Popcorn gets probation; Herald misses spell-check

In layman's terms, this here is a damn shame.

Famed Appalachain moonshiner gets 18 months

If you didn't catch it, the Spartanburg Herald-Journal misspelled "Appalachian." In a headline, no less. And in more than one place on the online edition, both on its front page and on the stand-alone story. It's spelled correctly in the Associated Press text. The misspelling might be easier to miss if it wasn't the name of a massive mountain range, and a university, and a walking trail, and used in the names of numerous businesses in the region, and if it wasn't in the headline itself.

But the bigger news is poor ol' Popcorn, and his getting caught again, and getting sentenced again.

Twice in the past week, I've watched ol' Popcorn on public television, making moonshine in a documentary that was aired just last night on SCETV. He's an artist at it, that's for certain, and a scientist of it.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one watching that documentary. Prosecutors used material from it in court against Popcorn.

A federal judge turned aside public pleas for leniency and sentenced famed Appalachian moonshiner Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton to 18 months in prison. The bearded 62-year-old Parrottsville author of the book "Me and My Likker" pleaded guilty in April to two counts charging him with illegally producing distilled spirits and being a felon in possession of a .38-caliber handgun.

U.S. District Judge Ronnie Greer sentenced him on Monday to 18 months on each count, to run concurrently, and ordered him to "self-report" to prison when marshals call.

The Greeneville Sun reported that hundreds of people from North Carolina and Tennessee signed petitions supporting Sutton. "We trust him in any matters of great importance in our everyday lives and would welcome him as a neighbor," the petitions said. But the judge doubted many would think that placing a man convicted five times on probation again would serve their interests. Most would say, "no," he said.

Sutton has been running afoul of the law at least since 1974, when he was charged by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms with multiple violations of liquor tax laws. He was convicted in 1981 and 1985 in Haywood County, N.C., on charges of possessing controlled substances and assault with a deadly weapon.

In 2007, firefighters putting out a fire at his Parrottsville property discovered 650 gallons of untaxed alcohol, leading to a probationary sentence from Cocke County for untaxed liquor. In March 2008, he told an undercover agent he had 500 gallons of moonshine in Tennessee and 400 gallons in Maggie Valley, N.C., ready for sale. Federal authorities arrested him days later, leading to Monday's charges.

Sutton's 1999 book "Me and My Likker: The True Story of a Mountain Moonshiner" tells his life's story and describes his "profession" and personal philosophy.

During Monday's hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Reeves played videos showing Sutton surrounded by firearms and demonstrating how to make moonshine whiskey.

He's an honest man -- he told the revenuers just how much he had, and where it was. And he's a learned man, having written a book ten years ago about his life and livelihood. And he's an industrious man; he can't be lazy and make 1,550 gallons of moonshine in the past two years. He is, in fact, just the sort of man our economy needs to get us back on our feet.

Well, maybe after his probation is up, if his health holds out, he can get back to work.

And maybe President Barack Obama will pardon him.

An annotated tour of Capitol Hill

Hard to catch up a couple of weeks in a few paragraphs, but here goes: Daisy and I spent a week or so in Charleston with her mom in the hospital, then went to Washington, DC, for a work-related conference, then she came home to the Upstate and sweltered until a broken heat pump was repaired, then we rode back to Charleston for her mom's check-up in the heat and humidity. Daisy's right: It's been a long, hot summer already, and summer's not over.

A couple of interesting things occurred during this time, not counting that I've learned a little bit about kidney stones, E. coli, MRSA and other bacterial infections.

One is that we spent July 4 in the nation's capital but didn't spend it on the crowded National Mall with thousands of others; we watched happily from the air-conditioned comfort of our hotel room. Another is that we scheduled a tour of Capitol Hill through the office of one of our illustrious Senators -- I won't name names but there are only two, and only one of them made his name as a presidential persecutor during the Clinton impeachment trial. And speaking of persecutors, Old Scratch collected on his contract with Jesse Helms, and Daisy and I happened to drive through Raleigh on the very afternoon that the Helms account was closed at Hayes Barton Baptist Church. (Yep, I got pictures, but no, I didn't get inside.)

I'll skip the lessons in bacterial infections and hospital visits, and the various dramas connected thereto, and get straight to Washington. Well, it was hot and the days were long. This was no vacation for either of us, and some of our real goals were accomplished. But at the end of the work, Daisy and I scheduled with that unnamed Senator's office to get a guided tour of Capitol Hill.

In fact, Capitol Hill isn't open to the public as it was before Dubya's and Congress's knee-jerk reactions to the attacks of 2001. Now, law-abiding Americans can only visit the People's House -- as it was called when it was being conceived by Washington, L'Enfant and others in the eighteenth century -- by calling and getting an appointment for a guided tour through a member of Congress.

