The state lawmaker, a gun, Planned Parenthood and... a girlfriend?

Tuesday afternoon, state Rep. Tom Hackbarth went to the St. Paul Police Department and picked up his gun.

How his silver .38-caliber revolver came into the possession of the cops is a story that Hackbarth himself acknowledges sounds "really weird and odd."

Last week, St. Paul police pulled the Anoka County Republican over and seized his loaded Smith & Wesson after he told them he was "jealous" about his "girlfriend," whom he didn't have any contact information for but suspected was with another man, according to police reports.

Police had been called to the city's Highland Park neighborhood by a security guard at a Planned Parenthood clinic, where Hackbarth had parked and appeared "suspicious."

Hackbarth, who has a permit to carry a concealed weapon, was briefly handcuffed and released without being charged with a crime, and he told the Pioneer Press he did nothing wrong or illegal.

Officers at the scene, however, suspected him of "stalking-like behavior" and borderline "harassment or terroristic threats," so they hung on to his weapon, reports state.

"What did I do that was so bad?" he asked a reporter during an interview Tuesday. "According to me, all I did was go to an empty parking lot and parked my truck ... walked around the block, and picked up the car and left."

Hackbarth said he had no idea he was parking in a Planned Parenthood parking lot. A gun-rights advocate, he said he usually carries his revolver on him and emphasized that's perfectly legal.

The 58-year-old married father of three said he and his wife are separated and planning to divorce. He said the woman, whom he met through an online dating service, "wasn't even a girlfriend" and said his description to police that he was "jealous" wasn't accurate.

"It's not like I was really jealous, but you know how you meet this person and you really like her, and she's saying all the right things, but you think she's feeding you a line of bull—? She's giving you all this ... and you want to figure out what's going on. Well that's what I did," he said in a telephone interview in which he readily talked about the incident but questioned its newsworthiness. "Sure enough, she lied to me and I'm done with it."

He said the notion that police suspected him of terroristic behavior is "insane," but he acknowledged, "It's really weird and odd when all taken together, and I can see how people took things the way they did."

November 22, 2010 12:38PM

Canadian Courts Consider Decriminalization of Polygamy
Post by Joanna Brooks

Share In a case that may have wide-reaching influence, the Supreme Court of British Columbia today opened deliberations in a constitutional reference case to determine whether a small group of fundamentalist Mormons living in a remote B.C. community called Bountiful may practice religiously-motivated plural marriage without fear of prosecution or conviction.


Before a courtroom packed with legal experts, scholars, civil libertarians, and child rights advocates, justices initiated groundbreaking legal processes to determine the constitutionality of section 293 of the Canadian Criminal Code, which criminalizes the practice of polygamy, in light of sections of the Canadian Charter of Freedom pertaining to religious and civil liberties.

Polygamy-practicing Mormons began fleeing to Mexico and Canada in the 1880s, after US Supreme Court Justices upheld the conviction of George Reynolds on polygamy charges in 1879, declaring polygamy an “odious” “Asiatic” practice not protected by First Amendment freedom of religion guarantees. Mormons founded and continue to make up a significant proportion of Canadian towns such as Cardston, in Alberta. The Bountiful community began when FLDS leader Owen LeBaron visited Cardston in 1945 to proselytize and recruit mainstream LDS into “the Work” of plural marriage Mormonism. Cardston dairyman Harold Blackmore was among those who followed LeBaron and started his own remote FLDS community near Lister, British Columbia, naming it Bountiful after a city in the Book of Mormon. In 2002, when Warren Jeffs became President and Prophet of the Hilldale, Utah-based FLDS Church, the affiliated Bountiful community split over issues of succession.

The case is sure to be watched closely among tens of thousands of FLDS and non-FLDS polygamists in the Book-of-Mormon belt and beyond, and may also have implications for Muslims and other polygamy-practicing people of faith.


http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/joannabrooks/3782/canadian_courts_consider_decriminalization_of_poly gamy

Personally, I agree with much of this argument. Plural marriage is part of many world cultures and if it were legal in the US, it might actually help thwart child sexual abuse (re- cases of forced "marriages" of minors) in some ways due to legal ages of majority for marriage.

