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:
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Tue Nov 22, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET
This is just the tip of an oppo iceberg that would make Herman Cain’s look like a pebble.
With the prospects of a vulnerable president and a Senate that’s clearly within reach, I just can’t imagine Republicans nominating someone so noxious among independents, someone with so much baggage. But Newt’s boomlet is yet another sign of the fact that this was really Rick Perry’s nomination to lose – something Perry’s worked diligently to do almost since the day he entered.
Every day this media-manufactured boomlet persists is another day that some enterprising journalist will dig a little deeper into Newt’s past. Like Cain, he’ll claim that the liberal media is trying to bring him down, when in reality, it will be his own pattern of reckless personal, political, and profit-seeking behavior that will do the trick.
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Mon Nov 21, 2011 at 3:00 PM ET
The Politics of Pigskin
This week in his MMQB article Peter King talks about Jay Cutler, what could happen if the Colts end up with Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck on the same roster, and much more. [Sports Illustrated]
What happened to Jay Cutler, you might be asking. Well he fractured the thumb on his throwing hand, which will require surgery. This is a tough break for a surging Bears team. [ESPN]
The winners and losers from Sunday include Bears’ wideout Johnny Knox representing the winners and the Bengals’ TE Jermaine Gresham in the loser’s column. [Yahoo! Sports]
Rex Ryan generated another headline as the NFL fined him $75,000 for cursing at a fan. [CBS Sports]
Here is a quick preview of the Monday Night Football matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the New England Patriots. [SB Nation]
After the weekend’s college football schedule wrapped up there were some changes at the top of the rankings. Currently, the top 3 teams in college football are 1. LSU, 2. Alabama, and 3. Arkansas. Not only are these three teams all from the SEC, they are from the same division of the SEC! LSU and Alabama are currently sitting pretty to match up in the national championship game. That is, unless Arkansas can play spoiler next week against LSU. [Sports Illustrated]
By Sandra Moon, RP Staff, on Mon Nov 21, 2011 at 1:30 PM ET
The Politics of Faith
Are Christians in the U.S. being oppressed, like some church leaders claim? [LA Times]
James Arthur Ray is sentenced to two years in prison for the deaths of two participants in his “Spiritual Warrior” seminar who died in a sweat lodge ceremony. [Time]
Some faith leaders have been active in Occupy Wall Street, but others have been reluctant to support the movement because of its lack of central leadership and ambiguous list of demands. [Reuters FaithWorld]
By Patrick Derocher, on Mon Nov 21, 2011 at 12:00 PM ET
Wisconsins is fed up on every level possible in a must-read from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
Wisconsin may have finally had enough of its toxic political climate– the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel put up a must-read piece yesterday about that state’s loss of civility. It cites, amongst other evidence, protests held outside of politicans’ homes, and the recently-launched effort to recall Republican Governor and Lieutenant Governor Scott Walker and Rebecca Kleefisch and four Republican State Senators. Democrat Tim Cullen, a State Senator who has been referred to in this blog before, said he never received a death threat until this year, in spite of having served in the Senate for several years in the 1970s and 80s. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]
California, easily the country’s most financially-befouled state, finally has someone advocating for bipartisan solutions to the problem. Think Long, made up of business and labor leaders in addition to officials including former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, proposes a mostly tax-based fix to the Golden State’s budget woes. In particular, they advocate flattening tax rates and implementing a sales tax on more goods than are currently taxed. A draft report can be seen here, but a final report is expected some time today. [Sacramento Bee]
Ohio Governor John Kasich, a Republican, appointed Democratic Senate Minority Leader Jason Wilson to head the Governor’s Office of Appalachia, a rare move of bipartisan goodwill for the embattled governor. Wilson, who would have had to move to run for Senate again as a result of redistricting, will continue to represent his far-eastern Ohio constituents in this position, intended to foster development in the economically-downtrodden Appalachian Mountains. [Columbus Dispatch]
The internal revolt in New York’s Democratic Party continues. State Chairman Jay Jacobs stymied a move on Thursday to endorse a millionaires tax hike and a ban on natural gas extraction via hydrofracking in western and Upstate New York. Both of these positions would have put the party decisively to the left of Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo, a split that has left the party rank-and-file, especially its influential New York City members, frustrated over the past several months. [Newsday]
Petty redistricting politics continue, as Democrats in the Florida House of Representatives tussle with their Republican counterparts about cancelled redistricting meetings across the state. [St. Petersburg Times]
By Ronald J. Granieri, on Mon Nov 21, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET
In 1963, William F. Buckley, Jr. quipped “I would rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the Boston phone book than the faculty of Harvard University.” The quote has been passed around so often in various forms (my initial Google search this morning returned more than seventy million hits), with and without attribution to the late Mr. Buckley, that the original context of the comment (a jab at the Kennedy brain trust) is lost in the mist.
At the risk of alienating many of my readers, I will declare right now that Buckley has been one of my heroes since my teenage years. However my opinions on specific issues may have diverged from his over time, Buckley’s sparkling wit and clarity of thought continue to inspire me. I still read his works for pleasure, and measure my own poor writing style against his.
Even the cleverest comments from great thinkers, however, can be dangerous when they are wrenched from their original context and take on a life of their own. (Thomas Jefferson, the tree of liberty, and the blood of tyrants come to mind…) Buckley’s Boston phone book quote is just such a comment. It has become a popular rhetorical tic among conservatives, and threatens to be more damaging to the conservative intellectual project than anything ever dreamt up on the left.
The quote, and the attitude behind it, has been in a great deal of conscious and unconscious circulation of late, as Republican presidential candidates attempt to contrast themselves with President Obama and to deal with their own occasional lapses of knowledge or eloquence. Thus we have Rick Perry, fresh off recent debate catastrophes, saying to all who would listen, “I am a doer, not a talker. ” Similarly, Herman Cain, far from embarrassed about his lack of facility in discussing complicated international events, has embraced ignorance, proclaiming (in unconscious echo of a classic moment from The Simpsons): “We need a leader, not a reader.” In this time of crisis, these messages suggest, the country should reject intellectual attainment in favor of someone unfettered by too much thinking.
Read the rest of… Ronald J. Granieri: Up From Ignorance
By Chris Schulz, RP Staff, on Fri Nov 18, 2011 at 1:30 PM ET
In New Zealand, rats wiped out some native species. Instead of wreaking havoc on the ecosystem though the rats began to do the job of those species that they wiped out. [bbc.co.uk]
As the world population rises and the idea of a nuclear family changes, architecture and laws about zoning and construction should also adapt. [nytimes.com]
The Senate votes down a measure that would cut funding for walking and bike paths. For good reason too, as a bike path can add $9,000 in value to a nearby home. [theatlanticcities.com]
In lighter news, instead of trying to solve actual problems PETA once again goes for a cheap publicity stunt where they lose more credibility. [latimes.com]
Blog this!
