If you read nothing else ever posted on this blog, I want you to read Robet Mann’s The party of “Shut up, boy” post of today.

Read it. Then go back and read it again. And again. Slowly. Digest it. Let his words sink in and maybe, just maybe you’ll feel a twinge of the shame and outrage that he has expressed so well.

Mann is at his articulate best with this column and it exposes this state and this legislature (one legislator in particular) for becoming—and remaining—the example of everything we should abhor in elected officials.

And let’s lay the blame where it belongs: The Repugnantcan Party.

Don’t believe me? Just listen to the nauseating TV ads of the Repugnantcan candidates from State Supreme Court to Congress and the Senate. They’re all doing their dead-level best to be a better Trump-whore than their opponents.

When, for example, have you heard a candidate for judge emphasize his or her ability to faithfully follow the rule of law? All I’m hearing is who is the most conservative, the most loyal Repugnantcan. That’s not how a candidate for judge should campaign. They’re supposed to be impartial, immune to party politics. But not, apparently, in Louisiana.

Here is a photo of the subject of Mann’s wrath and indignation:

This is what hatred looks like when you dress it up in a suit

Remember this face. It is the face of the typical Republican white supremacist, the champion of the white nationalist redneck, the kind of person who runs on the coattails of the Pedophile-in-Chief—and is proud to do so. Think about that for a moment. They have hitched their career to a convicted rapist and an accused child sex abuser. Can it possibly sink any lower than that?

This is State Sen. John C “Jay” Morris III (R-West Monroe).

And remember, it is not Bob Mann but Morris who has exposed himself to being a bigot, a racist, a man who would, in the year 2026, tell the Black executive director of the Louisiana Democratic Party during a committee hearing on congressional redistricting to “Shut up, Boy.”

That is just about as Jim Crow as you can get. Nothing subtle about the good senator who authored the bill to strip an elected clerk of court in New Orleans of the office he’d just won. A detractor pointed out to LouisianaVoice recently that Calvin Duncan was a convicted felon who’d served hard time in Angola. True. But what that person who, like Morris, is obviously blinded by his own bigotry, failed to point out is that Duncan had been wrongly convicted by a corrupt prosecutor who withheld exculpatory evidence and that he had been 100 percent exonerated—after more than three decades behind bars, after which he pursued and obtained a law degree.

(Of course, the person who pointed that out is of a somewhat limited vocabulary. He repeatedly employs the term “libtard commie” in his diatribes even though he would be hard-pressed to accurately define a communist of communism—and he certainly cannot explain the difference between socialism and communism.)

But I digress. Bob Mann is dead right in his critique of Louisiana’s elected officials who are perfectly content with the state ranking at the bottom of every list of accomplishments so long as the petrochemical, pharmaceutical, fossil fuel and other special interest money keeps feeding their campaigns.

If Morris’s sorry rebuke does not enrage you, embarrass you, make you cringe, then by God, you’re just as much a part of the problem as Morris or any mouth-breathing KKK member.

As is the case with most scandals, big or small, details leak out slowly until a sharper image is formed of the entire sequence of events. The case of Nathan Jump, the former proncipal of Mt. Olive Christian School in Claiborne Parish, appears to be no different.

It now appears, according to at least one person, there were as many as 80 complaints lodged against him. It’s not known if all, most or even any are related to sexual misconduct–though his arrest in February and again last week were for just that.

LouisianaVoice has learned that Louisiana State Police initiated the investigation of Jump but the Louisiana Bureau of Investigation, an arm of the Louisiana Attorney General’s office, soon stepped in and took over the case, a development described by a retired law enforcement officer as “a good move.”

The same retired officer said he was told Jump’s first arrest for sexual battery in February was not a political move to discredit his wife, Tammy Jump, who is running for district attorney of the 2^nd JDC, but was legitimate. “He also told me there would be more arrests and sure enough, they popped ol’ Nathan again,” the retired officer said, the latest last week for two counts of indecent behavior with juveniles and a single count of molestation of a juvenile.

Tammy Jump For several years has been an instructor in an annual law enforcement criminal law update class. This is a three- or four-hour class where officers around north Louisiana are made aware of the latest criminal law updates of the most recent legislative session. “I think she started doing that with retired (now deceased) Judge R. Harmon Drew from Minden,” he said. “After Judge Drew’s health declined, the class was taken over by presiding Judge Jeff Cox of the Second Circuit Court of Appeal. I don’t know if she and Judge Cox are still working together on this or not.”

Another person will knowledge of the situation said Nathan Jump wrote notes to some of the girls at Mt. Olive Christian School and would take some of the female students to lunch. She described him as ”creepy.” The person said when the first female victim contacted local authorities to report Jump, she was “blown off.”

“One complaint—possibly a vendetta, but 80 complaints? That is insane,” the individual said. “[There’s] no telling how many more there are that are ashamed or afraid to come forward.”

