I did a double-take when I read this on CNN. It’s been a while since I read Fire in a Canebreak, an account of the last mass lynching in the United States, which took place in my home state in 1946. Apparently, there’s new evidence in the case.
State and federal investigators said Tuesday that they spent the past two days gathering evidence in the last documented mass lynching in the United States: a grisly slaying of four people that has remained unsolved for more than six decades.
In a written statement, the FBI and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said they collected several items on a property in rural Walton County, Georgia, that were taken in for further investigation.
On July 25, 1946, two black sharecropper couples were shot hundreds of times and the unborn baby of one of the women cut out with a knife at the Moore’s Ford Bridge. One of the men had been accused of stabbing a white man 11 days earlier and was bailed out of jail by a former Ku Klux Klan member and known bootlegger who drove him, his wife, her brother and his wife to the bridge.
The FBI statement said investigators were following up on information recently received in the case, one of several the agency has revived in an effort to close decades-old cases from the civil rights era and before.
“The FBI and GBI had gotten some information that we couldn’t ignore with respect to this case,” GBI spokesman John Bankhead said.
Of course, there are people who’d rather they did ignore it.
I’ve got some stuff in mind to post, but first I have to get lunch and do any number of things. And I might not get around to posting anyway.
Since a big portion of my day job is promoting other people’s writing, I might as well do the same here. Besides, I come across more worthwhile content than I have space to promote at work. And if I’m not creating any content myself….
Anyway. Here’s some of what I’ve been reading this morning.
I really should have paid more attention in English class. Or, rather, I should have paid more attention to my grammar lessons. (Probably any hard-core grammarian who’s read the blog would concur.) But I spent the better part of my time as an English Lit. major in creating writing classes, and post-war literature. (My advisor finally told me I had to take the requisite pre-1800 literature classes. I realized then that I’d have been better off as a comparative lit. major.)
Had I spent more time diagraming sentences, then maybe I could make sense of the recent Supreme Court ruling on D.C.’s gun ban.
As I write this, it’s getting late, and I’m tired. It’s the day after Father’s Day; the end of the day after Father’s Day. Aside from Parker’s usual swimming lessons, we had Capitol Pride.
We marched with the Rainbow Families contingency, after spending the afternoon decorating bicycles, strollers, and wagons, meeting other families, and watching the kids play with together. We walked with Parker on his bicycle and Dylan in his stroller. It was great, being together as a family, walking with other families, and hearing the cheers of support from the people watching the parade.
I should be asleep now, especially since it will be just a few hours before Dylan wakes up, and it’ll be my turn to get up and get him back to sleep. But there’s something I’ve been wanting to write about since the California Marriage decision came down; something that’s been on my mind since I read the decision. Something that changed in a way that overwhelmed me so much that I had to walk away from my computer for a few minutes. Something changed; or didn’t change, because its something I’ve always known is true. But just hearing it validated in a way it hasn’t been before … did something to me..
Y’know, it really shouldn’t be news when people commit to each other, except maybe for a engagement announcement or wedding announcement in the paper. It definitely shouldn’t be controversial, like Bishop Gene Robinson entering a civil union with his partner of 19 years. When two people step up to the altar or the steps of city hall to declare their love for one another, their desire to name one another as kin, and their desire to commit to one another, it should be celebrated, because it means a commitment to community.
And maybe that’s why it is controversial. Because, in many ways, it’s public. But it’s also personal. Sometimes in wonderfully surprising ways, when it turns out that you know the people behind the headlines.
I’m all kinds of late on this, I know, but I was struck by this clip from Bill O’Reilly’s show, in which he and a guest can’t come up with a single reason to oppose same-sex marriage.
It’s an amazing four minutes, in which both O’Reilly and his guest come to the conclusion — from slightly different starting points — that there’s really “no reason” to oppose or prohibit same-sex marriage, once you’ve left aside religious “reasons.”
