Mississippi’s College Board wants us to believe that it had to plead, cajole and beg Dr. Glenn Boyce to come out of retirement and accept the chancellorship at the University of Mississippi.
A Jackson CPA has offered a novel idea about resolving the Mississippi flag issue. Rather than having a divisive fight over the current flag, with its Confederate symbol, and a new one, let’s have them both, says Sherry Mosely.
It’s a good thing the Madison County Sheriff’s Office reached a settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union regarding the use of roadblocks. A protracted lawsuit would have cost a lot of money with little certainty of winning.
‘Poverty’ programs
JACKSON — Federal District Judge Carlton Reeves ruled against Mississippi and in favor of the United States in the recent lawsuit about how to deal with the mentally ill.
It’s been a rough few weeks for President Donald Trump. His weapons-for-dirt efforts in Ukraine resulted in the opening of an impeachment inquiry, and his abandonment of the Kurds — they may not have won World War II, but they did beat back the ISIS terrorists in the Middle East — prompted a…
As long as there are politicians, there will be politicians helping out their donors. It’s just a matter of degree.
Editor, Commonwealth:
MADISON — Rebel Nation has been roiled by the recent hiring of Glenn Boyce as the new chancellor of the University of Mississippi.
MERIDIAN — Did you get a glimpse of Mississippi’s invisible black hole? It briefly appeared over the past year in the Bigger Pie Forum, an Associated Press article by Jeff Amy, and the Jackson Jambalaya blog.
The ongoing budget problems associated with the Jackson Zoo came to a head this month with the city of Jackson taking over the zoo from the Jackson Zoological Society, which had run the zoo for 35 years. Things had gotten so bad, the society had failed to pay its city water bill, running up …
Some retirees are reportedly grousing because they don’t think the 1.6% increase they will get on their Social Security checks in 2020 is enough.
Schools’ shake-up
RIDGELAND — Earlier this month, Allison D. Burroughs, a U.S. District judge in Massachusetts, ruled that Harvard University’s use of race to ensure diversity in its admissions meets constitutional standards.
Without meaning to, basketball superstar LeBron James this week gave credence to the argument that America’s top professional athletes are making so much money that they’re oblivious to any other issue.
We don’t follow Sam Abraham’s reasoning when the Leflore County supervisor argues it’s not right to seize a person’s income tax refund to pay a seriously delinquent garbage bill.
Guenther letter
OXFORD — The furor over the way the University of Mississippi’s new chancellor was hired could ignite renewed efforts to take away some of the power the Institutions of Higher Learning Board has over Mississippi’s eight public universities.
Polls can be one way to assess the possible results of an upcoming election. But campaign finance reports are another way, and the latest ones show that when it comes to money, Republican nominee Tate Reeves still has more of it.
The statistics vary, but they all reach the same conclusion that it’s very difficult for a company to last 10 years, much less 100.
Mississippi’s little-known and usually irrelevant two-tiered system for electing its governor and other statewide officials may very well have been set up to ensure white political control.
This past week’s detailed proposal from Tate Reeves to sharply raise teacher pay and recruiting efforts makes you wonder if the candidate for governor actually read it before announcing it.
Editor, Commonwealth:
COLUMBIA — Nature’s food chain features a lot of living things playing different roles: Predators such as lions eat smaller game such as deer. The deer eat grass. When animals die, their bodies decompose, nourishing the soil.
JACKSON — In the 2015 legislative session, an election year, the Mississippi House rejected a $555 million tax break proposed by Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves and other legislative leaders.
Two thoughts about the fuss between China and the NBA: It’s ridiculous that a tweet supporting freedom in Hong Kong would upset the Chinese the way it has, but the pro basketball league’s commissioner looks even more ridiculous as he grovels before a huge foreign market.
‘Idiocracy’
MERIDIAN — Brain drain in Mississippi is gross. That’s what Phil Hardwick wrote in the Mississippi Business Journal.
Mississippi’s Democratic legislators held a hearing in Jackson this week to keep the focus on how much this state is forgoing by stubbornly refusing to expand its Medicaid program to cover the working poor.
Trent Lott, the former U.S. senator from Mississippi who’s been accused of working behind the scenes to get Glenn Boyce the chancellorship at the University of Mississippi, did Boyce no favors when he commended him as a “good ’ol boy.”
