The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans tossed out a $1 million punitive damage award to Norman and Genevieve Broussard, a Biloxi couple who successfully sued State Farm Fire and Casualty Co. in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
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The tobacco tax is back on the board. The House amended and approved Senate Concurrent Resolution 655 to include state statute sections that could eventually pave the way for a tax increase on tobacco and alcohol products. The resolution, designed to allow a bill to be considered past its deadline, passed with an 81-to-38 vote.
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What if you threw a block party and nobody came? Last year, Tonja Murphy was a little apprehensive about throwing the first Millsaps-North Midtown Block Party on the college’s west lawn. After all, the imposing iron gate along West Street had been locked to the North Midtown neighborhood since the mid 1980s. Would anyone from North Midtown even want to walk through?
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The House and Senate spent all of March firing bills at one another, waiting to see what the other side was going to do with them. It’s that time of the session now where both chambers get to face the mutated monsters that come back to them.
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by Maggie Burks
Photo by Maggie Burks
April 2, 2008
The distinct smell of acrylic paint greets you as you arrive at the top of the stairs leading to the fine arts hall at Lanier High School in Jackson. Paintings line the floor of the corridor, where they can dry without interference. Students will exhibit many of them in an art show and auction at Rainbow Whole Foods Co-op on April 10.
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Try Christmas Bonuses?
As if having charges dropped against the woman who allegedly stayed in the house with their beaten-to-death young relative wasn’t bad enough, the family of Heather Spencer was hit with a March 26 Clarion-Ledger article that was riddled with errors, including one of the most chilling fashion. Ledger reporter Nicklaus Lovelady actually gave the last name of the victim to the mother of George Bell, who has admitted to bludgeoning Spencer to death last year, referring to Robbie Bell as “Robbie Spencer.”
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by Adam Lynch
Photos by Melissa Webster & Mississippi Museum Of Natural Science
March 26, 2008
Some Levee Board members are not convinced a plan to flood the Pearl River and create waterfront development is dead, despite a recent board decision seeming to kill the project.
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What a long, strange, trip it’s been. The co-developers of the King Edward Hotel are holding a groundbreaking on March 27, at 11 a.m., after years of the project languishing in the planning stages. Developers, including Jackson attorney David Watkins, HRI Properties co-founder Pres Kabacoff and New Orleans Saints star Deuce McAllister will be on hand with Gov. Haley Barbour to celebrate the “Rebirth of Jackson’s downtown and the commencement of renovation” of the King Edward.
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by Adam Lynch
Photo by Melissa Webster
March 26, 2008
A Jackson City Council committee on Monday approved a change to a 2003 city ordinance banning smoking in many businesses, extending the ban to restaurants—unless they have a bar.
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by Ronni Mott and Adam Lynch
Photo by Alice Roth
March 26, 2008
Actor Harry Belafonte Jr., writer Alice Walker and filmmaker Keith Beauchamp are headlining the third annual Conference of the Veterans of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement at Jackson State University starting this Thursday.
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A group of about 70 Indian workers marched onto the Mississippi State Capitol Thursday, March 20, protesting treatment by Pascagoula construction company Signal International, LLC.
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Deadlines both made and spayed bills last week. Many bills passed in the two chambers of the Mississippi Legislature, but now face conference committee to bang out their differences.
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This week marked either the victory cheer or the death knell for a round of money bills seeking approval. Tuesday, specifically, marked the deadline for the House or Senate to consider bills coming in from the opposite chamber. Among those bills are the House’s ensuing attempt to balance the state’s ailing Medicaid budget by raising the cigarette tax to $1.18.
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The Senate passed a bill that expands the use of the death penalty in the state. Senate Bill 2921 provides that multiple murders in a single incident or a murder committed in conjunction with an attempted murder—a classification that did not exist in Mississippi until the Legislature took up a bill creating the classification this year—shall constitute capital murder, which comes with the possibility of a death sentence.
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Well, he signed it. Gov. Haley Barbour caved in to the screaming fury of conservative talk radio and the raging rant of phone calls and signed into law SB 2988, which makes an undocumented immigrant with a job in Mississippi a potential felon. The bill also makes employees who hire undocumented workers felons, with a punishment of up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.
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The Mississippi Center for Justice is still looking to buy the old library building at 301 N. State Street, the site of the historic “read-in” by nine Tougaloo College students during the Civil Rights Movement. MCJ, a nonprofit, public-interest law firm, wants to make the building—which had served as the city’s “whites only” library until the read-in—the future site of its offices. MCJ President Martha Bergmark said the role the building played in the Civil Rights Movement made it a fitting location in synch with the nonprofit group’s prime agenda of providing equal justice to everybody.
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After serving 18 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit, Levon Brooks walked away from the Noxubee County courthouse a free man on March 13. Arrested for the rape and murder of his girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter, Courtney Smith, in 1990, Judge J. Lee Howard released Brooks on his own recognizance on Feb. 15, pending today’s hearing. Brooks received a life sentence for the crimes in 1992 after two years in jail waiting for his trial.
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America reached a new record this year, but it’s not one that comes with bragging rights: We’ve reached the point where one in every 100 adults is behind bars. In Mississippi, one in every 97.3 adults is in prison or jail.
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U.S. Sen. Barack Obama rocked the campus of Jackson State University March 10, committing to an agenda of ending the Iraq War, universal health insurance and providing $4,000 in annual tuition credits to college students under his administration.
