Yet now we have a statue of her representing the state in Statuary Hall that will be dedicated next week. Rep. Parker Griffith (BD- AL) honored her today with a speech. She's on the official Alabama quarter!
Of course we also hate Former President Jimmy Carter, perhaps the most religious president in recent history.
Perhaps the welcome signs at the state line should read
I saw this new advertising scheme for the first time in Desperate Housewives on Sunday...the use of storyline-like characters in a commercial that is all-but seamlessly inserted into the show, tricking viewers into watching it. A friend who saw the commercial inserted into Heroes told me he thought it was a new character being introduced to fans of the show! Just the kind of confusion producers worry about. Advertisers and Networks are desperate too...desperate to keep those eyeballs on the screen during commercial breaks.
It's a battle as old as TV. How do we stop 'em from using the commercial breaks to run to the kitchen or the bathroom?
Of course it can backfire on 'em too. The NBC/GE researcher quoted in the story says "the rules have changed and we have to change with them." But the new-media rules have changed in another way too. If enough viewers were to promise to never to buy from advertisers who use the technique, it would end overnight. Take the pledge? Repost this? Pass it on?
And on the inhabited Island, they would spot Adamstown, which has to be the most remote place on the planet. If the name sounds familiar, here's why: Just about the entire population of fifty is related to the seamen who rebelled against Captain Bligh on the HMS Bounty.
Yes, this tiny speck of land in the middle of a half under-water globe is the place they inhabited with some Tahitian women they abducted. It is the least populated jurisdiction in the world, though not really a sovereign nation. They speak English, and, thanks to satellites, are even connected to the Internet now. Their (very expensive) phone calling code is 64. It really is a small, small world after all.
Oh..Samoa...it's about 2,500 miles away from Adamstown, and about the same distance from Hawaii. If you want to visit the middle of nowhere, the Pitcarin Islands would be a great destination.
There was another connection with General Bailey that I found recently: she had served here in Alabama, during WWII, teaching English to the French pilots who were training at Craig Field in Selma, Alabama. Those who died during the training are buried here in Montgomery, and each year the French Consulate in Atlanta comes over to honor them. And she was Deputy Coommander of the training Center at Ft. McClellan near Anniston in 1970.
After two years almost continuously at sea, the CSS Alabama was starting to show her age. In June of 1865, she sailed into the harbor at Cherbourg, France, to seek repairs and coal. During the war, technology had improved, and so her arrival was quickly announced to The U.S.S. Kersarge, a battleship that soon arrived to stand guard at the mouth of the harbor. Despite the condition of his ship, Semmes sent a message through consular channels that he would gladly fight the Yankee:
"I desire to say to the U. S. consul that my intention is to fight the Kearsarge as soon as I can make the necessary arrangements. I hope these will not detain me more than until to-morrow evening, or after the morrow morning at furthest. I beg she will not depart before I am ready to go out."
“The pirate Alabama has at long last gone to the bottom of the sea. After a bloody and lurid career…she has been annihilated on the very first occasion* that one of our-ships-of-war was enabled to get an opportunity to measure metal with her.” [The New York Times, July 6, 1964] (*The Times was conveniently forgetting the U.S.S. Hatteras, which lay on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico off Galveston, courtesy the guns of the Alabama.) Southern papers mourned her loss, while saluting her bravery: “It is safe to say The Alabama has paid for herself five hundred times. She could afford to die,” offered one Richmond editorial writer.
I thoroughly enjoyed writing (and recording) these posts, and I hope you enjoyed reading them. Perhaps some day the documentary Bob and I planned will come about. In the meantime another book in what seems to be a never-ending stream of volumes about The CSS Alabama, the war, and the Confederate Navy has been published. Read about "The Most Perfect Cruiser" here on the British website "When Liverpool Was Dixie".
And Please do comment on the series, and let me know where you live!]
Do a google news search under the word "Alabama".
The Pentagon is trying for a third time to select a company to build refueling tankers...a contract worth tens of billions of dollars over the life of the contract. The NY Times quotes Alabama Senator Richard Shelby (where does he stand on the college loan bill???) as saying the devil's in the details and he will study the new bid announcement to make sure it favors the EADS team that will build in Mobile....er, I mean that it presents a fair playing field for all involved. Shelby obviously wants the planes built in Mobile, as Senators from other states may favor the Boeing proposal. May the best and most fiscally responsible proposal win!
