Making the scene at Zoo Atlanta.

downtownatlanta:

We’ve been transformed! Downtown Atlanta’s Woodruff Park got a 1970s-New York-era revamp as part of the set of “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” 

tartantambourine:

You don’t get Tony awards for playing in Atlanta, but “Zorro,” featuring music by the Gipsy Kings, is now playing at the Alliance Theatre and might just be the best new musical on a stage anywhere in the U.S.

tartantambourine:

A great exhibit of art by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, now at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art.

thepoliticalfreakshow:

Warren Hill, saved from execution by mere hours earlier this year, once again faces death

In February we noted how Warren Hill, a 53-year-old man with severe learning disabilities, was just 30 minutes away from receiving a lethal injection from the state of Georgia when he learned of the stay of execution from the federal appeals court. As of this week, however, a decision by the 11th circuit court has lifted the stay on Hill’s execution. This, despite the fact that all medical specialists who have examined Hill —  a death row inmate of 16 years — have now concluded that he is unfit to face the death penalty.

As the Atlantic’s Andrew Cohen wrote on the decision to once again see the inmate put to death at the hands of the state of Georgia:

There is nothing typical about what two federal judges of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did Monday in denying relief to Warren Lee Hill, a mentally ill capital defendant in Georgia who came within hours of being executed earlier this year.

What makes this result so extraordinary — and so unnerving to many who follow capital cases — is the rationale employed by the court in turning down Hill’s request. The 11th Circuit employed an argument that turns on its head the very essence of judicial review. Yes, there was relevant new evidence that Hill is mentally retarded, the judges acknowledged, but that new evidence didn’t create a new “claim.” And since there was no new “claim,” they concluded, Congress precluded them from allowing Hill’s evidence to be evaluated on its merits.

The decision here is important and terrifying: in the name of finality, as opposed to, say, justice, Georgia will put this man to death. As Cohen points out, “Such logic is a perversion of justice — and of the role of the appellate judge — because it precludes the ability of the reviewing court to remedy material mistakes made during the course of a case.”

penguinsweaters:

Jeanette Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress (on November 7, 1916) at a time when women lacked suffrage on a national level. While in office she did many things, her efforts included work on the 19th Amendment (ensuring a woman’s right to vote), giving married women citizenship separate from their husbands and legislation on government-sponsored instruction for pregnant and nursing women.

However, she was a passionate pacifist and when she (along with 49 other representatives) voted against the United States’ entry into World War I many believed it meant women were unable to be national leaders and she was not reelected and left Congress at the end of her single term.

That was not the end of her life in politics though, running primarily on an anti-war platform she won reelection to the House in 1940 where she shortly was asked to vote again on whether or not the US should enter a world war. Sticking to her beliefs, despite the majority of American’s outrage over Pearl Harbor, she again voted against war, famously saying, “As a woman I can’t go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else,” an act that ended her political career.

She continued to advocate pacifism through the rest of her life and even led a march on Washington in her eighties to protest the war in Vietnam. Jeannette Rankin died in 1973 at the age of 93 and will always be remembered for her tireless work for women’s suffrage, her pacifist beliefs and for being a groundbreaking legislator, as both the first woman in Congress and the only person to vote against both world wars.

Source 1, 2, 3

Ms. Rankin, who was elected to Congress from Montana, also had a house in Georgia. She was an inspiration for student activists at the University of Georgia during the Vietnam war era.

If Georgia Republican Rep. Jack Kingston had had his way, the National Guard wouldn’t have been at Tuesday’s Boston Marathon when two bombs exploded, killing three and wounding more than 170. A year ago,

“The Georgia Republican pleaded with the guard’s leaders to skip participation at the annual race because state-based troops were stressed by the oncoming sequester budget cuts and the need to be in global hotspots like Afghanistan and Bosnia. ‘The Boston Marathon, we got to take a pass,’ Kingston said last March during a House Appropriations Committee hearing on the National Guard’s budget.”

Awkward! As it was, at the time of that hearing, National Guard officials explained to Kingston that state, not federal, money was used when National Guard troops were deployed at things like the Boston Marathon.

Backers of a newly adopted ordinance requiring gun ownership in a small north Georgia town acknowledge they were largely seeking to make a point about gun rights.

The ordinance in the city of Nelson — population 1,300 — was approved Monday night and goes into effect in 10 days. However, it contains no penalties and exempts anyone who objects, convicted felons and those with certain mental and physical disabilities.

City Councilman Duane Cronic, who sponsored the measure, said he knows the ordinance won’t be enforced but he still believes it will make the town safer.

The good news is that almost no one had ever heard of Nelson, Georgia, before this — including most lifelong Georgians. The bad news for Nelson is now some people have heard of it — and most are likely to view it as a place synonymous with stupidity. 

I thought it was an April Fools’ joke. There in my inbox on the morning of April 1 was an email from something called Ray McBerry Enterprises announcing the official start of “Confederate Heritage and History Month” in Georgia.

Apparently, former Georgia governor Sonny Perdue signed the annual celebration into law in 2009, joining six other Southern states in official monthlong “celebrations.” My folks live next door in South Carolina, and I’m a bit of a Civil War nerd, so there’s no inherent shock in the impulse to recognize local history, however painful the legacy.

Yes, we Georgians wish it had been an April Fools’ joke — at least those of who have any sense at all.