Reasons To Hate Republicans

Just in the case you’ve not figured it out by now, I loathe Republicans. They have – as history has demonstrated, time,  and time, again – led America down primrose paths of destruction, while benefiting their wealthy corporate donors and clientele.

I purposely do NOT use the word “constituent” in that sentence, precisely because when someone pays a person to do their bidding – it is a Master/Servant relationship, in which someone who is paid to render services, who otherwise would not – that’s what it is, a pay-for-play quid pro quo corruption of democratic representation.

And, to be absolutely certain, I am neither a sycophant for Democrats – and there are some corrupt ones, who would better be identified as “Republican Lite,” for they do not have The People’s best interests at heart, and like Republicans, do their Corporate Masters’ bidding.

The GOP is no longer “the party of Lincoln,” and hasn’t been for well over 100 years – probably more like 150. Republicans have been the source and cause of practically every scandal and corruption which has harmed the United States, and its people.

Republicans gave us The Great Depression.

Democrats saved not only the United States, but the world as well, from the ravages of the Great Depression.

And, ever since, Republicans have been trying to TEAR DOWN, and DESTROY every vestige of public policy, law, or governmental agency which benefits The People.

For example, again, hearkening back to

Racism Rampant In The South

Rampant racism continues in our United States, especially and particularly in the South.

Or, so it seems.

One would’ve hoped for “a more perfect union,” especially by now.

But, that’s progress, and “progress” is a dirty word to many – especially to Southerners – whose loathsome contempt of, and resistance to change is as ignobly infamous as their Lost Cause (of the Confederacy) following defeat in our nation’s Civil War.

Curtis Flowers was tried for the SAME crime SIX times in Mississippi. If that doesn’t violate the intent of the “Double Jeopardy” clause of the Constitution, I don’t know what does. (Image from Mississippi Department of Corrections.)

Synopsis: A Mississippi Death Row inmate was prosecuted SIX times for the SAME crime by a prosecutor with a history of racial bias in jury selection.

The case was SO egregious, that the sole, long-silent Southerner, and only Black SCOTUS Justice, Clarence Thomas, who has for many years maintained literal silence on the bench, asked a question – the last question he asked was THREE YEARS AGO.

NPR wrote that arguments before the SCOTUS Justices in this case were “more passionate and fact-filled than usual.” (SCOTUS case transcript linked above, and here: SCOTUS case Curtis Giovanni Flowers v Mississippi 17-9572)

The case the Justices heard Wednesday, 20 March 2019, involved the conduct of Montgomery County District Attorney Doug Evans, in the tiny town of Winona, Mississippi, and his relentless pursuit of a conviction of Curtis Flowers.

With a population well under 5000, Winona is practically a village, and of the modestly-sized tiny town, NPR wrote that it’s a place “where everybody knows everybody.”

Curtis Giovanni Flowers is a black man who had NO prior arrests or convictions before he was arrested and accused of a quadruple murder in the town.

After Flowers’ arrest, he was

The Awesome Power Of Love

On this day in 1945, humans unleashed a power so deadly that we’ve spent decades trying to prevent its use in warfare again. Here’s how President Harry S. Truman described the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in a press release sent out 16 hours after the attack: “It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.” Jesus, too, harnessed the power of the universe, but His energy was used to

How can you know if you’re in an Emotionally Abusive Relationship?

Just because there’s no physical violence, does that mean a relationship isn’t abusive?

No.

The adage, “can’t see the forest for the trees” is particularly true in emotionally abusive relationships, and it’s not uncommon for men and women in them to be unable to identify the relationship as being abusive.

Why is that?

It goes back to 1973 and an unsuccessful bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden in which two perpetrators – both repeat offender prisoners – took four hostages, three women and one man. Over the six days they were held, the hostages began to identify and sympathize with their captors.

Hostages in the Norrmalmstorg Kreditbanken bank vault, Stockholm, Sweden. The 1973 robbery gave rise to the term “Stockholm Syndrome” which characterized a scenario in which captives sympathized with their captors.