For previous stories LouisianaVoice has posted on the Jumps and their family ties to the defunct New Bethany Home for Girls where survivors continue to claim they were sexually, physically and mentally abused, see the links below:

Husband of DA candidate arrested on sex counts; she was prosecutor who punted on New Bethany sex abuse in 2015 | Louisiana Voice

Family of DA who failed to prosecute sex abuse claims now owns home once operated by accused preacher Mack Ford | Louisiana Voice

Former Mt. Olive Christian School student says accused principal had students he favored, wrote ‘love notes’ to | Louisiana Voice

Well, this just has to be filed under “What in the world was he thinking?”

Every time I write about the Jackson Parish Sheriff’s Department, I find myself thinking they can’t possibly do something even more bizarre and each time, I’m wrong—because they do.

Before I go any further, someone in Jackson Parish seems to think I’m relying on a certain individual (apparently a candidate for sheriff) as my source of information. Such is not the case. I am receiving information from various sources, none of whom is the one the writer assumed it was.

When Deputy Brent Barnett became Interim Sheriff following the resignation of incumbent Andy Brown, we more or less figured the office would be straightened out but then Barnett commandeered the sheriff’s department PICKUP TRUCK, plastered it with his own campaign posters and drove the truck in the annual Christmas parade. State law prohibits the use of department vehicles for any thing other than official use and political campaigning is not considered an official use.

WELCOME TO JACKSON PARISH SHERIFF’S OFFICE

As a Sheriff’s Office, we value:

Integrity | Professionalism | Commitment | Honesty | Trust | Respect

Fair enough, Bad judgment on Barnett’s part.

And one would think he’d be a little more careful after we exposed Brown’s side hustle with his SIX POINTS business.

But it gets better. Or worse, depending upon your own ethos.

Barnett also has his outside business enterprise, Barnett Cattle and Land Development.

Registered Agent(s)

Officer(s)Additional Officers: No 

He is listed in Louisiana Secretary of State corporate records as the agent and only officer/manager of the company which apparently also markets Derksen portable buildings.

Business hours for Barnett Cattle and Land Development is listed as 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. six days a week and get this, the web page lists Barnett’s sheriff office email address: bbarnett@jacksonparishsheriff.com

That’s pretty brazen even by Louisiana’s lax ethical standards.

Shoot, even Andy Brown wasn’t foolish enough to refer clients of Six Points to his office email address.

But I suppose when you’re pulling down $280,000 a year, including benefits, in your day job in a historically low-income parish, you tend to get a little blinded by the temptation of bending the rules to make a little more…

A former student at Mt. Olive Christian School in Claiborne Parish has posted on Facebook that Nathan Jump did in fact, in her eyes at least, appear to act inappropriately with certain female students at the school.

Jump, the husband of 2^nd JDC district attorney candidate Tammy Jump, was arrested last February for sexual battery and again last week on a single count of molestation of a juvenile and two counts of indecent behavior with juveniles.

Until his February arrest, he was principal of Mt. Olive Christian School and is listed as vice-president of the Association of Christian Educators of Louisiana, according to the Secretary of State’s corporate records. Those records show that the association’s non-profit corporation is “not in good standing for failure to file [an] annual report.” It last filed its annual report on Feb. 12, 2025.

Tammy Jump’s parents, James and Linda Gantt and one other member of the Gantt family, Perry Keith Gantt, serve on the school’s board of directors and Linda Gantt is listed on the school’s web page as its headmaster. The school was incorporated in 1995, according to state records.

Tammy Jump, who has served as an assistant DA for the 2^nd JDC for about 25 years, is pitted against Jim Colvin, also an assistant DA in the 2^nd JDC for the DA’s job.

Subsequent to publication of her husband’s arrests by LouisianaVoice, Tammy Jump posted on Facebook, “Living the farm life. People can hate all they want. I know who I am, and I know who Nathan is. The lies and defamatory statements being posted on social media are just that. The truth is going to come out. Until then, we will keep loving our animals and counting the blessings that God gives us every day. Sweep Pea says she’s ready for America’s 250^th birthday celebration.”

Sweetpea is apparently the cow that is included in Tammy Jump’s post.

The former student, whose Facebook identity we’re not revealing, posted a response, saying, “She (Tammy Jump) posted this about it (apparently the controversy swirling around her husband’s arrest). And I’m sorry, but so many girls have come forward. There’s no way all of them are lying. And I went to that school. [H]e 100% had favorites. He would write love notes to them, take them to lunch, and text them who knows what? At the end of the day they are trying like hell to sweep it under the rug. It’s just said how the justice system is.”

Tammy Jump, in giving misleading information pertaining to rape laws, led a grand jury into refusing to bring charges against Rev. Mack Ford who owned and operated the New Bethany School for Girls in Arcadia despite testimony from several survivors of the school who described sexual assault by Ford and New Bethany staff members.

But it was learned by LouisianaVoice that members of Ford’s family performed work for the Gantt family, which should have triggered a recusal from Tammy Jump. Subsequent to Ford’s death, the Mt. Olive Christian School, run by the Gantt family, now owns the former New Bethany property.