Sheriff takes down Rep. Edward Hagen

Is this just the tip of the iceberg?

Rep. Hagen in happier times

It seems the long-standing rumors of high-stakes poker games held at The Rebel Yell for the elite who can afford it are true. The Yoknapatawpha County Sheriff's Department arrested Big Jack Rowan and Congressman Edward Hagen Sunday, Big Jack for hosting the games and Hagen for playing in them. Sources who were there tell us that Sheriff Taylor Sheldon himself was there to slap the cuffs on Hagen personally.

Sheriff's spokesperson Elizabeth Jones said the evidence against Hagen and Big Jack was found during an unrelated investigation. She wouldn't say what that investigation is, but we've been told it's the Monica Drum murder investigation. What did Monica Drum have to do with illegal poker games in the back rooms of a seedy bar? We'd all like to know, but for now, no one's talking.

The Rebel Yell is notorious throughout Yoknapatawpha County as a place where folks can go to sin as little or as much as they want to. The YCSD has raided the business numerous times over the last 10 years, but have never been able to make any significant charges stick.

These arrests raise a lot of questions like what was Edward Hagen thinking? As a former county prosecutor and district attorney in north Mississippi, he can't credibly claim ignorance of the law as a defense. Will the voters forgive him this "indiscretion" or is his political career over?

But maybe the biggest question of all is whether Hagen or Rowan or both were involved in Monica Drum's murder, and if so, how? And why?

It's obvious the sheriff's department knows more than they're telling right now, but once they do, this whole situation could get a lot uglier.