tagged w/ Alabama
-
I've joked for years that God needs a better PR team on Earth. Some of the most log-headed charlatans, grifters, and just plain logically-challenged people claim to speak on His behalf. Pat Robertson, Ted Haggard, and ethically inept Newt Gingrich are just a few. But, AL state Sen. Shadrack McGill covets his own serving of ignobility.I've joked for years that God needs a better PR team on Earth. Some of the most... more
-
-
There’s not much that passes for happiness or credible hope on Here We Rest, but what finally broke me down, after seven or eight spins, was sitting with the lyrics and humming along to “Stopping By,” a gut-wrenching number about dropping in to see Dad, unannounced, after 15 years. I’m sure most of us understand how the dysfunctions of one generation all too predictably serve as the only role model the next generation has. If we wonder why a boy grows up unable to connect with a woman – say, the woman in “Alabama Pines” or perhaps “Daisy Mae” – we might have a look at their parents. Add a hint of bygone scandal, the intimation of bile and repression that still characterizes family and community in the Gothic South, and what remains is a moment where little is said, even less is understood.There’s not much that passes for happiness or credible hope on Here We Rest, but... more
-
-
By Brian Wheeler
BBC News, Alabama
Banks stand to lose millions of dollars in debt repayments if the biggest municipal bankruptcy in American history is allowed to proceed.
But the real victims of the financial collapse in the US state of Alabama's most populous county are its poorest residents - forced to bathe in bottled water and use portable toilets after being cut off from the mains supply.
And there is widespread anger in Jefferson County that swingeing sewerage rate hikes could have been avoided but for the greed, corruption and incompetence of local politicians, government officials and Wall Street financiers.
Tammy Lucas is the human face of a financial and political scandal that has brought one of the most deprived communities in America's south to the point of what some local people believe is collapse.
She says: "If the sewer bill gets higher, my light might get cut off and if I try to catch up the light, my water might get cut off. So we're in between. We can't make it like this."
Mrs Lucas's monthly sewerage rate bills - the amount levied by the county to flush away waste and provide water for baths and showers - has quadrupled in the past 15 years. She says it is currently running at $150 (£97) a month, which leaves little left out of her $600 social security check for food and electricity.
"We need to keep the water running because we're women," she says. "We need to take baths. I try to pay the sewer bill and the water bill together and then what little I got left I try to put on my lights. I got to have lights."
More at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16037798By Brian Wheeler
BBC News, Alabama
Banks stand to lose millions of dollars in debt... more
-
-
From the left and from the right the ads will come until one day, not so far off, we'll all reach saturation and walk off a cliff. Welcome to the United Lemmings of America!From the left and from the right the ads will come until one day, not so far off,... more
-
-
-
Hello there. My name is Cristie Clark and I am the District Coordinator for the North Alabama region of The Alabama Medical Marijuana Coalition (AMMJC). We just started our Non-Profit organization June 3, 2011 and have since put forth a Patient’s Rights Bill that will be headed to the Legislature in February 2012. We have gained the support of Representative K.L. Brown, a Republican Conservative Christian, and he has agreed to sponsor our Bill. Since making this progress, we have been hosting picnics all over the state in an effort to spread the word and gain support. We have also been on several morning talk shows.
We are solely fighting for the most terminal patients who have chosen to push their harsh and addictive medications to the side, and replace it with marijuana, despite being labeled a criminal. I feel that it is imperative to give these patient’s a voice, as well as the right to choose what treatment is best for them.
-Cristie L. Clark
District 2 Coordinator
Board Member, AMMJC
(Facebook Page)
https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/167652663294034/
https://www.facebook.com/#!/cristielynnclarkHello there. My name is Cristie Clark and I am the District Coordinator for the North... more
-
-
Ima BossClothing Men & women's urban fashion for go getters making success happen one day at a time.
The T Burton Collection
For
KemetLight Media
Shirts (short)Ima BossClothing Men & women's urban fashion for go getters making success... more
-
-
FOLEY, Alabama -- An Arizona couple reportedly outraged by a Foley police officer’s walk-through at an area Walmart last week was arrested after the man allegedly hit the officer and his wife jumped on him.
