First, in case you missed this last week from the Jackson, MS Clarion Ledger:

Booneville lawyer Joey Langston’s guilty plea and former State Auditor Steve Patterson agreeing to plead guilty to corruption charges is hammering home a theme begun last year with a judicial bribery scandal that Mississippi’s legal system is in serious need of reform.

In federal court documents, Langston admitted he tried to influence a state judge; Patterson, in a document unsealed Monday, has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery of an elected official.

For those of you who watch state and local contests, in particular attorneys general races, this is huge news. Some major donors to the Democratic Attorneys General Association, DAGA, have been permanently removed from the playing field. There is some real money that just dried up for the forseeable future for the Dem AGs group.

You know, if you’re the folks over at the DAGA, with all of those Democrat Attorneys General, with names like Andrew Cuomo, Jerry Brown, Catherine Cortez Masto, Terry Goddard, and Lisa Madigan – just to name a few – maybe you give some good hard thought to returning any and all money you’ve received from the likes of Joey Langston and Company – because you’d hate to have that come up later.  As an aside, the Wall Street Journal Law Blog has done a great job tracking this story.

Perhaps no other lawyer in Mississippi seemed to try harder – and with more apparent success – to emulate Scrugg’s lifestyle and public demeanor than did Booneville attorney Joey Langston. Langston, whose firm was founded by his father, Joe Ray Langston, had some advantages as a young man that the hardscrabble Scruggs did not.Langston gradated from the Ole Miss School of Law in 1983 and went into practice with his father that same year. In 1986, Langston became the lead lawyer in the firm when Joe Ray Langston died.

Read the Rest…