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:
The 2010 mid-term elections brought out record numbers of Latinos in the United States to practice their rights as citizens to vote. But while the number that voted was high, the number of non-voting eligible Latino voters was also high. This is a voting group that is still, in the RP’s opinion, up for grabs. And if either party begins to consistently win the votes of Latinos, will the number of non-voting Latinos continue to rise? Pew Hispanic Center
Copy cat versions of Arizona’s draconian anti-immigration (or anti-immigrant, depending on your POV) laws continue to pop up around the country. These laws are keeping the ACLU (and those that oppose them) busy in federal court. The Indianapolis Star
And in Louisiana, another controversial immigration bill was withdrawn after opposition from the Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops and law enforcement officials. This was the fourth year in a row that the same lawmaker has failed to pass a similar bill. Repeating the same thing over and over expecting different
results? NOLA
And finally, your correspondent, having visited Ireland on numerous occasions and thoroughly enjoying the warmth and hospitality of the Irish, simply loves this photo of the President and the First Lady quaffing a Guinness in Moneygall. New York Times
Starting today at 2 PM EDT, and then reappearing every Thursday at the same time, the RP — along with contributing RP Lisa Borders and others — is serving as a co-host for No Labels Radio.
No Labels is a new grassroots movement of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents who are united in the belief that we do not have to give up our labels, merely put them aside to do what’s best for America. No Labels Radio will offer a weekly dose of news and interviews with the policymakers who are working to find bipartisan answers to the otherwise intractable problems our country faces.
If you are interested in the organization, click here to learn about how you can help promote civility and reduce the hyper-partisan influences on public policy.
And regardless of your political preferences, please join the RP on No Labels Radio at 2:00 PM EDT today and every subsequent Thursday.
By Grant Smith, RP Staff, on Thu May 26, 2011 at 10:00 AM ET
The Politics of Fame
The toast heard ’round the world: read more about it hear. [Politico]
The Department of Justice gives the go-ahead for an investigation into John Edwards for potential campaign finance violations connected to the cover-up of his affair. [ABC News]
NYC Judge allows lawsuit against Huffington Post to continue: details here. [Associated Press]
Now you definitely have more free-time to read The RP: Oprah Winfrey hosts final show. [Hollywood Reporter]
Popeye vs. Mickey Mouse: The Navy is challenging Disney’s attempt to trademark the name “Seal Team Six.” [Fox News]
Beloved CNBC anchor Mark Haines passes away at the age of 65. [Market Watch]
Bill Gates proposes changes to the American educational system, but some argue that his “fixes” will only make things worse. [The Daily Beast]
Former New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein penned a lengthy and thought-provoking essay that appears in this month’s Atlantic magazine entitled “The Failure of American Schools.” In it, he reveals a number of disturbing trends and endemic problems that plague the nation’s public schools system.
Klein offers, however, a signal of hope that comes from the work being done currently by contributing RP, Eva Moskowitz, in her Harlem Success Academy:
Eva Moskowitz is Founder and CEO of the Harlem Success Network
At the individual school level, the differences can be breathtaking. One charter school in New York City, Harlem Success Academy 1, has students who are demographically almost identical to those attending nearby community and charter schools, yet it gets entirely different results. Harlem Success has 88 percent of its students proficient in reading and 95 percent in math; six other nearby schools have an average of 31 percent proficient in reading and 39 percent in math. And according to the most-recent scores on New York State fourth-grade science tests, Success had more than 90 percent of its students at the highest (advanced) level, while the city had only 43 percent at advanced, and Success’s black students outperformed white students at more than 700 schools across the state. In fact, Success now performs at the same level as the gifted-and-talented schools in New York City—all of which have demanding admissions requirements, while Success randomly selects its students, mostly poor and minority, by lottery.
These school-level differences ultimately reflect the effectiveness of a child’s particular teachers. Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, has shown that, while some teachers get a year and a half’s worth of learning into a year, others get in only half a year’s worth of learning with essentially the same students. Imagine the cumulative impact of the best teachers over 13 years of elementary and secondary education. Indeed, even if California raised its performance to Texas’s level, Detroit to Boston’s, the neighborhood schools in Harlem to Harlem Success’s—that is to say, if our least effective teachers performed at the level of our most effective—the impact would be seismic.
We hope we added a little levity to help you get through your Wednesday.
Tomorrow, we’ll get a bit more serious as we highlight some national attention one of our contributing RPs is getting for her work in the private sector since leaving office. She proves that sometimes recovering politicians can be more successful in developing sound public policy than active politicians.
We’ll also have plenty of Weekly Web Gems — the best of civil discourse on the Internet.
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Wed May 25, 2011 at 3:00 PM ET
The Politics of Laughter
President Obama’s trip to Ireland in 12 parts. [picture]
You really learn how many people just do not get satire when you look at the reactions to The Onion’s article: “Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex.” You have to imagine these people don’t get out much. [Facebook]
A very cool (and unexpected) exchange between an iPhone app user and the creator of the app. [XSellize]
By Stephanie Doctrow, RP Staff, on Wed May 25, 2011 at 1:30 PM ET
NPR’s news blog posts a horrifying first-person account of being in Joplin, Missouri during the deadly tornado. As of Monday night, 116 people were killed in the storm. [NPR]
The New York Times profiles GLBT teens as they come out to their friends and family. [NY Times]
Even though the United States is on its way out of the economic recession, Americans still aren’t taking vacations. According to CNN, relaxing is just not in our DNA. [CNN]
In other economic news, small businesses still aren’t hiring full-time staffs as rapidly as they were before the recession. [Newsweek]
Luckily for us, we weren’t wiped off the face of the planet on Saturday. In celebration of surviving The Rapture, check out this photo gallery of Hollywood depictions of the apocalypse. [Time]
By Jonathan Miller, on Wed May 25, 2011 at 12:00 PM ET
A number of friends remarked that I showed a lot of chutzpah in my inaugural Huffington Post piece last week — by coming out of the political closet to endorse gay marriage.