As the standoff was ending, police called for the hostages to come out first, but the four captives – who protected their abductors to the very end – refused. One female hostage, 23-year old Kristin Enmark, called out, “No, Jan and Clark go first—you’ll gun them down if we do! We want to leave with the robber!”

When police seized the gunmen, two female hostages cried sympathetically, “Don’t hurt them – they didn’t harm us!”

When interviewed by investigators and others following the crisis’ conclusion, the hostages reported fearing Law Enforcement Officers’ rescue effort attempts, and felt their captors were protecting them from harm. The bonds formed during that stand-off had become so strong that there were reports of one female hostage who had been engaged to be married to one of the kidnappers – which was later discovered to be false, though it is true that one hostage developed a Legal Defense Fund to help pay the perpetrators’ criminal defense costs.

Researcher Ian K.Mackenzie wrote
in “Journal For Police Crisis Negotiations”
that Stockholm Syndrome consisted of:
“strong emotional ties that develop between two persons
where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other.”

Psychological researchers utilizing the FBI’s Hostage Barricade Database System (HOBAS) – the only entity that compiles national statistics on crisis incidents (hostage, barricade, and/or suicide) which are used in research and decision making – found that

Right Wing Political Religious Zealots

If Right Wing Religious Zealots get total political control, we could have this here in Gilead… er, the good ‘ol USA!

Watch “The Handmaid’s Tale“ on Hulu!
https://www.hulu.com/the-handmaids-tale

Indonesian men caned for gay sex in Aceh

Two men have been caned 83 times each in the Indonesian province of Aceh after being caught having sex. The men stood on stage in white gowns praying while a team of hooded men lashed their backs with a cane. The pair, aged 20 and 23, were found in bed together by vigilantes who entered their private accommodation in March. They have not been identified. Gay sex is not illegal in most of Indonesia but it is in Aceh, the only province which exercises Islamic law. It is the first time gay men have been caned under Sharia law in the province. The punishment was delivered outside a mosque in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-39996224

Public caning, Dover, Delaware, 1910.

A respondent wrote: “Yeah! and we want to

Jeff Sessions: Suitable Or Not For United States Attorney General?

Is Republican Alabama Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III suitable to be United States Attorney General?

Some say “yes,” others say “no.”

Let’s examine his record – it should speak for itself.
The legal term for that concept is “res ipsa loquitur.”

1.) Sessions said of the SCOTUS decision in Shelby County v. Holder (570 U.S.___(2013)), an Alabama-based case which gutted important parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that “Shelby County has never had a history of denying voters and certainly not now,” even though Shelby County’s history of discrimination is well-documented and ongoing when in 2008 the small town of Calera in Shelby County drew a gerrymandered voting map which excluded their only Black councilman out of office.

Gerrymandering Explained, by Steven Nass – Each square represents a precinct. See original post here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10203407721984998

Before Calera’s local elections in 2008 the town had redrawn its city boundaries which – even though the town’s Black voting-age population had grown from 13-16% – eliminated the only majority-Black district which had been represented by Ernest Montgomery since 2004, and decreased the voting-age Black population from 71-30% by adding three overwhelmingly White subdivisions while failing to include a large surrounding predominately Black-populated neighborhood.

The United States Department of Justice objected to Calera’s actions, and notified City Officials, who defied the DOJ’s orders and held the election anyway which caused Mr. Montgomery to lose the election by two votes, of which he said “they voted against me because of the color of my skin.”

2.) When Sessions was Alabama Attorney General he supported the “separate but equal” policy ensconced in Alabama’s 1901 Constitution in Amendment 111 which to this day deprives impoverished children in Alabama of a right to public education because public support for school funding collapsed after its passage, and since the early 1990’s created enormous funding disparities in school systems statewide which remain, despite legislative attempts to remedy.

3.) Sessions voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act (Public Law 103–322).

4.) Sessions is a fierce opponent of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (42 U.S.C. 1973(a)) and called it a “piece of intrusive legislation.”

