InkBlots

Writes C-L reader Dick Acker of Madison: “Why is it that The Clarion-Ledger has to repeatedly add the words ‘who is a former tobacco lobbyist’ after Gov. Haley Barbour’s name whenever his name appears in a news article? What has that got to do with the price of eggs?”

Responds Charles Freeman of Brandon: “I don’t think so. Even though Haley Barbour is governor of Mississippi, he shows his true colors by keeping taxes low on cigarettes, keeping taxes high on groceries.”

And Walley Morse is glad the newspaper in his neck of the woods is not running things: “None of them seems to have a grasp on what taxes are. According to them, it is just a tax shift to tax the existing smokers in the state, some half million smokers, an additional $184 million in taxes. That is a TAX my friends.“

Longtime Neshoba Democrat publisher and editor Stanley Dearman will be presented the Silver Em Award from Ole Miss next month in Oxford. Dearman, who retired in 2001, led the Democrat during one of the most turblent periods in the state’s history and covered the infamous civil rights murders in Philadelphia.