In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina members of the media noticed there was widespread devastation in the South. Watching it on television, as a person of Southern heritage, to me it was clear: “Some of that was like that before the storm.” And it was. And it still is years later. Now since the Southern states have primaries for the next few weeks – combined with Mitt Romney doing his best Rand McNally material at campaign stops – the South is in the spotlight once again.

However, in this election cycle there are no real Southern candidates. Newt Gingrich represented Georgia but was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (and retains that accent). To contrast that, both the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention events are being held in southern states (North Carolina and Florida).

Here’s what the nation ignores unless there’s a disaster (or an election which could also qualify as a disaster): Of the bottom 10 poorest states in the union – nine of them are Southern states east of Texas. Mississippi is the poorest state of all. Child poverty. Unemployment. Under-employment. Lack of education. Lack of resources. The nation’s highest obesity rates are found south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Despite the conservative bona fides, the South isn’t pulling herself up by her bootstraps … mainly because she can’t see her toes she’s about to lose to diabetes. These are deeply and consistently Republican voters – but being poor and Republican is like being a cow and pro-leather. The South is a parable as to why that is: Their prejudices are being exploited to prod them into being against their own best interests.

In the South there’s been a long (and storied) resentment of outsiders coming in and telling them how to run their lives. But without fail, when the economy is bad anywhere – historically the first group to be blamed are the noobs. Hence why a new wave of anti-immigrant legislation has been pouring out of the southern region of the U.S.

Last year, Alabama passed HB 56 or Hammon-Beason Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act which led to a mass exodus of labor in the state. There were reports of crops rotting in the fields and an estimated cost to the state in the billions. Now the governor of Mississippi has endorsed a similar plan. Capitalizing politicians will say these heavy-handed laws are to keep out illegal immigrants but in practice it’s anyone who looks vaguely foreign being forced to show their paperwork.

Not exactly the land of the free. And sure not Southern hospitality.

Are immigrants, as these laws imply, parasites on the system? It’s actually the poorest (and yes, Southern) states that are the ones not carrying their own weight. For every dollar Alabamans pay in federal taxes, they receive $1.66 in federal money. In Louisiana it’s $1.78 per dollar. Mississippi gets $2.02 per dollar they give the dreaded federal gubmint.

There’s a way to help this region get off the federal dole: Welcome immigrants.

California has a huge immigrant population (both legal and illegal) and while certainly not void of any problems, the state still boasts of having the 8th largest economy in the world. And grumble as you will about Californians, for every dollar they pay in federal taxes – the rest of the country receives nearly a quarter of it.

Southern conservatives can bemoan “paying for someone else’s birth control” but in this way the New England states are paying for “someone else’s” (namely the South’s) Lipitor.

Welcome immigrants. When you welcome immigrants - you welcome tourists, you welcome tax revenue and then, counter-intuitively, the South can be more self-reliant. That’s a conservative principle in a “severely” right-leaning culture.

The best thing the South can do to save herself is welcome the world. Be a place immigrants move to. Let smart people from other countries call themselves Alabamians. Let hard working people everywhere call Mississippi home. Welcome the world to the South.

Basically enact the opposite of HB 56.

State: Alabama

Type of election: Primary

How it works: 47 delegates are up for grabs. 26 are given proportionally according to statewide results, the remaining 21 are given out at the congressional district level. If any candidate gets more than 50 percent, the delegates are given out winner-take-all. The primary is open.

Official election results: Alabama Secretary of State

Republican candidates: Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum (all others have dropped out or are polling at less than 1 percent)

Democratic candidates: There is no Democratic primary.

Previous performance: In 2008, Romney finished third to Mike Huckabee with nearly 18 percent. Paul finished fourth with less than 3 percent. Obama won the Democratic primary with 56 percent.

Newspapers: Birmingham News, full list

Television stations: Full list

Progressive blogs: Left in Alabama

Latest polling: New York Times:

PPP: Romney 31 percent, Gingrich 30, Santorum 29, Paul 8

ARG: Gingrich 34, Romney 31, Santorum 24, Paul 6

Rasmussen: Gingrich 30, Santorum 29, Romney 38, Paul 7

Alabama State U.: Gingrich 21, Romney 20, Santorum 17

Capital Survey: Romney 30, Gingrich 25, Santorum 20, Paul 6

Nate Silver gives Gingrich a 48 percent chance of winning, followed by Romney at 39 percent, and Santorum at 13.