5.) Sessions voted against

Hillary & Trump: Two Deeply Flawed Candidates

By many accounts, the 2016 Presidential Election year is a complete campaign in the ass. Two deeply flawed candidates manipulated and exposed deeply flawed processes in both major political parties, not the least of which is for the GOP, how to vet their candidates more thoroughly, and have the ability to remove them from official party candidacy, and for the Democrats, how to maintain candidate neutrality, and prevent party officials from influencing candidates of the top officials’ choosing toward nomination. I predict many much-needed changes on the horizon for both parties… following the November General Election.

—/—

by Gary Cosby, Jr.
Used with permission

WARNING:  This is a long post. It is also my final political post before the election.

I am not an editorial writer but today I am going to play one on Facebook. First, let me say, everyone is welcome to comment; however, if your comment uses foul language or is abusive to anyone else, your comment will be deleted. One of the great problems we have today is our lack of ability to disagree and still have civil discourse; therefore, we will practice it or be censured. Keep in mind, this is my opinion and you do not have to agree with it. Thank your First Amendment rights for that.

By now, we all know this presidential election cycle has presented us with the two poorest candidates in memory, perhaps in all of American history. Certainly there have been poor candidates running for one party or the other throughout our history but not facing one another in the same election.

They have turned the presidential debates into bad Saturday Night Live skits. In fact, I doubt the writers of SNL would have been able to dream up anything this hideous. The American political scene will never be the same and

PLEASE! @TheDemocrats Help #ALpolitics @ALDemocrats REMOVE Bigoted Racist Joe Reed from the SDEC!

As I was saying…

(And I’m not the only one saying it.)

Racism & Bigotry Abounds
in the
#ALpolitics
State Democratic Executive Committee

Joe Reed,
a member of the Alabama State Democratic Executive Committee,
is a bigoted racist.

Make
NO MISTAKE:
Joe Reed is an evil, and wicked man.

For that reason alone, he should be ousted from the Democratic party.

And, it appears that the only way in which that could happen is by force majeure.

All You Need Is Love

I recollect, a few years ago, having gone with a dear friend to the apartment where her former husband lived.

He had died alone.

D’Angelo (not his real name) was a retired Army NCO, whom had volunteered for service. He was genuinely a “squared away” soldier, and rose to the rank of First Sergeant (E-8), which rank is politely nicknamed “Top,” because, aside from Sergeant Major which is also an E-8 position, it is the highest rank and position a NCO can obtain.

His generosity was well-known, and his humility, honesty and genuine love for his fellow man was evident throughout his life. And though he was a good man with many admirable character qualities, a congenial fellow, well liked – even loved – by many, it seemed he never could win the battle over the bottle.

What little I knew of him from others’ reports and my own limited interaction with him, he was an honorable family man. And yet,

Medical News You Can Use: “I hate you; you’re stupid” Edition – Brain Stimulation Reduces Racial Prejudice

Brain Stimulation Reduces Racial Prejudice

Racial discrimination remains to be a pressing issue across the globe. In a study published in “Brain Stimulation“, Dutch researchers have now demonstrated that racial prejudice can be reduced with brain stimulation.

Scientists at the University of Leiden, Leiden, Netherlands, conducted an experiment in 60 healthy volunteers. Half of the group received transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) with a low intensity current administered by electrodes placed on the frontal part of the scalp. The other half received sham treatment.

During the treatment, the participants were

Is God an Abortionist?

The Bible never mentions abortion.

It doesn’t suggest it, nor does it even hint at it.

The Bible doesn’t forbid prostitution.

In fact, there are many things the Bible doesn’t even mention.

But it does forbid eating pork, shrimp, oysters, mussels, clams, cheeseburgers, wearing clothing made with cotton/polyester blended  fabric, that a man should marry his brother’s wife if the brother dies before impregnating her, and several hundred other nonsensical rules, regulations and laws – almost all of which were religiously based upon ignorance.

At the time the Bible was written (approximately 4000 BC/BCE), there was no understanding of Germ Theory (1864). No one understood Bernoulli’s Principle (1783). In fact Bernoulli wasn’t even born then. No one understood the physics and principles of lift, low pressure, high pressure, or how weather systems occurred. Even the beer and wine that was made then was thought to have been made magically – as if it were some kind of mystical gift from the gods, a god, or the God. They had no idea – were literally clueless – that it was through fermentation, because

Is Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore Sexually Repressed?

