The infantile white people things fits my family members. They feel like they are losing their edge. Minorities never had much of an edge, they have to grow up. Some white people choose to grow up too, while some hold a little kernel of white supremacy in their heart like it's an insurance policy of sorts.

Gov. Larry Hogan joined a groundswell of opposition to Confederate-linked monuments on Tuesday, calling for the removal of a statue of the Supreme Court chief justice who wrote an 1857 decision that upheld slavery and denied citizenship to black Americans.

The statue of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, a Calvert County native and author of the infamous Dred Scott decision, has stood on the front lawn of the State House in Annapolis since 1872, withstanding multiple efforts to remove it.

Hogan's announcement probably ensures that the bronze likeness of Taney will be removed from its prominent perch in the state capital. Hogan acknowledged the statue may send an inappropriate message in a country that continues to struggle over civil rights and equality.

"While we cannot hide from our history -- nor should we -- the time has come to make clear the difference between properly acknowledging our past and glorifying the darkest chapters of our history," Hogan said in a statement. "With that in mind, I believe removing the Justice Roger B. Taney Statue from the State House grounds is the right thing to do, and we will ask the State House trust to take that action immediately."

I say "finally," because of this:

Hogan previously supported keeping Taney in his spot at the State House, and in 2015 called removing monuments to the Confederacy "political correctness run amok." Hogan did recall more than 100 Sons of Confederate Veterans commemorative license plates that year.

A spokesman said Tuesday that the governor was moved to change his mind following the weekend events in Charlottesville, Va., where white supremacists held demonstrations and one woman was killed and others injured when a car plowed into a crowd of counter-protesters.

"The governor was disgusted by the events in Charlottesville and rightly concluded that these memorials had become a rallying point for white supremacists and bigots," Hogan spokesman Doug Mayer said. "Their presence on prominent public land was sending a confusing and ultimately inappropriate message."

Whoa dude you really got me there.

As long as an iron-clad no repatriation clause is included, never allowing the Trump family to return to US soil.  1 billion dollars is a f&ckin' bargain.

We went to Prague for Christmas because my husband and his sister are only 2nd generation Czechs in the US. My niece pointed out to me something the Europeans are supporting and doing in certain towns and countries. On the cobblestone walks in front of houses and buildings you can find raised bronze caps attached to cobbles. On them is the name and date that someone from that location "was taken" and died in Nazi custody or concentration camps. They were on the sidewalks in Prague. But this is overall a European thing, not a German thing. And not all towns in Germany are participating in the marking, just some. Stuttgart did, but Berlin fights it, some argue that people can step on these blocks and the names and dates be disrespected in this fashion. They are appropriately called stumbling blocks though.

Josh and I are in Warsaw tonight. We came to see another young man with what Josh deals with. He's very bright. He receives stipends in their school system because of how well he does in his studies. But he is not doing as well as Josh physically/medically. His family asked us about a visit, I suspect to discuss this and options available.

The best ticket from DC to Warsaw and back was offered from Scandanavian Air/SAS. Nobody in the family had flown them before so I was asked to "check them out" before paying. Then they offered me $400 off on each ticket if I left 2 days earlier so I took it. And SAS was a nice flight. Comfortable seats, they didn't try to kill me with pain and suffering, but if you choose seats they charge you. I chose seats. They are 49% owned by the governments of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

Trying to figure out how to burn these 2 extra days though. I Google things to do in Warsaw. One of them is to get on a train, go to Auschwitz.

While there are no official Nazi memorials erected in Germany for obvious reasons, many individual towns in the former West Germany, especially in Bavaria, do have memorials to their fallen soldiers from the Second World War.

When we visited Bavaria, most of those I saw were simple "Gedenkstein," or memorial stones with a commemorative plaque bolted to it. They were hardly ostentatious, by any means. But they're certainly around.

While there we visited Schweinfurt, which was once the site of a massive ball-bearing manufacturing complex, and which had naturally presented a prominent and tempting industrial target to American and British air force planners during the war.

However, two daring but ill-fated (and poorly planned) daylight raids conducted by the U.S. 8th Air Force in August and October 1943, respectively, ultimately cost 142 heavy B-17 bombers and the lives of more than 1,200 American pilots and airmen in total, which then constituted represented nearly 20% of the USAAF's standing combat capacity in Europe at the time.

