Press conference details... Crash it with me in fifteen minutes? Call is 3 PM CST Tuesday Call in number: 530-881-1000. PIN: 287517# #mssen
— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) July 2, 2014
Tea party official Mark Mayfield, charged in connection with a scandal involving photos of Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran's ailing wife, has been found dead and police said they suspect suicide.More at Twitchy, "Reports: Mississippi attorney charged in Cochran nursing home photo scandal commits suicide."
Ridgeland Police Chief Jimmy Houston said the body of Mayfield, who was an attorney, was found Friday morning at his house outside Jackson, Miss., and that a suicide note was found at the scene, the Associated Press reported.
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant released a statement early Friday...
The day after incumbent U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran won the GOP primary runoff, challenger Chris McDaniel had not conceded and said his team would be looking at voting irregularities “in coming days” to determine whether to challenge the results.More.
McDaniel’s campaign spokesman Noel Fritsch, reached by phone late Wednesday morning, promptly hung up without answering questions about McDaniel’s next move but later issued a written statement from McDaniel. McDaniel also appeared on the Sean Hannity radio show.
Cochran, in unofficial results, defeated McDaniel with 190,633 votes to 184,260, or 51 percent to 49 percent on Tuesday. Cochran spokesman Jordan Russell said: “We are moving forward. The election is over, and now it’s time to get ready for November. Chris McDaniel, his campaign and his supporters ran a great race. They have a lot to be proud of.”
McDaniel says Cochran’s campaign brought in Democrats to steal the GOP primary. He told Hannity he might launch a court challenge on “a civil conspiracy to violate state law.” In his written statement he said, “After we have examined the data we will make a decision about whether and how to proceed.”
Asked by Hannity whether he could support Cochran if he remains the nominee or mend fences with the state Republican establishment, McDaniel said he has been praying about it.
“It’s too early right now to get those raw emotions out of the way,” McDaniel told Hannity. “... They used everything from the race card to food stamps to saying I would shut down public education. ... I’ve fought for this (Republican Party) all my life, but they abandoned us, made fun of us and ridiculed us and brought in 35,000 Democrats to beat us.”
Cochran’s ability to turn out black Democrats in huge numbers to offset his unpopularity among members of his own party in an open primary state could also be interpreted as a triumph for GOP outreach. For a party that desperately needs more minority support, some may argue that Cochran’s tactic of paying black political organizers to persuade hard-core Democrats to vote in a Republican primary is a sign that African-Americans can be enticed to support a GOP candidate under some circumstances.Continue reading.
While that is a rather dubious assumption, the bottom line about the Mississippi primary is that the Tea Party got out-organized, out-spent and outflanked by an incumbent. Cochran was able to use support from the party establishment, business, and local constituencies who were influenced by the senator’s ability to manipulate the federal budget. That bought him a win in a primary that should have been dominated by the highly motivated conservative activists who wanted to retire him.
But the general satisfaction among establishment Republicans today needs to be tempered by the knowledge that what Cochran did in Mississippi may hurt the party in ways they may not quite understand...
Here's your proof of mass voter fraud, people bragging about illegal votes, bribes... in #mssen pic.twitter.com/QaifWx0S3V
— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) June 25, 2014It's bullshit that McDaniel won't challenge #mssen results. I heard it from the source. Tell that to the face of any "reporter" who lies.
— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) June 25, 2014Superintendents all over #MS sent out letters to staff warning of McDaniel win, lying about cuts to education. #mssen pic.twitter.com/yp5hUnBFke
— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) June 25, 2014The amazing @jason_howerton publishes this & gave me shout out. Rush Limbaugh weighs in, too. #mssen http://t.co/1eF1hrFEpE
— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) June 25, 2014Many people have asked me this. I have not taken a penny from #McDaniel campaign & would not take anything if offered. Period. #mssen
— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) June 25, 2014
#MSSen keeps freakin' tightening.
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 25, 2014
Decrepit race-baiter Thad Cochran edges tea party's Chris McDaniel in #MSSen. http://t.co/BFGoO0covM
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 25, 2014
Radio ad says Tea Party wants to send blacks back to the "good old bad days" #mssen https://t.co/85Yhzg7FId
— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) June 24, 2014
Defiant Chris McDaniel declines to concede in speech to supporters http://t.co/1xzGCCS3Fu | Getty pic.twitter.com/CNgfQUTOR8
— POLITICO (@politico) June 25, 2014
PARCHMAN, Miss. — To spend time alone with the man she married four months ago, Ebony Fisher, 25, drives nearly three hours through the flat cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta until she pulls into a gravel lot next to the state’s rural penitentiary.Well, there's your Jim Crow history lesson for the day.
She joins her husband, who in 2008 began serving a 60-year sentence for rape, aggravated assault and arson, in a small room with a metal bunk and a bathroom. For an hour, they get to act like a married couple.
“That little 60 minutes isn’t a lot of time, but I appreciate it because we can just talk and hold each other and be with each other,” said Ms. Fisher, who is studying to be a surgical assistant.
But conjugal visits, a concept that started here at the Mississippi State Penitentiary as a prisoner-control practice in the days of Jim Crow, will soon be over. Christopher B. Epps, the prison commissioner, plans to end the program Feb. 1, citing budgetary reasons and “the number of babies being born possibly as a result.” In Mississippi, where more than 22,000 prisoners are incarcerated — the second-highest rate in the nation — 155 inmates participated last year.
Since they began here in the early 1900s, when the penitentiary was just called Parchman Farm, conjugal visits have been an unlikely barometer of racial mores and changing times both in Mississippi and in states like California and New York, where married same-sex couples can participate.
In the 1970s, new prisons often included special housing for what had come to be called extended family visits. But by 1993, only 17 states allowed conjugal visits. Mississippi is one of just five that have active programs.
In California and New York, they are called family visits and are designed to help keep families together in an environment that approximates home. Some research shows that they can help prisoners better integrate back into the mainstream after their release.
Visits in those states, and in Washington and New Mexico, can last 24 hours to three days. They are spent in small apartments or trailers, often with children and grandparents, largely left alone by prison guards. Visitors bring their own food and sometimes have a barbecue.
In New York, about 8,000 family visits were arranged last year, a figure that corrections officials say has declined. Of those, 48 percent were with spouses. The rest were with family members such as children or parents.
Studies cited by Yale law students in a 2012 review of family visitation programs showed that the programs could work as powerful incentives for good behavior, help reduce sexual activity among prisoners and help strengthen families.
Though what qualifies prisoners for the visits varies from state to state, all must have records of good behavior and be legally married. In most, prisoners in maximum security or on death row are denied the visits. Federal prisons do not allow them.
Mississippi ended its more extensive family visitations last year but left in place the hourlong visits, which since their inception a century ago have been designed more as a way to control inmates than nurture relationships.
“Conjugal visits have been a privilege,” said Tara Booth, a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Corrections Department. “So in that sense, it has, as other internal opportunities, helped to maintain order.”
The notion of allowing prisoners to have sex was born here shortly after Parchman Farm opened in 1903 as a series of work camps on 1,600 acres of rich Delta farmland. Inmates, most of whom were black, were used as free farm labor in an arrangement not that far removed from slavery.
Set in the middle of the birthplace of the blues, Parchman Farm has been the subject of many songs written by classic bluesmen like Bukka White and others who did time here.
The warden at the time believed sex could be used to compel black men to work harder in the fields, according to a history on the practice produced in the 1970s by Tyler Fletcher, who founded the department of criminal justice at the University of Southern Mississippi in 1973. So black prisoners were allowed time on Sunday with spouses or, more often, prostitutes...