The other thing that I am thinking about is the huge population of LDS related (white, middle class, Christian) children on welfare roles in the US. Documentation of non-legal plural marriages with up to dozens of children fathered by one man receiving welfare benefits is staggering! And this only due to the lack of a legal sanction!

I guess I just can't go to a moralistic place with this practice. There are also plural marriage families that demonstrate positive interaction and respectful ways of relating as a family unit. One of those "filtering" paradigms based upon social conventions of majority populations within societies. How someone views their "married" life is not for me to judge.

I have mixed feelings.

On one hand: it's none of my business and it's none of the government's business. So sure, have at it.

On the other hand: I do find the whole plural marriage thing to be super sexist. Men can have a bunch of wives, but the women can only have one husband. It's poop-tastic. Plus, you KNOW that this will have a negative downtrickle in terms of people fighting for equal marriage rights for same-sex couples in the US and other countries that are not Canada - those "slippery slope" assholes are going to have a FIELD DAY with this.

What people do need to understand is that "decriminalised" does not mean something becomes legal. It simply stops being something that goes on your criminal record - and is reduced to something you would get a fine for (you know, like jaywalking or a parking ticket)

So simply "decriminalising" it does not, in my opinion, do anything helpful for the WOMEN and CHILDREN in these marriages. If it's simply "decriminalised" rather than "government recognised" - then there will still be no marriage certificates and therefor no RIGHTS.

It's not going to have the best impact on gay marriage discussions, but I think polygamy should be legal. I've known too many polyamorous people (including lesbians) to think they should be denied the benefits associated with marriage just because their love/partnering style is different.

Tom Delay
 

I know, this is a big sticking point for the right-wing to wrap themselves around with attempts to ban same-sex-marriage. I remember Faux News people like Bill O’Rielly bringing up how allowing same-sex marriage would "invite" polygamy activists (and bestiality) in the debate and demand legal sanctioning. It's the whole vilification and moralizing thing going one step further with a huge Christian right-wing flavor. Really strange when you consider that the major organized religious body in the US representing polygamy historically is Latter day Saints- a Christian faith! The one that poured millions of dollars into the 2008 prop 8 election here in CA. from outside the state!

Yo, the irony of it all!

Another take on the "Junk Man"...
 

