We've seen the Tweets that former House speaker Newt Gingrich sends out about Donald Trump. On Monday, we saw Gingrich exit that Washington meeting of the party establishment with the Republican presidential nominee. Now the Daily Beast has put two and two together:
But surely WSB Radio's Erick Erickson, part of the effort to stop Donald Trump, couldn't have had Gingrich in mind this morning when he confessed second thoughts about backing a third-party candidate who would challenge the Republican frontrunner:
If a third party rises up to take on Trump, they'll be able to point out that this third party is to blame for Trump's loss, not that Trump was always going to lose.
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In a column on the campus carry bill as a threat to academic freedom on university campuses, Sonja West, an associate professor at the University of Georgia's School of Law, points to a clause in the state constitution that might become grounds for a future lawsuit. From Slate:
Within a year, Talmadge's tactics had led to the firing of 10 more esteemed educators (including the vice chancellor of the university system). The Board of Regents had lost all political independence. And the schools' libraries were purged of "subversive" books that were deemed to encourage concepts like racial equality or communism. Talmadge's political power grab only ended after several Georgia colleges and universities lost their accreditation, and Talmadge was defeated in his run for re-election.
So damaging was the "Cocking Affair," as it became known, to the independence of Georgia's colleges and universities that two years later the state amended its constitution. The new provision explicitly gives the Board of Regents constitutional power over "the government, control, and management" of the state's colleges and universities. Whether that constitutional provision provides a legal defense against Georgia's campus-carry law has not yet been tested in the courts. But the underlying threat of political intrusion into university administration remains the same now as it was in 1941.
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On that same topic: Several campus presidents have urged Gov. Nathan Deal to reject the "campus carry" legislation that lifts the ban on firearms at universities. But few carry as much weight as the admonition from Cecil Staton, a former Republican state senator who is now the interim president of Valdosta State University.
In the final minutes of the 2013 legislative session, Staton yanked his support for a measure that would have cleared the way for the carrying of concealed weapons on campuses. And he made clear on Wednesday his concerns still linger. From his letter:
Our police officers are concerned with maintaining the security of the campus and with so many unpredictable consequences possible from accidental or negligent discharges or the addition of well-intentioned but untrained bystanders to any potentially volatile situation on the campus, "campus carry" complicates their mission exponentially.
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Add another celebrity to the list of big names criticizing Georgia's "religious liberty" legislation.
On the other side of the coin is the Rev. Franklin Graham, son of Billy, who held a rally for religious conservatives in February at the state Capitol has sent many, many Tweets on the issue. This is only one of them:
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