Word: bills
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Three senior Democratic politicians--Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd, North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan and Colorado Governor Bill Ritter--announced they would not run for re-election this November. Dodd, retiring after 35 years in Congress, said in a press conference on Jan. 6 that there were many reasons for his decision, including finding himself "in the toughest political shape of my career." In recent weeks, several Democratic Congressmen announced their retirement, while another, Parker Griffith of Alabama, defected to the Republicans. It's not just blue dominoes: as many as 20 Republican lawmakers have said they will...
Reinvigorated by the President's support, King's widow, Coretta, testified before joint hearings of Congress and organized a nationwide lobby to support the bill. Yet in November 1979, Conyers' King-holiday bill was defeated in the House by just five votes. Coretta continued her fight for approval of a national holiday, testifying before Congress several more times and mobilizing governors, mayors and city council members across the nation to make the passage of a King-holiday bill part of their agenda. Singer Stevie Wonder became a prominent proponent and released the song "Happy Birthday" in 1980 - it became...
...This is not a black holiday; it is a people's holiday," said Coretta Scott King after President Ronald Reagan signed the King Holiday Bill into law on Nov. 2, 1983. But in the complicated history of Martin Luther King, Jr Day, it has only recently been a holiday for all the people, all the time...
...holiday are mired in racism, politics and conspiracy. Three years after Conyers introduced preliminary legislation in 1968, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference - which King headed from its inception until his death - presented Congress with a petition signed by more than 3 million people supporting a King holiday. The bill languished in Congress for eight years, unable to gain enough support until President Jimmy Carter, former governor of Georgia and the first Democratic President since Lyndon Johnson, vowed to support a King holiday. (See pictures from the life of Coretta Scott King...
...bill faced a somewhat tougher fight in the Senate, however. In an opposition campaign led primarily by Republican Senators John P. East and Jesse Helms of North Carolina, some attempted to emphasize King's associations with communists and his alleged sexual dalliances as reasons not to honor him with a federal holiday. As part of his efforts, on Oct. 3, 1983, Helms read a paper on the Senate floor, written by an aide to Senator East, called "Martin Luther King Jr.: Political Activities and Associations" and also provided a 300-page supplemental document to the members of the Senate detailing...