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Saturday, I posted a guessing game about a photo of Mississippi outlaw Kinnie Wagner; in a later post, I provided some history of Wagner, and Researcher and others supplemented the history in comments.  It was interesting enough to folks I thought I’d dig around a bit for more information.

You might want to read the prior Kinnie Wagner post just noted before diving into this one.

Online, I encountered two interesting points-of-view about Kinnie Wagner.  The first was from the old WPA guide to Mississippi. In the entry for Leakesville, it says that Leakesville was a town of 662 people, “the center of a lumbering, farming, and stock raising area. It was here that Kinnie Wagner, the sawmill worker who became Mississippi’s last notorious outlaw, first ‘broke the law, and threw his life away,’ as the old ballad says. Kinnie killed Sheriff MacIntosh at Leakesville on May 2, 1925…”  p. 492.

Folks who are interested in the WPA guide can see it in Google books at the link. It is very much worth exploring for folks fascinated with local Mississippi history.

The second is two online accounts of Wagner from what appears to be one of Wagner’s sister’s children. Recall that Wagner was going to meet his younger sister (about 11 years younger) near Kingsport, TN, when he was ambushed. This nephew or niece remembered the uncle and describes that ambush in Tennessee, along with some other information (not exactly expected).

One of the accounts was on a circus geneology site. The other was on ancestry.com.

On both sites, the story is that Wagner left home at 14 to join the Richard Brothers Circus after his father remarried when Kinnie was six (it’s implied that his mother had died), blending two families, in which Kinnie was an awkward fit:

“He was a 14 year old child, who adored his mother…he was born in 1903, and, left home to keep from wetting bed. …he joined circus, to help keep peace and harmony, from there, it went to a life, which killed him.”

The post on the circus site describes Wagner learning trick riding and rope tricks in the circus. About his life after leaving the circus, the relative wrote “he learned to be a man at 16″ after leaving the circus:

He had been running moonshine, at a very early age. for his food,he rarely drank himself. starting the first thunder road, which became stock car, then now is the nascar cicuit.  he was a very handsome young man, and, the girls loved him.

On the circus site, the post refers to “the trouble with the sheriff who was running moonshine.” It says:

the sheriff, arrested him, for a watch he did not steal, he was never charged, so, one day, he told the sheriff, who he had been running moonshine for, if you do not charge, I am leaving, the door was opened, he went to a friend. The sheriff had Kinnie hold for him, amazingly enough, my uncle, became wanted dead or alive. the sheriff, knew he knew too much on what the sheriff was doing. so, they shot the door off, Kinnie had no shoes on.

Whoever wrote these posts (they are signed BJ Cunningham) remembers Wagner, and talks about his love for the dogs he cared for at the prison. The posts also describe the ambush in Kingsport, where Kinnie pushed his sister to the ground as the posse began firing at him; bullets passed through his sister’s hair as she pushed him to the ground.

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Retired general and former U.S. special envoy to the Middle East Anthony Zinni tells CNN that

if Obama hopes to forge a peace deal, he needs to do it at the beginning of his administration.

“You make a commitment that no matter what happens, you’ll stick with it,” Zinni said on CNN’s “American Morning.” “We have enough agreements in principle that never worked out. I would say — start from the beginning, be determined, stick with it and don’t repeat the mistakes of the past and the processes of the past that did not work.”

In order for the new administration to engage with Hamas, Zinni said the militant group must be willing to end its rocket attacks and violence against Israel and commit to a peace process.

In the long term, Zinni said, the next administration will have to take a new approach in dealing with the problem.

“The old way of using envoys and summits and us putting plans on the table — that has never worked. I think we need a fresh start, more involved, a greater presence on the ground and a commitment to do it throughout the term of an administration,” Zinni said.

Greater presence on the ground? ongoing commitment? What — a permanent State Department sub-office (with special envoy) inside Gaza itself, or some such? Talk about your hazardous duty.

I wonder how Secretary-in-waiting Clinton receives this idea. Not that long ago she was declaring to AIPAC, “Here is how I feel: until Hamas renouncing terrorism and recognizes Israel, negotiating with Hamas is unacceptable for the United States.”

Not only does Zinni’s idea make better sense (since HRC’s makes none) and may appeal to Obama’s taste for a challenge, but another quote from the CNN story seems to make room for something like this:

Asked Sunday if the Obama administration would be as supportive of Israel as the Bush administration has been, Obama’s senior adviser said the president-elect would “honor” what he sees as “the special relationship between the United States and Israel.”

“But he will do so in a way that will promote the cause of peace, and work closely with the Israelis and the Palestinians on that — toward that objective,” David Axelrod said.

But first let’s see how far from her announced position Madame Secretary may be willing to dance (if, indeed, she’s ever asked or ordered to).

