Charles Bishop (R - Jasper) resigned as Alabama's Labor Secretary over Governor Riley's efforts to equalize Alabama's regressive tax system and then helped defeat the proposal. He was for the recent legislative pay raise before he was against it. At a rally pandering to a few pay raise opponents, he veered off topic and asked those attending if they believed "all those Mexicans should go back to Mexico", with the crowd responding enthusiastically. "All" of them? Should I go back to Scotland? And England? And ...?Today's news that Senator Bishop wants the issue of an official state apology for slavery decided by a vote of the public shouldn't be surprising. Senator Bishop claims he's worried that "lawsuits" will result. While I'm not always happy with Senator Sanders, he's correct in the fact that most reparation claims are time barred. Corporations, rather than individuals, might face some exposure yet even that's a stretch. This MSNBC/AP article from the past summer is decent entry level material on the issue yet is interesting simply for the human angle.
Here's my beef though. Alabama has hardly had a real good record on these votes. Just today MSNBC/AP recalls 40% of Alabama voters voting against the removal of the ban on interracial marriages, which has long been unenforceable, from our antiquated Constitution. This old CNN coverage of the vote hardly comforted me on how our voters might handle this apology issue. We voted down removal of language on segregated schools!
Alabama voters just might serve up some numbers that might not be very pretty if Charles Bishop get his way. Peace ... or War!
UPDATE - July 2, 2008 - Like Dan I could also write many posts on Alabama's CCC. He reveals the following:
Alabama Senator Charles Bishop was the keynote speaker at 2008 Conference of the Council of Conservative Citizens. For those that don’t know, the CCC is an interesting Christian conservative organization. They have 14 principles — some of them are more than okay. I like the Bill of Rights too, even the ones that are out of favor currently. Other principles, however, are a little more than sublimely racist. Some of the highlights:
- They believe the US is a “European” [white] country and should remain that way.
- They oppose any and all Mexican immigration (as well as any other non-European immigrants).
- They oppose interracial marriage.
- There shouldn’t be histories, monuments, and cultural items that show anything but a European perspective of US history and culture.
- They oppose “multicultural” and “Afrocentric” education in schools.
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