The above graphic comes from the Washington Monthly's Steve Benen column. The data it was created from is credited to the Daily Kos...and it appears to be a true poll, not a self-selected "internet poll". Is the South really that out of step with the rest of America? Or is it America that is out of step with the South?
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has added another Alabama Power ash pond to the list of those with a high hazard potential. It's a pond at the Gorgas Steam Plant* in Parrish in Jefferson County, one of six AlaPowCo coal fired plants in the state. The TVA has two.
Listing the ash pond means there could be significant damage if the pond earthen walls were to break. The listing does not mean there is significant risk of those walls actually breaking.
The focus on ash ponds by the Feds comes after a massive ash spill in Tennessee in December (pictured at the top of this posting). Ash from that spill is being transported to a commercial landfill just outside Uniontown in Perry County, Alabama. That process was the subject of a report I filed for WBHM Radio in Birmingham. Last week the EPA announced it would write new rules by 2012 regarding coal ash retention at power plants.
The EarthJustice group posted first word of the Gorgas Plant status being changed.
Yesterday was Sunday, the only day of the week I still have The Montgomery Advertiser delivered.
And I forgot.
Some of it can be chalked up to the weird schedule I've been keeping. I get up at O'Dark O' Clock to anchor "CBS 8 This Morning" starting at 6:00am each weekday. I've been trying to more or less keep the same schedule on weekends, so each Monday doesn't feel like hitting a brick wall. So I was awake long before the paper was delivered yesterday. Then I went back for some more sleep, then I got up again...so a crazy schedule. I had already watched all of CBS Sunday Morning, and was back online again before I remembered that there was a newspaper sitting at the front door. 10:00am! During the early morning hours I had been on and off the net...keeping an eye on the big stories of the night and morning, so I felt no real need for the paper.
Sigh.
Reading the paper with a cup of coffee used to be a significant part of my Sunday. Now here it was 10:00am and I had forgotten. I determined to write yet another MMMM about the end of newspapers as we knew them.
I kinda sheepishly went to the porch and retrieved the paper, looking to see if any neighbors would spot my tardiness. None did.
I am happy to report it was well worth the trip!
There on the front page, Markeshia Ricks had a piece about why there's so much campaigning going on for an election that's a year off. Inside on page C-1, Sebastian Kitchen wrote about candidate Bradley Byrne's quest for supporters in his GOP race for Governor. And back on the front page, Kim Klass interviewed Montgomery men who hire prostitutes, and were willing to talk about it! Pictures and all! (I do wish she had including the controversy over the paper and TV stations showing the mug shots of men accused...not convicted..of soliciting a prostitute, but that's literally another story.) There was a nice feature in section D about a Montgomery artist doing a huge mural for a New York City apartment building project, and coupons, of course. Usually enough to justify the cost of the paper.
My faith in newspapers has been renewed. Albeit a touch late in the day.
[PLUS: Watch the video on this site of a FOX Network TV producer encouraging a crowd to yell an shout as the reporter she's working with does his report. Amazing. Thanks to Steve Sanders for pointing it out to me.]
[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]
a) Superman's girlfriend in Smallville is assigned to cover a fashion show.
b) The cousin of the main bloodsucker in the Vampire Diaries trying to get close to some fresh flesh.
c) The girls in Gossip Girl convincing friends to strip for a charity calendar.
d) The tenants at Melrose Place try to help one of their neighbors who is being evicted by putting on a fashion show?
As far as I know, it's none of the above..I just made up those scenarios. Add in Supernatural or some new ones, One Tree Hill or Beautiful Life, and the CW is probably doing more young handsome and pretty white actors than all of the old studios combined. Think Young Hollywood Stimulus Program.
