Southern States

To look outside, it's hard to believe that spring is just a couple of weeks away. Oh, all right, a couple of months. But there's a fun, and not dangerously expensive, way to speed its arrival. Just take a few days off, pack up the car and drive south until the grass looks green and the breezes feel sweet. Unless you have a lot of time and more than $100 for gas, it might be best to delay your departure a month or so, which should be just about enough time to send away for brand-new state travel guides from two of our nearer Southern neighbors.

For months now, Southern politicians have been plotting to give their region the pre-eminent role in determining the identity of the major parties' next presidential nominees. They have been assembling, state by state, what amounts to a regional presidential primary to be held on March 8, 1988, soon after the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. This plan is the brainchild of Southern Democratic leaders, most of whom were not exactly thrilled with the nomination in 1984 of Walter F. Mondale, whom they considered a big-spending liberal.

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration's civil-rights office stepped up its fight with Southern states over voting rights, saying Friday that it would block a new South Carolina law that requires voters to show a government-issued photo ID before casting a ballot. The Justice Department invoked the Voting Rights Act, saying the new photo ID rule could deny the right to vote for tens of thousands of blacks and other minorities. "According to the state's statistics, there are 81,938 minority citizens who are already registered to vote and who lack DMV-issued identification," Thomas E. Perez, chief of Justice's Civil Rights Division, said in a letter to South Carolina officials.

MICHAEL VICK served over a year and a half in prison for fighting and killing dogs. America's forefathers didn't serve one day for killing Native Americans, nor did any of the racist hate-mongers in the Southern states for 400-plus years of slavery. Vick has fulfilled what the commonwealth of Virginia has deemed a reasonable punishment, so everyone else should just back off. I would bet that if your son was arrested and jailed for rape and murder and released from prison, you would want him to get a second chance.

Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall has sounded a critical note during the celebration of the Constitution bicentennial with his reminder that the original document perpetuated slavery and denied women the vote. His remarks are at odds with the unalloyed praise heaped on the framers' wisdom by others. The true "miracle at Philadelphia", says Justice Marshall, was "not the birth of the Constitution but its life . . . through two turbulent centuries" that saw the passage of the Bill of Rights and later amendments abolishing slavery, guaranteeing equal protection of the law, and enfranchising women.

U.S. Civil Rights Commission leaders have concluded "there is no evidence of a national conspiracy" in the arson attacks on Southern black churches. "Nor do we find signs of a regional conspiracy," Commission Chairwoman Mary Frances Berry announced yesterday. But she said the lack of a general conspiracy "makes these fires even more frightening. " The commission conducted fact-finding hearings in several Southern states to determine what fueled firebombings and arson attacks on at least 59 African- American churches from October 1995 through June.

The number of homeowners behind in their mortgage payments fell late last year, but more slipped into foreclosure than at any time since 1987. The Mortgage Bankers Association said yesterday the proportion of homeowners at least 30 days late on payments fell to a seasonally adjusted 4.78 percent, the lowest in a year. That was down from 5.07 percent at the end of the third quarter and a five- year high of 5.28 percent in June. The fourth quarter rate was still slightly higher than the rate a year earlier, 4.71 percent.

Terry Bivens is to be congratulated on his well-written and thoughtful article "Can prisons for profit work?" (Inquirer Magazine, Aug. 3). The debate between those in favor and those opposed to "prisons for profit" that is outlined in the article again demonstrates that Americans should learn their history and learn from their history. How can we discuss this issue in a historical vacuum? Doesn't any penologist on either side remember the notorious convict-lease system that plagued much of the South in the last quarter of the 19th century?

The delegates to the Federal Convention found still another issue to disagree on yesterday - how to count the population of the United States. The dispute set North and South squarely at odds and produced a spirited debate. Southern delegates argued that a periodic census was necessary to assure that the allocation of representatives in the new national legislature, which will be based on population, remained fair. The majority of Americans now live in the North, but a day may come when that will no longer be true, the Southerners declared.

After weeks of deadlock, a spirit of compromise seemed to be stirring at last yesterday in the Federal Convention. Not only did the delegates agree that a census be taken six years after a new Constitution is adopted and every 10 years after that, but they also agreed to count three-fifths of all slaves in determining representation, a measure that Southern and Northern delegates have disputed vigorously. However, the words of some delegates early in the day seemed as uncompromising as ever.