Because Daisy and I had watched C-SPAN's gorgeous documentary on Capitol Hill on Memorial Day, we actually called to get one of the special tours up into the Rotunda. But we were advised that the rules are different for those tours: Your member of Congress must accompany you, and you have to sign papers declaring your physical fitness for that tour (because it involves climbing a ton of stairs, and it takes a long while), and those tours have to be arranged with the office of the architect of the Capitol. Indeed, our contact advised us, our Senator had never taken that tour himself. (It is more important, after all, to travel the nation in support of John McCain's presidential campaign than to be available to meet the requests of constituents.)

So for these reasons (though we were not only sufficiently physically fit, but excited at the prospect of that behind-the-scenes tour), we didn't get the Rotunda tour. Instead, we got (the names have been changed to protect the uninformed) Bart. Bart would take us and another unsuspecting family on our guided tour. Okeydoke.

So on July 7, Daisy and I parked at Union Station. We tried to park closer to Capitol Hill, but Capitol Police advised us that the closest "citizen parking" was in the pay-by-the-hour parking deck behind Union Station. "Citizen parking," the officer called it. I took it to mean that those hundreds of cars parked behind the martial perimeter around Capitol Hill must be other-than-citizens, either "non-citizens" or "super-citizens." In either case, I'm concerned; the Constitution does not establish any "super-citizenship," and it makes no sense to allow non-citizens to park nearer to the government than citizens themselves are allowed to park. Nevertheless, we parked behind Union Station and called our office contact to ask about the policy on carrying bags and purses.

When we told her we'd parked at Union Station, she blanched (yes, even over the phone, we could tell she blanched) and said that we should park near the elevators and cover anything valuable we might have to leave in the truck. In fact, she told us that it would be safer for Daisy to leave her purse in the Senator's office than in our locked vehicle. It was a confidence booster, since we'd checked out of the hotel already, and everything we'd brought to Washington was in the truck. Mmm, I thought: My tax dollars at work. I gave my little truck a second glance as we rounded the corner to leave the parking deck.

Did you know Union Station was built on bottom land that once was occupied by Irish transients? The shantytown was called Swampoodle and the Irish had to be run out so the land could be filled in and the station could be built. What a fine welcome for the Irish, I thought. Give us your tired, your poor -- but get the hell out of the way now, because progress is coming, and its god is capitalist. Swampoodle.

And did you know that the statues of Roman centurions that ring the upper deck of Union Station were original cast as nude, but shields were cast additionally to cover the nudity in order so as not to offend weaker sensibilities? To which I thought, then why cast the statues at all, and why not just paint murals of Mickey Mouse up there instead? What unnecessary drama.

There are inspiring inscriptions in the station's facade, and we paused long enough to read them. But the heat and the taxi traffic kept us moving toward our Senator's office, a little up Delaware Avenue and on the left.

Though we got there a few minutes early, Bart started our tour fifteen minutes late, there being more important matters to address: checking Facebook pages and whatnot. It was a precursor of things to come.

Bart told us he'd only been with the Senator's office for a few weeks. He may have said, too, that he spent part of the spring as a legislative page, but he mumbled a good bit when he was unsure, so he may have been saying something else entirely. I'm certain that the mumbling is endearing to the co-eds at his college -- which will go unnamed here to protect those who may actually be paying attention to their history professors in Clinton -- as is his fresh-from-North-Myrtle tan and Zoom!-whitening, but it was a bit of an aggravation to someone who'd seen the C-SPAN documentary and who was actually interested in learning more about our Capitol. I can tell you too that those hiking from Union Station on a hot July afternoon were not as charmed by Bart's surreptitious smoothing and primping as were the nubile tour guides with whom we crossed paths. I'm sure that many have swooned upon hearing that he's a business major, with intentions of law school thereafter.

Lucky for Bart that the LSAT doesn't include a section on American history. Or on grammar. "The most funnest part" of the tour for Bart, he told us, was riding the underground trolley that ferries legislators from their office buildings to their respective chambers for votes. "The most funnest" is a direct quote; I have no reason to lie about it.

He took us downstairs to line up for the trolley and explained the little red light on the clocks located throughout the Senate complex. Based upon his mumbling explanation, I still have no understanding of the clock system, but I know the clocks have little red lights on them for some reason. And it's important to members of Congress.

The original statue of the Lady of Freedom, the model for the statue that stands atop the Capitol dome, was encased in plywood because it's being moved to a visitors center. Bart explained that this "15-feet-tall" statue was the tallest in Washington, by law. None can be taller, he said. Having seen the statues of Jefferson and Lincoln, I kept my lip buttoned, for I didn't want to get anyone into trouble.

Stepping up into Statuary Hall, Bart explained that each state has two statues in the Capitol, including South Carolina. (!) Our two are of Wade Hampton and John C. Calhoun, he told us.

Of course, Daisy and I went to marvel at many others we recognized by image or by name. We apparently impeded Bart's tour plan, as we pointed and called out names, and took pictures, amazed at the collective significance of the history in the room. I figured that if Bart were brighter, he likely would have thought, You can take the yokels out of the sticks, but you can't take the sticks out of the yokels. But I rest assured that Bart arrived at no such construction.