This is right-wing populism in the classic American style, as inchoate and paranoid as that hawked by Father Coughlin during the Great Depression and George Wallace in the late 1960s. Wallace is most remembered for his racism, but he, like Beck, also played on the class and cultural resentment of those sharing his view that there wasn’t “a dime’s worth of difference” between the two parties.The potential for violence is longer an elephant in the room. Now everyone seems to be talking and writing about the danger in the air now, and the danger in Dallas when Kennedy was assassinated...though Oswald was a communistphile. And now the net and the other massive-media that have come along since 1963 act as a giant megaphone for individual rant-crazed nuts. I remember a friend who last year was reluctant to vote for then-candidate Obama because of that same fear for his safety. Now President Obama he has the entire secret service as a full-time security force. And there may be more fear than before. In his column, Rich says Joe Wilson's shouted insult to the President was akin to yelling "fire" in a crowded theater...the classic case that's cited as an example of when it is OK to ban certain speech. He doesn't follow through though, he doesn't suggest Beck be muzzled. And anyway, that's not possible. There will always be some media willing to give voice to somebody who's been tossed by the MSM like FOX, advertisers or no advertisers.
The new ship, The CSS Alabama, turned out to be a great investment for The South. Between September 5th and the end of that month, The CSS Alabama took and burned ten Yankee ships valued at more than the cost to build her! Some were whalers, their captains shocked to learn that they had become prisoners of war. While Semmes had to chase a few, two actually sailed towards the Alabama, believing her to be a U.S. ship sent to protect them from raiders, like the mysterious and dangerous Alabama they had been hearing about!
In New York and Boston, the country‘s two major foreign shipping centers, the reaction to those first ship burnings was immediate. Indignant editorials in the city papers demanded the U.S. Navy do something to protect the merchant marine and catch The Alabama!
“Can one vessel do as she pleases on the high seas, as we with all our resources of ships, guns, men and money, be unable to prevent it? The people ask the question, How long is this to last? [The New York Herald. November 3, 1862, quoted in Wolf of The Deep, by Stephen Fox.] “What if some fine morning she should make her appearance off Boston Light? Have we anything with which to stop her?” [The Boston Post, October 11, 1862, quoted in Wolf of The Deep, by Stephen Fox]
The New York Chamber of Commerce spread the story that Semmes burned ships at night to attract other ships to plunder. The chamber warned:
The Chamber was especially indignant about the The Brilliant, the first New York City based ship to be taken and burned by Semmes, who later wrote“The sight of a burning ship could no longer be considered a call to aid but a signal to steer clear of potential pirates...in view of this atrocity, it is the duty of this chamber to announce, for the information of all who are interested in the safety of human life--the life of ship-wrecked passengers and crews--that henceforth the light of a burning ship at sea will become to the American sailor the signal that lures to destruction; and will not be, as in times past, the beacon to guide the generous and intrepid mariner to the rescue of the unfortunate."
“...her destruction must have disappointed a good many holders of bills of exchange drawn against her cargo ... for the ship alone and the freight-moneys which they lost by her destruction [came] to the amount of $93,000. The cargo was probably even more valuable than the ship.”
[ABOVE: A newspaper clipping Semmes attached to his logbook in October of 1862. It tells of The New York City Chamber of Commerce demanding action against The "pirate" Semmes and his CSS Alabama. Semmes obtained valuable information from the newspapers he found on ships he seized. It was perhaps the first war in which mass media played a significant role. Semmes also read about the movement of northern ships from the papers.]
[NOTE: A remote control model of the CSS Alabama can be seen in this YouTube video. The stack is not visible, so I will presume it is in the below-decks position.]
The South might not have had factories and armories to match the North, but Confederate Navy Secretary Mallory and Semmes believed ships like the Alabama and The Florida, traveling alone, could interfere with Northern shipping to the point that it could make a difference in the war itself by inflicting damage and by forcing the North to divert some ships assigned to blockade duty in Southern ports to go after the raiders. Within weeks of Semmes first Sumter raids, insurance companies were boosting rates, and ships were being sold to foreign firms to put them under a flag that would not likely to make them a target. In October of 1862, Semmes was 250 miles away from the U.S. East Coast. He pointed the Alabama toward New York City for his planned attack on Manhattan. Along the way he took some ships. On the 23rd it was the New York based Lafayette, headed to Belfast with grain. The Captain was brought before Semmes. He presented a British consular certificate, suggesting to Semmes it should protect him and his ship, but the sea lawyer would have none of it. He wrote in his journal: “New Yorkers are getting smart, but it won’t save it. It’s a damned hatched up mess.”
He burned The Lafayette. On the 28th The Alabama took the Lauretta, and on the 29th, The Baron De Castile, an old vessel not worth much of anything. Semmes put the prisoners from the burned ships onto it and sent it into New York Harbor with a sarcastic message for the New York Chamber of Commerce President: …thanking him for "the complementary resolutions he had passed in regard to The Alabama.”