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration's civil-rights office stepped up its fight with Southern states over voting rights, saying Friday that it would block a new South Carolina law that requires voters to show a government-issued photo ID before casting a ballot. The Justice Department invoked the Voting Rights Act, saying the new photo ID rule could deny the right to vote for tens of thousands of blacks and other minorities. "According to the state's statistics, there are 81,938 minority citizens who are already registered to vote and who lack DMV-issued identification," Thomas E. Perez, chief of Justice's Civil Rights Division, said in a letter to South Carolina officials.

U.S. students don't know much about American history, according to results of a national test released yesterday. Just 13 percent of high-school seniors who took the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress, called the Nation's Report Card, showed solid academic performance in American history. The two other grades didn't perform much better, with just 22 percent of fourth-grade students and 18 percent of eighth-graders scoring proficient or better. The test quizzed students on topics including colonization, the American Revolution and the Civil War, and the contemporary United States.

The dramatic - and undoubtedly smelly - fish kill on Delaware Bay this month wasn't an effect of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, as some readers posited. Or a sign of cataclysmic climate change. The deaths of thousands of menhaden that washed onto the bayshore of Cape May County were most likely the unfortunate result of steady winds, ocean movements, and even the science of flat soda pop. When the fish kill happened on Aug. 11, conditions were unusual but not unexpected, said University of Delaware oceanographer Matt Oliver, who's part of a group that monitors ocean conditions.

MICHAEL VICK served over a year and a half in prison for fighting and killing dogs. America's forefathers didn't serve one day for killing Native Americans, nor did any of the racist hate-mongers in the Southern states for 400-plus years of slavery. Vick has fulfilled what the commonwealth of Virginia has deemed a reasonable punishment, so everyone else should just back off. I would bet that if your son was arrested and jailed for rape and murder and released from prison, you would want him to get a second chance.

Southern California football coach Pete Carroll made things perfectly clear about who he thinks is the best team in the country. "With all due respect to Oklahoma and Florida, those are two fine football programs, but I don't think anybody could beat the Trojans this year," Carroll said to the postgame crowd and a national television audience last night after USC defeated Penn State, 38-24. Carroll is in his eighth year as USC's head coach. Carroll and Penn State coach Joe Paterno are proponents of having a Division I football playoff.

THE MYTHOLOGY of the year 1968 A.D. is a black hole so powerful that objectivity can hardly escape it. What follows is drawn from research, from impartial sources and from my personal memory. One of the most cherished beliefs about 1968 is that it culminated the years of liberals' struggle to improve America. In fact, vast social change pre-dated 1968. Under the Great Society, barriers were torn down in 1964 and 1965, with civil-rights acts outlawing racial segregation and enshrining equal opportunity in jobs and voting.

LAST MONTH, I attended a seminar in Philadelphia at the Crown Plaza Hotel. As a Catholic, I also made a side trip to the Central Association of the Miraculous Medal on Chelten Avenue. Although I've traveled all over the country and to many areas abroad, it was my first trip to the City of Brotherly Love - and I found it to live up to that name. In moving about the city, I traveled by train and, not being familiar with the system, made several mistakes in the process. To a person, from people in the street, to the hotel staff, to the staff at the shrine and everyone affiliated with the seminar, all exhibited the kind of hospitality, helpfulness and friendliness that is more often associated with southern states.

Biden says Del. can help him as a former 'slave state' Sen. Joseph Biden says he can hold his own in a 2008 presidential primary against Democratic contenders from the South, noting that his home state of Delaware was a "slave state. " Biden dismissed the notion that he was a "Northeastern liberal" who would have a poor showing in the South against other likely contenders such as Virginia Gov. Mark Warner and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee.

David Shoemaker Richie, 97, who in his 34 years as executive secretary of Friends Social Order Committee of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting founded relief work camps in the United States and Europe, died Friday of heart failure at a daughter's home in Bryan, Ohio. Born in the Moorestown house where he lived until last year, Mr. Richie was exposed at an early age to pacifism and ideas of social justice. His parents took him on weekly trips to North Philadelphia to help provide for the poor.

Erroneous to begin with, the notion still persists 143 years after the start of the Civil War that New Jersey was a Northern border state with Southern sympathies. "Nothing could be further from the truth," said William Gillette, a Rutgers University history professor in a talk last month about New Jersey before the Civil War. "New Jersey was loyal to the Union. " Less than 1 percent of New Jersey's population was born in the South; its boundaries fall far away from the Mason-Dixon line; and 15 years before the start of the Civil War, there were only a handful of slaves to be freed in 1846 when the state adopted a new constitution banning slavery.