Month: June 2021

WaPo: “It was a curious time for Sonny Perdue to close a real estate deal. In February 2017, weeks after President Donald Trump selected him to be agriculture secretary, Perdue’s company bought a small grain plant in South Carolina from one of the biggest agricultural corporations in America. Had anyone noticed, it would have prompted…

Sun Herald: “He’s been crisscrossing the state for months meeting with local leaders. He’s on track to have $1 million in his campaign coffer this year. He’s taking jabs at Gov. Tate Reeves at every opportunity. Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn sure shows all the signs of someone strongly considering a gubernatorial run in 2023….

Mediaite: “House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Tuesday he supports legislation to remove Confederate statues in the U.S. Capitol, saying they’re “statues of Democrats.” “Let me state a simple fact,” McCarthy said. “All the statues being removed by this bill are statues of Democrats.” He even said “the bill should go further” and suggested, “Maybe it’s time…

North State Journal: “A news release from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said the school’s trustees would meet Wednesday, June 30. It is expected they will vote on whether to grant tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, the author of the controversial 1619 Project, which seeks to reframe American history. A decision by trustees…

TX Observer: “After years studying errors in death penalty cases, Columbia University law professor James Liebman wondered whether he could prove someone had been executed for a crime they didn’t commit. To test the theory, Liebman turned to Texas, the epicenter of the modern death penalty. In 2004, he and a team of students stumbled…

New Day for NC: “Conservative evangelical Christians in America haven’t always been all-out supporters of Israel. They once were downright hostile. That changed in 1984 when North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms ran for reelection against Governor Jim Hunt. Helms’s flip-flop on Israel had nothing to do with religion. It was about campaign contributions. During his…

AR Times: “Ernest Dumas looks back to 1963. The nation was roiling from the civil rights movement and an Arkansas governor, Orval Faubus, was nurturing his political power with defense of segregation. Into the story step John F. Kennedy, not long before his assassination; Orval Faubus’ sister, a JFK admirer, and Faubus’ father Sam, a…

Off the Kuff: “From the inbox: The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas sent letters today to 34 counties informing top officials that implementing Gov. Greg Abbott’s unlawful plan to engage in immigration enforcement would violate the U.S. Constitution. The letters, sent to the counties targeted by Abbott, advise against local law enforcement participation in…

Off the Kuff: “I return once again to doing cycle-over-cycle comparisons in vote turnout, in this case for State House districts. There are a lot of them, and I’m not going to do them all but I am going to do enough of them that I will split this into two parts. Part One, this…

North State Journal: “A prominent Mississippi business leader said Wednesday the decision to change the state’s flag has removed a “significant impediment” to economic development in Mississippi. Mississippi lawmakers voted last year to retire a Confederate-themed flag state as part of the national reckoning over protests against law enforcement. “This, I think, removes a significant…