Please sign the petition below to remove the statue of Jefferson Davis currently in Kentucky’s Capitol Rotunda, and replace it with a tribute to Muhammad Ali, “the Louisville Lip” and “the Greatest of All Time.”
I just heard from the Ali family: It is the Champ’s belief that Islam prohibits three-dimensional representations of living Muslims. Accordingly, I have adjusted the petition to call for a two-dimensional representation of Ali (a portrait, picture or mural) in lieu of a statue.
UPDATE (Tuesday, December 2, 2014)
In this interview with WHAS-TV’s Joe Arnold, Governor Steve Beshear endorses the idea of honoring Muhammad Ali in the State Capitol (although he disagrees with removing Davis). Arnold explores the idea further on his weekly show, “The Powers that Be.”
Click here to check out WDRB-TV’s Lawrence Smith’s coverage of the story.
And here’s my op-ed in Ali’s hometown paper, the Louisville Courier-Journal.
UPDATE (Saturday, June 4, 2016)
In the wake of the 2015 Charlestown tragedy, in which a Confederate flag-waving murderer united the nation against racism, all of the most powerful Kentucky policymakers — U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, Governor Matt Bevin, Senate President Robert Stivers and House Speaker Greg Stumbo — called for the removal of the Davis statue from the Rotunda. Today, as we commemorate last night’s passing of Muhammad Ali, there is no better moment to replace the symbol of Kentucky’s worst era with a tribute to The Greatest of All Time.
UPDATE (Wednesday, June 8, 2016):
Great piece by Lawrence Smith of WDRB-TV in Louisville on the petition drive to replace Jefferson Davis’ statue in the Capitol Rotunda with a tribute to Muhammad Ali.
UPDATE (Thursday, June 9, 2016):
Excellent piece on the petition drive by Jack Brammer that was featured on the front page of the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Highlight of the article:
Miller said he has received a few “angry comments” on his call to honor Ali.
“One of them encouraged me to kill myself,” he said. “You can quote me that I have decided not to take their advice.”
UPDATE (Friday, June 10, 2016)
The petition drives continues to show the Big Mo(hammed): check out these stories from WKYU-FM public radio in Bowling Green and WKYT-TV, Channel 27 in Lexington:
UPDATE (Saturday, June 11, 2016):
Still not convinced? Check out this excerpt from today’s New York Times:
As former Illinois Rod Balgojevich spends his first full day behind bars, contributing RP Jeff Smith offers him a few educated tips:
After spending a year in federal prison on an obstruction of justice charge stemming from a 2004 congressional campaign violation, I have a few tips for former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich as he heads for prison.
1. As your grandma probably taught you, God gave you two ears, two eyes and one mouth — use them in proportion.
• When you get to prison, listen, watch and learn. You’ll have a hundred questions on your first day and in one month you will know the answer to 90 of them without having to ask and risk looking stupid.
•Don’t ever ask anybody about their crime. If they want to tell you what they did, fine. But you won’t know if they’re telling the truth. And if you ask and strike a nerve with someone, the result may not be pretty.
•Don’t talk about how you got railroaded. So did everyone else.
•Don’t ask anything about anyone’s family; it will be a sore subject with many, especially those who have not seen or heard from their children or ex-wives in years.
•Don’t ever talk about how much time you have. Someone else has more.
Read the rest of… Jeff Smith: Advice for Blago on His First Day in Jail
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Mar 15, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Hope your conscience is greater than your cleverness.
When I was about eight or nine years old I tried tricking my mom into giving me money I could spend at Thornbury’s Toys.
I told her I was curious about how checks worked and wondered if she could teach me. My mom was impressed with my curiosity and desire to learn and that I took the initiative to ask. She happily pulled out her check book and started going over each line and how it needed to be filled in.
“So, for example, let’s say it is going to be for $10. Where would you write that?” I asked.
My mom showed me where on the check that went and wrote in the amount in numbers and then in her beautiful cursive longhand.
Next I pointed to “Pay to the order of” line and suggested, “Let’s say it’s for, I dunno, like, Thornbury’s Toys. Is that where you’d write out ‘Thornbury’s Toys’?”
“Yes! Exactly!” My mom replied, excited to see I was really paying attention and understanding this lesson….and gladly filled out that line “Thornbury’s Toys.”
I asked her to please finish filling it out and asked if I could keep the check to study and memorize. She proudly signed her name, wrote “Toys’ in the “For” line and handed over my homework assignment for me to “study,” as I requested.
Well, you see where this is going. I proudly took the check and went back to my bedroom to try to now figure out how I could get a ride to Thornbury’s—and not from my mom.
But something awful and unexpected happened. Guilt slowly crept in. A loyalty to my mother and to honesty began to displace the excitement I was feeling about the possibility of buying a new toy. And the sense of cleverness started to feel heavy and burdensome like something I should be more ashamed about than proud of.
In fact, the feelings were so horrible, without understanding what was happening to me, I immediately tore the check into tiny little pieces and threw the pieces away behind my clothes drawer–where no one would find it.