“…it’s about sexual preference.”

In an interview  broadcast Thursday morning, February 12, 2015, with CNN’s “New Day” co-host Chris Cuomo, Alabama State Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore FINALLY told the truth.

In his view, Marriage Equality under the law in Alabama is NOT the issue under discussion.

When pressed by host Cuomo, Moore said, “It’s about sexual preference overcoming an institution which has existed in our state, in our United States, for centuries, and I think it’s wrong.”

Alabama Supreme Court Chief Jester Roy Moore

Clearly, Chief Jester Moore doesn’t “prefer” those with Same Sex Attraction, and by his own confession, seeks to intrude upon their private lives. That is, he seeks to tell others what they should (or should not) do in their own privacy. Why he has such an excessive interest in them is indeed quizzical, if not outright disturbing.

There continues to be a disturbing dichotomy in Alabama law, which,

Secession: We Fought A War Over This

Secessionist billboard campaign by League of the South, as seen in Montgomery, Alabama

Hate, or Heritage?

Recent news reports indicate that a billboard campaign through Lamar Advertising by League of the South in the Southeastern United States of Florida, Alabama and Georgia, has met with opposition. The billboards prominently displayed one word – SECEDE – which almost completely filled the area, listed their group name, and a URL. The campaign billboard locations were in Montgomery, Alabama, Tallahassee, Florida with another one planned for Atlanta, Georgia in the summer. More specifically, League of the South and their 15,000 members have been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “a neo-Confederate group that advocates for a second Southern secession and a society dominated by “European Americans,” and since 2000, “the SPLC began listing the league as a hate group.”

Dr. J. Michael Hill, PhD, President, League of the South, a racist white supremacist neo-Confederate group headquartered in Killen, Alabama

It is a description to which

Right Wing Nuts in Amurka: Cliven Bundy speaks… GOP retreats.

“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro…”

Hey, hey, hey!

The GOP’s “Big Tent” has let in all sorts of krazees and they like it, they love it, and want more of it.

Not sure why they run away from the nutzos they attract.

After all, shit draws flies.

That’s just great!

Here’s to the GOP’s Radical Right Wing pseudo-Libtardtarians modern-day Wild, Wild West American hero… Cliven Bundy.

Yeah.

It’s not difficult to imagine a bunch of rabble-rousing, gun-toting freaks on horseback out in the Desert Southwest of Nevada saying stupid things like that. Dehydration will do strange things like that to a man.

Just in the case you’re not aware of the news, Cliven Bundy is a “rancher” in Nevada who has, to this point, defied several federal judge’s orders as far back as 1990, called together his misfit band of brothers in civilian arms to support his efforts to continue defrauding “we the people” of the United States government.

To wit, he has admitted owing over $300,000 in arrears of grazing fees – established by then-President Ronald Reagan – to the Bureau of Land Management, and against court order continues to allow his cattle free range forage on federal land, without paying for the privilege. In other words, he had admitted he is a thief.

***

A Defiant Rancher Savors the Audience That Rallied to His Side

By ADAM NAGOURNEY
APRIL 23, 2014

BUNKERVILLE, Nev. — Cliven Bundy stood by the Virgin River up the road from the armed checkpoint at the driveway of his ranch, signing autographs and posing for pictures. For 55 minutes, Mr. Bundy held forth to a clutch of supporters about his views on the troubled state of America — the overreaching federal government, the harassment of Western ranchers, the societal upheaval caused by abortion, even musing about whether slavery was so bad.

Bundy speaks as Sympathizers & armed White Supremacists surround him – (Cliven Bundy, flanked by supporters, has become a celebrity, drawing hundreds of sympathizers. Credit John Locher/Las Vegas Review-Journal, via Associated Press)

Most of all, Mr. Bundy, 67, who was

Be nice to me… or else!