After having lunch in the nearby town of Schwemmelsbach, we strolled around a bit and came across a war memorial to that town's dead from the First World War, which had been further inscribed with the names of the town's dead from the U.S. air raids on those ball-bearing plants, as well.

Further, not too far away in the Frankenwald (Franconian Forest) of northern Bavaria, we saw a fairly prominent Gedenkstein which honored the fallen soldiers of 1st SS Panzer Division, Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler.

Now, this was a rather prestigious and elite unit which until the latter stages of the war had served as Hitler's personal bodyguard, and been deployed to southern Germany in late February 1945 in a desperate gambit to stem Gen. Patton's advance with his U.S. 3rd Army. Needless to say, Der Führer's finest had suffered tremendous casualties in that failed effort.

Honestly, seeing that Gedenkstein for the 1st SS Panzer Division surprised me, given what we had been told about the general antipathy of Germans to any official and public mention of the Nazis and the Third Reich.

  The human being so celebrated will have, in addition to the good/good works, all the frailties and complexities of human beings, including within the context of time and circumstances.

  We honor founders, such as George Washington for the good he did as a successful leader in the war for independence against the Crown and for initially effecting the ideas of the new  US Constitution and "the presidency", including the peaceful transfer of power.

 And, we  honor Thomas Jefferson for the Declaration of Independence, his advocacy of, and contributions to, democracy, and his important foreign diplomatic efforts on behalf of the newly founded country.

  Washington and Jefferson were, also, slave owners. Both of these great historical figures contributed to the founding of the country and its original sin.  We live with the fruits of both, but, on balance, we celebrate the former and disdain the later--continually striving, on the base they helped provide, for the more perfect union.

What good/good works do we celebrate with a statue,for example, of Jefferson Davis?  Despite being in a many decades later historical period, Davis, as with Washington and Jefferson, was a slave owner.

  Maybe, it was his service to the United States of America as Secretary of War during the Pierce Administration. Or, a senator from ole Miss? Doubtful.  Davis was president of the Confederacy, a failed insurrectionist caught in an attempted flight to Europe sporting his wife's shawl. The  rebellion and the confederate government was triggered by the election of a US president some states did not want, and so as to maintain slavery as an institution.

What good did the confederate generals do for the country?  Statues are erected for them because they led a pro-slavery insurrection well. Or, have been thought to have done so. Robert E. Lee, slave owner and a West Point Commandant, when the choice of his life arrived, went with the confederacy, and left the Union.

Perhaps the good thing Lee did occurred after the defeat of the insurrection.  In his writings, Lee opposed erecting monuments: "As regards the erection of such a monument (a proposal for a Stonewall Jackson monument, in 1866) my conviction is that however grateful it would be to the feelings of the South, the attempt in the present condition of the Country, would have the effect of retarding, instead of accelerating its accomplishment, and continuing, if not adding to the difficulties under which the Southern people labor."  That may be worth a statue.  

Any of those other names you floated rise to that level?

I do not believe any confederate monument should be destroyed or defaced...I do think it's a good idea to move them to museums with other historical monuments to be used as a learning tool, and admired for their artistic merits.  They really do not belong on prominent display on public or government property...in my humble opinion, if opinions are allowed to be humble anymore;)

I find the case of Princeton student Willglory Tanjohn, Class of 2018, quite revealing.  She wrote a letter to the Daily Princetonian attacking the school's reverence for its former president, Woodrow Wilson,

I told the administrator that Wilson is arguably the most racist U.S. and Princeton president, and the administrator agreed that Wilson was indeed racist. They argued that he may have not been the most racist president in history because he had a plethora of competition, including George Washington who they mentioned has multiple institutions, a state and our capital that bear his name.

Who could have predicted the nation would catch fire like this simply by stoking a little Klansmanship?

I don't know if Kelly will want to handle that chief of staff job much longer.

The term "alt-left" was probably simultaneously invented hundreds or thousands of times, always bearing a slightly different meaning depending on its inventor.

it's a childish retort to 'alt-right.' yet the the alt-right chose that name for themselves. i do quibble a bit that the author includes the neo-nazis and kkk with the alt-right. we call nazis, nazis. we call the kkk, the klan. the term alt-right is attempting to describe something else.

But Orange County is trending blue--as Hillary won the County overall by 9 points.  Obama lost it twice.