Several years later when we moved to a new house—and the clothes drawer was being moved–I was standing there to pick up those little shreds of paper, which signified the still alive little shreds of guilt. I hadn’t forgotten them…or the lesson I had learned.
By Jonathan Miller, on Thu Mar 15, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
Just two more hours to enter an opportunity of a lifetime. Or at least a good time for all.
Yesterday, “No Budget, No Pay” legislation — sponsored by Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) and Cong. Jim Cooper (D-TN) — received its first hearing by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT). The landmark bill, sponsored by No Labels, would deny Congressmen pay if they fail to pass a budget and spending bills on time. (Read all about it here, and Click here for more information on how you can get involved.)
Now today, March Madness erupts — the first full round of the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament begins play across the country.
To celebrate the convergence of these two monumental events, we at The Recovering Politician and No Labels are sponsoring our first NCAA basketball March Madness bracket challenge.
No Bracket? No Pay!
We are calling it…wait for it… “No Bracket, No Pay“. The RP Nation and No Labels activists across the country are invited to submit a completed NCAA bracket — for free — and the winning brackets (and perhaps some losers as well) will receive BIG CASH PRIZES.
(OK, full disclosure: The “BIG CASH PRIZES” don’t actually involve “cash.” But we will come up with some fun stuff to give away.)
Entering the tournament is simple and easy. Just click here and follow the directions. And you don’t need to be a roundball expert to play — in most office pools, it’s the clueless hoops-a-phobe that usually wins.
The deadline for entry is TODAY (!!!) at 12pm (Noon!!!) EDT.
And remember, you can’t win if you don’t play — No Bracket, No Pay.
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Thu Mar 15, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
The Politics of Pigskin
The 2012 NFL free agency is officially underway and there is a lot of news of visits, workouts, and signings floating around. Let’s start with Peyton Manning who reportedly spent 6 hours at Cardinals HQ recently. [Houston Chronicle]
Another of the blockbuster names available is former Texans DE Mario Williams. He is currently visiting with a number of teams. [ESPN]
The Lions signed Calvin Johnson to a huge 7 year contract extension. [Twitter]
The Bears finally got Jay Cutler some receiver help in the form of his old teammate Brandon Marshall. [ESPN]
The Cowboys were able to pick up Kyle Orton who will give them some added depth at QB. [Twitter]
Drew Brees is none too happy with the franchise tag that the Saints stuck on him. [NBC Sports]
Finally, Matt Flynn who saw his stock as a potential starting quarterback rise over the past few seasons will visit with the Seahawks. [Twitter]
March has opened cruelly for conservatives. One of their icons, Andrew Breitbart, died prematurely; another, Rush Limbaugh, lives on, and valuable time is spent apologizing or distancing from his choice to punch down at a young woman. Between the recollections of Breitbart, and both the real and canned outrage over Limbaugh, the pugnacious, caustic side of the political Right is in full public view.
In the normal course of the ideological firefight, one favored tactic is to minimize antagonists as irrelevant and undeserving of attention. The critics of Breitbart and Limbaugh are actually just as quick to dramatize their importance as their defenders. For the left, the ferocity of both men helps prove their case that the Right is an intolerant, mean-spirited crusade that bullies its detractors. For much of the right, the two epitomize a conviction activism that has been indispensable in outwitting and outlasting the mainstream media and its liberal biases. It’s worth examining each claim for signs of inflation.
Breitbart first: to the extent the general public was aware of Breitbart, it was largely based on three episodes, one of which reflects poorly on him. On the plus side, he drove the exposure of ACORN as a loopy, madcap farce that was living off the public dime and an unmerited reputation for good works. On the neutral side, he outed Anthony Weiner as the kind of guy who milked his mini celebrity to bait attractive twenty-somethings, and who thought his best features are the kind that require public covering. It all seemed seedy, but small and trivial then, and looks even smaller and more trivial now. On the inexcusable side, his expose of Shirley Sherrod as a racist avenger didn’t survive the light of day: Breitbart may have been a white guy lost in interpreting colloquial black to black banter, but his confusion seemed willful and strategic.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Of Breitbart and Limbaugh
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Mar 14, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
The real Shakespeare controversy.
For centuries, commentators have debated whether Shakespeare really wrote Shakespeare’s literary works.
The recently released movie, Anonymous, which I saw last week, examines the evidence in depth and comes to some interesting conclusions.
Perhaps it was Christopher Marlowe.
Perhaps it was someone else.
But I’ve decided there is an even a bigger and more profound way of asking the question:
“Should it even matter if Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare since most individuals who claim to have read Shakespeare, really haven’t read Shakespeare— and are only pretended to?”
When I was asked in college what Shakespeare plays I had read, I answered Macbeth, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, and Othello.
But that wasn’t true. I had seen the movies for those plays with the exception of King Lear, which I read. But even with Lear much of my reading was done by relying on Cliff Notes.
