Rosa Parks--Champion of states rights?
'We need to have our Rosa Parks moment,' says Rep. Crane during debate.
The No. 3 Republican leader in the Idaho House says he made a "slight mistake" when he described Rosa Parks as a champion of states' rights.
"One little lady got tired of the federal government telling her what to do," Assistant Majority Leader Brent Crane of Nampa said during Wednesday's debate on Gov. Butch Otter's bill establishing a state-run health insurance exchange. "I've reached that point, Mr. Speaker, that I'm tired of giving in to the federal government."
In fact, Parks' arrest for violating a local law by refusing to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery, Ala., bus in 1955 sparked the civil rights movement, which ultimately ended a century of state-enforced racial discrimination in "Jim Crow" laws.