Supporting a sacrilegious sanctuary, scientific society, and solace for Southern secularists.

I was reading the Dispatches from the Culture Wars and it pointed me in the direction of this tidbit from the New York Daily News.  It doesn't actually have any particular significance...it's just creepy.  Happy Halloween everybody.  (Oh, and justjames, I think this puts Rummie over the top for scariest costume.)

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is sending out quite a different message by maintaining a weekend home on Chesapeake Bay that was originally built and lived in by a singularly notorious slave owner, Edward Covey. The defense secretary's house, a former bed and breakfast, is known locally as Mount Misery.

The name is well deserved. Edward Covey was not just a slave owner. He was a "Negro breaker," to whom other slave owners handed over rebellious slaves. The most famous slave Covey tried to break was Frederick Douglass, who later escaped and wrote "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," one of the era's most important anti-slavery tracts.