Old Times Are Not Forgotten

New Donkey, a moderate Democratic site, rightly slams Alabama conservatives for the failure of a constitutional amendment that would have removed Jim Crow language about segregated schools from the state constitution: "The irony in all this is that Alabama conservatives are deeply devoted to the idea that the state's economic future strictly depends on doing everything imaginable to attract business investment. But a lot of businesses aren't terribly crazy about committing themselves to a community that can't quite bring itself out of the 1950s. So the defeat of Guin's amendment was really an atavistic two-fer: establishing a lack of interest in quality public education at a time when employers care more about a skilled workforce than ever before, and reminding the whole country of Alabama's unsavory history of race relations."