As Bart made his way through a halting, embarrassing explanation of Constantine Brumidi's murals in the Rotunda, Daisy and I agreed that he would benefit from watching the C-SPAN documentary, and we noticed too that other tour guides were going into much greater -- and more accurate -- detail than was ours, and that some were referring to a printed script of some sort. Not our Bart.

I have to confess that because our little tour party included another family, a couple with elementary- or middle-school-age kids, I felt compelled to correct some of Bart's more egregious declarations. For example, a bit of the mural in the Rotunda illustrates the Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk. When Bart said it occurred "sometime in the mid-1900s," I couldn't stop myself from telling the kids, "That happened in 1903."

"You must be a real history buff," said young Bart.

"I was an English major," I replied. What I didn't say, but thought, was: The reason I can recognize these statues and murals, and know the dates of certain important events, and know their significance, is that I paid more attention to what I was being taught in the public schools of eastern North Carolina than to what I'd be doing on Friday nights, and with whom, and where, and what beverages might be available there.

On the other hand, if only I'd paid more attention to primping and tanning and Zoom!-whitening, I might have been working for a Senator too when I was 20. And I might still be there, parking in the "super-citizen" parking areas, much closer to Capitol Hill than Union Station's dark and dangerous parking deck. C'est la vie.

Is it really important, after all, to know that flight began with the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk in 1903, instead of in the mid-1900s? Maybe not.

Is it really important to recognize Po'pay as a leader of the Pueblo tribe in New Mexico? Young Bart informed us that Po'pay -- which he pronounced unmumblingly "Pompeii" -- was a statue of an Indian and had been removed from Statuary Hall "to get a bath or something." He didn't know who Po'pay was, or why Po'pay was significant, only that a statue of an Indian had been removed, maybe for "a bath." In fact, in a chronology of all the statues on Capitol Hill, Po'pay represents the earliest one of a person born on what ultimately became America. Pretty significant, in the scheme of things. And the statue wasn't removed for "a bath," but has been moved to the new Visitors Center behind Capitol Hill. Hm.

Ushering us out of the Rotunda, young Bart took us quickly to and through the old well of the Senate -- which bears a literal resemblance to a well, and might explain why it's called that -- when the young nation's Senate had only 26 members and could be accommodated around a circular bar, overlooking the speaker below (like a medical theater). Daisy and I were fascinated here, standing where America's first few crops of Senators stood.

Then Bart led us hastily through the original Supreme Court's chamber and we took a few photographs of it. It's a tiny, rare space, all the rarer given the importance of what occurred there. And then he led us to the "Crypt," another room that today houses statues but was originally built to be the burial place for a president, Bart told us. "I think it was George Washington," he mumbled.

Pausing to wait in line to get out of the crypt, our tour mates asked Bart where he thought was the best place in town from which to watch the fireworks display on July 4th. He wouldn't know, he said; he'd spent the evening "on a crowded dock on the waterfront," he said. Okeydoke.

It happened that the Senate was in session that day (the House was not), so I asked Bart if we'd be able to visit the Senate gallery. Well, he didn't bring passes, he said. He didn't think we'd be interested in that, he said, because he finds it really boring himself. And he'd never taken a tour group way up there; he'd only been there himself on his own "training" tour with other legislative staff. But if we reeeally wanted to see the Senate gallery, he'd call back and "try to get some" passes. Mm, we definitely felt it might be an uphill climb. But indeed, Daisy and I said, and our tour mates agreed that they'd like to do that, too. So Bart made a call and mumbled that maybe someone could bring us passes as we moved along.

And we moved along, finally, to a momentous spot on the tour. In one smaller chamber off Statuary Hall is another ring of statues, including a massive bronze statue of King Kamehameha of Hawai'i. Bart merely pointed to the statue, standing in a dark corner, and said it was there because it was so heavy and it was moved to a spot where it was supported by a pillar on the floor below. He didn't know who it was, he said, but he told us it was solid gold and it was from Hawai'i. "It's a little ironic," he said, "I just got an email this week saying that Barack Obama's parents were from Hawai'i."

I was instantly embarrassed for Bart, knowing as most of America does that Obama's mother was from Kansas, as landlocked a state as any state can be, and that his father was from Kenya, which isn't even in the Western hemisphere. So I spoke up to divert attention. "It's King Kamehameha," I told our tour mates' kids, "who ruled Hawai'i when it was still a nation, before it was discovered by white people and became our property."

I think Bart was oblivious. He led us into the next little hallway where, he told us, President George W. Bush walks through double doors to deliver his State of the Union Address to Congress. In fact, he said, drawing our attention to a window between statues of Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut and Father Jacques Marquette of Wisconsin, this is the spot where President George W. Bush knelt and prayed after September 11. "I wasn't here to see it myself, but I've heard it from several people."

Daisy didn't miss a beat: "He ought to be praying now," she said aloud.

I was aghast. Our tour guide, a representive of one of our state's Senators, had just repeated Internet misinformation about Barack Obama, and in the next breath had repeated equally vapid reverence for the least capable president in history, at least the worst one since James Buchanan. If there had been any question before of Bart's ineffectiveness, he had erased it now.

