorry, a 108 vote majority says you're not eligible for a slice of the victimhood pie.

Secondly, unless something has seriously changed since I graduated high school in 2008, most of those things are already recognized rights. Students can pray in schools. In fact, at my high school, See You At the Pole was a regularly held prayer event in which students held hands around the flagpole to pray together, and students were given a "moment of silence" (translation: "Moment to pray to Jesus Christ") every morning. Students aren't penalized for airing religious viewpoints in class. Au contraire, my high school biology teacher was shouted down by my classmates for even attempting to broach the topic of evolution (she ended up teaching it as if it didn't pertain at all to humans). Students can already organize prayer groups and religious clubs. In fact, I was part of one – First Priority – in my high school, and there was at least one more – Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I'm not sure what "related purposes" entails.

What you can't do – and many schools in Mississippi violate this anyway without the need of a law – is force others to participate in a certain religious practice. You can't allow students to walk around, vocally projected loud, boastful, disruptive prayers. You can't make students listen to a reading of the Bible (even though that was a daily part of my primary school education, along with collectively saying the blessing at lunch). You can't give students special privileges to excuse them from the same curriculum as everyone just because they feel scientific reality is at odds with their religion (even though students at my high school obviously got away with it when it came to evolution). You can't force students to attend religious functions (even though students at my high school were given no option but to attend several religion-centered, school-hosted speaking engagements).

My point is, there are many things public schools in Mississippi already do that they aren't supposed to do Constitutionally, but that doesn't mean the Mississippi House should recognize, as a matter of law, blatant Constitutional violations. Certainly, it doesn't need to pass a law purporting to "legalize" religious freedoms that public school students already enjoy without question thanks to the Constitution.

Let's remind ourselves of the text of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Clearly, Mississippi Christians are not suffering the denial of the free exercise of their religious beliefs (although other religious groups probably are). But protecting Christians from that prohibition isn't the aim of the law, and it's not the goal of the lawmakers behind it. Rep. Kevin McGee (R-Brandon) explained the real motivation for the 'Mississippi Religious Liberties Act' when a nearly identical bill was introduced last year:

"We all need to pray," said Rep. Kevin McGee, R-Brandon. "Hopefully, if this bill passes, we will be able to do that in many different places."

You see, that's the true intent behind the law: "We all need to pray." So even if a student is atheist, agnostic, Hindu, or Muslim – the Mississippi Republican House wants that student to pray, and that's why they've passed the Mississippi Religious ~~Liberties~~ Requirements Act of 2013. Because the free exercise of religion shouldn't simply be "not prohibited"; it should be requisite.

Sadly, Rep. Kevin McGee couldn't join his colleagues in voting for the Religious Liberties Act of 2013. He resigned in November in order to avoid over $400,000 in fines after he was charged with ethics violations. Clearly, we all need to pray for him.