| A teacher at Georgia’s Hephzibah High School has been placed on administrative leave after suggesting to students that people with Confederate Flag bumper stickers might be inclined to marry their siblings.
The unidentified teacher projected the image of a Confederate Flag on the classroom whiteboard during a PowerPoint presentation. The slide described the Confederate Flag as “a sticker you put on the back of your pickup truck to announce that you intend to marry your sister.” The text continued on with the words, “Think of it like a white trash ‘Save The Date’ card.”
Melissa Fuller, a mother of one of the students, claimed her daughter found the message offensive and immediately sent her a message of the image. Fuller, herself incensed, reposted the image on Facebook. The Facebook post immediately got over 150 comments, most of them from fellow angry parents.
The City of Charlottesville Will Appeal Loss of UDC Lawsuit
The Daily Progress reports the City Council on Monday night authorized the city attorney to appeal once a judge delivers his final ruling against removing statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
Circuit Court Judge Richard Moore ruled last month that monuments don’t send a racially discriminatory message. He also issued a permanent injunction preventing the city from removing the statues.
A group of residents led by the UDC sued the city, citing a state law that protects war memorials. The only outstanding issue is their request for more than $600,000 in attorneys’ fees. A hearing is scheduled for Oct. 15.
LOUISIANA UDC TO FILE ANOTHER LAWSUIT
The United Daughters of the Confederacy has already vowed to keep fighting the removal of the Confederate monument outside the Caddo Parish Courthouse, even after the Supreme Court declined to review their case.
Now, an attorney for the local chapter of the UDC has confirmed plans to file another lawsuit in hopes of putting a stop to an order giving them until November 26 to move it.
UDC Attorney Dave Knadler said the suit will argue, among other things, that the Louisiana statute cited in the Caddo Commission’s August 29 notice to remove the monument does not apply because the parish does not own the land: “We still claim the land underneath the monument. The federal court, what it ruled was we had insufficient proof to show that we owned the land underneath the monument, but that’s all.”
The suit filed in 2017 by the UDC suit was thrown out by a federal judge in Monroe last year, a decision that was later upheld by a federal appeals court.
Knadler also reiterated the group’s concerns about moving the monument: “It’s impossible to move, it’s very fragile. It’ll fall apart if we do that. Basically, unless it can be moved in one piece, it’s basically demolishing the monument.”
IN ANOTHER APPEAL
Judges for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments Tuesday morning in the latest effort to counter the University of Texas’ removal of several Confederate statues.
We reported back in 2017 when UT President Gregory L. Fenves authorized the removal of statues of Confederate figures – Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston and John Reagan – along with Gov. James Stephen Hogg from the UT South Mall. The statues of Lee, Johnston and Reagan were placed in storage; Hogg was later relocated to another spot on campus.
Days after the statues’ removal, members of the Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans filed a lawsuit against Fenves. The organization’s named plaintiffs, David McMahon and Steven Littlefield, argued that the removal of the statues was an illegal restriction of political speech and a breach of agreement with the estate of Maj. George Washington Littlefield, who donated the statues in 1921. The lawsuit argued the university agreed at that time the statues would remain as promotion of a “Southern understanding of the Civil War” on UT’s campus.
“In removing the statues, Pres. Fenves has breached the University’s long-standing promotion of American history from the Southern perspective that it promised to its generous donor, Maj. George Washington Littlefield,” the lawsuit said.
Western District U.S. Court Judge Lee Yeakel dismissed the case in late June 2018, stating that the Sons of Confederate Veterans lacked standing, but he did not comment on whether the plaintiffs had a valid argument under the First Amendment.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans appealed Yeakel’s decision to the 5th Circuit, where they presented oral arguments for why the removal was a violation of federal free speech laws. The case was consolidated with a similar lawsuit that originated in San Antonio where two residents and the Sons of Confederate Veterans sued city leaders for making plans to remove a Confederate monument in Travis Park.
Kirk Lyons, the attorney representing the plaintiffs in both cases, told the American-Statesman on Tuesday he was arguing for standing, which lower courts had denied, saying the Sons of Confederate Veterans couldn’t prove any injury from the statues’ removal. He said his clients do have standing because the removal of Confederate monuments injures their rights to free speech. The effort is part of what Lyons believes is a national agenda to dishonor Confederate history and quiet conservatives.
“If you took every offensive monument out of Europe, their tourist industry would collapse,” Lyons said. “These people are mentally unstable.”
After Tuesday’s oral arguments, Texas Attorney General and closet liberal RINO scalywag Ken Paxton who fast-tracked the removal of other Confederate monuments issued a statement saying the court should dismiss the suit.
MARYLAND TO BUTCHER MONUMENT
A Maryland panel has voted to remove a logo that includes a Confederate Flag from a plaque in Maryland’s Capitol that honors Union and Confederate soldiers, but the state is keeping the plaque.
The State House Trust voted 3-1 by email to spend more than $2,400 to remove the logo, which includes a Confederate flag and a U.S. flag, and overlay it with a cast image of the Maryland state flag.
Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller and Laura Mears of the Maryland Historical Trust voted for the change and to keep the plaque.
Maryland House Speaker Adrienne Jones, the state’s first black speaker, supported removing the entire plaque and voted against the plan.
NON-HERITAGE NEWS AFFECTING THE SOUTHLAND:
Secretary of Homeland Security, Kevin McAleenan, was scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the Migration Policy Institute’s annual conference on law and immigration policy.
Police and security at Georgetown University refused to remove violent protestors who ultimately succeeded in removing the Secretary from the event.
PRESIDENT CARTER IS BACK TO BUSINESS
Despite taking a fall on Sunday at his home in Georgia while dressing for church, he required 14 stitches, the former President made it to the opening ceremony of this week’s Habitat for Humanity event in Nashville, Tennessee.
He had a bandage over his eye and was heavily bruised. But he does not appear to have suffered any permanent injury.
8 YEARS OF TAX RETURNS
Judge Victor Marrero rejected President Trump’s challenge to the release of his tax returns, saying he cannot endorse such a “categorical and limitless assertion of presidential immunity from judicial process.” The President’s lawyers have already filed an “emergency appeal.”
BROKEN DOWN AGAIN
North Korea and US nuclear talks resumed in Sweden. The BBC reports that the talks broke down in less than a day.
SCOTUS TO REVIEW ROE V WADE
The US Supreme Court announced that it will hear an abortion case that challenges Louisiana’s clinic shutdown law.
YOU’RE FIRED
Marie Yovanovitch, US Ambassador to Ukraine, was fired by President Trump because she was blocking the Ukrainian government’s probe of Joe Biden and bad-mouthing her boss and other US government officials to leaders in Ukraine.
HILLARY CLINTON TWEETED ON OCT. 4
“If the impeachment provision in the Constitution of the United States will not reach the offenses charged here, then perhaps that 18th-century Constitution should be abandoned to a 20th-century paper shredder!”
NY TIMES REPORTED ON WEDNESDAY
That for the first time, Joe Biden called for the impeachment of the President.
DNA COLLECTION ORDERED BY PRESIDENT TRUMP
A Department of Homeland Security official confirmed that the agency is working with the Department of Justice to start collecting DNA samples from detained migrants for entry into a national criminal database. |
