1. Attorney general: Barbour tried to rule the state like Boss Hogg.
Remember Boss Hogg, the unethical, greedy commissioner in the 1980s television series "The Dukes of Hazzard?" Mississippi's attorney general sure did when he gave the state's Gov. Haley Barbour a tongue-lashing by comparing him to the fictional character. This came after a judge issued a temporary injunction forbidding the release of any more prisoners to whom Barbour gave clemency or pardoned in a final act before leaving office this week.
2. Rivals turn up heat on Romney after New Hampshire win.
Mitt Romney arrived Wednesday in South Carolina as the clear front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, while his rivals campaigned across the state to try to halt the former Massachusetts governor's momentum after his victory the day before in New Hampshire. CNN projected that Romney's second straight triumph in the first two contests of the nomination process gained him seven of the state's 12 delegates, based on his first-place support from just over 39% of primary voters. Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who finished second with about 23%, picked up three delegates, and former Utah Gov. and U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman gained two delegates based on his third-place finish with roughly 17% of the vote.
3. Judge to consider whether to declare Natalee Holloway dead.
An Alabama judge will consider a request Thursday to have Natalee Holloway, the teen who went missing in Aruba in 2005, declared dead. A probate judge may make the decision at a presumption of death hearing in a Jefferson County courtroom in Birmingham Thursday afternoon. Holloway vanished in 2005 while on a graduation trip to Aruba. No one has been charged in the case. Holloway was 18 when she was last seen in the early hours of May 30, 2005, leaving an Oranjestad nightclub with Joran van der Sloot and two other men.