Alabama
updated
12:03 a.m.
Cross-posted from The Huffington Post The Weekly Standard ran a cover story this week called, " In Denial: The Meltdown of the Climate Campaign ." Despite the cute play on words about who is denying what, the article got it all wrong. Climate change legislation is not dead--not as long as publications like this keep putting it on its cover. As one experienced senator recently told an...
Left in Alabama - Sun 6:02 p.m.
This was posted earlier and garnered a little discussion, but I'd like to bring it back for the Sunday afternoon crowd. Basically, the proprietor of Politics Alabama (a blogger of Libertarian bent) and I are doing a few one minute each, pro/con discussions on topical issues and calling the series Counterpunch . The first is related to constitutional reform; look for a new ep...
Left in Alabama - Sun 12:21 p.m. - 3 clicks 
FiveThirtyEight has a great diary from last night about the least valuable Dems based on taking votes at face value. Dennis Kucinich finishes as the least valuable Dem Artur Davis (AL-07) ,running for Ala. Gov and not seeking a 5th term in Congress, finishes as the second least valuable Dem cross posted at Progressive Electorate ...
DailyKos (Alabama) - Sun 8:45 a.m. - 2 clicks
The higher any DK entry highlighting LIA gets, the higher the profile of this website. To that end, I want to subscribe to fellow LIA-DKers, so come say howdy ! Here's a new video about the late return of paranoid politics. The song is by the defunct band "idiot" on their CD it's all a lie, which was pressed before the movie Idiocracy was a glimmer in the eye. ...
Left in Alabama - Sat 9:48 p.m.
Don't forget to set your clocks forward tonight, or you'll be late all day tomorrow! Consider this an open thread - are spring flowers blooming in your neighborhood? ...
Left in Alabama - Sat 5:29 p.m.
Parker Griffith is throwing lots of ads at his district, especially on Fox affiliates. I'll let you watch an ad from one of his primary opponents while you get over that surprise: More after the jump! ...
DailyKos (Alabama) - Sat 5:04 p.m.
You better read this. The author of this Daily Kos piece is a friend here in Huntsville and I'm copying their story for all to read. Citation for Dem Bumper Stickers in Alabama Yes, it's true. I just encountered an experience that I wish upon no one, but that I'm sure happens too often in America. I live in Huntsville, Alabama. I was driving home from the downtown area ...
Left in Alabama - Sat 7:25 a.m. - 4 clicks
I have a couple of interesting polling memos to share. The first is from a Democracy Corps analysis of a number of recent polls on the health care reform bill. In the wake of the Massachusetts special election, public surveys showed support for health care reform declining to record lows. Yet, in recent weeks, support for reform has started to recover in nearly every publi...
Left in Alabama - Fri 9:26 p.m.
Every new day brings at least one new Sparks for Governor "press release" into my email inbox. And each one is more dreadful than the last. They've taken a plunge downward: from semi-hysterical and over-caffeinated comic pieces to truly nasty, poorly-sourced mud-slinging. I don't write that lightly and I don't like criticizing a fellow Democrat in this manner. Bu...
Left in Alabama - Fri 12:19 p.m. - 3 clicks
Last Friday Eddison Walters told the Birmingham Downtown Democrats, "I'm pretty sure we already know what the problems are facing this district. So I'm going to try to talk about some solutions." The solutions he proposed revolve around nurturing small businesses and creating new green industry in the district. All the Democratic candidates for the 7th congressional distri...
Left in Alabama - Fri 11:21 a.m. - 5 clicks
Rep. Artur Davis will speak to a lunch meeting of the North Alabama Chamber of Commerce today in Huntsville and then attend the Grand Opening of his campaign's Huntsville Headquarters at 5:30 pm. The HQ will be at 228 Holmes Ave. NE, Suite 216. The public is invited to attend. The campaign recently released this video of a visit to Gee's Bend. ...
Left in Alabama - Fri 8:47 a.m. - 6 clicks
We've seen it before in Alabama when Cynthia Stewart wanted to bring her girlfriend to the prom and the school refused. The ACLU of Alabama intervened and the school relented : From an ACLU of Alabama press release: The American Civil Liberties Union today applauded Franklin County School System officials for reversing their decision barring a lesbian student from attending th...
Left in Alabama - Fri 8:47 a.m. - 3 clicks
Shelia Smoot made sure the Birmingham Downtown Democrats knew she is the candidate "On your side" at their meeting last Friday. "Don't send a rookie to Congress," she said. Not coincidentally, Smoot hosts a daily radio show on WAGG 610 in Birmingham called "Smoot on Your Side" All the Democratic candidates for the 7th congressional district spoke at the Downtown D...
Left in Alabama - Fri 7:05 a.m. - 3 clicks
Folks, I've spent the last two weeks dealing with computer crashes, software glitches, and equipment malfunctions. My apologies for the length of time it took to get this in the can. ...
