By Robert Reich – As tyrants take control of democracies, they typically do 7 things: 1. They exaggerate their mandate to govern – claiming, for example, that they won an election by a “landslide” even after losing the popular vote. They criticize any finding that they or co-conspirators stole the election. And they repeatedly claim…
By David Underhill – PACE, Fla. – The dapper dude in a dark suit entered with a surrounding shield of so many uniformed cops that he looked like one of those football coaches who can’t cross the field at game’s end to shake the opposing coach’s hand without a body guard of troopers. But this…
Republican Defends Bill to Abolish the EPA By Glynn Wilson – MILTON, Fla. — Freshman Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz faced protesters and supporters at his first day of town hall events since the election, defending a bill he put forward with three cosigners in the House to abolish the EPA. The Florida Panhandle Progressives, local…
The Western pioneer and cowboy myth is huge, but not so much from the Native American perspective. By Glynn Wilson – Editor-in-Chief – EDITOR’S NOTE: There are two kinds of people in the world. Which kind are you? Do you like reading the pretty little patriotic myth? Or would you rather see a real journalist…
By Glynn Wilson – MOBILE, Ala. — Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg showed up on the Gulf Coast Sunday just in time for Mardi Gras and had people speculating that he may have a political future in mind. Dutifully, all three local television news stations covered the visit like any other celebrity sighting. But due to a…
EDITOR’S NOTE: Republican legislators in Montgomery are monkeying around again and turning more public education funding over to private schools. They claim 5,793 scholarships have been awarded under the Alabama Accountability Act, but numbers from the Department of Revenue show that only 127 people have asked for the tax credit allowed when a child is…
By E.J. Dionne Jr. – Let’s not mumble or whisper about the central issue facing our country: What is this democratic nation to do when the man serving as president of the United States plainly has no business being president of the United States? The Michael Flynn fiasco was the entirely predictable product of the…
By Glynn Wilson – A special district attorney has been appointed by Alabama’s new attorney general to investigate allegations of misconduct by Governor Robert Bentley. Steven T. Marshall, appointed by the governor as state attorney general to replace Luther Strange, who will assume the U.S. Senate seat of Jeff Sessions recently confirmed as President Donald…
By Glynn Wilson – A freshman Florida congressman has introduced legislation to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency and he’s joined by co-sponsors in Georgia, Mississippi and Kentucky. Matt Gaetz, a Republican from Fort Walton Beach, introduced House Bill 861: To terminate the Environmental Protection Agency on February 10 to be effective on December 31, 2018.…
Watch the video – By Glynn Wilson – “Buffalo Bill” Cody is a name that conjures up romantic images of the American “Wild West” in the 19th century. It’s almost unfortunate in the 21st century when there is a renewed interest in justice for Native Americans that the name of William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody…
Joe Reed and the Democrats are no better: It’s time for an independent third party to emerge. The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – Little Jeffry Beauregard Sessions of Alabama has made the big time. No, it’s not just because a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate held their noses and confirmed him as…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – Since television celebrity businessman Donald J. Trump shocked the world and became president of the United States, the news has become so dissonant it’s hard to find a place to enter the conversation with facts that matter. This is especially true since it doesn’t seem to matter…
EDITOR’S NOTE: During the turbulent 1960s when the civil rights movement made Selma and Birmingham Alabama infamous, turning Martin Luther King Jr. of Atlanta and other activists into household names, including Fred Shuttlesworth of Birmingham, there were other activists in other cities who never became so well known. The political and business establishment of Mobile,…
By Robert Reich – With congressional Republicans in the majority in Congress and unwilling to cross Donald Trump, the job of containing Trump’s incipient tyranny falls to three centers of independent power: the nation’s courts, its press and a few state governments. Which is why Trump is escalating attacks on all three. The Judiciary After…
By Catherine Bullock Rainey – Arts Editor – With the glamor of a Broadway show and the ambience of a carnival, Venardos Circus brings a whole new light to entertainment and the festivities of Mardi Gras. “We are proof that the circus is not coming to an end!” announced ringmaster and producer Kevin Venardos during…
A lawsuit in the 1990s had Alabama poised to fund poor black school districts as fairly as wealthy white schools. As state attorney general, Sessions fought the effort passionately. – By Ryan Gabrielson – ProPublica – In the early 1990s, children across Alabama’s large rural stretches still attended faltering public schools, some with exposed wiring…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – It is with a heavy heart that I bring you this news today, word that the amazing and historic Standing Rock Sioux protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline is coming to an end north of Cannon Ball, North Dakota. While most of the official tribal leadership is…
By Glynn Wilson – The gerrymandering plan rammed through the state legislature by Alabama Republicans after they took control in 2010 has now been thrown out by a three-judge panel of federal judges in Montgomery as an unconstitutionaly overtly race-based map. A three-judge panel of the Federal District Court in Montgomery unanimously agreed that in…
By Glynn Wilson – Less than two weeks into Donald J. Trump’s tenure as President of the United States, already 40 percent of Americans say they want him impeached and removed from office in an unprecedented public backlash to his policies, according to a new survey just out from Public Policy Polling. Yet it is…
By Robert Reich – Donald Trump has reorganized the National Security Council – elevating his chief political strategist Steve Bannon, and demoting the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Bannon will join the NSC’s principals committee, the top inter-agency group advising the President on national security. Meanwhile, the…