http://www.opednews.com/articles/TSA...01121-464.html

TSA and The Junk Man: The Thanksgiving Trojan Horse




For OpEdNews: Adam Bessie - Writer
This Sunday morning, sitting reading the news at my corner coffee shop, I found myself sitting amidst the News Feeding Frenzy that is the Transportation Security Administration "controversy": as I struggled to find an article not focused on TSA screening procedures, two young women next to me worry aloud about being "felt up" at the airport, as if they were performing a live parody of the viral video sensation "Don't Touch My Junk," which sparked this frenzied, paranoid debate in the first place. In fact, it was just last week -" a decade in Web 2.0 years -" that John Tyner became famous for telling a T.S.A. screener patting him down that "If you touch my junk, I'll have you arrested."
Now, Tyner's comment not to "touch his junk" has became a viral sensation, with the endless parodies, blogs, and commentaries in the new grand tradition of Mob Journalism, on par with the Ground Zero Mosque, the Koran Burner, Christine O'Donnell, and Tiger Woods. Tyner, as with all of these controversies, becomes a blogospheric black hole, a dying neutron star, into which all coverage, all informational resources and attention are sucked away.
But more than distracting us from real news, "Junk Man," as Charles Krauthammer fondly dubs him in his commentary this week for the Washington Post, has became an "airport hero," a symbol, really. Junk Man, according to Krauthammer, is an icon, he is common man tired of the government -" of Obama, of Big Brother -" trying take his rights. The Junk Man is a modern day revolutionary, and
"Don't touch my junk is the anthem of the modern man, the Tea Party patriot, the late-life libertarian, the midterm election voter. Don't touch my junk, Obamacare - get out of my doctor's examining room, I'm wearing a paper-thin gown slit down the back. Don't touch my junk, Google - Street View is cool, but get off my street. Don't touch my junk, you airport security goon - my package belongs to no one but me, and do you really think I'm a Nigerian nut job preparing for my 72-virgin orgy by blowing my johnson to kingdom come?"
In short, the Junk Man's outrage is not really about airport policy, it's not about scanners nor pat-downs, really, but more broadly, as Krauthammer points out, his outrage is about the powerful victimizing the weak, and his anthem "Don't Touch My Junk" is a call to arms on par with "Don't Tread on Me." And in Krauthammer's worldview, the powerful is not the Koch Brothers who funded the Tea Party, nor is it the Neo-Cons who engineer Trickle Up economics, but rather, it is Obama, it is government supported healthcare -" it is the government, really. The Junk Man is a marionette for the anti-government, neo-conservative agenda, an agenda that thrives on our fear and paranoia, and the TSA controversy has presented yet another opportunity to focus the newscycle on attacking the government, and to encourage privatization, de-regulation, and the free market. Ken Taylor, a writer for Red State, exposes the real agenda behind the Junk Man Best: "TSA Controversy Exposes Failures of Government Control." He argues that this episode "exposes the true and real failures of government control over anything especially involving individuals and businesses."
But more so, the Junk Man episode reveals not a failure in government, but in our press, a press that reacts as a mob, frantically feeding on neo-conservative manufactured controversy like the Ground Zero Mosque, the Koran Burner, and the Tea Party itself. And all of us, the entire media that has fed into this controversy unreflectively, that have participated in this News Feeding Frenzy without asking why it's a frenzy, about asking whether these stories deserve the volume of press they receive, have also become marionettes for this same agenda, pulled around by Krauthammer and other fear mongers who use these discussions to forward an neo-conservative agenda. Even in writing this essay, and in writing on the Tea Party, and in writing on the Koran Burner, I too am a marionette, coloring within the Talking Points set by the neo-conservative controversy, which ultimately, serve to privilege neo-conservative ideas. When these discussions surround me -" in person and online -" I find it hard to not comment, as is the case with most writers. We want to jump into the conversation, to say our piece, to get into the fray.
And yet, as we jump into the conversation, so do we make the crowd bigger, so do add volume to the echo chamber, making it harder to escape. We simply make the conversation louder, and more dominating. I wrote in "Unknown Bigot Given Media Megaphone" that we should ignore these controversies in order to take away their power, to turn down the volume. The more writers -" and citizens in general - that refuse to speak, to write, to blog, to join the conversation, the lower the drone, the more other conversations and ideas can emerge.
Ignoring these manufactured controversies is only part of the solution, I realize now, as it seems unrealistic to think that our new media participatory media landscape -" which thrives on debate -" will stop these Feeding Frenzies. While we should work towards constructing a press not authored by mob-ocracy, while we should strive to not participate in the echo chamber that shuts out any diversity in news stories, we should at the same time work in the independent press to continue to create and cultivate alternative dialogues and debates, on our own time, and not in lock step with the corporate media constructed controversies. This Thanksgiving dinner, rather than talking about Junk Man, or about the evils of the T.S.A., let's start our own conversations, ones that are emotionally relevant, ones that everyone wants to join in and talk about. Then, once back, let's keep doing it, online and in person.
Adam Bessie is an assistant professor of English at Diablo Valley College, in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a co-wrote a chapter in the 2011 edition of Project Censored on metaphor and political language, and is a frequent contributor to dailycensored.com, truthout, media-ocracy on diverse issues in education, culture and politics. Follow my essays on Twitter: adambessie

U.S. warns Ottawa of WikiLeak release

The U.S. government has notified Ottawa that the WikiLeaks website is preparing to release sensitive U.S. diplomatic files that could damage U.S. relations with allies around the world.

U.S. officials say the documents may contain accounts of compromising conversations with political dissidents and friendly politicians and could result in the expulsion of U.S. diplomats from foreign postings.

A Foreign Affairs spokeswoman said the U.S. ambassador to Canada, David Jacobson, has phoned Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon to inform him of the matter.

Melissa Lantsman said the Canadian Embassy in Washington is "currently engaging" with the U.S. State Department on the matter.

A State Department spokesman said Wednesday the release of confidential communications about foreign governments probably will erode trust in the United States as a diplomatic partner.

U.S. diplomatic outposts around the world have begun notifying other governments that WikiLeaks may release the documents in the next few days.

US judge says lesbians can be ‘cured’ by male soldiers
 

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/11/26...male-soldiers/

So, rape is okay now...along with all those "other" countries who say it is okay to kill us, too.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME????? I try to be a man of peace. But this is over the bloody top!