Left in Alabama - Fri 6:01 a.m. - 4 clicks
The main reason I support Constitutional Reform in Alabama goes back to a U.S. Supreme Court case I read in law school, Hunter v. Underwood , 471 U.S. 222 (1985). It is from that case that I learned about the overtly racist origins of our current Alabama constitution of 1901. Since then, I feel a shame in my gut for the invidious racism that underlies the fundamental document that creates ...
Left in Alabama - Fri 5:28 a.m. - 7 clicks
What's the best course to put Alabama's bingo/slot machine controversy to bed? Davis wants Up or Down Vote Sparks wants Special Session Hank Sanders wants to Lance the Boil Let's take a closer look at some Democratic proposals to deal with this Bingo mess -- or the Bingo Boil as Sen. Hank Sanders calls it . Bingo came to a head this week – sort of. ...
Left in Alabama - Thu 2:37 p.m. - 6 clicks
Temporary AL-05 Congressman Parker Griffith and his new best friend, Congressman John Boehner, weren't the only attractions in Huntsville, AL on Monday. The labor unions in North Alabama also held their promised monthly news conference demanding their money back from Griffith. Just a few minutes later, Griffith and Boehner held a "press availability." The Griffith/Boehn...
Left in Alabama - Thu 11:22 a.m. - 6 clicks
Earl Hilliard, Jr. is no stranger to the Harbert Center where the Birmingham Downtown Democrats met last Friday. "As a child I used to sit in this room and I thought I'd go into politics, then when I got a little older I thought maybe I wouldn't go into politics." Hilliard left Alabama and left politics for a while, but after a stint in California and Washington, DC, he ...
Left in Alabama - Thu 9:08 a.m. - 5 clicks
Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman knows the dangers of a dysfunctional justice department in a way that most Americans only can imagine. So when Siegelman points out that the Barack Obama administration is acting irrationally on justice matters, citizens would be wise to pay attention. Siegelman still is appealing unlawful convictions obtained against him under the George W. Bush DOJ, so he ...
Legal Schnauzer - Thu 7:20 a.m. - 5 clicks
Former Bush White House strategist Karl Rove has a new book coming out, and it is drawing a strong response from several quarters. One of those quarters belongs to former ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson. The Wilsons contend that Rove played a central role in outing Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert CIA officer, and they say Courage and Consequence is a poor attempt to re...
Legal Schnauzer - Thu 7:20 a.m.
The Madison County Democratic Executive Committee will meet tonight at 7 pm at the Optimist Rec. Center, 703 Oakwood Ave. E, in Huntsville (just east of Andrew Jackson Way and I-565 on Oakwood Ave.) Alabama Commissioner of Agriculture & Industries (and gubernatorial candidate) Ron Sparks will be the guest speaker. Qualifying for county offices and the C...
Left in Alabama - Thu 7:20 a.m. - 5 clicks
I just saw these on Twitter: Rep. Laura Hall to host “One Woman Can Change The World” to celebrate Women's History Month in Huntsville. If not for the fact that this is at 7 am, Friday morning I would definitely attend, just not sure I can drag myself to Huntsville at that hour. http://bit.ly/chsfCp Artur Davis to speak to North Alabama African-Ameri...
Left in Alabama - Thu 7:20 a.m. - 7 clicks
Terri Sewell was unambiguous in her support for health care reform at the Downtown Democrats' lunch in Birmingham last Friday. She declared, "I will go to Congress and make sure that health care gets passed. A comprehensive health care bill that includes a public option." Sewell may not be the most polished public speaker in the field, but she came across as serious about the...
Left in Alabama - Wed 6:43 p.m. - 8 clicks
Alabama's state budget year runs from October 1 to September 30th. Normally that's no big deal, but next year it puts us in danger of losing out on 3 months of higher federal Medicaid reimbursement from a provision in the Jobs for Main Street Act and its counterpart in the Senate. Congress extended federal medical assistance percentages (FMAPs) to provide a higher rate of...
Left in Alabama - Wed 4:20 p.m. - 5 clicks
Lawyers for debt collectors have filed fraudulent documents in U.S. district court, seeking to unlawfully exclude evidence that points to multiple violations of federal law. The motions probably amount to attempted fraud on the court and represent the latest action in a lawsuit my wife and I filed against Pennsylvania-based NCO and Birmingham-based law firm Ingram & Associates. The suit alleg...
Legal Schnauzer - Wed 9:48 a.m. - 11 clicks
Less than one month after fatal shootings at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), workplace violence has struck on another campus. Nathaniel Brown, a custodian at Ohio State University, shot and killed his supervisor early Tuesday morning and wounded another boss before turning the gun on himself. The Ohio State incident did not involve any students or faculty members. It comes after...