So, until we get to the bottom of whether people who claim they have read Shakespeare are real people who have actually read Shakespeare (and aren’t just pretending to), we should hold off investigating the authorship question altogether.
Was it fair when Al Gore – who actually had done more than just about any member of Congress to help make it happen – was pilloried for the line about “inventing the Internet” (despite it being a misquote)?
Fair when Gore was off by $50 or so in relating the price of his mother-in-law’s meds, and got castigated for it – even as Bush’s mostly unexamined references to his proposed tax cuts understated its size by $900 billion?
Of course not. Politics, like life, isn’t fair. The media – aided substantially by opposing campaigns – looks for a stylized fact that fits a developing narrative, and creates a caricature.
And it goes without saying that you couldn’t make up a story that better fits the narrative of a coldly (and cruelly) efficient Rombot than the Seamus story.
Point is, it’s not going away. Pet lovers vote – and even non pet-lovers find the story alarming. So I suspect you’ll see Dem-driven “protests” by dogs at Romney events throughout the summer and fall. And I suspect that they will overpower the concerted effort Romney and his family have been making for months to “humanize” Mitt via the contrived retelling of “warm, fuzzy Mitt” stories.
By Jason Atkinson, on Tue Mar 13, 2012 at 3:30 PM ET
Our own contributing RP, Jason Atkinson, has decided to take a sabbatical from politics, announcing they he would not run for a second term. Here’s the story from The Oregonian:
Steve Duin: Jason Atkinson’s choice not to run again means Oregon Legislature suffers an untimely loss
Why is Jason Atkinson involved in Oregon politics?For years now, the Central Point Republican has been close to the Ramirez family, the patriarch of which slipped across the border with Mexico in the ’70s, gained amnesty during the Reagan administration and raised eight children in Medford.
After Cesar Ramirez, the youngest of those children, graduated fromSouthern Oregon University in June, he told Atkinson he planned to take two years off to raise money for law school.
Mightily impressed, De Muniz handed Ramirez his business card and said, “Let me know when you apply.”
When Ramirez later asked his tour guide how he could ever thank him, Atkinson said, “Show the chief justice’s card to your father. He’s going to have a proud smile on his face, holding that card. Memorize that look. And work as hard as you can getting through law school, remembering that look.”
Why is Atkinson exiting Oregon politics?
“We don’t do that in Oregon politics anymore,” he said. “In Oregon politics, that kid would be considered a Hispanic kid who is a drain on the system. That’s the pettiness of politics right now. It’s completely devoid of humanity.”
When Atkinson announced last week that he would not seek re-election in November, the state Senate lost one of its more thoughtful, balanced and idealistic personalities.”Twenty years ago, he would have been considered an idiosyncratic conservative,” said Jack Roberts, the former labor commissioner. “In a healthy party, that kind of conservatism, which carries some independence of thought, would be valued. Now, it doesn’t seem to be.”
Money is a significant factor in Atkinson’s sabbatical. He needs a better-paying job. “I’ll come back,” he notes, “when I can afford to come back.”
But Atkinson is increasingly unnerved, he said, by the anger in the public arena and the colleagues who pander to it.
When Atkinson decried the January 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., arguing that we must abandon “the idea that I am right and you are evil,” he received so many threats that a sheriff’s deputy spent several weeks parked outside his Jackson County home.
When he finished speaking last week at a woman’s retirement party in his district, Atkinson said he was “attacked by three angry people. One guy comes up to me and says, ‘Why are you taking my freedom?’ The other two guys are angry that I’m too fish friendly.
“I’m thinking, ‘Hey, if you’re gonna beat me up, beat me up on Monday, will ya?’ It’s getting angrier and it’s getting more petty. I’ve lost my taste for the pettiness of politics.”
Atkinson — who reached the Legislature in 1999 — is the rare political figure who celebrates the Tea Party and a 100-percent rating with the Oregon League of Conservation Voters.
Huge chunks of his library are devoted to Theodore Roosevelt and fly-fishing. He knows the best book on C.E.S. Wood and regularly exchanged letters with the late Mark Hatfield on Herbert Hoover, the only U.S. president to live in Oregon.
Five generations of Atkinson’s family have waded the Klamath River. And every Wednesday during legislative sessions at the Capitol he leads a college seminar on politics and history for Senate floor staff and interns.
That weekly gathering, the Floyd McMullen Fire Brigade, is named after the 23-year-old firefighter — and Willamette Law student — who died when the Capitol went down in flames in 1935.
The decision to put that career on pause has been draining, Atkinson admits. But he needs some financial security, more time with his 9-year-old son, Perry — who was born three months premature and has already survived a romp with thyroid cancer — and a reason to believe there’s still nobility in public service.
Until the riptide turns, the last is a daunting proposition. Should he need a little extra encouragement, Atkinson could do far worse than to check in with a freshly energized Southern Oregon grad who is still working his way toward law school.
“Mr. Atkinson always told me to follow my dreams,” Cesar Ramirez said, “and if challenges come, to not be afraid to face them.”
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