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Hinds County Sheriff Malcolm McMillin warned that legislators had better be ready to back up Senate Bill 2988 with more funding if they intend for local law enforcement and jails to cover the impending crowd of convicts.
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The Mississippi House of Representatives deeply involved itself in appropriation bills last week. The House is up against a March 12 deadline to weigh in on “money bills” originating in the House, but it also faces a March 18 end-date for House committees to ruminate over general bills coming in from the Senate.
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Since Mississippi State University President Robert H. “Doc” Foglesong announced his resignation last Friday, students have vocalized mixed feelings about his two-year administration. A decorated four-star Air Force general, Foglesong held promise as a new, strong leader who would promote academic advancement. But many students and faculty members found his dictatorial leadership style overbearing.
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A Civil Rights Museum commission appointed by Gov. Haley Barbour approved the location of a planned National Civil Rights Museum, March 11, with a 22-to-9 vote in favor of a controversial site near Tougaloo College. Commission members, including Tougaloo President Beverly Hogan, voted in favor of the Tougaloo location despite outcry from advocates of a downtown Jackson location.
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Animosity continues to rage between advocates of the city of Jackson and friends of Tougaloo College over the proposed location of a National Civil Rights Museum with advocates of a downtown location saying that neither the commission nor the consultants tasked with choosing a location has played fair during the process.
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Bigotry: A Felony?
Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann’s office sent out a bizarro, mistake-riddled press release this week that, ultimately, seemed to avoid taking a position on what to do about “felon voting.” The release complained that of the “50,000 criminals which are incarcerated at our expense,” “only 12,000 are prohibited from voting.” It then added: “Meaning, 38,000 felons are allowed to vote on state officials as well as the judges and district attorney’s (sic) who sent them to prison. The release said that the following are not allowed to vote currently: “criminals convicted of murder, rape, bribery, theft, arson, false pretense, purgery, forgery, embezzlement or bigotry.” Bigotry? Purgery?
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It was our own hometown David and Goliath story. Bernie Ebbers and WorldCom were the symbol of what Mississippi could be. WorldCom was the lone Fortune 500 company in the state, and Ebbers its ebullient, charismatic, down-to-earth hero. Everyone—from employees to stockholders to Wall Street—were charmed. Believers invested everything, buoyed by the company’s phenomenal growth.
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Apr 10, 08 | 3:13 pm Opening the Flood Gates ladd: I love it when Ed starts spouting his vast historical knowledge! You really should be the city historian, Ed. Thanks! ;-)...
Apr 10, 08 | 2:10 pm Opening the Flood Gates ed inman: Actually I don't think the fence went up until about 1985 (not 1982). I was living on "Popcorn Alley" on the east side of Millsaps in 1983 and used to routinely cross campus to walk to CS's and also to visit friends on West St. and Millsaps Ave....
Mar 30, 08 | 6:41 pm Lakes Plan Still Alive, Despite Vote? pjiv: The current plan to push ahead with a levees only plan make some sense, McGowan first began promoting the idea of the Two Lake plan in 1996, and as a result derailed improvement of the levees for going on 12 years now (I would guess the current...
Mar 30, 08 | 6:37 pm Lakes Plan Still Alive, Despite Vote? pjiv: McGowan has since pushed a less audacious plan to create a smaller lake further down river, but still bordering parts of Jackson. McGowan said his new plan would cost about $175 million, with the U.S. Water Resources Development Act—approved last...
Mar 30, 08 | 6:33 pm Lakes Plan Still Alive, Despite Vote? pjiv: Some clarifications:
"McGowan claimed the project will cost no more than $100 million, while some levee board members and environmentalists claim the plan will cost more along the lines of $1.4 billion. McGowan said last year that the board...
Mar 28, 08 | 7:05 pm Lakes Plan Still Alive, Despite Vote? gwilly: I have two minds about Two Lakes. I want the flood protection and I think a waterfront recreation area would be an attractive community feature. But natural systems generally work better and more cheaply than engineered systems, and I never feel...
Mar 27, 08 | 2:36 pm Rebirth of a King Fat Harry: Yes, great speech Mr. Watkins. The excitement was palpable. The interior really looks horrible, but I'm glad that I got to see it. I look forward to telling my children "I remember when the King Edward was a dump!"...
Mar 27, 08 | 2:26 pm Rebirth of a King Izzy aka Laurel Isbister: David, I was there, too and I enjoyed your speech and the speech by the governor - wow! The image of a jewel is staying in my mind and I'm so glad to have witnessed the event. Ich ben ein Jacksonian, too!!!...
Mar 27, 08 | 1:40 pm Rebirth of a King L.W.: Wish I could have been there. Guess I'll have to wait for the grand opening. :-)...
Mar 27, 08 | 1:35 pm Rebirth of a King andi: That was so much fun. It was so cool to see the inside of the lobby and to see the plans for the renovations. I am so proud that the King Edward is coming back!...
Mar 27, 08 | 8:47 am Rebirth of a King andi: I'm there dude!! I am so excited. ...
Mar 27, 08 | 6:34 am Rebirth of a King Pops: The ceremony today is an opportunity to recognize the many, many people who helped make the restoration of the King Edward a reality. There will be a media staged ceremonial "rubble shovel" inside the lobby of the King Edward right at 11 for about...
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