Free Republic

JACKSON, Miss. -- The Mississippi Highway Patrol will lift its ban of Mississippi state flag decals on agency vehicles, said Public Safety Commissioner Rusty Fortenberry. "It will be done in a way so there will be discretion for them to display the United States flag and the state flag. And it will be done in a way so that it will be uniform," Fortenberry told The Associated Press staff this week. Mississippi Highway Patrol officers in 2000 were ordered to remove state flag tags and stickers from their cars. L.M. Claiborne, then the Highway Patrol chief, had applied the ban...

JACKSON, Miss. -- The U.S. Supreme Court will discuss Jan. 9 whether to hear arguments in a case in which a Muslim claimed the Confederate battle emblem in Mississippi's flag is actually a Christian symbol. Lower federal courts had rejected John Ellis Briggs' argument that the Mississippi flag contains the St. Andrew's Cross and that the symbol represents state endorsement of a particular religion. Briggs' lawsuit seeks punitive damages of up to $77 million. It also seeks to have the symbol "removed from display in public places." Since 1894, Mississippi's flag has contained the Confederate battle emblem, a blue X...