That would have marked the end of the tour, but there was the question of the Senate gallery passes. Bart hadn't gotten a call back yet, and he mumbled about someone bringing passes to us in mid-tour, but no one had come. So he left us alone in one of Brumidi's hallways, pointing to painted birds and lilies on the wall to keep us occupied. A bit later, he returned and turned us around to take a corridor to the Senate gallery.

On the way, we passed a plaque in a stairwell, marking the spot where George Washington himself had laid the original cornerstone of the Capitol. I was struck by this and pointed it out to Daisy, because I've been reading a book called "The Sacred Geometry of Washington, D.C." about Pierre L'Enfant's draft of the city of Washington. It is this point, the cornerstone of the Capitol, that marked L'Enfant's "zero meridian" and from which he marked the various measurements, streets, avenues, circles and squares that were mostly realized as the city was built. As much as anything else we'd seen, seeing this spot sent chills down my spine; this point on a one-time hill overlooking the Potomac River was the origin of so much of the future world capital's history.

Of course, we passed it right by; it didn't register a blip on Bart's radar.

Upstairs, we unloaded all electronics into a plastic bin, which Bart checked into a little office, and filed into the Senate gallery. More chills. At the moment, Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota was orating on the rising costs of oil on the world market and decrying the role of speculators in that increase. Dorgan was alone in the chamber except for his legislative aides and Sen. Jim Webb, sitting on the dais as the presiding officer of that day. That very morning, Webb has issued a statement taking himself out of consideration for the vice presidency on Obama's ticket.

Far from being bored, I was enthralled, studying the busts of the first several presidents of the Senate in little alcoves around the gallery, and catching various details I remembered from the C-SPAN documentary: the Latin inscriptions over the doors, the eagle in the Senate skylight, and others.

Our tour mates had kids with them, so after twenty minutes or so, Daisy tapped Bart on the shoulder and said we were ready to go if he was. He certainly was.

And that was it. Bart led us back to the underground trolley, which carried us backward to the Senate office where we began, and we collected our things to leave. Outside, we paused on a park bench to rest, decompress and reflect on the tour before starting our long drive home.

Back at Union Station, we were thankful to find the truck intact and unmolested. We left Washington and got as far as Raleigh, North Carolina, where we passed the night at a hotel just outside downtown. And the next morning, we decided to spend the day in town. But that's a story for our next note.

Leaving for my family reunion

Tomorrow evening, I leave with my mom for the long drive from rural Upstate South Carolina to rural northwestern Missouri, where her brothers and sisters and other assorted family members meet annually for our family reunion. I look forward to these reunions, which we began in the 1990s after my grandfather passed away. My mom's siblings are good people to spend time with, and I look decidedly more like them than like my dad's side of the family.

The downside of the trip is the drive itself, which is more than 18 hours long. We would love to fly, and have flown before, but even Bushgas is cheaper than flying now.

This year, we'll stay in Maryville, which is sort of central to the family members who remain in that region. (Not all do; some will come from Atlanta, some from near Branson, some from Michigan.)

So I'll likely be away from the blog for the next week or so, and I hope to have some notes to share when I get back.

Oh, and I predict Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas will be Obama's choice for vice president. Just for the record.

Sanford begs to be McCain's successor on CNN

Oh, please.

You know it's a slow news day when CNN files a brief on South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's chances of being John McCain's running mate, and Sen. Lindsey Graham comes awful close to sounding sensible.

The headline reads, "Sanford isn't hinting he wants to be VP." No, hints are supposed to be subtle, and there's nothing subtle about Mark Sanford's desire to become McCain's Dan Quayle. He's practically begging.

A man who can't make peace with the leaders of the South Carolina House and Senate -- members of his own party, mind you -- thinks he'll offer some fiiiiine balance to the blustery egotism of McCain. The best part of running with McCain is that he might get to escape South Carolina, where ordinary Republicans hold their noses to vote for him.

Sad thing is, McCain might actually consider Sanford -- no, not for the vee-pee's slot -- for a Cabinet post, since Sanford's a lame duck in South Carolina anyway and the wingnuts and pew-waxers love him. Hmm, is Untersturmfuhrer already taken?

WASHINGTON (CNN) – South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford continues to see his name floated in the GOP veepstakes — but he’s still not dropping any hints that he wants the job.

On CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer” yesterday, Blitzer asked Sanford: “You want to be the running mate?”

“No, I'm just trying to survive the week,” Sanford responded. “I made it to Sunday. I got another week ahead of me.”

“What's wrong with being vice president of the United States?,” Blitzer asked.

“There's nothing wrong with being president, there's nothing wrong with being president, there's nothing wrong with being vice president,” Sanford said. “But it's not on my radar screen. I'll worry about that lightning strike if it comes my way.”

Sanford told the Washington Post last year that if the GOP nominee inquired about putting him on the presidential ticket that he would at least entertain the idea. "Of course I'd take the call,” he said at the time.

The fiscal hawk is popular vice presidential option among conservatives, but some McCain insiders say Sanford may have damaged his chances by not endorsing the Arizona senator before the South Carolina primary in January. Sanford, as a congressman, had endorsed McCain during his 2000 bid.

