The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – MOBILE, Ala. — So we rolled into the laid back land of live oaks, Spanish moss and historic McMansions this week after spending half the year in another swamp, Washington, D.C., and what a surprise we found. Everywhere you look, even on streets occupied by families with…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — After spending the past five months living and working in the nation’s capital, and the better part of the past four years in Washington, Maryland and Virginia, I took a break on Saturday to get an up close look at football Saturday in the…
By David Underhill – MOBILE, Ala. – Advocates for a fee-based definition of all value are having spasms of ecstasy over the plans for giant increases in entrance fees at the nation’s most popular national parks. The America Feesters, as these patriots call themselves, praise interior secretary Ryan Zinke for his courageous politically incorrect decision,…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. — It started as a trial balloon not long after the election. There were whispers and a few half-baked news stories citing the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted to fix presidential succession weaknesses in 1967, as a way to get rid of…
By David Underhill – MOBILE, Ala. – I have stood as the Confederate flag rose in front of a burning cross. I didn’t do this out of respect. I did it because I wanted to get out alive from that Alabama farm field where I had gone one night long ago to see what a…
By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. — So it comes as no great surprise that Alabama’s infamous judge Roy Moore is a liar and a hypocrite who wears Christianity on his sleeve and then exploits donations from Christians and turns them to personal use. The Washington Post is now reporting that Moore paid himself more…
By Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian – David Barsamian: You have spoken about the difference between Trump’s buffoonery, which gets endlessly covered by the media, and the actual policies he is striving to enact, which receive less attention. Do you think he has any coherent economic, political, or international policy goals? What has Trump actually…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Sunday, September 15, 1963, when the bomb went off in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in downtown Birmingham, I was only five-years-old about to turn six in October. My family lived just 15 miles northeast of the church in the suburbs, but oddly,…
By George Lakoff – Freedom in a free society is supposed to be for all. Therefore, freedom rules out imposing on the freedom of others. You are free to walk down the street, but not to keep others from doing so. The imposition on the freedom of others can come in overt, immediate physical form…
The Big Picture By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. – So far key politicians in Virginia have not learned the lesson of Charlottesville. There is no public evidence that Governor Terry McAuliffe, Senators Tim Kaine or Mark Warner have noticed that there is a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in the U.S. Capitol,…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. – We need a new term to describe Donald Trump’s leadership style, modeled on his idol Vladimir Putin of Russia. People in the United States probably still think of Russia as a Socialist-Communist country. But it’s not. Not since the breakup of the Soviet Union…
“Be it life or death, we crave only reality.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. — Oh how things have changed since Henry David Thoreau’s 1854, when he first published Walden. How things have changed since 1896, when Adolph Ochs purchased and began transforming the New…
By Ken Levy – Many commentators are suggesting that both right and left are equally to blame for all the polarization between them. They’re wrong. The reason for all the bitterness between left and right is entirely the right’s fault. Right-wingers who suggest otherwise are self-deluded – and usually projecting. Exhibit A: Newt Gingrich. On…
By James Rhodes – BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Victoria Siciliano, communications coordinator for the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice, recently hosted a community informational forum at the Civil Rights Institute downtown. The primary purpose of the gathering was to raise awareness regarding the plight of the resident immigrants as well as to showcase their personal stories…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. — What happens when you have a United States Attorney General who is just as much of a liar as the president, only one who has been in Washington much longer and understands the practice of dissembling in answering questions and claiming a faulty memory?…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. — While it may seem easy to be lulled into a spring stupor with the fine cool weather in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, it is hard to avoid going into shock with all the strange news coming out of the Trump administration. Around here they…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – Are you sick and tired of living in a land of idiocy and mediocrity? What if I told you there is a way to escape it and see excellence rise to the top? The answers are right in front of our faces, like a long pass for…
By Robert Reich – The question is no longer whether there are grounds to impeach Donald Trump. It is when enough Republicans will put their loyalty to America ahead of their loyalty to their party. Trump’s statements last week about his firing of former FBI director James Comey provide ample evidence that Trump engaged in…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – MOBILE, Ala. — The political intrigue surrounding President Donald J. Trump and his fascination with Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin and Russian money hit a new benchmark on Tuesday when the president announced the firing of F.B.I. director James B. Comey. The comparisons to President Richard M. Nixon’s…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – CAMP DAVID, Ala. — Let me paint a picture for you of where we are this Sunday morning, on day 108 of the Tragic Era of Trump. We were sitting around last night on the back yard deck waiting on the chicken thighs to cook (no we…
