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Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/04/21/confederate-flag-removed-us-capitol-tunnel/83337106/

How many times have you heard of Senators and Representatives adding riders or amendments to bills to help fund their pet projects back in their states or for a friend? I’ve written about a number of these in the past including: $384,949 for the study of duck penises$876,752 to study snail sex$15.3 million for the infamous Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska$113,227 for a video game preservation center in New York$550,000 for a documentary on how rock music contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union$48,700 for 2nd annual Hawaii Chocolate Festival, to promote Hawaii’s chocolate industry.$350,000 to support an International...

Tennessee's rule factory is cranking at full tilt, and Nashville lawmakers want to tell Memphians how to pay for bike lanes, what monuments we can move, and whether or not we can own skunks (seriously). No gas tax for bike lanes A new bill would prohibit spending any gas tax revenues on bike lanes, pedestrian walkways, and "other non-vehicular facilities." Portions of the state gas tax are required to go to cities and counties. Those governments sometimes use the gas tax funds for matching dollars to get federal money for bike and pedestrian projects. The new bill says all of...

Confederate monuments first erected after the Civil War to honor Southern soldiers have increasingly been targeted by civil rights activists who say they are offensive to blacks and should be taken down. An Alabama legislator wants to make sure that doesn't happen without state lawmakers' approval. Republican Sen. Gerald Allen of Tuscaloosa has proposed a bill that would prohibit the removal of historic monuments, plaques and statues from public property unless a committee of lawmakers grants a waiver. "I think there is an undercurrent, not just in Alabama, but throughout the nation" of people who "want to kind of rewrite...

A Republican lawmaker who says he's grown weary of what he calls "Confederate cleansing" is working to preserve the famous carving of Robert E. Lee and other Confederate leaders on Georgia's Stone Mountain. "I'm tired of the anti-Confederate rhetoric toward Stone Mountain and any other Confederate monument that's out there," state Rep. Tommy Benton told the Morris News Service. "We're entitled to our heritage just like other people are entitled to theirs, and there seems to be an attempt to do Confederate cleansing." He continued: "I refer to that more as cultural terrorism than anything. They're attacking us for no...

The New Orleans City Council has voted in favor of removing prominent Confederate monuments along some of its busiest streets - a sweeping move by a city seeking to break with its Confederate past. The council's 6-1 vote on Thursday afternoon allows the city to remove four monuments, including a towering statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that has stood at the center of a traffic circle for 131 years. The decision came after months of impassioned debate. Now, the city faces possible lawsuits seeking to keep the monuments where they are. ...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- New Orleans is poised to make a sweeping break with its Confederate past as city leaders decide whether to remove prominent monuments from some of its busiest streets. With support from Mayor Mitch Landrieu, a majority on the City Council appears ready to take down four monuments, including a towering statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Their ordinance has sparked passionate responses for and against these symbols, and both sides will get one more say at a special council meeting before Thursday's vote.

(CNN) - During the Civil War, it was a patch of the South so reviled by the Confederacy for its pro-Union leanings that it in 1862 it was declared "enemy territory" by the secessionist government. The area's most celebrated native, Andrew Johnson, was the only Southern senator to remain loyal to the Union. Johnson would go on to become president, succeeding Abraham Lincoln. Now, more than 150 years later, Greene County, Tennessee is once again ruffling feathers on matters pertaining to the long-gone Confederacy. This time, however, the rebellious county just might turn the historical tables and for the first...

On a warm day in August, a couple dozen people gathered for an afternoon picnic at Shawnee Mission Park. Under the shade of a shelter surrounded by leafy green trees, two men cooked burgers and brats on a charcoal grill next to a row of tables topped with red plastic tablecloths and a summery spread of sliced watermelon, barbecue-flavored potato chips and sopapilla cheesecake. The weather would have been perfect if not for occasional gusts of wind that whipped through the grove and threatened to topple the three flags fixed to portable poles next to the dessert table: an American...

On the summit of Stone Mountain, yards away from where Ku Klux Klansmen once burned giant crosses, just above and beyond the behemoth carving of three Confederate heroes, state authorities have agreed to erect a monument to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Specifically, an elevated tower — featuring a replica of the Liberty Bell — would celebrate the single line in the civil rights martyr’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech that makes reference to the 825-foot-tall hunk of granite: “Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.” (snip) Gov. Nathan Deal has green-lighted the projects, and a formal...