It certainly seems that there’s no shortage of opinion on FaceBook.

Recently, I had seen this posted on a friend’s page, and remarked upon it. Whether or not Eminem said it, I am uncertain. However, the sentiment expressed was what caught my attention.

Since we’re now in

Top Hitler Aide’s Diary Found

I reiterate:
1.) The only good Nazi, is a dead Nazi.
2.) Once a Nazi, always a Nazi.

—

Exclusive: U.S. finds long-lost diary of top Nazi leader, Hitler aide

By John Shiffman
Sun Jun 9, 2013; 7:59pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The government has recovered 400 pages from the long-lost diary of Alfred Rosenberg, a confidant of Adolf Hitler who played a central role in the extermination of millions of Jews and others during World War Two.

A preliminary U.S. government assessment reviewed by Reuters asserts the diary could offer new insight into meetings Rosenberg had with Hitler and other top Nazi leaders, including Heinrich Himmler and Herman Goering. It also includes details about the German occupation of the Soviet Union, including plans for mass killings of Jews and other Eastern Europeans.

“The documentation is of considerable importance for the study of the Nazi era, including the history of the Holocaust,” according to the assessment, prepared by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. “A cursory content analysis indicates that the material sheds new light on a number of important issues relating to the Third Reich’s policy. The diary will be

The Birmingham News knew of plot to assassinate Fred Shuttlesworth

The things we continue to learn about the explicit wickedness and evil of that era continues to plague the South, and the nation at large… particularly those who pander to it in the Republican party. And GOP party officials wonder why they continue to lose elections. Perhaps they should get a clue.

—

Good and Evil in Birmingham

January 20, 2013

By DIANE McWHORTER

FIFTY years ago, Birmingham, Ala., provided the enduring iconography of the civil rights era, testing the mettle of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so dramatically that he was awarded the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.

During his protest there in May 1963, the biblical spectacle of black children facing down Public Safety Commissioner Eugene (Bull) Connor’s fire hoses and police dogs set the stage for King’s Sermon on the Mount some four months later at the Lincoln Memorial. And the civil rights movement’s “Year of Birmingham” passed into history as an epic narrative of good versus evil.

Our understanding of the “good” has expanded beyond the lone-dreamer theory to embrace other activists, like King’s partner in Birmingham, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. Yet the evil segregationist archetype is fixed in the popular mind as the villainous housewife of “The Help” or the cretinous mob of “Django Unchained” — nobody we’d ever know, or certainly ever be.

But the disquieting reality is that the conflict was between not good and evil, but good and normal. The brute racism that today seems like mass social insanity was a “way of life” practiced by ordinary “good” people.

According to the Southern community’s consensus of “normal,” those fighting for rights now considered mainstream were “extremists,” and public servants could rationalize plans to murder men like Shuttlesworth, confident that they were on the right side of history.

Consider new evidence about a plan by Connor to have Shuttlesworth assassinated. Under Connor’s orders, Detective Tom Cook

Nazi War Criminal found hiding in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA… City of Brotherly Love.

AP Exclusive: Philadelphia man target of German Nazi war crimes probe; will fight extradition

By Associated Press, Published: September 23, 2012

BERLIN — Germany has launched a war crimes investigation against an 87-year-old Philadelphia man it accuses of serving as an SS guard at the Auschwitz death camp, The Associated Press has learned, following years of failed U.S. Justice Department efforts to have the man stripped of his American citizenship and deported.

Johann “Hans” Breyer, a retired toolmaker, admits he was a guard at Auschwitz during World War II, but told the AP he was stationed outside the facility and had nothing to do with the wholesale slaughter of some 1.5 million Jews and others behind the gates.

The special German office that investigates Nazi war crimes has recommended that prosecutors charge him with accessory to murder and extradite him to Germany for trial on suspicion of involvement in the killing of at least 344,000 Jews at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in occupied Poland.

The AP also has obtained documents that raise doubts about Breyer’s testimony about the timing of his departure from Auschwitz.

The case is being pursued on

Grand Old Party of Xenophobic, Racist, Hypocrites

Someone please tell me… how does one spell xenophobe?