Anthony Scott Smith, 41, and his wife, Chrisanna Elizabeth Smith, 40, of Scottsdale, Arizona, were arrested Friday and charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and second-degree assault on a police officer.FOLEY, Alabama -- An Arizona couple reportedly outraged by a Foley police... more
-
-
With hurricanes missing the United States over the past two hurricane seasons, the country has now gone more than 1,000 days without a landfall.
http://exm.nr/jphR1DWith hurricanes missing the United States over the past two hurricane seasons, the... more
-
-
Massive EF5 Killer Tornado Birmingham Alabama April 27th Kills 43
(Raw Video)
http://shockingtornados.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/shockingtornados
Alfa Mutual Group said t it will not renew
73,000 property insurance policies statewide as it
following the April 27 tornadoes.
Volunteer Reception Center, at the McAbee Activity Center,
3801 Loop Road, issues credentials to volunteers. Open 6 a.m.-7 a.m.
Monday-Friday; Saturday 8 a.m.-7 p.m.; Sunday 1 p.m.-5 p.m.
Visit www.givetuscaloosa.com to download forms. Call 205-248-5045.Massive EF5 Killer Tornado Birmingham Alabama April 27th Kills 43
(Raw Video)... more
-
-
Harriett Louise Carter, 22-year-old Courtland (Decatur, Alabama) woman has pleaded guilty in Morgan County Circuit Court to second-degree rape for having sex with a 13-year-old boy.
According to the court documents, Carter had agreed to babysit five children for a friend at an apartment in June last year. During the night, Carter first performed oral sex on the 13-year-old boy and then engaged him in sexual intercourse. When boy admittedt sexual acts to his mother, she reported Carter to Decatur
http://femalesexoffenders.com/fso/index.php/the-news/311-harriett-carter-pleads-guilty-Harriett Louise Carter, 22-year-old Courtland (Decatur, Alabama) woman has pleaded... more
-
-
b2r
-
added this
-
9 months ago
- |
-
As rescue workers continued their search Monday for possible survivors of last week's deadly tornadoes, it was unclear just how many people really are missing across the state.
The daily situation report from the Alabama Emergency Management Agency reported eight people missing statewide -- seven of those in Marion County and one in Elmore County.
But in Tuscaloosa, one of the hardest hit areas with 39 killed, Mayor Walt Maddox's office was reporting 340 people missing as of Monday. The number was even higher Sunday, when the city was listing 370 people missing.
Tuscaloosa officials are quick to point out that missing is not the same thing as dead.
"We do not presume any of those are dead," said Vickie Gilliland, an aide to Maddox. "If someone called the police or sheriff's office to report a missing person, that name got on the list. If someone called the mayor's office to report a missing person, that name got on the list. It's as complete a list as we can make it, but we also know there may be some mistakes on it too."
Gilliland said the number may be high because some names have been duplicated or, once a person has been found, the person who reported them missing did not call back to have the name taken off the list.
Gilliland said police and the county's sheriff's office have been attempting to contact each person on the list.
"It is putting a strain on police, but if someone called to report a missing person we are going to do all we can to find them," Gilliland said.
cont.As rescue workers continued their search Monday for possible survivors of last... more
-
-
The worst natural disaster in the United States since Hurricane Katrina just happened, and many in the mainstream media are already treating it like back page news. It can be really tempting to want to talk about whatever the next "news cycle" brings us, but right now we really need to pray for those affected by "the tornadoes of 2011". There are parts of Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia that will never, ever be the same again. Entire towns have been wiped off the map. Hundreds are dead and thousands have been seriously injured. Over a million people lost power. One of the tornadoes that ripped through the region was reported to be a mile wide. How in the world are you supposed to get away from something like that once it is on top of you? Many in the mainstream media have already acknowledged that this was the worst natural disaster in the U.S. since Hurricane Katrina took 1,800 lives back in 2005. Over and over and over, those living in the region are describing the devastation by saying that they have "never seen anything like it". This truly was one for the history books.The worst natural disaster in the United States since Hurricane Katrina just happened,... more
-
-
April 27, 2011 - Tuscaloosa tornado damage, shot by Bill Castle of ABC 33/40 in Birmingham. Gives you a whole new perspective of just how powerful these things are. The tornado was classed as an EF-5, the most powerful.April 27, 2011 - Tuscaloosa tornado damage, shot by Bill Castle of ABC 33/40 in... more
-
-
The Super Outbreak of 1974 has stood as the most deadly rash of tornadoes in recent memory until this week.