In his book Service Afloat, he later wrote " There must have been a merry mess in the cabin of the Baron that night, as there were the masters and mates of three burned ships. New York was " all agog " when the Baron arrived, and there was other racing and chasing after the "pirate," as I afterward learned."But that was as close to attacking New York City as Semmes would get. The ship had been damaged during a run-in with a hurricane some weeks before, and the chief engineer delivered even worse news: they were low on coal. Alabama Master’s mate George Fullam wrote in his log:
“We were considerably startled and annoyed. To astonish the enemy in New York harbor, to destroy their vessels in their own waters, had been the darling wish of all on board.”
It was not to be. Semmes couldn't risk depending on sail alone to make a quick escape from the inner New York Harbor. He headed off to find coal, always a problem because of the Northern blockage of Southern ports and the supposed neutrality of many other countries. At the same time, the hunt for The Alabama was heating up. On October 30th, an Assistant Secretary of The U.S. Navy wrote in his journal about a reward:
"The [Navy] Department has published that it will give $500,000 for the capture and delivery to it of that vessel (the Alabama), or $300,000 if she is destroyed.….”
But Semmes had just begun. The CSS Alabama would travel the seas for another eight months, taking 44 more prizes, including the warship The USS Hattaras just off Galveston Texas, the first yardarm fight between steamships at sea, and the only instance during the war of a Confederate vessel sinking a U.S. Navy ship. Near North Island in East India, on November 11th, 1863, he took The Contest, a beautiful clipper ship based in New York. Wrote one of the Alabama’s officers:
”...we had never taken so fine a vessel. She was a revelation of symmetry, a very racehorse. A sacrilege, almost a desecration to destroy so perfect a specimen of man’s handiwork…”They burned her nonetheless.
[ADDENDUM: The CSS Alabama traveled as far as current day Vietnam. During her visits to South Africa, she created such a stir that a song was written in her honor, a song still sung today: '"Daar Kom die Alibama'". Also, the sea shanty Roll Alabama, Roll has been performed by numerous groups..one of them The Irish Breakdown, which you can hear on YouTube.
The original plans to the Ship are part of the Hoole Collection at the University of Alabama.] [NEXT: Semmes sails and steams and burns his way across the seas. The Alabama comes to a spectacular end off the coast of France! The conclusion of this series will be posted next Sunday, September 27th, the 200th anniversary of Raphael Semmes birth.]
"They received 44,000 proposals and 1.4 million votes for those proposals...yet in the middle of two wars and an economic meltdown, the highest ranking idea was to legalize marijuana."That's the exact same thing that happened to Rep. Davis in his Democratic campaign for Governor. His poll was hijacked by pro-legalization forces who got enough people to vote to swing the results their way. The Obama Camp published the results, but quietly. The Davis camp just ignored the pro-marijuana legalization votes and focused on other issues that were proposed. Online is a wild place, with lots of traps and dangerous curves. Proceed with caution!
"Ask yourselves whether another government takeover is what we need right now," said Minnesota Rep. John Kline, senior Republican on the Education Committee.So there's a middlebankerman costing us billions, and they oppose removing him? Anyone know if Alabama's own Senators Shelby and Sessions will support it? Senator Shelby serves on the Senate Banking Committee...used to be the chair. But a search of his website under the term "student loan" turns up nada. zilch. zero.
With the curbside recycling program ending in Montgomery*---a casualty of the new city budget---I found this N.Y. story about tracking devices put on pieces of trash rather interesting. Where will the coffee cup and bookshelf and stuff really go? If the trackers survive and aren't crushed, we may know a bit more of where the stuff we toss ends up. 
[UPDATE: Notices were included with the water bills. Now you can drop off your recycling goods at seven schools on two Saturdays a month. But no plastic anymore.]
[UPDATE: A news release from the EPA on 9/ suggests recycling programs can even play a roll in reducing global warming...now there's an argument that will probably have some politicians doing the opposite! Time to shut down all recycling!]
The Birmingham News reports this afternoon that Mayor Larry Langford has ordered city hall closed tomorrow, with a thorough disinfection of the building to be done, because a worker had the flu.
