This and That. Just some odds and ends for an off week.

[TayTay]

From Rollcall 11/2/8/05

Parks Action Urged. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.

(D-Ill.) sent a letter to the White House last week requesting that President Bush use Thursday's 50th anniversary of Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., city bus to sign recently passed legislation that directs a statue of the late civil rights icon to be added to Statuary Hall. The Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute has also sent Bush a letter requesting the anniversary date bill signing.

If enacted, as is expected, Parks will become the first black person to be honored with a statue in the Capitol corridor and the only individual to be honored there who does not represent the contribution of an individual state. Her action a half-century ago is widely viewed as the spark that set off the modern-day civil rights movement.

"A formal bill signing ceremony on December 1, 2005 would send a powerful message to the country and the world about how much this nation values freedom and the fight against injustice,"

Kerry and Jackson wrote in their letter. "What better event to bring our country together than honoring this great American hero and what better way to teach future generations of Americans how they can change their country by demonstrating courage in the face of injustice?"

- John McArdle and Bree Hocking

[TayTay]

1. Young vote grew in 2004 (a lot)

OTHER VIEWS
Monterey County Herald, Sec. z_Opinion 11-28-2005

Young voters not apathetic

Young voters were derided and dismissed immediately after the 2004 presidential election, but now there's proof the criticism was wrong.

Exit polling a year ago indicated that about 9 percent of voters were between the ages of 18 and 24. About the same percentage of young voters cast ballots in 2000. So some pundits scoffed that all those "Vote or Die" campaigns in 2004 had failed to motivate young people to take elections seriously. Some blamed Democrat John Kerry's loss on the supposedly lackluster turnout of young people.

Now, new data from the Census Bureau confirm what some media outlets reported at the time: Young voters did indeed turn out in much larger numbers in 2004. About 47 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 voted; only 36 percent of that age group voted in 2000. It was the largest percentage of young voters in 32 years.

No other age group came close to increasing its turnout that much. (Granted, no other age group started from such a low rate of participation.) Because all age groups voted in higher percentages in 2004, the overall share of the "youth vote" remained about the same.