Mr Rehyansky, of Hamilton County, Tennessee, argued that men were naturally more promiscuous than women and “it fell to men to swing through the trees and scour the caves in search of as many women as possible to subdue and impregnate – a tough job but someone had to do it”.

Hello? Mr. Rehyansky? Can I set up an appointment with you out back for as my mom would say a meeting of the minds?

his job should be taken away. he might hurt someone. he has no idea what he is talking about...he is just so out of line and out of wack. This is disgusting. Folks, put this behind you, move on, and don't think about him again. Please.

Iran May Have Missiles From North Korea, Cables Posted by WikiLeaks Show

Iran obtained 19 advanced missiles from North Korea, potentially giving the Islamic nation the capability of attacking Moscow and cities in Western Europe, according to embassy cables posted by WikiLeaks.org and provided to the New York Times.

U.S. officials denounced the release, coming on the eve of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s departure for a security conference in the Persian Gulf, as jeopardizing U.S. ties with foreign governments and endangering individuals. WikiLeaks began posting the cables yesterday.

The 19 North Korean BM-25 missiles, based on a Russian design known as the R-27, might give Iran the “building blocks” for producing long-range missiles, according to a Feb. 24 cable posted on WikiLeaks. The cable didn’t provide specific evidence, according to the Times, which agreed not to publish the document at the Obama administration’s request.

“North Korea and Iran have had a decades-long missile relationship and also most likely a nuclear relationship,” said Bruce Klingner, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation in Washington and former chief of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Korea branch. “The leaking of the classified documents provides a greater sense of confidence” for analysis conducted previously by outside experts and most recently illustrated in photos from a North Korean parade, he said.

Pressured the U.S.

Diplomatic cables posted by the Guardian, which also received advance copies from WikiLeaks, indicate as far back as early 2008 Saudi Arabia and other Arab governments pressed the U.S. for attacks on Iran to stop it getting a nuclear bomb, even as some expressed concern that a military strike might destabilize the region.

The Obama administration has won stiffer United Nations Security Council sanctions against Iran and sealed arms agreements such as a $60 billion deal with Saudi Arabia over the next 10 years.

The State Department declined to confirm information in what WikiLeaks says is more than 250,000 documents, covering a period from December 1966 through February 2010.

“I can’t provide veracity of anything WikiLeaks has released to the media,” Nicole Thompson, a State Department spokeswoman, said in an interview, adding the agency’s policy is to refrain from commenting on specific leaked materials.

About 9,000 documents were listed as containing information too sensitive to be shared with a foreign government, the New York Times said. None was listed as “top-secret,” according to the Times.

Similar Tone

Along with the Guardian of the U.K., France’s Le Monde, Spain’s El Pais and Der Spiegel of Germany obtained the WikiLeaks documents.

On the threat from Iran, a cable posted by the Guardian quoted Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., as citing Saudi King Abdullah’s “frequent exhortations to attack Iran and put an end” to the Iranian nuclear weapons program. The exchange took place in an April 20, 2008 meeting between al- Jubeir, then-U.S. Iraq Ambassador Ryan Crocker and U.S. Central Command commander General David Petraeus, the Guardian said.

A similar tone was struck by King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain in a Nov. 4, 2009 conversation with Petraeus.

King Hamad “pointed to Iran as the source of much trouble” in the region and “he argued forcefully to take action to terminate their nuclear program by whatever means necessary,” according to a classified cable.

Hamad said “the danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it,” according to the cable cited by the Guardian.

Increased Monitoring

Bahrain is home to the U.S. 5th Fleet headquarters. The cable also disclosed that the king agreed to a NATO request to base Awacs air surveillance aircraft in his nation as part of increased monitoring of Iran.

Israeli military officials 14 days later in a Nov. 18, 2009 meeting with U.S. State and Defense Department officials, including Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro, said 2010 would be a “critical year” for Iran’s nuclear program and Israel’s capability to attack, according to a cable posted by the Guardian.

“If the Iranians continue to protect and harden their nuclear sites, it will be more difficult to target and damage them,” the cable said, summarizing Israel’s concerns.

The cable said both sides discussed the need to avoid publicity for an “upcoming delivery” of GBU-28 bunker-buster bombs to Israel “to avoid any allegations that the U.S. is helping prepare for a strike against Iran.”