Mr. Mayor, and anyone else contemplating similar action. Please read the word from the CDC:
"CDC does not believe any additional disinfection of environmental surfaces beyond the recommended routine cleaning is required."
and, also from the CDC:
Contamination & Cleaning
Q. How long can influenza virus remain viable on objects (such as books and doorknobs)?A. Studies have shown that influenza virus can survive on environmental surfaces and can infect a person for 2 to 8 hours after being deposited on the surface.
Eight Hours!!!! So, simply sending folks home overnight is enough! The virus will not live long enough to be there between the end of one work day and the start of the next! Send the sick people home...that's the key here.
Save the sanitation money for some other cause, unless there's a cleaning company just desperately in need of the contract or something...or you just want to make a public show of doing something.
The problem is...it's an old photo, not a photo of the tea party protests this past weekend, which was considerably smaller. The PolticFact.com website has the full story about the wrong photo being used.
...about Alabama. It's probably in a new book printed by The University of Alabama Press and compiled by the Alabama Department of Archives and History. The 600+ page volume is similar to books produced by other states, and is being used as a giveaway to industrial prospects by the Governor's office. (Bob Riley gets a front cover credit for writing a foreword. He took hot-off-the-presses copies with him on his current trip to Europe.)
New South Books publisher Randall Williams edited the work.
There are pages and pages of information about elected officials and heads of departments in state government, including their pictures.
The state's history is told: calling George Wallace an "exploiter"; citing Guy Hunt's election as the first Republican since Reconstruction (but not mentioning his removal from office for misuse of funds); mentioning Don Siegelman just once, in reference to his effort to bring Mercedes and Hyundai to Alabama, with nothing said about his conviction and jailing. There's even a picture of President Barack Obama at the Edmund Pettis Bridge Reenactment in 2008, although Alabama voted more for John McCain than virtually any other state.
Publisher Williams says it is a "kind History" of the state, and that since it is being used to give away to potential industrial prospects, it does not "dodge the negative history of the state, but doesn't dwell on it either". He says the project was conceived and launched well before today's economic climate, so whether a new edition will be published after next year's elections, when hundreds of new people are elected or appointed, making the book outdated, is anyone's guess.
(Presidential Press Secretary) Robert Hughes sharply criticized the news media for "reporting [that] was based on listening to a police scanner" and was not "verified" before being broadcast.Yea, that's about it. The incident happened on Friday in D.C. during the annual ceremonies commemorating 9-11. President Obama was nearby. The Coast Guard was conducting a training exercise (perhaps not the best choice of a date to do so, but that's another story), a voice on the the police radio goes "bang, bang!", simulating gunfire, and that's enough to get some assignment desk person or producer to manufacture it all into a story on two major cable networks. Whew. Read the Washington Post's story here. The event caused some soul-searching among journalism organizations...as it should! Virtually all newsrooms monitor police scanners..they are part of the general ambiance of the news environment*. Yet in some cities, police have started scrambling their radio traffic. Orlando started early last year. And I understand Montgomery, Alabama will start soon. There are legitimate reasons to scramble, and legitimate journalistic concerns too...but I kinda wish the U.S. Coast Guard had scrambled it's signals Friday morning. And I'll bet CNN does too. And FOX too, which followed CNN into the abyss. FOX said on air it had "learned" about the Coast Guard shooting at a private boat. Wonder who their teacher was? [*ADDENDUM: One of the first impressions I had of the APT newsroom when I arrived for the job interview in 1997 was how utterly quiet it was. The absence of a police scanner was a part of that quiet (Not too much ambulance chasing going in back then.) So was the lack of yelling and screaming, but that's another story.]
Whatever the reason:
---The birthers insist he's not a citizen? Silence.
---Protesters brand him a Hitler with "death panels"? Silence. ---A plan to kill health care reform so Obama himself will fail? Silence. ---And good old Confederate Joe Wilson shouts out. Silence. In her column today in the N.Y. Times, Maureen Dowd says all that was missing from Wilson's loud objection was one word. "Boy". If he had used it, would that have rallied the troops? [*NOTE: Jesse Jackson was a guest on MSNBC on Friday, and he was asked about race being a factor in the continued assault on Obama, but even he seemed subdued.]
