Democracy marches on in Harrisburg, PA. If you have ever been in the Capitol building there, you know how difficult it is to be this ignorant in those magnificent legislative chambers.
A session of the state House of Representatives was suspended for more than an hour Wednesday after a black lawmaker, upset by a white colleague's comments about ethnic groups, referred to him as a "cracker."
The House was debating a bill that would allow residents of communities governed by homeowners' associations to fly the American flag on their property, even if association rules prohibited them from doing so. No vote was taken on the measure.
Rep. John Myers, a black lawmaker from Philadelphia, objected to comments that Rep. Thomas Yewcic, a white lawmaker from Cambria County made in support of the bill. Both are Democrats.
"I don't think we should be embarrassed or ashamed to support the American flag or what it represents," Yewcic said. "If any ethnic group wants to fly ... a flag, and they're embarrassed to fly an American flag, they should go back to their ethnic origins and fly it there."
Myers said that he supported a person's right to fly the American flag, a military flag or a state flag, but was bothered by what Yewcic said.
"The one thing that does disturb me is that if you disagree, that you almost use a belligerent, racist doctrine to explain the disagreement by telling people to go back where they came from," he said.
Myers asked House Speaker John M. Perzel whether Yewcic's comments violated House rules, and Perzel told him they did not.
"I think that those type of remarks would come from a cracker," Myers said, using a derogatory term for a poor, white person.
(Thanks to the EveningSun.com [Hanover, PA] via Yahoo! News)
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