Legal Schnauzer - Wed 9:21 a.m. - 10 clicks
A small, public university in Alabama made a major decision last week, and it illustrates an alarming trend in higher education. The University of Montevallo , which sits in Shelby County about 30 miles south of Birmingham, is a liberal-arts school with an enrollment of about 3,100 students. The school had been searching for a new president for several months and announced last week that it had ...
Legal Schnauzer - Tue 11:03 a.m. - 7 clicks
Regular readers could get the idea that I don't much care for lawyers. (How anyone could get that impression is beyond me.) The truth, however, is a bit more complicated than that. While the villains in our Legal Schnauzer tale tend to be lawyers, the heroes also often are lawyers. Unfortunately, the villains greatly outnumber the heroes. Perhaps that's why I have great admiration for some law...
Legal Schnauzer - Tue 10:01 a.m. - 2 clicks
. President Obama traveled to Pennsylvania yesterday and talked about something dealing some legislation having to do with some stuff and blah, blah, blah . . . But the important thing he did was welcome the Crimson Tide to the White House : . President Obama also quoted Paul 'Bear' Bryant: "The most important thing for any winning team is a win...
DailyKos (Alabama) - Tue 5:07 a.m. - 2 clicks
Tonight the man with the Tan joined the Congressman in no man's land for a GOP fundraiser in Huntsville, AL. Parker Griffith, as you might recall, is the former Howard Dean supporter and Congressman who switched to the GOP in hopes of boosting his re-election chances. Forces aligned as the good side joined the dark side for a bipartisan protest of tonights Boehner/Griffith $100 a head fu...
DailyKos (Alabama) - Mon 7:48 p.m. - 6 clicks
Former Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison on Friday for his conviction on corruption-related charges. The facts and the law, as we understand them, indicate that Langford probably was doing some things he should not have been doing. And the former mayor's actions might indeed have violated federal bribery and fraud laws--even though our impulse is to que...
Legal Schnauzer - Mon 3:07 p.m. - 7 clicks
Maybe it was the specter of Jesse Jackson coming to Alabama to support workers at electronic-bingo facilities. Maybe it was a circuit judge ruling that the governor's anti-gambling task force could not raid the state's best-known gaming facility, allowing VictoryLand to reopen. Whatever the cause, Alabama Governor Bob Riley is showing signs of what we can only describe as a psychological dist...
Legal Schnauzer - Mon 3:07 p.m. - 8 clicks
Right out of the gate: h/t to 'mooncat' and Left in Alabama & to Real Clear Politics for this No Laugh-Track Needed, the Guffaws Should Come Naturally This is a rather simple, "Before & After" thing. First, though, The Setting: In 2008 Huntsville, Alabama, physician Parker Griffith ran for Congress, for Ala's 5th Congressional Distric...
DailyKos (Alabama) - Mar 7 - 4 clicks
Why do Americans continue to elect Republicans, even though the party's candidates consistently have failed to provide competent or ethical governance? The answer, according to an intriguing new piece from Scott Horton of Harper's , lies in the racially tinged politics of Alabama. And that can only lead to two words--George Wallace. Sarah Palin, the GOP's current shining light on the national ...
Legal Schnauzer - Mar 5 - 5 clicks
People hoping to gain a deeper understanding of the recent tragic events on the campus at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) are not likely to find it from reporting in The New York Times, purportedly the nation's leading newspaper. The Times has invested considerable resources on the UAH shootings, which left three faculty members dead and three others wounded. Much of the repor...
Legal Schnauzer - Mar 4 - 8 clicks
Officials at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) have tried to separate student leaders from a prominent alumnus who spoke out about the school's poor work environment following recent fatal shootings on the campus. Samuel Parks, a former student-body president who graduated in May 2009, says administrators have instructed him not to communicate with current student leaders. That came ...
Legal Schnauzer - Mar 3 - 13 clicks
Mrs. Schnauzer and I recently took a walk down memory lane by attending a Three Dog Night concert in Birmingham. It turned out to be more than a musical adventure; it also helped put the modern American economy in perspective. The concert was at the Alys Robinson Stephens Performing Arts Center on the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) campus. UAB is my former employer, and I hate to giv...
Legal Schnauzer - Mar 3 - 7 clicks
A spokesman for Alabama Governor Bob Riley decried what he called "low-road tactics" when a pro-bingo crowd shouted down the governor and his wife during an anti-bingo rally last week on the State House steps. Hypocrisy among Republicans is so blatant that it takes a lot for one example to stand out. But Riley spokesman Jeff Emerson definitely managed to stand out with his latest whopper. That'...