JACKSON — It’s hard to imagine that human slavery still plagues the world. A large group of Jackson Northsiders met last week at Billy and Cissye Mounger’s house to help do something about it.
The unprecedented success of the United States, sustained for more than 243 years, certainly has many causes. For one, a people who believe in freedom, equality and following the law is crucial. Without a populace that respects those ideals, any rules the government makes to try to promote t…
Ever since the 9/11 terrorist attack 18 years ago, the U.S. government has imposed more restrictions on flying in an effort to avoid a repeat of that mass slaughter.
Editor, Commonwealth:
OXFORD — Reading about the Lynyrd Skynyrd weekend being planned in Pike County Oct. 19-20 brings back recollections of that fateful airplane crash 42 years ago.
Ford Dye, the Mississippi College Board member who chaired the search for a chancellor at the University of Mississippi, said last week that the board rushed to name Glenn Boyce as its choice so Boyce could get to work quickly “to unify the Ole Miss family.”
The student editors at The Daily Mississippian either need some adults looking over their shoulder or to broaden their vocabulary.
My one-minute impression of Gary Marchand was a favorable one.
It was a rather surprising moment during Wednesday’s sentencing of a former Dallas police officer convicted of murder. The dead man’s brother, while giving his impact statement, testified that he forgave the fired officer, and then hugged her as she sobbed in the courtroom.
Let’s hope the forecasters are right and this uncharacteristically hot and dry beginning to fall will end this weekend.
JACKSON — As this term of the Mississippi Public Service Commission ends in December and two of the three commissioners will not return in January, the epitaph for the four-year term could read, “In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb.” Given that Mississippi has the unique national distinction to …
MADISON — Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke has vowed to do the impossible.
Cyber security is one of those things that most people and businesses don’t ever get around to doing — until they get hacked or their hard drive fails or a disgruntled former employee deletes important files.
When he was in office, Jimmy Carter was considered an ineffectual president, in part because he had such a distaste for war.
STARKVILLE — While most people aspire to the assurance that judges are first and foremost fair and unbiased in their rulings, President Donald Trump’s nomination of Southern District U.S. Federal Judge Halil Suleyman “Sul” Ozerden of Gulfport to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has evok…
It has been more than three months since the U.S. Supreme Court slammed Mississippi District Attorney Doug Evans for his prejudicial handling of the serial prosecution of Curtis Flowers.
President Trump’s head-in-the-sand attitude notwithstanding, a growing number of Americans is accepting that climate change is real.
Editor, Commonwealth:
JACKSON — The Stennis Press Institute recently featured the Republican and Democratic candidates for Central District public service commissioner.
The U.S. Justice Department’s inspector general said this week that the federal Drug Enforcement Administration was slow to respond to the opioid epidemic, reducing the use of a regulatory tool and allowing continual increases in the amount of pills that could be produced.
Give U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue credit for being honest about the future of dairy farming.
Editor, Commonwealth:
OXFORD — I’ve been a country music fan for as long as I can remember, having grown up listening to the Grand Ole Opry and what they then called hillbilly music.
The thermometer isn’t showing it yet — Monday, which marked the end of September, was yet another hot, summer-like day — but the weather is going to cool off soon and the sun will be setting earlier as the calendar moves toward winter.
Students who miss a lot of school are probably students who aren’t doing very well academically. Students who are frequently not in class get behind and don’t learn as much as they could or should.
GOP defender
Delbert Hosemann, the odds-on-favorite to be Mississippi’s next lieutenant governor, has an idea that he thinks can be sold to the public and to lawmakers as a way to raise more money for the desperately needed repairs to the state’s roads and bridges.
The growing battle over environmental health between the Trump administration and the state of California doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when it comes to air quality.
If there’s one thing this nation has learned from presidential scandals since Watergate, it’s always the cover-up that gets them.
MADISON — The Mississippi State Fair will begin its annual run in Jackson on Oct. 2, for good and bad.
Good for that Southwest Mississippi judge who recently held a woman accountable for her slanderous comments on Facebook about a Mississippi-owned business.
JACKSON — America has a poor record of accomplishment when it comes to blanket government prohibitions, yet that doesn’t mean lawmakers will use history as a guide in future decisions. The latest example: vaping.
MERIDIAN — Standing on the promises ...
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