In Jefferson's shadow

A truly notable bit of irony caught by the Washington Post's Reliable Source today. 5th District Congressman Virgil Goode continues to fan the fire of the controversy set off by his ignorant reaction to his colleague-elect's decision to take his oath of office on a Koran with a recent post on USA Today's blog, reiterating his condemnation of Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison's choice and his own commitment to the issue of illegal immigration lest we

"leave ourselves vulnerable to infiltration by those who want to mold the United States into the image of their religion."

The latest wrinkle, according the Reliable Source, is that the Koran upon which Ellison will take the oath, on loan from the Library of Congress, was the personal copy of Thomas Jefferson. The symbolism is deliberate; according to Ellison spokesman Rick Jauert:

"Keith is paying respect not only to the founding fathers' belief in religious freedom but the Constitution itself."

But the irony extends further, to Virgil's district in central Virginia, which both includes Jefferson's home, Monticello, as well as his monument to secularism in education, the University of Virginia. The story within the story here is just how accurately the flap illustrates the acute divide between the city of Charlottesville, which encompasses both of the aforementioned Jeffersonian sites and which voted for Goode's opponent by 75% in November, and the part of the district further South, extending to the North Carolina border and accounting for Goode's victory. Virginia's 5th district continues to prove an case study as single area containing swaths of the most ideologically, socially, and economically at-odds elements of the South.