Carrying Cash

The leaked documents include details about governments and officials, including an episode last year in which Afghanistan’s then-vice president, Ahmed Zia Massoud, was found carrying $52 million in cash while visiting the United Arab Emirates. Massoud denied taking any money out of Afghanistan, according to the Times.

According to another cable, a Chinese contact told the U.S. embassy in Beijing in January that China’s Politburo directed an “intrusion” into Google Inc.’s local computer networks. The Google hacking was “part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government,” the New York Times said in its account of the WikiLeaks cables.

Critical Articles

The cyber attacks in China were orchestrated by a senior politburo member who found articles critical of him using Google’s search engine, the Guardian reported. The Chinese Foreign Ministry and Jessica Powell, a Tokyo-based spokeswoman at Google, weren’t immediately available today to comment on the report.

In July 2009, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, then the defense supreme commander for the United Arab Emirates, declared that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “is Hitler,” the New York Times reported, citing the documents.

The Obama administration said in a statement yesterday that embassy reporting to Washington “is candid and often incomplete information,” not an expression of policy.

“Nevertheless, these cables could compromise private discussions with foreign governments and opposition leaders,” according to the statement from the White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs.

Republicans Condemn

Republicans also condemned the release of the cables, with Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina stating on “Fox News Sunday” that “the people at WikiLeaks could have blood on their hands.”

WikiLeaks, a nonprofit group that posts information the government wants to keep confidential, previously released 400,000 documents in October related to the Iraq war and about 75,000 in July on the Afghan conflict.

An Army intelligence analyst named Bradley Manning was arrested in June at age 22 and charged with illegally releasing classified information. He had said in an online chat in May that the documents he downloaded included “260,000 State Department cables from embassies and consulates all over the world,” the New York Times reported.

The Pentagon said yesterday it will take action to prevent future reoccurrences, such as monitoring user behavior in a way similar to steps taken by credit-card companies to detect fraud. The military will also conduct security oversight inspections at forward bases and remove the ability of classified computers to download information onto removable disks.

The real news here is that for some reason this is news (that this made the first page of google news):

For the Holidays, an Atheism Billboard

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...om-blog480.jpg

Vitamin D Deficiency Linked to Psychotic Symptoms in Adolescents

NEW YORK – Vitamin D deficiency was linked with an increased prevalence of psychotic symptoms in adolescents hospitalized for psychiatric reasons in a single-center study of 77 patients.

"The association of vitamin D deficiency with psychotic features warrants further investigation as a risk factor for both physical and mental health outcomes" in adolescents with serious mental illness, Dr. Barbara L. Gracious and her associates said in a poster presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

"The importance of vitamin D for brain development and function in both healthy and psychiatric populations is less well appreciated and understood, compared with its known role in bone health and emerging role in metabolic health," said Dr. Gracious, a psychiatrist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, and her colleagues.

Prior study findings documented links between vitamin D levels and seasonal affective disorder, depression, and schizophrenia, observations that highlighted the potential for vitamin D levels to modulate vulnerability to mental disorders.

Celebrating Secession Without the Slaves
 

New York Times

November 29, 2010

Celebrating Secession Without the Slaves

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

ATLANTA — The Civil War, the most wrenching and bloody episode in American history, may not seem like much of a cause for celebration, especially in the South.

And yet, as the 150th anniversary of the four-year conflict gets under way, some groups in the old Confederacy are planning at least a certain amount of hoopla, chiefly around the glory days of secession, when 11 states declared their sovereignty under a banner of states’ rights and broke from the union.

The events include a “secession ball” in the former slave port of Charleston (“a joyous night of music, dancing, food and drink,” says the invitation), which will be replicated on a smaller scale in other cities. A parade is being planned in Montgomery, Ala., along with a mock swearing-in of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy.

In addition, the Sons of Confederate Veterans and some of its local chapters are preparing various television commercials that they hope to show next year. “All we wanted was to be left alone to govern ourselves,” says one ad from the group’s Georgia Division.

That some — even now — are honoring secession, with barely a nod to the role of slavery, underscores how divisive a topic the war remains, with Americans continuing to debate its causes, its meaning and its legacy.