My second piece, published by HuffPo this morning, takes on the Lamestream Media, the Big Science Establishment, and nearly one thousand years of international conspiracy.
Yes, I prove conclusively that the Earth is flat. Here’s an excerpt:
It’s finally happening. Thanks to the courage of such TRUTH pioneers as Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, and Harold Camping (So what if his Rapture prediction was a little off?), the iniquitous conspiracy between Big Science and the Lamestream Media is finally beginning to crumble.
The first sign was cable news’ wall-to-wall coverage of 2009’s “Climategate.” We know that public exposure of a handful of snarky emails exchanged by British climatologists proved once and for all that all of the so-called “peer-reviewed findings” and “scientific consensus” that the Earth is warming as a result of human activity were a cruel hoax. And the liberal media refused to conspire (finally!) with Big Science’s attempted whitewash: There was scant coverage of the four “independent” investigations which, all-too-conveniently and coincidentally, cleared the scientists of misconduct and reconfirmed the global warming fallacy.
That’s why it’s high time for real, TRUTH-loving Americans to employ the same logic and observational methods used by climate change deniers to debunk a far more pernicious fantasy perpetuated for centuries by Big Science: The “theory” that the Earth is round, that it spins wildly on its own axis, and that it hurtles madly through “outer space.”
By Robert Kahne, RP Staff, on Wed May 25, 2011 at 10:00 AM ET
The Politics of Baseball
The reigning NL MVP, Joey Votto, has a new Sportscenter advertisement. Apparently, it took forever to film. Also, the Reds are a terrible skid. I am laughing at them. [The Big Lead]
Here is a great story about Jeremy Affeldt, a relief pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, and his passion for ending human trafficking. [xlog]
There is a lot of negativity in baseball at this moment. The Red’s ace, Edinson Volquez, was sent to the minors, and didn’t take it so well. The Mets owner had some nasty stuff to say about his own team, and the A’s closer is complaining about management. Deadspin has the rundown. [deadspin]
This is an interesting article about the relationship between alcohol and baseball. In a sport which plays games in Busch Stadium, Coors Field, and Miller Park, do you think things are going to change anytime soon? [Pocono Record]
You might have heard the awful tale of Bryan Snow by now. Mr. Snow, a Giants fan, was beaten almost to death in Los Angeles on opening day during a game between the Giants and Dodgers. Now, Mr. Snow’s family is suing the Los Angeles Dodgers over the lack of security which they allege led to Mr. Snow’s condition. [Seattle Times]
Speaking of Mr. Snow, one of the saddest things about this story is that Mr. Snow has two small children. Barry Bonds, the former Giants superstar and current convict, has put up the money to send the two children to college. [MSNBC]
Sometimes, a stupid lie that seems inconsequential at the time – in my case about a campaign postcard – can lead to betrayal, the end of a friendship, and a prison term. Other times, a stupid, inconsequential lie can lead to the blossoming of a long and meaningful friendship.
***
During my first Senate session in early 2007, I drove to Louisville for the weekend to visit my ex-girlfriend, who served as press secretary for Kentucky gubernatorial candidate Bruce Lunsford. It was the weekend before the Democratic primary, and on Sunday afternoon before I headed back to St. Louis, we stopped at a restaurant which we soon realized shared a patio with an adjacent restaurant hosting a campaign BBQ for one of her gubernatorial campaign opponents, Kentucky House Speaker Jody Richards.
Lis, whose jet-black hair, pale skin, haute couture dress, and staccato delivery screamed New York City, hid her head in her hand. “Oh my God,” she said, “they’re totally gonna recognize me and think I’m tracking them. Ohmigod, this is so embarrassing. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Although most people in St. Louis politics viewed me as a Type A politician, who sprinted door-to-door and whose campaign aides who worked 16 hours a day seven days a week, I tended to take a much more relaxed view of campaigns than Lis did. A year earlier, she had famously called my campaign manager and berated him for failing to blind-copy a group of reporters on a routine press advisory. I’d watched the call from his side in the office; he stood there, mouth agape and crumpling like a boxer taking gut punches, for 60 seconds while the office listened to her tear into him, the phone a safe distance from his ear.
Knowing her aversion to even the smallest gaffes, I mischievously decided, as was my wont, to antagonize her. “Hey, I’m gonna go meet Jody,” I said, rising from the table. As a politician, a political scientist, and a huge geek, I liked meeting and analyzing politicians. The only thing better than meeting and analyzing them was to do it undercover.
Lis trembled and turned ashen. “Do NOT do that. Ohmigod I will fucking KILL you if you do that! Let’s just get the check and get out of here.”
***
Former KY House Speaker Jody Richards
I rose from my seat and approached Richards. “Hey, Mr. Speaker, how’s it goin’?”
He clasped my outstretched hand and pumped it furiously. “Hey there, young fella, how ya doin’?”
“I’m great. How’s the campaign going?”
“Well, pretty dern good!” He gestured to the patio, where an embarrassingly small group of supporters had gathered for the BBQ. “Look at all these folks! I’d say things are pretty dern good! What’s yer name, young fella?”
“John,” I lied.
He reached out and pumped my hand some more. “It’s great to see ya, John. Where ya from?”
“Oh, right down Bardstown,” I replied, gesturing vaguely to my left, praying he wouldn’t pursue that line of inquiry any further. I needed a distraction, fast. “So, tell me about your platform.”
Read the rest of… Jeff Smith: When “John” Met John Y.
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