He'd take the call, he says. Christ on the Cross, he's likely already sent Jenny to check out Wal-Mart's selection of inaugural fashions for Marshall-Landon-Bolton-and-Blake (his heirs, not the famous 80s hair band of the same name). Sanford apparently enjoys sleeping in government housing, so he may also have had Jenny call up Lynne Cheney to get the layout of the Naval Observatory.

Of course, Lindsay pipes up to pop that bubble:

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of McCain’s closest advisers, appeared to pour cold water on Sanford’s chances in March, noting that Sanford has had a “tough” tenure as governor.

"To be honest with you, I don't see any of us in South Carolina bringing a whole lot of value to the ticket,” Graham told The State newspaper. “We're talking about winning a national race that's going to be very competitive."

It tickles me that high-priced talkers from out-of-state love to mention the time when Sanford brought two piglets into the State House, on the day after the House dispatched more than a hundred of his line-item budget vetoes lickety-split, one by one, in under a couple of hours. Sanford made a big scene about it, told the media he named the little piglets "Pork" and "Barrel."

What few of them mention is that Sanford, carrying the porkers under his arms in his best navy blue suit, apparently squeezed a big too hard and one of the piglets released some solid waste products onto the massive, antique loom-woven carpet that graces the State House's second-floor lobby. With the concomitant stink. Among a packed crowd of lobbyists outside the House chamber's massive brass doors. Classy.

With his photo op finished, Sanford beat a hasty retreat and, like a good delegater, sent one of his lackeys -- the one who likely came up with the idea, one who doesn't work for him anymore thanks to a criminal domestic violence charge -- to clean up the mess. And following the example of his mentor, that lackey failed at the task and pawned off the work on State House maintenance staff.

They call that a form of "trickle down economics" in South Carolina.

Furman Pres. chastises faculty protesting Dubya

Dubya delivered an apparently fluffy address to graduates at Furman University last night, and Furman President David Shi inexplicably gigged his own faculty members exercising their rights to free speech and civic responsibility.

This, according to the Spartanburg Herald-Journal today:

While he delivered the commencement address - the final one he will give as president - 14 professors removed their robes and stood in silent protest. They wore white T-shirts that stated bluntly, "We object." A few others showed their distaste for the president by not standing or applauding during the ovation he received when he took the stage.

"I, too, am a firm believer in free speech. And to prove it, I'm about to give you one," Bush said.

For the most part, the president held the crowd's attention, though the occasional flutter of a camera or a key word in his address would stir glances over toward the line of 14.

"The point was not to call attention to ourselves, but to show our students that they can speak out," said David Turner, a physics professor. "It's not a political thing, not a Democrat or Republican thing. It's a human right."

In the weeks leading up to Saturday's graduation exercises, a "We object" letter signed by about 80 faculty, staff, students and others opposing Bush's visit was posted on Furman's Web site. It admonished the president for the war in Iraq, the treatment of so-called enemy combatants, sowing fear and the denial of global warming.

Furman president David Shi, in his charge to the graduating class, seemed at times to also be wagging his finger at the dissatisfied academics. Shi has taken heat for inviting Bush to speak without consulting the faculty.

"Many smart people are prone to take their opinions too seriously," Shi said, receiving applause from the audience but not from the teachers.

"… The humility embedded in our imperfection should prompt us, at least occasionally, to reassess our dogmas, harness our arrogance and slow our keystroke rush to judgment."

Funny that Shi didn't direct any of that clear thinking to the guest delivered to him by South Carolina Governor Mark "Pick Me, Senator McCain, Pick Me" Sanford, only to the men and women who serve him as instructors at the university he leads. It calls to mind the esprit du corps among old plantation owners, commiserating over the foibles of their respective "workforces": Aw, can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. If only they'd do what they're told and stop complaining.

As expected, the Greenville News coverage fairly nuzzles Dubya's crotch as a young spaniel nuzzles his master's. Its website is redolent with photos and text vignettes like this one:

Furman University president Dr. David Shi said in his opening commencement remarks this evening that the university community has been "fervently" anticipating the graduation address from President Bush, eliciting laughter from the football stadium crowd in attendance.

During the opening processional, roughly a dozen faculty members could be seen in white ribbons or silver duct tape armbands of protest.

Shortly after 7:30, Bush emerged from a white tunnel in a blue robe with Shi, walked through a whooping crowd of new graduates and mounted the stage to a roar from the stadium crowd. The Furman Singers offered a rendition of "God of Grace and God of Glory" while Bush chatted with current-year graduate Meredith Neville seated next to him on stage.

Earlier, Bush stepped off Air Force One into a stiff westerly wind at Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport at 6:43 p.m. and waved to several dozen local residents in a roped-off area on the tarmac. Greeting him were Gov. Mark Sanford and his sons, Landon and Bolton, Sen. Jim DeMint and his grandson Jimbo, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Rep. Bob Inglis, Mayor Knox White and Susan WIlkins, wife of amabassador to Canada David Wilkins.

