Well, duh, slavery!

Of course, there are an awful lot of people who don't believe that.  Just the other day, I saw a teenager in a shirt with a confederate flag on the front and the following on the back: If This Shirt Offends You, You Need a History Lesson.

I'm a liberal, so of course I had to pause and wonder, "Do I need a history lesson?"  

A moment’s reflection led me to conclude that I do, in fact, know more about the causes of the Civil War than a redneck teenager in a rebel pride shirt.

It's always nice to have confirmation, though, and that's where a book review I read today on the
American Heritage website comes in.

I keep mostly quiet here, but I live in Blacksburg, VA, within sight of Norris Hall, where the bulk of the worst shooting incident in US history took place this morning.  

A terrible, terrible, thing happened here today, and it only took three hours for Glenn Reynolds to try to score a cheap political point about gun control.

Instapundit won't take comments, so I'm going to call him out here below the fold.

There's a poll with the standard sort of question, "Should intelligent design be given equal time with natural selection in public schools today?"

Currently, the results are 65% in favor of ID!  Booo!

In another part of my continuing effort to get people to support the efforts of my friends at American Heritage Magazine I present This Day in History.

December 6 is Saint Nicholas Day in much of Europe, but here in America, Santa comes on Christmas Eve.  Here, December 6 is known for other things:

On December 6, 1877 the first issue of the Washington Post was published.

On December 6, 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment banned slavery.

And, on December 6, the novel Ulysses, the "the most damnable slush and filth that ever polluted paper in print,"  was officially allowed into the United States.

It turns out the bus has an interesting history, and one that parallels people's changing feeling about the stuggle for civil rights.

Of particualr interest today, though, is the AH blog.  There are two AH bloggers who regularly go at it, conservative John Steele Gordon, and liberal(ish) Joshua Zeitz.  They've got a couple of post up over the past couple of days dealing with the Christmas controversy.

I haven't seen this mentioned in the diaries, but I really didn't look too hard...

The show was a while back, and the report was echoed in Salon's War Room on the 13th.

This may have been diaried before, but I didn't see it.

Some excerpts in the extended entry.

I just read Mike Stark's recent diary, which he updated to include a little bit of badgering he's received, and I want to say something, just to get it out there, just in case anyone with a shred of decency or half a brain in their head still wonders.  For all the other folks, the wingnuts who want to intimidate us, I have a message too.

We're going to aim for a couple of audiences, but we're primarily interested in serving the needs of local progressives.

The question is, what are those needs?

In typical two party fashion, we liberals have been taking some heat, and some of us are feeling some self-doubt.  If democracy is truly "on the march", the logic goes, then Bush must have been right.  And if Bush was right, then liberals are wrong.  And if liberals are wrong, then what do we do with all our reality-based thinking?  Should we be cranky about the anti-Syria demonstrations in Lebanon?  Should we be cranky about the Iraqi elections?  The promise of actual elections in Egypt?  Libya's recent trip in form the cold?

Hell no.  We can be happy about the good stuff that happens, fault Bush for the very real failings of his administration and policy, and not have our heads explode.

After the jump, I give you ten reasons George W Bush's presidency is still a huge pile of steaming turds.

Acording to the website 365gay.com Virginia Delegate Scott Limgamfelter (R-Prince William) has authored a bill that would create an anti gay marraige license plate for Virginia motorists.  That's right folks, a f*@%ing license plate for gay haters.

I'm excerpting the whole thing below the jump, but you should really go read it in it's original home.

But it is not, I repeat, IS NOT our banner issue.  Evolution is a tar baby, one the right knows we can't resist walking up and giving a good smack, and one they love to see us struggle around in.

They want us to punch the tar baby, we need to burn it down.

Why?  Follow me over the jump, please.

Registration is required to view the article.  It's free, but still annoying, so I'm excerpting liberally after the jump.

Here at Kos, and everywhere else for that matter, I hear a lot about "The South."  But the mountains from Alabama to Pennsylvania are their own distinct region, a region most people know only through the crude stereotypes of movies and TV shows like "Deliverance" and "The Beverly Hillbillies."  

It's important to understand all the areas of the country, and this one in particular seems like a fruitful place for inquiry.  It often goes Dem, it makes up a big chunk of the south, and it's a place Kerry got his ass whupped.

Almost no one around here actually seems to be FROM the Appalachians, so I'm going to take it upon myself to wash away the generalizations and misconceptions with some generalizations and simplifications of my own.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this incident proves conclusivly that the President is a robot from just far enough in the future to be lifelike, but not so far that he's intelligent.

Excerpts after the jump.

Until now!