Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear recently ordered a statue of noted American traitor Jefferson Davis to be removed from the state capitol. And as workers took the statue down, they discovered an empty bottle of Glenmore Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey and an old newspaper inside the base.

Here’s a look at what Governor Andy Beshear pulled out from the hole after the Jefferson Davis statue was moved to ground level of the Rotunda ⁦@SpectrumNews1KY⁩ pic.twitter.com/2Bjp8g9SLR

— Michael Cadigan (@michaelcadigan) June 13, 2020

The newspaper was dated October 20, 1936, and the front page makes references to some violent actions at the hand of anti-fascists vigilantes in Spain. According to Fox News, October 20, 1936 was also the same day that the statue was erected, which is very probably true and also rather ridiculous considering that that was more than 70 years after Jefferson Davis led the Confederacy in betraying the United States.

The Kentucky Historic Properties Advisory Commission has voted to move the statue to the Jefferson Davis State Historic Site — though I'm not sure why the leader of a traitorous secession force should continue to have a state park named in his unseemly honor, either.

Maybe if they raze the park, they'll find more bourbon?

In fact, we should probably search for more bourbon beneath every Confederate statue. Who knows what kind of liquid treasure we might find!

Artifacts found inside base of Jefferson Davis statue at state Capitol [Darby Beane / WDRB] Read the rest

Lee-Jackson Day is a state holiday in Virginia, meant to honor Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson as "defenders of causes." But the Virginia House voted to stop lionizing the slave-owning generals and instead establish an "Election Day" on the first Tuesday after the First Monday in November.

Not everyone is happy with the change, reports CNN:

Lee-Jackson Day, founded more than 100 years ago, is observed with Civil War-themed parades, wreath layings and reenactments hosted by Confederate memorial groups, though these celebrations are increasingly unpopular. Defenders of the holiday say it honors Virginia history.

"I think Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee are some of the greatest men to have ever lived," a supporter named Carson Via told the Roanoke Times at last month's Lee-Jackson Day celebration in Lexington while dressed in a Civil War uniform. "Great men, and we're all getting washed away."

Virginia has struggled to confront its Confederate legacy in recent years. In April, a Virginia judge ruled that statues of Lee and Jackson in Charlottesville were "war monuments" that the city couldn't remove without permission from the state.

Image: CC0 Public Domain Read the rest

Until now, Pinterest and The Knot (an online wedding-planning platform) actively promoted former slave plantations as great places to get married. It took pressure from a civil rights advocacy group called Color of Change to convince them to stop.

From Buzzfeed News:

The Knot Worldwide, which owns the Knot and WeddingWire, is currently working on new guidelines to ensure wedding vendors on their websites don’t use language that glorifies, celebrates, or romanticizes Southern plantation history, chief marketing officer Dhanusha Sivajee told BuzzFeed News.

Although plantations will still be able to list themselves as venues, Sivajee said the new guidelines are meant to ensure that wedding vendors aren’t referring to plantations using language such as “elegant" or “charming."

From a letter sent by Color of Change to The Knot:

The decision to glorify plantations as nostalgic sites of celebration is not an empowering one for the Black women and justice-minded people who use your site/ Plantations are physical reminders of one of the most horrific human rights abuses the world has ever seen. The wedding industry routinely denies the violent conditions Black people faced under chattel slavery by promoting plantations as romantic places to marry.