A leader of Georgia's Civil War Commission has drawn a line in the sand over the recently renewed debate about Confederate war emblems.
Charles Kelly Barrow is the vice-chair of Georgia's commission, which is charged with planning and preserving the state's Civil War battlefields and monuments. He's also the head of the national Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group that has been outspoken in its defense of Rebel insignia amid new scrutiny into the Old South symbols.
Barrow, who was reappointed to the state commission
, tweeted a
on July 4 that urged supporters to contribute to a new campaign he spearheaded.
"We are in a war to save American culture," read the dispatch's headline.
It continues:
"I am certain I do not need to tell you that we are facing a crisis. In fact, we are facing the greatest threat to our heritage in modern times. The forces arrayed against us are formidable. Their first declared goal is to remove the Confederate Battle flag which flies beside the Confederate Soldier's monument in Columbia, South Carolina. It was put there in 2000 as part of a political compromise. But do not be fooled into thinking they will stop there. The radical leftists who are driving this crisis are committed to the complete eradication of all things Confederate."
Barrow did not respond to a request seeking further comment.
Updated at 3:15 p.m.: Bryan Long of Better Georgia, the left-leaning pressure group, called for a full investigation into the commission. He cited a link from the group's Facebook page to a website called "Murderbymedia" with racist and anti-Semitic posts.
Said Long:
"Even one link between the Commission and white supremacist ideology is one link too many. We expect Gov. Deal and Lt. Gov. Cagle to have zero tolerance for racist, revisionist history. With the links that we've discovered already, it appears GCWC may be nothing more than a state-supported neo-Confederate propaganda organization."
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Stone Mountain Park, fresh off its decision to keep its Rebel flags aloft in the face of a boycott threat, reported heavy crowds for the Independence Day celebration.
Democratic state Representative LaDawn Blackett Jones this week urged people to stay away from the park 10 miles (16 km) east of Atlanta because it flies three flags of the pro-slavery Confederacy alongside the U.S. and Georgia state flags.
Bobbie Smith of Fitzgerald, Georgia, who was camping at Stone Mountain with her family, called the boycott call "just stupid."
"This whole park is a Confederate memorial. If you don't have the flag here, where on Earth would you put it?" she said.
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There's a lot of factors that help sway gas prices. But so far, supporters of Georgia's new gas tax are happy that prices in Georgia didn't surge after the law took effect.
The AAA fuel report over the weekend showed the price of a regular gallon of gas at $2.66. That's about the same it was a week ago, before the new gas taxes took hold.
Here's a reminder of what factors into the change from our AJC colleague Andria Simmons over at the Route 666 blog:
That all goes away (July 1) and gets converted it to a straight 26-cent-per-gallon excise tax.
This means drivers should expect around a 6-to-7-cent increase in the price for a gallon of gasoline if they visit a gas pump after today. The exact increase, however, will depend on the price of gas and diesel.
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Over on Maureen Downey's Get Schooled blog, state Rep. Stacey Evans, D-Smyrna, previews next year's fight over expanding the HOPE scholarship. Evans, an attorney and HOPE scholar herself, writes that she grew up in "a trailer" in North Georgia and would no longer qualify under the HOPE changes.
But keep in mind that Evans' education-focused advocacy for Jason Carter's gubernatorial campaign got her in a tiff with state Rep. Earl Ehrhart, the Republican who is a gatekeeper for all higher education legislation.
From Evans' essay:
"We have overcorrected and, should we stay this course, we are doing so at the expense of a bargain that has become part of the fabric of Georgia.
"Next session, I will put forward legislation that gets us back to the bargain we made with Georgia's families because frankly I know they will keep their end of the deal. I know because I did. I never asked for a hand out, and neither did my family. We just did the work necessary to hold up our end."
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If you were on the road and missed the Sunday paper/premium edition, you should catch up on our AJC colleague Jeremy Redmon's look inside the Texas detention center for Central American women and children who have come to the country illegally:
Yet, there is no mistaking what this place is — a tightly secured immigration detention center complete with roaming guards, metal detectors and high fences.
The South Texas Family Residential Center — the largest of its kind in the U.S. with capacity to hold 2,400 people — is now ground zero in the contentious national debate over illegal immigration. And there is a lot at stake in that debate for Georgia, a state that has fought for years to drive out immigrants living illegally within its borders.
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Authority for the controversial Export-Import Bank expired at month's end -- as its website will tell you -- but the Senate, at least, will stage a vote to revive it. And Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., indicated his support to the Atlanta Business Chronicle late last week:
But Isakson sympathizes with Ex-Im Bank opponents who say the program is being abused and needs to be held more accountable.
"The Ex-Im Bank ought to be the last resort of credit," he said. "There's some transparency issues that will have to be addressed, I can assure you of that."
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The mattress company Serta, which has a Buckhead-based parent company, is dumping presidential hopeful Donald Trump after his comments about "rapist" Mexican immigrants. From Bloomberg News:
The company, which sells Trump Home-branded mattresses, won't renew its licensing agreement with the billionaire presidential candidate when it expires at the end of the year, according to an e-mailed statement.
"Serta values diversity and does not agree with nor endorse the recent statements made by Mr. Trump," the company said in a statement Wednesday. Serta is "in the process of unwinding our relationship."
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