Bottom line: Those are the most competitive numbers we've seen yet from Silver and it appears like this one is going down to the wire. A win by Romney would help him get over his "can't win in the South" concerns and could give him a big boost. A loss for Gingrich is disastrous.

State: Mississippi

Type of election: Primary

How it works: 37 delegates are up for grabs. 25 are awarded proportionately according to the statewide results and the other 12 are awarded by congressional district.

Official election results: Mississippi Secretary of State

Republican candidates: Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum (all others have dropped out or are polling at less than 1 percent)

Democratic candidates: There is no Democratic primary.

Previous performance: In 2008, Romney finished fourth in the primary, despite having dropped out of the race, getting 1.5 percent of the vote. Paul finished third with just under four percent. Obama won the Democratic primary with over 61 percent.

Newspapers: Jackson Clarion-Ledger, full list

Television stations: Full list

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In their amici curiae brief filed in Mississippi, a coalition of social workers, the ACLU, the Mississippi Youth Justice Project, and advocates for addiction psychiatry and study argued that 15-year old Rennie Gibbs should not be prosecuted for the murder of her stillborn child because she had used cocaine during her pregnancy. Their most compelling argument:

Interpreting Mississippi's depraved heart murder statute to apply to the context of pregnancy will lead to absurd and dangerous public health consequences. Such prosecutions deter pregnant women from seeking prenatal care and drug and alcohol treatment. And they create a disincentive for pregnant women who do seek medical care from disclosing important informaiton about drug use to health care providers out of fear that the disclosure will lead to possible criminal sanctions.

Prosecuting women and girls for continuing to term despite a drug addiction encourages them to terminate wanted pregnancies to avoid criminal penalties.

Rennie Gibbs became pregnant at age 15, but the baby was stillborn in her 36th week. Via The Guardian:

Rennie Gibbs is accused of murder, but the crime she is alleged to have committed does not sound like an ordinary killing. Yet she faces life in prison in Mississippi over the death of her unborn child.

Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby's death – they charged her with the "depraved-heart murder" of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.

Gibbs is the first woman in Mississippi to be charged with murder relating to the loss of her unborn baby. But her case is by no means isolated. Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.

New conservative rule: If you have a drug habit, you must be a murderer. This, despite the fact that there is no evidence linking cocaine use to stillbirths. While it's certainly not a good idea to be using cocaine while pregnant, the fact remains that no scientific research directly links cocaine use to fetal death in late-stage pregnancy. It's far more likely that her poverty, young age, and probable lack of prenatal care had more to do with the stillbirth.

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Conservatives really wanted a fight about religious freedom. It appeared to be an easy win: Make an ObamaCare mandate that insurers cover birth control into a war on religion. The GOP, void of any ideas Obama hasn’t contaminated by agreeing with, finds itself in an election year frantically looking for a bold battle cry. That sweet hot button issue that can excite their party and (hopefully) win them the White House (or maybe the Senate).

Their old standbys have fallen flat: Iran, abortion, climate change, child labor laws, and even gay marriage don’t have the sparkle they once had for the Grand Old Party.

Republicans can’t seem to get excited about Mitt Romney as their ‘80s-teen-movie-smug-rich-guy-stock-character nominee. Worse yet, he’s Mormon, which makes evangelical leaders grumble. So having a common enemy is the best way to bring everyone together for the proverbial good fight: Freedom.

“It’s important for us to win this issue,” Speaker John Boehner told reporters last week. “Our government for 220 years has respected the religious views of the American people and for all of this time there’s been an exception for those churches and other groups to protect the religious beliefs that they believe in. And that’s being violated here.”

Is Boehner coming out against anti-Sharia laws?! Or is he just conveniently forgetting the government isn’t always so deferential to the pious? Mormons had to forsake polygamy to gain statehood, for one. In 1862 the then-General Ulysses S. Grant expelled Jews from his district of Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky. And there were plenty of states where you couldn’t hold public office if you didn’t swear to believe in God (as opposed to Allah, Buddha or a flying plate of spaghetti) until the Torcaso v. Watkins decision in 1961.

This whole charade of religious freedom collapsed under the girth of Rush Limbaugh. He pivoted what was supposed to be a church and state issue into snickering about young women having sex. For three days Limbaugh railed on law student, Sandra Fluke, who testified for congressional Democrats, calling her a prostitute and a slut for speaking in public about the need for birth control coverage. So the GOP was trying to take the high (read: holy) road and there was their mouthpiece driving them all off a cliff demanding Ms. Fluke post sex videos on the Internet.

