Here's an interesting item from our neighbors to the south.  A Democratic state senator in South Carolina has gotten a subcommittee's approval of a bill requiring all cities and counties in South Carolina to give their employees a paid day of vacation on Confederate Memorial Day or lose state funding.  Here's the kicker: the senator is African American.  From the article on ABC News:

Democratic Sen. Robert Ford's bill won initial approval from a Senate subcommittee Tuesday. It would force county and municipal governments to follow the schedule of holidays used by the state, which gives workers 12 paid days off, including May 10 to honor Confederate war dead. Mississippi and Alabama also recognize Confederate Memorial Day.

Years ago, Ford said, he pushed a bill to make both that day and Martin Luther King Jr. Day paid holidays. He considered it an effort to help people understand the history of both the civil rights movement and the Confederacy in a state where the Orders of Secession are engraved in marble in the Statehouse lobby, portraits of Confederate generals look down on legislators in their chambers and the Confederate flag flies outside.

"Every municipality and every citizen of South Carolina, should be, well, forced to respect these two days and learn what they can about those two particular parts of our history," Ford said Tuesday.

In a state steeped in a segregationist past, "there's no love in this state between black and white basically," he said. That's not apparent at the Statehouse, where black and white legislators get along, "but if you go out there in real South Carolina, it's hatred and I think we can bring our people together."

Not surprisingly the leader of the state's NAACP doesn't agree with the Senator.  It's an interesting story so go ahead and read the whole thing.