By Andrew Perez, The Lever – Andy Kroll and Justin Elliott, ProPublica.org – An elderly, ultra-secretive Chicago businessman has given the largest known donation to a political advocacy group in U.S. history — worth $1.6 billion — and the recipient is one of the prime architects of conservatives’ efforts to reshape the American judicial system,…
By Glynn Wilson – President Donald J. Trump didn’t waste any time in showing his true priorities just a day after he and the country learned of his apparent exoneration in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of his involvement in conspiring with Russia to win the 2016 election. Trump and his Department of Justice reversed…
By Glynn Wilson – Where are the howls of protest in front of the Supreme Court building in Washington? Where are the denunciations from unions and the trial lawyer associations? Where are comments from Democrats on Facebook and Twitter denouncing the U.S. Supreme Court decision on Monday gutting the rights of workers to collectively bargain…
By Kimberely Blackburn – Delta Digital News Service – VARNER, Ark. — The last man Arkansas plans to execute in April is not a saint. Sentenced to life for the 1998 death of University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff cheerleader Dominique Hurd, Kenneth Williams escaped in 1999 after 19 days in prison. Williams robbed and…
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…
Who Will Hold Them Accountable? – The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – There is so much rotten egg on so many faces in Alabama this week it is hard to decide where to begin. But I guess the biggest news is the egg all over the faces of just about every major law…
By Robert Reich – The Constitution of the United States is clear: Article II Section 2 says the President “shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint … judges to the Supreme Court.” It doesn’t say the President can’t appoint in the final year of his term of…
By Glynn Wilson – President Barack Obama nominated veteran appeals court judge Merrick Garland of Illinois to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, a moderate intended to head off a political showdown with Senate Republicans who vow to block any nominee to the high court by this controversial Democratic president. Garland, 63, now serves as…
U.S. Senator Al Franken, the Minnesota Democrat, took to the Senate floor this week to blast U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Senate Republicans for trying to block President Barack Obama from appointing a replacement for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who recently died in Texas. It is a factual argument every…
By Glynn Wilson – The death of conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, 79, may be the best thing to happen for the future of the planet than anything since the national Sierra Club and 350.org convinced President Obama to take on climate change due to global warming from the burning of fossil fuels…
By Glynn Wilson – Conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, 79, was found dead while visiting a luxury resort in West Texas, according to the San Antonio News-Express. The death was confirmed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, according to Reuters, who issued a statement sending his “deepest condolences” to Scalia’s family. The U.S. Marshal’s…
Watch the video interview – By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. – Independent curator Suzan Shown Harjo, a Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee from Oklahoma living on Capitol Hill, is seeing a long-held dream come to fruition at the Smithsonian Museum on the National Mall. An ambitious project that really started in 1967 — but began…
Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – With a couple of decisions in 2001 and 2006, the Supreme Court managed to break the Clean Water Act by calling into question what Congress meant by “the waters of the United States.” The existing law had been working just fine for almost 30 years. When the Clean…
To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize. – Voltaire, 1694-1778 – By David Underhill – MOBILE, Ala. – Newly captured Africans bound for slavery in the Americas often didn’t arrive directly. They stopped in the Caribbean islands for “seasoning.” There they lost their culture, language, religion.…
By Glynn Wilson – The United States Supreme Court upheld the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the air pollution from coal-fired power plants on Tuesday in a ruling that is being hailed as a major victory for the environment but a political setback for the Obama administration. The 6-to-2 ruling upholds the…
By Robert Reich – What does the Supreme Court’s “McCutcheon” decision this week have to do with today’s jobs report, showing 192,000 new jobs for March? Connect the dots. More than five years after Wall Street’s near meltdown the number of full-time workers is still less than it was in December 2007, yet the working-age…
Editorial Analysis – The United States Supreme Court continued the pro-Big Business conservative Republican majority’s drive to remove Legislative Branch limits on political money, effectively granting unlimited rights to rich people and corporations to continue polluting American politics with their vast riches built up mainly during the Bush years. The high court struck down the…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – Let me humbly apologize in advance to my fans all over the state, the country and the world for what I’m about to say, although I suppose there is a timeless message here for those who have an ear and can hear. There is a little reunion…
By Glynn Wilson – How the federal government fights climate change will be on the docket of the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday in a rare 90 minute oral argument session, an indication that the court thinks cases against the Environmental Protection Agency filed by chemical industry groups, conservative states and the U.S. Chamber of…
Camping, Hiking and Boating at Kymulga Grist Mill and Covered Bridge Park