Now here’s the thing: Even Rick Santorum who (oddly) thinks birth control leads to more teen pregnancies – who has previously said states should have the right to ban contraception – now tells Piers Morgan, “It should be available.” This was tempered with the now irrelevant point about religious freedom. But even the way-out, cringe-inducing, extremist-in-a-sweater-vest has to confess birth control should be available.

Affordability is accessibility. If it’s out of your price range – it’s out of your grasp. It doesn’t matter if the pill is offered over-the-counter or in vending machines – if you can’t afford it – you can’t have it. Fluke’s testimony was not about the legality or morality of contraception – it was about students not being about to shell out over $1,000 a year for a medication in addition to purchasing medical insurance.

If Republicans admit they think birth control should be available – that means they believe it should be within price range.

The conservative talking point on health care reform was summed up by Rep. Virginia Foxx: “There are no Americans who don't have healthcare," adding, "Everybody in this country has access to healthcare." In other words: Everyone has access to cake!

We don’t say everyone accused of a crime has access to a lawyer without providing one. We don’t say everyone has access to police protection but charge more than anyone can pay. We don’t say every child has access to education but require an outrageous tuition. Access is not abstract … unless you’re a Republican lawmaker.

No, when you’re a Republican “access” gets muddied with whatever sham controversy they hope will help them. This week it’s basic health care services for women.

Boss Hawg rides again. In what can only be described as an inexplicable act, Haley Barbour granted unconditional pardons to 214 prisoners just before leaving office on Tuesday. Included in that motley group? Brett Favre's brother, a few prison trustees who worked in his office, 14 murderers, and others who just happen to be violent criminals.

As you might imagine, the victims' families are outraged by this. It's one thing to give full pardons to people who might have been wrongly convicted, and another entirely just to use the sweep of a pen to release people who present a danger to their victims and victims' families.

Recognizing this, a judge has blocked the release of a few of the prisoners, stating that Barbour violated the Mississippi State Constitution by not publishing their release date 30 days in advance. While that release may stop a few for a short time, it's doubtful that they will be able to defend keeping them in prison if the pardon holds.

According to this report on Megyn Kelly's show (yes, I know, but it's what I was recording), Mississippi Attorney General is attending to the victims' families' complaints. Well, maybe. Honestly, I was a bit chilled to hear him say this:

So I think, they're gonna be fine. Just be careful.

Ya think? I'm not sure what possessed Haley Barbour to grant these pardons, to be honest. It strikes me as a cynical and self-serving move. Maybe he wanted his own posse?

It's great when we can disagree in a civilized way, but it's getting pretty hard to avoid the conclusion that the phrase "right-wing logic," as delivered by the GOP and mimicked by Mitt Romney, has become the mother of all oxymorons. They tell us corporations are people. But people? Not so much. That Right used that argument that in yesterday's elections, but it's starting to look like voters in swing states and the heart of Red America have had enough.

They love to preach the "corporate personhood" principle. IBM, Goldman Sachs, Halliburton: They're people! Why, they can even "speak"! Sure, they may be limited to the crude vocabulary of millions and billions, but you gotta admit: Come election time, they're fluent in it.

These corporations are endowed with freedom of speech, say Mitt and Friends, but employees of the same corporations aren't - especially when that speech involves forming a union. Follow the logic and the conclusion is inescapable: the Right believes that the company is a person but the people who work for it aren't.

Got that?

We're told that corporations have privacy rights, too. They have so much right to privacy, in fact, that when they throw millions of dollars of "speech" into an election we're not allowed to know who's speaking! But the Right says people with jobs don't have privacy rights. Employers can spy on them, say conservatives, even when they're at home using Facebook or Twitter

That anti-human, pro-corporate definition of personhood is part of what Ohio voters soundly rejected yesterday when they overturned the laws passed by its Republican Governor and legislators, who forbid union activities on the part of state employees. In a radical redefinition of the personhood principle,these voters decided that teachers and administrators and other state workers are actually ... people. And as people, they have the right to organize and bargain for themselves.

Some on the Right, including its new recruit Mitt Romney, has also argued that fertilized eggs should have all the rights that accrue to a fully-formed human being. But a full-grown person who happens to be female doesn't have the rights of personhood when it comes to determining how her own body is used.