“We in the South, who have been kicked around for an awfully long time and are accused of being racist, we would just like the truth to be known,” said Michael Givens, commander-in-chief of the Sons, explaining the reason for the television ads. While there were many causes of the war, he said, “our people were only fighting to protect themselves from an invasion and for their independence.”

Not everyone is on board with this program, of course. The N.A.A.C.P., for one, plans to protest some of these events, saying that celebrating secession is tantamount to celebrating slavery.

“I can only imagine what kind of celebration they would have if they had won,” said Lonnie Randolph, president of the South Carolina N.A.A.C.P.

He said he was dumbfounded by “all of this glamorization and sanitization of what really happened.” When Southerners refer to states’ rights, he said, “they are really talking about their idea of one right — to buy and sell human beings.”

The secession events are among hundreds if not thousands that will unfold over the next four years in honor of the Civil War’s sesquicentennial. From Fort Sumter to Appomattox, historic sites across the South, and some in the North, plan to highlight various aspects of America’s deadliest conflict — and perhaps its least resolved.

Many of the activities are purely historical, and some, like a gathering this month in Gettysburg for the 147th anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, will be solemn. At Antietam, on Saturday, the annual memorial will feature 23,000 candles, representing that battle’s casualties.

Some cities and states are promoting their Civil War history with an eye toward attracting tourists. In Atlanta, the Cyclorama, a giant painting-in-the-round that depicts the first day of the Battle of Atlanta, is being “refreshed and rebranded” as part of an overall marketing plan, said Camille Love, the city’s director of cultural affairs.

Commemorating the Civil War has never been easy. The centennial 50 years ago coincided with the civil rights movement, and most of the South was still effectively segregated, making a mockery of any notion that the slaves had truly become free and equal. Congress had designated an official centennial commission, which lost credibility when it planned to meet in a segregated hotel; this year, Congress has not bothered with an official commission and any master narrative of the war seems elusive.

“We don’t know what to commemorate because we’ve never faced up to the implications of what the thing was really about,” said Andrew Young, a veteran of the civil rights movement and former mayor of Atlanta. “The easy answer for black folk is that it set us free, but it really didn’t,” Mr. Young added. “We had another 100 years of segregation. We’ve never had our complete reconciliation of the forces that divide us.”

The passion that the Civil War still evokes was evident earlier this year when Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia designated April as Confederate History Month — without mentioning slavery. After a national outcry, he apologized and changed his proclamation to condemn slavery and spell out that slavery had led to war.

The proclamation was urged on him by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which asserts that the Confederacy was a crusade for small government and states’ rights. The sesquicentennial, which coincides now with the rise of the Tea Party movement, is providing a new chance for adherents to promote that view.

Jeff Antley, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Confederate Heritage Trust, is organizing the secession ball in Charleston and a 10-day re-enactment of the Confederate encampment at Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the war were fired on April 12, 1861. He said these events were not about modern politics but were meant to honor those South Carolinians who signed the state’s ordinance of secession on Dec. 20, 1860, when it became the first state to dissolve its union with the United States.

“We’re celebrating that those 170 people risked their lives and fortunes to stand for what they believed in, which is self-government,” Mr. Antley said. “Many people in the South still believe that is a just and honorable cause. Do I believe they were right in what they did? Absolutely,” he said, noting that he spoke for himself and not any organization. “There’s no shame or regret over the action those men took.”

Mr. Antley said he was not defending slavery, which he called an abomination. “But defending the South’s right to secede, the soldiers’ right to defend their homes and the right to self-government doesn’t mean your arguments are without weight because of slavery,” he said.

Most historians say it is impossible to carve out slavery from the context of the war. As James W. Loewen, a liberal sociologist and author of “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” put it: “The North did not go to war to end slavery, it went to war to hold the country together and only gradually did it become anti-slavery — but slavery is why the South seceded.” In its secession papers, Mississippi, for example, called slavery “the greatest material interest of the world” and said that attempts to stop it would undermine “commerce and civilization.”

The conflict has been playing out in recent decades in disputes over the stories told or not told in museum exhibits and on battlefield plaques.

“These battles of memory are not only academic,” said Mark Potok, the director of intelligence at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “They are really about present-day attitudes. I don’t think the neo-Confederate movement is growing, but it’s gotten a new shot of life because of the sesquicentennial.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/us...nted=2&_r=1&hp