We’re finishing the second day of our TPMPrime membership drive. Can you spare us a moment and take the plunge now?
Here’s my pitch. Here’s some context on the economics and future of independent web publishing. And here’s Molly Crabapple’s amazing illustrated piece on the post-Gezi street protest culture of Istanbul, a Prime longform, which we’ve temporarily made available to all readers. That’s one of her original illustrations from the piece below.
We’re making good progress on our sign-up goal. But we have a long way to go. If you’re thinking you might, probably will – can you take the plunge now? You’ll be glad you did. And we truly appreciate it. Click here to sign up.
This morning, two African-American men from Dothan, Alabama, Johnathan Reese and Greg Tiller, realized they’d missed a court date Monday and turned themselves in to a local bondsman, Rickey Stokes, to try to get a new court date. There were no warrants for their arrest.
Stokes proceeded to chain the two men to the Courthouse door and left.
(Videos after the jump but they’re auto-play and have ads. Pause them and then watch individually. They’re worth the wait.)
We’re 3 shy of 500 sign ups in the first two days of our membership drive. Still a long way to go to meet our goal. But can you get us to 500 before the clock strikes midnight eastern and we turn into a pumpkin? Sign up here!
Late Update: We got to 513 by midnight. Thank you from all of us. We truly appreciate it. But hey, 530 by 1 am? Why not?
Rickey Stokes, the bail bondsman who chained those two black men to the courthouse door in Dothan, Alabama, was trying to help out these two guys out and suggests – kinda – that they were cool with being chained up, even though that’s pretty different from their version of events. Stokes’ explanation after the jump …
Late this afternoon Dylan Scott reported on the quite odd story of how a close ally of Senate challenger Chris McDaniel had ended up locked in the Courthouse where ballots are stored at around 2 am the morning after primary night. Well, things seem to have gotten a good deal more interesting over the last six hours or so. Now it turns out that one of the two other people with Janis Lane, President of the Central Mississippi Tea Party, was none other than an actual campaign official with the McDaniel campaign. And there’s more.
I’ve arrived at the only reasonable explanation for the emerging situation in Mississippi. Chris McDaniel is in a desperate battle to revive Thad Cochran’s career but Cochran simply will not throw him a bone. There may even be some Odysseus type sh#t going on. McDaniel is essentially telling Cochran, “How crazy a thing do my people need to do before you bury me with it? We broke into the nursing home. My people showed up to chill with the ballot boxes in the middle of the night after the election officials left. And just to close the loop, we put out a statement saying that we, the campaign, me, us, me, told them to go there.”
As I said on election night, the real question here, the centerpiece of the campaign is, what crazy thing with Team McDaniel manage to do next and how will Thad Cochran manage not to capitalize on it?
Just a reminder that “Sons of Wichita” author Daniel Schulman will be answering questions in a live chat (sub. req.) about his book on the Koch brothers this afternoon at 3 p.m.
Key witness in the McDaniel Ballot/Courthouse caper explains that the trio’s stories are not adding up or even matching up.
One fun takeaway …
The sheriff deputy also conveyed to Perry during their interview that the stories given by Lane and company were not in sync with each other or Perry’s version of events.
“He said, ‘That doesn’t match with what Janis said this morning, but what she said this morning doesn’t match with what she said this afternoon,” Perry told TPM. A sheriff spokesman also told the Clarion-Ledger on Wednesday that the trio had given “conflicting stories.” Then on Thursday, the department was more assertive in astatement to the newspaper.
Read the rest here.
The McDaniel campaign is seriously trying to disrupt our membership drive. But we can’t let that happen. So between the posts on the rapidly moving McDaniel Courthouse story, don’t forget, we need you to subscribe to TPMPrime. So don’t get locked in a courthouse or anything and lose your chance to sign up. Now back to our regular programming.
The sheriff’s office in Jackson, Miss., is blowing up the Chris McDaniel campaign’s account of how three of its team members ended up locked in the courthouse with the ballots on election night, calling it a “fabrication.”