Some people on the other side of this contentious issue have a genuine difference of belief, a spiritually-based moral code that's worthy of respect. We may disagree vehemently, but we do it with respect when speaking with these people of integrity. It's easy to tell which ones they are; they're the ones who are against killing in all forms. The others believe in a person's right from the moment of conception until the moment they're born without health insurance.

The Mississippi initiative argued that an egg has more rights than the woman carrying it. Voters didn't go for that, even in rock-ribbed fundamentalist Mississippi. Not even the tacit endorsement of new-found "redneck Mitt" - who's started sporting plaid shirts, saying he makes less than working people, and using the song "Born Country" by the group Alabama at his campaign appearances, could persuade them. Even the Tommy Bahama-sportin' hillbilly himself couldn't push this initiative over the line.

Sorry, cowboy.

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For social conservatives, it is often said, life begins at conception and ends at birth. If so, nowhere is that more true than in Mississippi. After all, the Magnolia State seems poised to pass Amendment 26, the so-called "personhood" initiative which by defining a fertilized egg as a human being would ban virtually all abortions and inevitably outlaw many forms of birth control and in vitro fertilization.

But while Mississippi is focused inside the womb, there seems to be little concern about what happens to its residents outside of it. As the dismal rankings in out-of-wedlock births, poverty, family income, education, health care and almost every other indicator of social dysfunction show, personhood is a painful struggle for the actual persons of Mississippi.

With some of the most draconian abortion restrictions in the nation, Mississippi is now home to only one clinic providing the procedure. But as it turns out, Mississippi is also home to the most depressing statistics for out-of wedlock births in the entire nation. As the numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau show, Mississippi has the highest percentage of total births to teen mothers (17.1 percent, compared to the national average of 10.5 percent) and unmarried women overall (53.7 percent, compared to 39.7 percent nationally).

Mississippi may not be a Hobbesian dystopia where life is nasty, brutish and short. But as a quick glance at the poverty and income data show, life there isn't easy. The Census Bureau's 2011 Statistical Abstract (which is based on 2008 data), shows poverty and median household income is worst where GOP's laissez-faire crowd finds its strongest support. Financially speaking at least, life is no heaven on earth in America's most religious state.

Of course, Mississippi is one of the poorest states in the Union and has been for some time. According to the 2011 data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, Mississippi ranks first in the number of people living below the poverty line. Unsurprisingly, its 50th ranking median household income of $37,790 is the lowest in America, and over $14,000 below the national figure. Per capita income is similarly dismal. It's with good reason that in 2007, Mississippi ranked fourth in per capital federal aid.

That need for federal funding is especially acute when it comes to one of the Magnolia State's greatest failures: education.

The education of its children provides just one of many heart-breaking stories of failure for the people of Mississippi. At $7,890 per student per year, Mississippi ranks 45th in school funding. (And even that meager figure is only made possible by substantial funding from the federal government.) According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests administered by the U.S. Department Education, only 22% of Magnolia State fourth graders read at or above grade level. By eighth grade, the figure falls to 19%. (Only the District of Columbia does worse.) It's no surprise that Mississippi has the lowest mean score on the ACT college admissions test taken by 96% of the state's high school graduates. And as it turns out, only 63% of its children even graduate, less than the national average of 69% (and much lower than the 81% in, for example, that target of right-wing retrograde reform, Wisconsin.)

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Don't kid yourself that this is "just" Mississippi. The Christian right is going after birth control in every state:

Mississippi voters will be allowed to decide on a ballot measure that defines "personhood" from the moment of fertilization, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled last week. The measure could potentially outlaw abortions, birth control, in vitro fertilization and stem cell research across the state.

Measure 26, which will bypass the legislature and go straight to a popular ballot vote, redefines the term "person" as it appears throughout Mississippi's Bill of Rights to include "all human beings from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof." The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi, Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit against the proposal earlier this year, not based on its content or constitutionality, but because Mississippi state law says a ballot initiative cannot be used to change the Bill of Rights.

The Mississippi Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit in a 7-2 ruling, saying that it had no power to review any ballot initiative before the actual vote takes place.

Let's look at some of the interesting legal ramifications. If you go through in vitro fertilization, and it doesn't work, you'd have to report that as a death. Same thing would go for very early miscarriages. How do we know you didn't try to abort your pregnancy? Women would have to prove they didn't murder their blastocyst/zygote/embryo/fetus.