It’s pretty straightforward. You read the job description. You took the job Now, do your job.
On Wednesday, San Diego County Clerk Gregory Smith said he would consider allowing clerks to bow out of processing such marriages if they had moral or religions objections.
“I was pretty shocked about all that, candidly, and pretty outraged,” San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom told Reuters in an interview.
“This is a civil marriage that civil servants have a responsibility to provide, so for civil servants on religious grounds to start passing judgments, they, I think, are breaking the core tenet of what civil service is all about.”
“I’ve got very strong religious beliefs. So now, all of a sudden, I don’t have to do certain things, even though that’s my responsibility as mayor?”
…The mayor, who said he will wed his actress girlfriend in a ceremony in Montana this summer, suggested that clerks who refused to marry gays in California should lose their jobs.
“If that is their job and they are going to be able to pick and choose based on their morality, then all of a sudden they are not doing their jobs,” said Newsom, a Democrat thinking about running for governor to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“If you don’t want to provide a marriage certificate and you’ve got a job that does that, then you should think twice about why you got the job in the first place and maybe you should get a new job,” he continued. “Talk about a slippery slope, Mr. County Clerk down in San Dieg
Here’s the thing, though. I’m willing to say the same thing for myself.
Signaling a generational shift in attitudes, a new Field Poll on Tuesday said California voters now support legal marriage between same-sex couples and oppose a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
By 51 to 42 percent, state voters believe gay couples have the right to marry, according to a May 17-26 poll of 1,052 registered voters.
However, the same poll revealed a California electorate that remains sharply divided over gay marriage – split by age, political affiliation, religion and the regions where they live.
I thought the columnist I mentioned earlier took the cake in terms of the religious right’s hysterical response to the California marriage ruling. Boy was I wrong.
Ed has posted two World Nut Daily columns that leave me pretty much staring in open-mouthed wonder. It’s the kind of thing you have to read to believe, but once I did I was left with a question or two which I’ll pose at the end of this post.
So much has been written out there about the California marriage ruling, and I’ve read so much of it, that I can’t possibly write a post in response to each of them. In fact, some of them I’d just agree with and not add much more. So, it being Friday and all, this seems like as good a time as any for a round-up post of some of the most interesting stuff I’ve come across as bloggers celebrate and critique (sometimes simultaneously) the California ruling.
You discover all sorts of things, when you check out your incoming links. Like the fact that Matthew Yglesias is apparently all moved in to his new home at Think Progress, and has added me to his blogroll. I've returned the favor, which reminds me that it's probably time I updated the blogroll again...
I probably shouldn't say this, but I work on K Street. I've even bumped into Robert Novak once, when we were both pedestrians, crossing the street in opposite directions. Now, I'll have remember to keep an eye out, and look both ways before I cross the street, lest Robert Novak run into me.
I don't really care about the Madonna/Alex Rodriguez affair story, because I'm not married to either of them. But in this day and age why would anyone (who's not "in the business" and getting paid for it) intentionally record their sexcapades on video? Why, when there are a thousand different ways for someone to get and distribute that video? How dumb do you have to be to make a 'sex tape' nowadays?
Maybe I'm taking this the wrong way, and I know these aren't Warren Buffett’s actual words of widsom, but nothing irritates me more than hearing things like "Happiness comes from within," and "Find happiness in simple pleasures." From a billionaire? Easy for him to say...
Gimmick or no gimmick, I would sodance with Lance. Hey, I took ballroom dancing in college, and was pretty good at it. Later, I learned to two-step in a gay C&W bar, and was pretty popular because I was a good follower. Not like dragging around a sack of potatoes. So, Lance, you can lead if you want to...
I knew there was a reason I'm not buying an iPhone today. (Besides the fact that I don't "need" one, and the reality that I don't need to spend that much on a tech purchase. It looks like Apple's having a pretty bad day, along with people who did buy iPhones that currently don't work due to server problems.
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