And tell me again, just so I’ll be certain… what is racism?

Finally, just so I won’t forget… isn’t hypocrisy saying one thing, and doing the opposite?

—

The GOP‘s Immigrants 

By JASON L. RILEY

• POLITICAL DIARY
• September 1, 2012, 6:28 p.m. ET

Rare was the speaker at the Republican convention in Tampa this week who did not invoke his immigrant forebears, almost always described as poor or, at best, of modest means upon arrival to the U.S.

This is hardly surprising because we are not simply a nation of immigrants but overwhelmingly a nation people descended from immigrant strivers. The “huddled masses” of the 1800s and early 1900s were tired and poor, not Indian computer engineers and Chinese biochemists.

This point is worth making because although the Republican speakers were

When Healers Harm – Alabama Hospital Wars: Huntsville Hospital v Crestwood Medical Center

Why, why, WHY!?!

There’s nothing better to do with precious financial resources – especially in tough economic times?

Pay lawyers instead of using that same money to care for and treat patients, improve outcomes, and increase patient & staff satisfaction?

And what does that say about your concern for patients? Yeah… that’s right – you love wasting money on a court fight rather than using that money to heal people.

This problem exists precisely because of a Certificate of Need law in Alabama that specifically prohibits anyone from thinking about building, expanding or creating a healthcare treatment facility without first going to court.

I will say this, however – even with the CON law & board in place, there is no requirement for hospitals to sue each other over the matter. And yet, they do.

It’s time to eliminate the CON law and CON Board in Alabama.

—

Crestwood Hospital wins legal fight with Huntsville Hospital

“1921 slaying of Catholic priest gets renewed interest”

Some weeks back, my deacon had shared with us about this horrific tragedy. The long and short of it is that the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama had masterminded the murder of a Catholic priest in Birmingham whom solemnized a wedding.

Journalist Greg Garrison’s story is compelling.

“BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (RNS) The 1921 murder of the Rev. James E. Coyle on the front porch of his rectory was no ordinary slaying. Involved were the anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan, a future Supreme Court justice and a preacher’s daughter who secretly married a Puerto Rican.

In her book “Rising Road: A True Tale of Love, Race and Religion in America,” Ohio State University law professor Sharon Davies digs deep into the Coyle’s murder—and the dark chapter of anti-Catholicism in American history.

“There are so many things about this story that are really compelling,” said Davies, who stumbled across the case while doing research for a law journal article. “When I found it, I was absolutely captivated by it. This story needed to be told. We can’t afford to forget this.”

The murder trial was historic partly because future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black defended the accused killer, Edwin R. Stephenson, a Methodist minister and member of the Ku Klux Klan.”

The Klan paid the legal expenses for Stephenson, who was acquitted by a jury that included several Klan members, including the jury foreman, Davies said.

“The Klan held enormously successful fundraising drives across Alabama to raise money for the defense,” Davies said. “They portrayed it as a Methodist minister father who shot a Catholic priest trying to steal his daughter away from her religion, to seduce his daughter into the Catholic Church.”

Stephenson, who conducted weddings at the Jefferson County Courthouse, was accused of gunning down Coyle after becoming irate over Coyle officiating at the marriage of Stephenson’s daughter, Ruth, to a Puerto Rican, Pedro Gussman.

The recent release of Davies’ book comes at the same time as a documentary highlighting the case made by Irish filmmaker Pat Shine, Coyle’s grandnephew.

As defense attorney, Black had Gussman summoned into the courtroom and questioned him about his curly hair and skin color. Lights were dimmed in the courtroom so the darkness of Gussman’s complexion would be accentuated, said an Oct. 20, 1921, newspaper account of the final day of the trial. Black won the acquittal.

“That really does illustrate, beautifully and awfully, the lengths that this future Supreme Court justice was willing to go to in defense of a killer,” Davies said. “It only worked because it exploited the bigotries of the day, anti-Catholicism and racism.”