Bush briefly stopped into the shadow of his plane for a private, 20-second conversation with Andrew Barnhill, who received the president's customary award for volunteerism, and departed for Furman in a motorcade of more than 30 cars and law enforcement.

Interstate 85 traffic came to a standstill near Pelham Road, where people sat on the roofs of their SUVs and gawked as the motorcade weaved across three empty lanes of traffic.

Small clots of people waved flags and gaped as the caravan motored down Stone Ave. A crowd outside the Handlebar held camera phones aloft and offered mixed hand signals. A man in a grey T-shirt supported an especially large flag on his belt buckle.

The crowds thickened outside the Cherrydale shopping center. One man covered a "Wrong Way" sign with an illegible sign.

The motorcade wound past a crowd holding mixed signs in fron of Furman Hall, and staff and press entered the stadium just as graduates began marching in.

Want a little context for Dubya's visit to South Carolina? The same Greenville News tells us that abused children in the Palmetto State have been cheated by recent legislative budget cuts.

The Legislature's recent funding cut to A Child's Haven will have three times the apparent impact and comes as the number of children living in poverty is growing, an agency official says.

The nonprofit agency offers treatment and support to some 77 children 5 and younger who've been traumatized by poverty, neglect and abuse and their families in Greenville County.

And special projects director Scott Dishman says that in addition to the $135,000 it lost in state funding as Legislators whittled down the state's $7 billion budget, it will also lose the $270,000 in federal Medicaid matching funds the state money drew.

All told, that means about 20 percent of the agency's $2 million budget.

So much for abused children in South Carolina: To hell with 'em.

This, from The State newspaper:

With every brush stroke, Columbia artist Suzy Shealy remembers her son Army Sgt. Joseph Derrick. As Shealy paints scenes from Iraq, she places herself in her son’s combat boots in the dusty streets of Baghdad. She stands watch at dusk as a Black Hawk helicopter flies on the horizon. She patrols an Iraqi marketplace. She overlooks a mosque in Mosul.

The paintings are based on photos that Shealy found in her son’s flash drive, sent home with his belongings after he was killed in September 2005 in Baghdad. They have become her therapy.

“I feel like it’s a gift from God to help me muddle through this,” she said.

What would Dubya say to this woman? "It's good that God has blessed you with this gift, Mom. Keep thinking good thoughts."

What an honor.

'Silent protest' planned for Dubya at Furman

I fear for the safety of some of Furman University's faculty and staff this evening when Dubya arrives. If his apologists don't cause bodily harm to conscientious objectors before the warmonger's visit, the university itself may be pressured to review those objectors' employment status after the evening. Such is the nature of First Amendment rights today, hm? And this is for silence, not a full-blown protest with marches, placards and chants. 'Cause, you know, a university isn't really the place for free speech nowadays.

As The State newspaper reports this morning:

Some professors and students plan to protest President Bush’s commencement address at Furman University today. A few professors will stand. Others will wear armbands. And some will just skip it altogether.

The president’s speech, the first commencement address by a sitting president in Furman’s 182-year history, sparked an intense back-and-forth between students and professors about the right to protest Bush’s policies and the desire to honor graduating students.

“There’s a part of me that wants to be there for the students,” said Stanley Crowe, chairman of the English Department at Furman, where he has taught for 34 years. “I want to be there for the institution, for what it stands for. And what it stands for is the opposite of what George Bush stands for.”

Crowe was one of more than 100 professors — roughly half of the university’s faculty — who signed a petition objecting to Bush’s visit. Crowe said he plans to stand during the president’s remarks to note his opposition.

At a meeting Friday, professors discussed their plans to protest Bush’s visit. Crowe said some professors plan to wear white T-shirts that say “We Object” on the front and back. Between 10 and 20 professors will stand. “Everyone will rise when the president is introduced and we will keep standing until he stops speaking,” Crowe said. “If they say ‘Sit down,’ we won’t. If they say ‘You have to leave,’ we’ll leave quietly. We’re not going to say anything or shout slogans or anything like that.”

Furman Provost Thomas Kazee said the university will not seek to remove protesters, as long as their actions are carried out “in a dignified way so the message is received but the majesty of the moment is not lost.”

Meanwhile, the Bush Youth are holding up their end of the bargain, having defended their Chancellor with a petition of their own -- see the value of free speech on a university campus? -- and now browbeating the faculty in media interviews:

Christopher Mills, a 21-year-old junior who heads up a group called Conservative Students for a Better Tomorrow, said he and other students have been let down by their professors. “When the faculty letter came out, we were just disappointed by what we saw as something that was more of a publicity stunt as anything else,” Mills said. “We didn’t want people to think that most or even half of the people at Furman felt this way. We wanted the focus back on the students and not on faculty who disagree with the president politically.”

Mills’ group countered the faculty-led petition with one of their own. It has been signed by more 700 people so far, roughly half of whom are students.

“As students at Furman, we thought this was reflecting badly on all of us,” Mills said.