Legal Schnauzer - Mar 2 - 5 clicks
Mrs. Schnauzer and I have a couple of veteran attorneys, Darrell Cartwright and Allan Armstrong, handling our lawsuit against unethical debt collectors. We suspect that Cartwright and Armstrong have been around long enough to encounter quite a few people who have a serious problem telling the truth. But even long-time lawyers have been taken aback by the disinformation generated by the defendants...
Legal Schnauzer - Mar 2
For the old man is waiting to carry you to bingo! Yes, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are expected to attend a pro-bingo rally in Montgomery. Because it’s about justice! ...
Birmingham Blues - Mar 2 - 2 clicks
The newspaper industry is struggling, but don't count me among those bloggers who seem to almost look forward to the death of dailies. I got into reading and writing because of a love for newspapers. That led to a 30-year career in journalism, and I want to see the "old gray ladies" stick around. I've been reading newspapers cover to cover for years. But I originally was drawn to them by two fac...
Legal Schnauzer - Mar 1 - 4 clicks
Is America a country of colossal contradictions? Consider that, a little more than a year ago, we elected our first African-American president, a step many people would consider a sign of progress. But at the same time, the spirit of Russian dictator Josef Stalin lives on in America--and evidence of that came last week with the latest ruling in the Paul Minor case. Stalin, of course, was known f...
Legal Schnauzer - Mar 1 - 4 clicks
We have established that, based on my experience, debt collectors will target you even when they have little or no documentation to show that you owe the alleged debt. We also have established that debt collectors, when caught in the act and forced to account for their violations of federal and state laws, will go to great lengths to keep from disclosing information about how they do business....
Legal Schnauzer - Feb 25
An associate of Alabama Governor Bob Riley threatened a Christian Coalition leader over gambling issues, according to a lawsuit filed in Montgomery County Circuit Court in May 2007. Dr. Randy Brinson, chairman of the Christian Coalition of Alabama, states in the lawsuit that he supported a bill in the Alabama House of Representatives that would tax and regulate gambling and help fund Medicaid. Br...
Legal Schnauzer - Feb 25 - 6 clicks
We've established, based on my experiences, that debt collectors will target you even when they have no documents to show you have a cardholder agreement--much less that you owe a debt. So what happens when you catch on to the debt-collection scheme and file a lawsuit alleging violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA)--and perhaps alleging fraud and other state-law claims? Yo...
Legal Schnauzer - Feb 24 - 5 clicks
Governor Bob Riley's campaign to shut down electronic bingo in Alabama started at about the same time a Mississippi Choctaw casino was laying off employees. Do you see a connection? Bob Gambacurta, writing at the Montgomery Independent , sure does. And it shows that the story of disgraced GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff still resonates in the Deep South. Gambacurta also raises a critical point about...
Legal Schnauzer - Feb 24 - 5 clicks
We know that the debt-collection industry played a major role in electing Scott Brown to Ted Kennedy's U.S. Senate seat from Massachusetts, and that's largely because the industry opposes health-care and consumer-protection reforms. So its appropriate that we take a critical look at an industry that is trying to flex its political muscle on the national stage. My wife and I have filed a lawsuit...
Legal Schnauzer - Feb 23 - 4 clicks
Rob Riley, the son of Alabama Governor Bob Riley, paid a $10,000 fine in 2008 for his role in a decade-old campaign-finance ethics case. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) announced the fine in a press release dated June 20, 2008 . But we can find no record that the story was reported in any of Alabama's major newspapers. Was the story covered up by Alabama's mainstream press, and if so, why...
Legal Schnauzer - Feb 23 - 3 clicks
Coverage of the fatal shootings at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) so far has focused on the crime itself and the background of the alleged perpetrator, neuroscientist Amy Bishop. But we are seeing signs of a more complex story starting to emerge, one that includes a focus on the workplace environment at UAH--and the actions and inactions of University of Alabama officials. A promi...
Legal Schnauzer - Feb 22 - 4 clicks
The Barack Obama administration hardly has distinguished itself on matters of justice. With the latest news from the Paul Minor case in Mississippi, the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) appears to be clueless and perhaps downright deceitful. A report in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger indicates something still is seriously wrong with the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of Mississ...
Legal Schnauzer - Feb 22 - 2 clicks
The story of last Friday's fatal shootings on the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) campus has taken a number of twists and turns, most of them focusing on the background of neuroscientist Amy Bishop, who has been charged in the case. But perhaps the most stunning development since news of the shootings first broke came in a report two days ago from The Chronicle of Higher Education . An...
Legal Schnauzer - Feb 19 - 6 clicks
A robo-poll called the house last night, and my husband cleverly pretended to be a 27-year-old Republican likely voter. Way to stick it to The Man! The meat of the polls was: “If the election was tomorrow, would you vote for…Republican Mitt Romney, Democrat Barack Obama, or Tea-Party Candidate Sarah Palin?” The poll asked this [...]...
Birmingham Blues - Feb 10