The Confederate Captain goes to sea: SIR: I submit for your consideration the attack of New York by the Virginia. Can the Virginia steam to New York and attack and burn the city? She can, I doubt not, pass Old Point safely, and in good weather with a smooth sea could doubtless go to New York. Once in the bay she could shell and burn the city and the shipping. Such an event would eclipse all the glories of the combats of the sea, would place every man in it pre-eminently high, and would strike a blow from which the enemy could never recover. Peace would inevitably follow. Bankers would withdraw their capital from the city. The Brooklyn Navy Yard and its magazines and all the lower part of the city its magazines and all the lower part of the city would be destroyed, and such an event, by a single ship, would do more to achieve our immediate independence than would the results of many campaigns. Can the ship go there? Please give me your views.
“...would have become, from that moment, a pirate.” Yet about both ships he commanded, Semmes wrote “I had not half a dozen Southern men…most were foreign born”. There were even “A few Yankees on board,“ he added.
The Confederates paid with cotton credits. Britain was officially neutral in the war, and it would be a violation of that neutrality for English companies to build warships for the South. The shipbuilders argued that the vessels were launched without any armament, and thus were not military craft. But it was clear from their designs that the vessels were not built for fishing, shipping or pleasure. Their superstructure featured openings for the cannons that would be added once the craft left English waters. An American consul, Thomas Dudley, called the unarmed ships “embryonic warships”, but the British Government looked the other way.
After the war, England would pay heavily for allowing the ships to be built. The international court decision in 1872 known as the “Alabama Claims” would require Britain to pay $15.5 Million to the U.S. for damages caused by the Alabama and other raiders. Forced to abandon the CSS Sumter in Gibraltar, Semmes began his trip back home. But while waiting in Nassau to catch a blockade runner home, he received a telegram ordering him to report to Liverpool. A new ship awaited him, a 200 foot warship built with speed and stealth in mind. She was powered by both a full rigging of sail and a coal-powered steam engine. For her time, the ship was high-tech. The propeller could be lifted out of the water into a well, preventing it from slowing the vessel when she was under sail. There was a condenser device to provide fresh water for the crew. The coal holds were positioned around the engine to protect it from shells. And the smokestack could be lowered into the deck, making it more difficult to identify the ship from a distance.
By the time Semmes got to England, the new ship had sailed to the Azores to be fitted with the cannons and supplies that would transform her into a true weapon of war. When he caught up with it, Semmes proclaimed the ship “as fine a vessel as ever floated.”
At the shipyard, she had been called "The Enrica" (a foreign sounding name to add to the fantasy that she had nothing to do with the U.S. Civil War) and "The 290" (she was the 290th hull built by The Laird Company). But once Semmes recruited and sworn in a crew of just over one-hundred, he christened her as The CSS Alabama on August 24, 1862. The captain and his new crew quickly turned to the business of commerce raiding.
[ADDENDUM: Another part of Semmes lore is the appearance of a comet, "a shooting star" the first night the CSS Sumter went raiding, and the first night Semmes took command of the Alabama as well! Read about it on the blog we created as a companion to the documentary that was shelved.]
* This was apparently a common practice on both sides during the war and before.
[NEXT: in Part Three, to be posted Sunday, September 20th, The CSS Alabama burns its way across the seas as the Yankees fume. He targets his enemies in New York City.]
[PHOTO: Some of the many CSS Alabama models that are part of the collections at The Museum of Mobile.]
Birmingham News Washington Correspondent, Sean Reilly, reports funding in next year's budget for a U.S. Navy ship being built in Mobile has been eliminated by a Senate committee. The "littoral"* ships are designed for relatively shallow water. The one pictured in The USS Independence, built in Mobile by a General Dynamics consortium. There was a competition for the contract. The other competitor is Lockheed-Martin, which came up with a much more conventional looking craft. Now there will be a battle with the House over the future of the ships. 
The Alabama Supreme Court has upheld the Legislature's ban on sex toys. On the positive side, kudos to the lawmakers. It may be one of those times when they managed to write a law that does withstand constitutional challenge.
On the other hand...let's see how we're doing so far this Summer: the ABC Board bans a wine label based on an1800's poster because it shows too much skin, and now the highest court in the state rejects a store's argument against the part of the state obscenity law that bans stores selling sex toys and such from being located too close to a school or a church.
Are we on a PR roll, or what?
Republican Attorney General Troy King should be pleased with the decision. He's been defending the legislature's ban for five years now. Maybe he'll use it in some of his re-election ads.