And who was behind this entire debacle? Governor Mark "Vet Me, Senator McCain, I'm Ready to Serve" Sanford, the Libertarian in Republican clothing who took a degree from Furman way back when he was just a young LIRC. According to reports, Sanford jumped the gun, arranging Dubya's visit to Furman before informing Furman's president that he'd done so -- not only subverting the university's authority to choose its own commencement speaker as it's done before, but boxing in its president to swallowing Sanford's shotgun arrangement and getting himself in hot water with his faculty. Sanford ought to apologize heartily to David Shi when this is all over. Take him out to dinner. Better yet, give him a gift certificate for dinner out, so as not to punish the man further in public.

Joel Sawyer, a spokesman for Gov. Mark Sanford, said the governor, a Furman graduate, called the White House to see if Bush would be interested in addressing the graduating class.

“The governor knew this was the time of year when the president might be accepting invitations to make commencement addresses,” Sawyer said. “He called the White House and mentioned the possibility to him, and then he called (Furman President David Shi) to see if they would extend an invitation.”

Shi consulted with some Furman students and extended the offer, angering some professors, who feel they, too, should have been given a chance to weigh in on the decision. The faculty voted to admonish Shi for not consulting them. “In my judgment, he could have said ‘Thanks but no thanks,’” Crowe said. “None of it needed to be made public. No one needed to be embarrassed.”

Efforts to reach Shi were unsuccessful.

No doubt. He's likely in hiding, praying for no blood to be shed, praying that this day comes and goes as quickly as possible, praying that he, too, will be able to get work when this is over. Prediction: Furman President David Shi will be employed elsewhere by July 1, 2010.

Given that Sanford had already reached out to the White House, some professors wonder whether Furman officials could have refused to extend the invitation. But Kazee said the administration did not feel boxed in. “I don’t think we felt we couldn’t say no,” he said.

In recent years, Furman has not had outside speakers and has relied instead on students to make the commencement address. When university officials met with student leaders to discuss the prospect of having Bush make the speech, they thought it was a good idea, Kazee said. “They felt this was a situation where an exception was warranted,” he said.

Furman was not caught off-guard by the strong reaction to Bush’s visit, Kazee said. “I understand the strong feelings a president can arouse, especially at a time of war and with a president who isn’t very popular,” the provost said.

As his time in office draws down, Bush has reached historic lows in voter disapproval. A recent CNN poll found 71 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Bush is doing as president, the highest level of dissatisfaction ever recorded for any president. White House spokesman Blair Jones said the president “looks forward to making the address.” Bush, he said, is not deterred by the prospect of protests.

“The cornerstone of American democracy is the right to dissent,” Jones said.

Mmm-hm. So long as that dissent is held far from cameras and from Dubya's field of vision.

South Carolina: Christian symbols, not Christian policies

Two items published over the weekend at The State's website caught my eye. One explains that our legislative majority has agreed on a bill that "allows local municipalities in South Carolina to post a number of commonly-held religious documents in public places, including the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments."

Because, you know, that's important. It feeds the hungry, treats the sick and clothes the poor when we hang copies of religious texts on the walls of our public buildings.

Recognizing that such a bill might attract litigation, our lawmakers covered themselves by casting these texts as "historical" rather than merely religious, and they mixed a handful of other "historical" texts into the bill as additional options for hanging on the walls.

But, knowing that some of these texts were blatantly religious in nature, why did lawmakers vote to approve the bill? Because "few wanted to vote against the Lord's Prayer."

Aware of the constitutional mandate of separation between church and state, the Senate declared more than a dozen of some of the nation's most revered secular and religious documents and speeches to be historical.

The documents would have to be labeled as "historical" in their display, which, along with previous U.S. Supreme Court rulings, senators hope will give them constitutional cover for the displays.

The bill includes 10 original historical/religious documents, such as the Ten Commandments, along with several others lawmakers added as the legislation moved through the General Assembly. For instance, the Emancipation Proclamation and the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech were added at the Senate Judiciary Committee level. The Lord's Prayer and the 19th Amendment, establishing a woman's right to vote, were added on the Senate floor.

Some senators said the measure was unconstitutional on its face, but few wanted to vote against the Lord's Prayer.

"When the Lord's Prayer went in there, it's obvious to me that's not going to pass constitutional muster," said Sen. Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, an attorney. "We may look good doing it, but it's not good legislation."

Understandably, this item attracted some colorful bulletin-board banter. I fully expected to read opposition to hanging King's "Dream" speech. But these two stuck to the issue:

First, from Cap'n Louie:

In fact, one of the FIRST treaties this government authored stated very specifically that we are "in no way a Christian nation". Most of the founding fathers were Deists. Look that up. They were NOT Christians. The phrase "wall of separation between church and state" was written by Jefferson in a letter to a group who complained that their religious practices were not being recognized. Jefferson himself eschewed proclaiming days of prayer or fasting, even stating very specifically, that matters of religion and faith were entirely between "a man and his god."

I think the Uber-religious crowd who would shove and force Christianity on everyone around are the ones who should sit down and do some reading. They can start with their own bible, in which their prophet Jesus the Nazarene even warns them against public displays of religion and public prayers. He said the their god best listened when no one could hear but the man and the god.

