Ah, yet another profile in Republican courage:
The House is about to put its members on record on whether Confederate flags can briefly decorate rebel graves in historic federal cemeteries and if their sale should be banned in national park gift shops.
Thursday's vote comes after southern lawmakers complained they were taken by surprise two nights ago when the House voted — without a recorded tally — to ban the display of Confederate flags at historic federal cemeteries and strengthen Park Service policy against its sale in gift shops.
The earlier voice vote came on an amendment to a measure funding the National Park Service, which maintains fourteen national cemeteries, most of which contain graves of Civil War soldiers....
Which I'm assuming are now to all be exhumed, the markers and/or tombstones obliterated in classic Islamic State fashion, and their remains trucked to either the nearest landfill or industrial furnace.
Thursday's vote would preserve existing Park Service policy permitting limited display and also overturn an earlier vote that would have banned the agency's concessionaires from selling Confederate flags and would have prohibited the inclusion of the Confederate image on items like belt buckles and pins.
The re-vote was scheduled after southern lawmakers protested Tuesday's unrecorded tally. That vote was taken during a slightly-attended debate and after most lawmakers had left the Capitol. It's hardly unusual for House leaders to take a pass on forcing members to go on record on controversial subjects.
"Congress cannot simply re-write history and strip the Confederate flag from existence," said Representative Steve Palazzo, R-MS4. "Members of Congress from New York and California cannot wipe away one hundred fifty years of Southern history with sleight-of-hand tactics."
Oh, yes, they can, Congressman Palazzo, as - guess what? - the re-vote that House GOP leadership promised you has now been rescinded. And with it, the Confederate flag and the history it represents, good and bad, has officially been expunged and re-written, respectively. A century and a half of Southern history from which it is vital to learn in order to avert its grievous mistakes (slavery) as well as its constitutionalist virtues (State sovereignty) has been wiped away. The only difference between Obamerikastan and the antebellum South now is the ethnic persuasion of the slaves to be taken.
Exit question: Does the fact that Representative Ken Calvert (R-CA42) apparently was a leading figure in trying to arrange the re-vote earn him any slack in the Gibbs Pocket?
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