Earlier this month, the SPLC launched a new initiative called "Erasing Hate," which "aims to identify and eliminate government-sanctioned symbols honoring the Confederacy." "There are numerous government-sponsored symbols of the Confederacy that are out in the public across the country, and, quite frankly, it's time for them be removed," said SPLC founder Morris Dees. "In Montgomery, Alabama, we have a Robert E. Lee High School that wasn't even named until [Brown v. the Board of Education], the desegregation case. We have government-sponsored holidays honoring Confederate 'heroes'." Flags, street names, building names, and statues honoring the Confederacy became public targets across...

The recent movement to scrub the American South of Confederate flags and names, which many view as pro-slavery symbols, has a new celebrity supporter: Julianne Moore. The Academy Award-winning actress has teamed with movie producer Bruce Cohen in launching an online petition to change the name of J.E.B. Stuart High School in Falls Church, Virginia, arguing that the name represents a "history of racism."

As a committee of city government called Thursday for taking down four controversial statues that celebrate Confederate officials and a white supremacist group’s violent fight against a biracial state government during Reconstruction, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s office said it is looking into whether he can use the power of his office to keep the monuments in place. The monuments, including the statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee atop the column at a St. Charles Avenue traffic circle, should be taken down under an ordinance that allows the City Council to remove public statues that celebrate racist ideologies or are likely to...

"What I see appears to be a vengeful elimination of any memory or dignity in the South, a dignity the peace after the Civil War thought it wise to allow"

Social engineers have a knack for destroying history, then self-servingly reshaping it to align with political agendas for consumption by the masses.  The results of their skill are no better exemplified than we are currently witnessing.  Confederate history is quite literally being destroyed, as monuments to Robert E. Lee and other Confederate heroes are being defaced by ignorant vandals who know nothing more than the legend of how Abraham Lincoln and his brave Union army crushed Jefferson Davis’ and Robert E. Lee’s Southern hordes in the name of liberating enslaved blacks.  That this is legend is in no way...

Foote's narrative is such a breath of fresh air when compared to much of the politically motivated and agenda driven Civil War history of recent years. That alone would make it bad enough but, in addition, much of what is being written is not only poor history, it is poor literature. (Foote remains of the few adults in a room of Civil War historians populated by juveniles.)

There’re consequences and repercussions for just about everything . . . . With that notion in mind, as I ran-across the news and discovered the Atlanta branch of the NAACP wants all the Confederate paraphernalia removed from the “infamous” Georgia Stone Mountain state park . . . the branch’s chair, Richard Rose said his group not only wants Confederate symbols removed from all state-owned buildings, parks and lands . . . he’d start with the enormous monument itself of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Well go-head with ya’ bad-ass self bra’. "Those guys need to go. They...

“Then arose that do or die expression, that maniacal maelstrom of sound; that penetrating, rasping, shrieking, blood curdling noise that could be heard for miles and whose volume reached the heavens such an expression as never yet came from the throats of sane men, but from men whom the seething blast of an imaginary hell would not check while the sound lasted.” ~ Confederate Colonel Keller Anderson of Kentucky's Orphan Brigade There are few aspects of the Civil War which have been engrained in American culture and remembrance more than the Confederate soldiers’ Rebel Yell . . ."

JULY 17--But who will care for all those Confederate flags? The North Carolina man who responded to the South Carolina church massacre by further covering his property in the rebel flag was arrested and jailed this week on a probation violation charge, records show. Edward Lee West, 69, is locked up in the Nash County jail in advance of an August 5 court appearance. Seen in the adjacent mug shot, West was collared Wednesday afternoon. According to court records, a judge issued an arrest warrant for West after he failed to show up last week for a court hearing on...

WEST POINT, N.Y. ─ Following the decision of the South Carolina government to remove the Confederate flag from a state memorial, and the subsequent, nation-wide uproar over all things Confederate, West Point has announced that it will posthumously revoke the diplomas of all cadets who graduated from the Academy and fought for the South during the Civil War.