So, Christians, will you practice your religion at the defiance of your own gods?

Then a response from Bob:

GET OVER IT PEOPLE, this nation was founded upon Judeo-Christian beliefs - period-end of story! We don't go into other countries demanding that our religious customs and beliefs supercede theirs and neither should immigrants coming to this country. They ALL have freedom of religion and "THE FREE EXERCISE THEREOF" but you SUPPOSEDLY cannot change history and CHRISTIANITY and YES belief in JESUS CHRIST is the dominant religion in this country.

So, once AGAIN - GET OVER IT!!!!!!

As much as some would like, Christians DO NOT have to check their beliefs at the courthouse door and it is PAST time that CHRISTIANS quit acting like a bunch of WIMPS and speak out as they were COMMANDED to do!

Funny, I don't remember ever being told these things in Sunday school.

Nevertheless, neither of these comments were likely read by Joanne Mew, who works as a laundry machine operator at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on Hilton Head Island, and who rides a bus five hours each workday to make the round trip to her job. Ms. Mew lives in Allendale County, 90 miles from her workplace, and she's done this for 15 years.

Why does she have to make this trip?

Jobs are scarce in Allendale County — South Carolina’s poorest — where more than one in three residents lives in poverty. The few jobs that are available pay minimum wage — $5.15 per hour — or just a few pennies more. Work on the island can pay almost double that or more.

Scores of people commute every day from Allendale and other impoverished inland towns to Hilton Head — located in the wealthiest county in the state — where they work at resorts, grocery stores, fast-food restaurants and other businesses.

Don't you wonder if Ms. Mew's life would be made better if they just hung copies of the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and the 19th Amendment on the bus she rides every morning and every evening? "Historical" and religious texts hanging on the wall are a balm to the soul, aren't they?

Seven publicly financed Palmetto Breeze buses make stops each morning in Allendale, Colleton, Jasper, Hampton and Beaufort counties to shuttle people to Hilton Head jobs. Nearly 4,100 round-trips from those counties are made each month.

It wasn’t always that way. U.S. 301 through Allendale County once was the main route from New York to Miami. Then, in the 1970s, Interstate 95 was built some 30 miles east and took away the traffic. The county has never recovered from losing all that pass-through business to I-95. Allendale became a “ghost town,” County Administrator Art Williams said. Motels along U.S. 301 are boarded up; the county has only two fast-food restaurants, and, he said, “you would not find a clothing store.” Most recently, Mohawk Industries, a carpet manufacturer in Ulmer, closed in November — causing 225 people to lose their jobs.

“If there was work in Allendale, honey, I don’t think none of us would be getting on that bus,” Mew said. “They need to bring jobs down here.”

After sitting on the bus 25 hours a week, Mew has just $10 for herself at week’s end after bills are paid. “That ain’t no money; that ain’t nothing.”

Mew rises at 3:30 a.m. — five days a week — and catches a ride to the bus stop at the intersection of Railroad Avenue and Marion Street. While the bus typically doesn’t arrive until 5:10 a.m., she knows it pays to get there early.

What's really poetic is that the buses, though publicly-financed, aren't free. Ms. Mew and the others from Allendale County pay $2.50 each way for the privilege of washing hotel laundry, and cleaning hotel rooms, and cooking hotel food, and tending to hotel landscaping and golf courses on Hilton Head Island.

I don't know how long our lawmaker debated the initiative to hang the Lord's Prayer in public buildings, but I suspect it was longer than Camron Freeman gets to spend with her two daughters in Allendale:

Camron Freeman of Allendale, a 30-year-old cashier at the Hilton Head Publix, is raising two daughters. For her, the long bus ride means missing PTO meetings. As passengers around her on the way home blow off steam with laughter — some joking around with the bus driver — Freeman talks of missing her children as they grow up.

“We catch the bus at 5 o’clock, so I don’t even know what (my) child be wearing unless I put it out the night before,” she said. “One of your kids take sick, how you gonna get home?”

But with the pain comes pride. “At least you don’t have to go out here and rob, cheat and steal from somebody for some money,” Freeman said. “You got an honest-paying job.”

To learn a little more about Allendale, I did some Googling. In just a few minutes, I picked up something interesting about race in that county.

According to the 2000 census, Allendale's population included about 8,000 African-Americans and about 3,000 white residents (and fewer than 200 Hispanic residents).

And according to the state's Department of Education report card on schools and school districts published in 2003, the school district population that was given the state's standardized test that year broke down this way: white students, 32; African-American students, 804; all others, 14.

That didn't seem right, if white citizens number roughly 3,000 and black citizens account for roughly 8,000 in the entire county. Are white families not having children in Allendale?

Here's the answer: Yes, they're having children, but those children don't show up on the Allendale School District's enrollment because they don't attend the public schools there. They attend school someplace a little... whiter, shall we say?

If only the Allendale School District had the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and the Emancipation Proclamation hanging in the halls of its schools, I bet children's lives would be better, and Allendale's white families would send their children to public schools there, too.

Again, I appreciate The State for these notes on their weekend website.