Four Teens Arrested In Murder of Beloved World War II Veteran

Four Mississippi teenagers have been charged with murder in the killing of a beloved World War II veteran who gained local fame for his home-cooked hot tamales.

The long and lustrous life of Lawrence “Shine” Thornton, 87, was celebrated last week during a ceremony at St. Joseph Catholic Church. Following the ceremony, Thornton was buried with military honors at Greenlawn Memorial Gardens.

Thornton died Oct. 20, succumbing to the injuries he sustained after four teenagers "pushed him down and stole his wallet," during an apparent mugging that occurred in the late-afternoon two days earlier in the driveway of his long-time Greenville home.

Meanwhile, Greenville Assistant Police Chief Andrew Kaho told the Delta Democrat Times that Terrance Morgan, 19; Edward Johnson, 19; Leslie Litt, 18; and Geblonski Murray, 18; were all arrested Monday, and charged with capital murder, robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery.

And although little is known about the specifics of the run-in that cost Thornton his life, much has reportedly been said about the apparently momentous loss to the delta community.

Via: Fox News

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An Election Integrity Victory in Mississippi

There was a historic victory for election integrity on Wednesday: A federal court approved aconsent decree in a lawsuit filed in Mississippi by the American Civil Rights Union (ACRU) that requires a local county to finally clean up its voter registration list.

As The Foundry previously reported, the ACRU sued Walthall County (a majority-white county that Mitt Romney won in 2012) under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) because of the county’s failure to remove ineligible felons, dead voters, voters who had moved, and noncitizens from its voter rolls. In fact, Walthall County has more registered voters than the Census shows it has voting-age residents by 124 percent, a problem shared by a dozen counties in Mississippi. Section 8 of the NVRA requires states and counties to maintain accurate voter rolls by engaging in regular list maintenance that removes ineligible voters.

In the consent decree approved by Judge Keith Starrett of the Southern District of Mississippi, Walthall County must check its voter registration list against:

• The records of the Social Security Administration and the Mississippi Department of Health to find dead voters;
• State Department of Motor Vehicles records to find voters who have moved out of the county;
• Conviction records of the local county court clerk, the Mississippi Department of Corrections, and the Mississippi and Louisiana U.S. attorneys’ offices to find felons;
• The Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database to find noncitizens; and
• Jury-duty declinations and county tax filings to find noncitizens and nonresidents.

Via: The Foundry

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‘Democratic’ and ‘Anti-Business’ Are Becoming Synonymous

Forbes’s recently released list of “The Best States for Businesses and Careers” provides further evidence of the Democratic party’s striking erosion as a party of economic growth and prosperity.  Based on their votes in the most recent presidential election, all but three of Forbes’s top-10 states are Republican-leaning, while all but two of its bottom-10 states are Democratic-leaning. 

The top-10 states on Forbes’s list — Utah, Virginia, North Dakota, North Carolina, Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Iowa — voted for Mitt Romney by an average margin of 14 percentage points.  Meanwhile, the bottom-10 states on Forbes’s list — California, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Vermont, West Virginia, Mississippi, Michigan, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Maine — voted for President Obama by an average margin of 13 points.  That’s a 27-point swing from Romney to Obama as we move from the top-10 states to the bottom-10 states.

Forbes rated the states based on six factors: “business costs,” “labor supply,” “regulatory environment,” “economic climate,” “growth prospects,” and “quality of life.”  Forbes rated 62 percent of Obama’s states as being below average and 63 percent of Romney’s states as being above average.  Obama won only 33 percent of Forbes’s top-15 states but 73 percent of its bottom-15 states.

Via: Weekly Standard

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