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I’m still tickled over Karl Rove’s claim the other day for Dubya the Bookworm. Poor ol’ Karl — dude tells a whopper like that in WSJ, and two days later here comes Vanity Fair to pwn him with:

Richard Clarke, chief White House counterterrorism adviser: We had a couple of meetings with the president, and there were detailed discussions and briefings on cyber-security and often terrorism, and on a classified program. With the cyber-security meeting, he seemed—I was disturbed because he seemed to be trying to impress us, the people who were briefing him. It was as though he wanted these experts, these White House staff guys who had been around for a long time before he got there—didn’t want them buying the rumor that he wasn’t too bright. He was trying—sort of overly trying—to show that he could ask good questions, and kind of yukking it up with Cheney.

The contrast with having briefed his father and Clinton and Gore was so marked. And to be told, frankly, early in the administration, by Condi Rice and [her deputy] Steve Hadley, you know, Don’t give the president a lot of long memos, he’s not a big reader—well, shit. I mean, the president of the United States is not a big reader?

Any of y’all who are reading VF ‘s oral history of the Bush Years, feel free to ooo-and-wow over other favorite passages here. And to think, these are just a few highlights . . .

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Vintage photos fresh in from wooabby:

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So I woke up awhile ago and started reading news and views about Gaza. Big mistake: for trying to drink from that firehose, now I can hardly talk at all.

Rather than there, I’ll go for some comic relief, starting with the Melton’s-health hearing yesterday. Get your throe-pillows fluffed and ready.

Equally laughable: the C-L’s “coverage” of whatever-that-was at Mississippi State’s coastal research center (reader comments the best part).

This one is especially boffo: Port Gibson, having forgotten to pay its worker’s-comp premium, now has to shutter its cop shop. The next municipal elections oughta be fun, huh?

That Cincinnati parking valet is heard from, and again the reader comments take the cake (or for Rodney, the biscuit).

Back at the Eagle, Alyssa continues her quarter-by-quarter review of 2008-in-Oxford, where of course the springtime’s highlights were Dickie Scruggs’ sentencing, the MS-01 special election, and Double Decker:

Bruce Newman / Oxford Eagle

Alyssa’s story in itself isn’t droll, but maybe it’ll remind you of some waggery around here.

C’mon, tell us a funny . . .

UPDATE: Pssst . . . ThirdSouth has a new girlfriend: Sophie, fresh from the rescue shelter last week:

How old? ThirdSouth says, “It’s not clear because the litter was found on the road, but my vet thinks right at ten weeks now (would be seven in the photo you have, taken at the shelter). She has a black tongue, that makes me think there may be some dreaded Chow in there with the Golden Retriever and Lab and God knows what else. Man is she sweet. Was scared of everybody in the beginning, but she’s coming around like a champ. Forgive my shameless boasting. Sometimes you just get lucky, and my luck with mutts has been excellent.”

Not to mention Soph‘s luck, huh?

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John Currence (chef-owner of City Grocery, Big Bad Breakfast, and Boure in Oxford) has a blog on the Garden and Gun magazine website (where he also contributes the occasional story).  So far, he’s got three posts up since late November, one where he introduces himself, one about cooking pumpkins, and one about his adventures in Maine exploring the glories of lobster rolls.

h/t to Emily in comments.

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Look at these:

Israeli Official: Our Goal Is To ‘Destroy’ Hamas

Israeli Defense Minister Refers to ‘All-Out War’

Barak: ‘War To The Bitter End’

Ehud Barak expands war aims

Western-backed Arab governments under pressure

Supplies Growing Scarce in Gaza

Across Europe, Thousands Protest Gaza Raids

Israel targets senior Hamas, Islamic Jihad commanders in fresh Gaza strikes

Hezbollah: Defending Gaza means offering blood of martyrs

Hamas threatens to assassinate Livni, Barak

Iranian Group Recruits Volunteers to Fight Israel

World rallies around Palestinians amid Gaza offensive

Take your pick: U.S., U.K., Israeli papers — wall-to-wall reports of bloodlust.

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Well well well. I direct your attention to the bottom of page 11 in the 14-page February 2009 Vanity Fair article Farewell to All That: An Oral History of the Bush White House (compiled by Cullen Murphy, Todd S. Purdum, and Philippe Sands), where we find:

December 16, 2005 The New York Times reveals the existence of a massive warrantless- surveillance program conducted on American soil. Bush contends that the September 2001 war-on-terror authorization by Congress—“to use all necessary and appropriate force” against relevant “nations, organizations, and persons”—effectively gives the president unlimited power to act. Other kinds of snooping occur inside the administration.

Lawrence Wilkerson, top aide and later chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell: The Cheney team had, for example, technological supremacy over the National Security Council staff. That is to say, they could read their e-mails. I remember one particular member of the N.S.C. staff wouldn’t use e-mail because he knew they were reading it. He did a test case, kind of like the Midway battle, when we’d broken the Japanese code. He thought he’d broken the code, so he sent a test e-mail out that he knew would rile Scooter [Libby], and within an hour Scooter was in his office.

Do you suppose that, once Cheney loses his remaining power to punish, the real breathtakers start spilling out? I can’t believe that, back when he was pulling all this shit, he ever dreamed 2008 would end up as it has for his “team” . . .

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More about this below the fold, along with an update.

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