more values

[sisyphusshrugged]

Alabama would be OK with taking the racist stuff out of their state constitution, but it would put them at risk of educating their children (and, you know, some of them are - well, you know)

One week after voters apparently rejected an amendment that would have deleted segregationist language from the Alabama Constitution, state officials now say the margin of defeat was so narrow that in all likelihood, it will automatically mean a recount.

The proposal, whose opponents had warned that it could lead to court-imposed taxes, seemingly failed on Election Day, but by fewer than 3,000 votes, about 0.2 percent of more than 1.3 million cast on it.

The measure would have struck language - both in the main body of the Constitution, adopted in 1901, and in subsequent amendments - saying that "separate schools shall be provided for white and colored children, and no child of either race shall be permitted to attend a school of the other race." It would also have deleted language on poll taxes, which in the Jim Crow South were often applied to keep blacks from voting.

Those provisions have long been unenforceable, said State Representative Ken Guin, and trying to remove them was part of a broader effort to streamline the Constitution, which, with 742 amendments, was described by Mr. Guin as the world's longest.

But the proposal met trouble after it was changed to delete yet more constitutional language, adopted in 1956, two years after Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court decision requiring desegregation of public schools. That language prohibited "recognizing any right to education or training at public expense."

Mr. Guin said his researchers had found that the 1956 provision was intended to protect school districts that were threatening to shut down in response to the Brown decision, their white former students sent by parents instead to private schools.

Opponents of the new ballot initiative said deleting this latter provision would lead to court-imposed education taxes or thorny lawsuits demanding equal financing among schools. Michael Ciamarra, vice president of the conservative Alabama Policy Institute and author of the bill that became the initial proposal, withdrew his support for the amendment, saying it had been "hijacked" with the extra deletion.

Vocal opponents of the amendment included Roy S. Moore, who in 2003 lost his seat as the state's chief justice for refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building, and his former legal adviser Tom Parker. Mr. Parker, who won election to the Supreme Court last week, was supported by the pro-secession Alabama League of the South and at one point handed out small Confederate flags.

Do you suppose at any point in the ten commandments battle Judge Moore took the time to read them?

Probably not. He had those television lights in his eyes.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Poor Alabama - literally. I have been following and posting on the Judge Moore nonsense and its relationship to D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge "ministry" - as in "ministry of disinformation." I think the plan after November 2nd is to spread Alabama's magic nation wide. I know I'm praying.

http://guerrilladove.blogspot.com/