Free Republic

Two Catholic nuns were found dead inside their Mississippi home after they didn’t show up to work Thursday, according to police. Both women had stab wounds, the Durant police chief told WJTV. The nuns have been identified as Sister Paula Merrill and Sister Margaret Held. Merrill worked with the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in Kentucky and Held with the School Sisters of St. Francis in Milwaukee. “These were the two sweetest sisters you could imagine,” Father Greg Plata told the Clarion-Ledger. “It’s so senseless.” Authorities believe the women may have been victims of a robbery, according to the paper....

The tea party-backed lawmaker defeated by U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran in Mississippi's Republican primary said Monday that he has formally challenged the election's outcome with the state GOP. State Sen. Chris McDaniel filed the challenge with the Mississippi GOP state executive committee over Cochran's June 24 runoff victory, McDaniel attorney Mitch Tyner said during a news conference. McDaniel will have to prove there were enough illegally cast votes to change the outcome or that the election was so sloppily handled its result is in doubt. Mississippi voters don't register by party, but state law makes so-called crossover voting — casting...

Mississippi is in the last three weeks of a Voter ID Ballot Initiative. If we get more signatures, it will get on the ballot. If passed, it will require people to show an ID before voting. Everywhere from Jackson down to the coast needs more signatures. We need people to sign this petition, we need people to go door to door, put them in stores, churches or at any event where people gather. We will never have this opportunity again. If you are against voter fraud and are from Mississippi please get on board this effort now. Go to this...

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — More than a third of Mississippi counties have more registered voters than residents old enough to cast a ballot, according to an Associated Press analysis. In addition to providing ammunition for people who say the voting system is vulnerable to fraud, the flabby voting rolls may make it difficult to accurately determine turnout for the Nov. 4 presidential election. "There is no reason in the world why some of these counties should have more registered voters than they have living, breathing people," Mississippi Senate Elections Committee Chairman Terry Burton said.

As President Bush scurries back to the Gulf Coast, it is clear that this is the greatest challenge to politics-as-usual in America since the fall of Richard Nixon in the 1970s. Then as now, good reporting lies at the heart of what is changing. But unlike Watergate, "Katrinagate" was public service journalism ruthlessly exposing the truth on a live and continuous basis. Instead of secretive "Deep Throat" meetings in car-parks, cameras captured the immediate reality of what was happening at the New Orleans Convention Center, making a mockery of the stalling and excuses being put forward by those in power....