Your blastocyst/zygote/embryo/fetus would have the right to inherit, naturally, so if you have a miscarriage, that could certainly tie up some estates -- not to mention that Social Security would be paying survivors benefit if you're pregnant and your spouse dies. Could be a little more costly!

And if people get illegal abortions, as people will when you make them impossible to get, that means the woman and her doctor can be charged with homicide. Of course, having a drink or a smoke during pregnancy is contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Geez, I just thought of something else -- if you have sex while you're pregnant, is that child sexual abuse?

The mind reels at the possibilities!

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour just gave small government a whole new meaning. Small, as in mean and cold-hearted. While Barbour bows and scrapes to the Conservative God of the Almighty Dollar, people are bracing to lose everything in what could be the worst flooding in history.

So what do you suppose Governor Barbour did to protect the people of his state? Do you think he took any measures to help them, or to shore up their homes, or provide emergency shelter?

Here's what he did:

As the water rose, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour moved furniture out of his lake house outside Vicksburg on family land that was inundated during the 1927 flood. A week ago, he urged residents to flee low-lying areas, saying that the state wouldn't assist the evacuations and that people should help one another secure their property and get out.

Widespread flooding was expected along the Yazoo River, a tributary that is backed up because of the bloated Mississippi. Rolling Fork, home of the bluesman Muddy Waters, was also in danger of getting inundated.

That's right. He told them they were on their own, to just do whatever they could. Well, that, and he did remember to apply for federal assistance. After all, the federal government is great when conservatives don't want any responsibility for anything.

Those folks most affected by flooding aren't people Barbour cares all that much about, I guess.

While some farms in the cotton-, rice- and corn-growing Delta are prosperous, there is also grinding poverty. Nine of the 11 counties that touch the Mississippi River in Mississippi have poverty rates at least double the national average of 13.5 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

All those good folks in Mississippi can take comfort in the fact that conservative lawmakers nationwide are praying for them. They're not doing anything to help them, but they're praying for them. All hail the Very Earnest Conservatives.

Haley Barber has done a marvelous job in Mississippi. He didn't mind sharing his thoughts about what a great organization the Citizens Councils was back in the day and he said that growing up there during the civil rights revolution wasn't all that bad. MLK came to town and it was like a country picnic.

So, are you surprised by the PPP's latest polling on Mississippi, which produced a pretty revealing portrait of Mississippians' views on interracial marriage?

The PPP polled Mississippi and found a very interesting response about marriage.
46% of these hardcore Republican voters believe interracial marriage should be illegal,
while 40% think it should be legal.

PPP surveyed 400 usual Mississippi Republican primary voters from March 24th to 27th

TPMDC writes:

The poll also found that voters who thought interracial marriage should be banned liked Barbour, Palin, and Huckabee the most among the slate of potential GOP presidential candidates. Seventy-nine percent of those voters said they approved of Gov. Barbour's job performance, while 74% said they had a favorable opinion of Sarah Palin, and 73% viewed Huckabee favorably.

Jon Perr wrote a detailed post about Haley's town on C&L called: The GOP Has Seen America's Future - in Mississippi
Here's some of what ot said:

Mississippi is one of the poorest states in the Union and has been for some time. According to the 2011 Statistical Abstract compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, Mississippi ranks first in the number of people living below the poverty line. Unsurprisingly, its 50th ranking median household income of $37,790 is the lowest in America, and over $14,000 below the national figure. Per capita income is similarly dismal. It's with good reason that in 2007, Mississippi ranked fourth in per capital federal aid.
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Using data from the Census Bureau and the Legal Community Against Violence's state-by-state comparison of firearm laws, the Daily Beast in January concluded Mississippi was the deadliest gun state in the nation. Its divorce rate is among America's highest; the teen birth rate is at the very top.
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UPDATE: Almost on cue, White House hopeful Haley Barbour attacked President Obama's handling of the economy, claiming his own state serves as a shining example. ""We still have more to do in Mississippi," Barbour said, adding, "But we have made great progress and are laying a foundation for the future.

Palin and Huckabee would do pretty well there. I'm sure Donald Trump would poll OK there too, since he's been pushing the Birther nonsense. Mississippi, the state of conservative values and miscegenation-law nostalgia. For a minute I thought about the justice of the peace who refused to marry an interracial couple, but that was in Louisiana.

A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have.

Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.