A Rebel Without A Clue

  I pledge allegiance to the Great Mosquito and to the Yellow Fever which it spreads The Mississippi Commission to Redesign the State Flag received over 3,000 proposals. Some were obviously jokes, which was expected, and at least one of those jokes -- or at least we assume it was a joke -- inadvertently made its way onto the published list of 147 "finalists." Supposedly this happened because of a typo on a commissioner's "first cut" list.  While it's not exactly dignified enough for courtrooms, the Great Mosquito Flag certainly strikes a chord in the hearts of all Mississippians. According to one source , the mosquito pictured on the proposed flag would be capable of sucking 12 gallons of blood per hour! As far as I know, the only bloodsucking parasite capable of exceeding this rate of consumption is a Mississippi politician.  Seriously (and in my opinion, sadly), the Great Mosquito flag was a joke . The guy who submitted it did so to poke fun at a coworker...

Once it had mandated the removal of the 1894 "Confederate" state flag, the Mississippi Legislature realized it had bigger fish to fry. First up, repealing Prohibition . That's right, Prohibition. You know, the manufacture, sale, and distribution of alcoholic beverages. The same Prohibition that ended in the United States of America in 1933.  Okay, it's not quite as weird as it sounds for Mississippi to be repealing Prohibition almost 90 years after the fact. It's weirder.  It's instructive to begin with the beginning. Mississippi enacted statewide prohibition of alcohol in 1907 . And it was the first state to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment twelve years later. But in truth, the Great Sovereign State of Mississippi has a much longer history with restricting the sale of booze. Around 1839, there was a (short-lived) state law that banned the sale of alcohol in amounts less than one gallon. Naturally, this didn't sit well with tavern keepers, and the law was r...