Black joined the Klan 18 months after the trial, Davies said. He was a U.S. senator from Alabama from 1927 to 1937, and served on the U.S. Supreme Count until his death in 1971, gradually becoming one of the court’s most liberal members.

After the acquittal, Stephenson once again was a regular at the courthouse, conducting marriages. “For awhile after the trial, he was a hero,” Davies said. “He was the Klan’s champion, celebrated at Klan initiation ceremonies.”

But Stephenson never reconciled with his daughter, who divorced Gussman, moved to Chicago and died of tuberculosis in 1931 at age 28. “She was their only child,” Davies said. “I’m sure that was a grievous wound for them.”

Gussman was killed on Valentine’s Day 1934 in a hit-and-run accident steps away from where Coyle was killed, in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral. “They never found the person who hit him,” Davies said.

People don’t grasp today the level of anti-Catholic bigotry that was rampant in America at the time of Coyle’s slaying, Davies said.

State lawmakers enacted the Alabama Convent Inspection law in 1919 to authorize officials without a warrant to search convents to see whether any person found inside the convent was being “involuntarily confined” or “unlawfully held,” Davies said.

“My students laugh,” Davies said. “They can’t believe these laws existed. State legislatures were convinced they needed these laws to protect against the Catholic threat.”

There was a fear that Protestant girls would be kidnapped, forced to become Catholic nuns and held against their will, Davies said.

The Coyle case played into those fears because Ruth, as an independent-minded 18-year-old, had converted to Catholicism against her father’s will. Coyle fought the Klan’s attacks on Catholics, and federal officials at one point warned Coyle’s bishop that Coyle had been the target of death threats, Davies said.

“There were threats to burn the church to the ground,” she said. “This was a time when lectures and sermons were routinely given from pulpits … that spewed anti-Catholicism.”

The racist impulses exploited by the young defense attorney were later curbed by Supreme Court decisions in which Black played a key role during his 34 years on the Supreme Court. He joined unanimous opinions in the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision that outlawed school segregation, and the 1967 Loving vs. Virginia case that overturned Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage.

“It’s a good thing to remember where he began,” Davies said. “It gives us a greater appreciation for where he ended up. It reflected the movement of the nation.”

(Greg Garrison writes for The Birmingham News.)

“1921 slaying of Catholic priest gets renewed interest”.
May 27, 2010

“These extremists feed on fear, hate and terror.”

At the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco, CA, then-NY Governor Nelson Rockefeller was granted five minutes to address the delegates. He was booed for over 16 minutes.

At the time, the Republican party’s sweetheart was Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, and the party was in jeopardy of being hijacked by subversive ideologues from the Ku Klux Klan, John Birch Society, Communists and others whom Goldwater and the party at large refused to repudiate. Appealing to racist elements, and Southern Democrats, Goldwater later became the party’s presidential nominee, only to be resoundingly defeated  in the November General Election by incumbent LBJ – Lyndon Baines Johnson – whom had become president upon JFK’s death. Goldwater’s defeat was one of the widest margins in American political history.

In his later years, having resigned, then re-elected and succeeded by John McCain, Goldwater’s extremist libertarian ideals included abortion, gay rights, and anti-religious sentiment.

I wonder – to what extent have those same subversives successfully infiltrated the party, our airwaves and national governance today?

The following is the text of Governor Rockefeller’s remarks from The Rockefeller Archive Center, and are available online. See http://www.rockarch.org/inownwords/nar1964text.php.

*****************************************************************************

FOR RELEASE AT 6:00 P.M., PDT, TUESDAY, JULY 14, 1964 ROBERT L. McMANUS, PRESS SECRETARY TO THE GOVERNOR

TEXT OF REMARKS BY GOVERNOR NELSON A. ROCKEFELLER PREPARED FOR DELIVERY BEFORE THE THIRD SESSION OF THE 1964 REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION IN MOVING ADOPTION OF THE AMENDMENT TO THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON RESOLUTIONS ON THE SUBJECT OF EXTREMISM, COW PALACE, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA JULY 14, 1964

Mr. Chairman, fellow delegates, I move that the following language be inserted in the proposed 1964 Republican Platform