http://exm.nr/kQ9IKOThe Super Outbreak of 1974 has stood as the most deadly rash of tornadoes in recent... more
-
-
En Alabama, los tornados arrasaron todo lugar por el cual pasaron. Además del estado de Alabama que fue el más afectado con 131 muertos hasta el momento, las tempestades y tornados también dejaron muertos en Mississippi (32), Tennessee (15), Georgia (11) y Virginia (8). En total, hasta el momento el número de muertos llega a los 197.En Alabama, los tornados arrasaron todo lugar por el cual pasaron. Además del... more
-
-
UPDATED: terrifying Alabama tornado videos. Our thoughts are with the affected communities.UPDATED: terrifying Alabama tornado videos. Our thoughts are with the affected... more
-
-
Remembering the Freedom Rides
In 1961, riders black and white headed South to test the region's segregation laws. Things turned violent in Alabama. Fifty years later, cities along the route are marking the rides with exhibit, murals and a new museum.
PHOTO: A Greyhound bus that carried Freedom Riders burns after being set ablaze by Ku Klux Klan members in 1961. (Joseph Postiglione / Birmingham)
-----
PART ONE...
By Larry Bleiberg, Special to the Los Angeles Times
April 24, 2011
Reporting from Montgomery, Ala.—
As the bus leaves Atlanta, Dennis Climpson is eager for conversation. He wants to talk about college football this Sunday morning, but I have a question for him. "Have you ever heard of the Freedom Rides?" I ask.
Fifty years ago next month, a group of 15 passengers travels the same route. Like us, they were blacks and whites sitting together on buses, then a violation of segregation laws. Climpson, 48, says he hasn't heard of the protests, but he's intrigued. As Interstate 20 passes by, he turns to his smartphone to check Wikipedia.
In 1961, Charles Person was 18 and the youngest of the Freedom Riders, who were traveling on two buses to New Orleans from Washington, D.C. The Georgia native still remembers crossing into Alabama that Mother's Day. "There was tension. It was kind of eerie."
Person expected to be harassed and roughed up as the group tested compliance with federal integration laws, but he didn't imagine much worse. "This was broad daylight," he says.
Later that day, members of the Ku Klux Klan would set fire to one bus and beat riders on the other with pipes, chains and bats. Over the next week, the world would watch as the Kennedy administration struggled to protect the protesters.
The racial violence shocked — and changed — America.
Today you can retrace the Freedom Rides easily by car or bus. The Alabama cities on the route are marking the anniversary with murals, exhibits and a new museum. It's a leisurely tour of the Deep South, where you'll find gracious hosts, good food and stark reminders of a not-so-distant past.
Climpson, who is bound for Jackson, Miss., to start a new truck-driving job, can't believe what he's reading on his phone.
"Anniston, Ala.?" he asks, pointing to the screen. "I thought that was a quiet town."
Half a century ago, when the Greyhound bus carrying some of the Freedom Riders pulled into Anniston, in the foothills of the Appalachians, a crowd awaited. Klan members pummeled the vehicle and slashed its tires. It limped away 20 minutes later, and a convoy of cars followed. Six miles later, the bus stopped with a flat.
Bernard Emerson still lives on a hill overlooking the spot, which now bears a historic marker. Someone had tossed burning rags through a smashed bus window. "The smoke was getting pretty thick," he recalls. "One lady was coming out of the window. She got her foot caught, and she was kind of hanging there."
Anniston, a town of 23,000, has only recently acknowledged the incident, commissioning murals and detailed exhibit signs at its former bus stations, two blocks from the current stop. I took a layover for a few hours to look around and eventually found my way to a converted Woolworth's, now a restaurant called Classic on Noble. Its Sunday brunch recalls a Southern country club buffet: more than 100 offerings, including fried green tomatoes, grits, shrimp salad, beef tenderloin and a dessert counter with 26 pies, cobblers and cakes. The after-church crowd is predominately white, but a few black guests feast too.
"We're a nice town," the hostess tells me. "We have a dark past, but we've overcome it."
When the second bus reached Anniston in 1961, a pair of Klansmen boarded and beat the riders, causing permanent brain damage to one. The Klansmen warned them that worse awaited 60 miles down the road in Birmingham.
"They taunted us all the way," Person says. Still, the wounded protesters stuck to their plan; when they arrived, they headed to the white waiting room in the Trailways bus station.
"The walls were surrounded by a group of men," Person recalls. "As we got toward the center, they started coming toward us."
Person, who had been trained to practice Gandhian nonviolence, was immediately set upon. "Everyone had a chance to punch me," he says. His head was bashed with a pipe. Then a news photographer snapped a picture, distracting Person's attackers. "I just walked out of my jacket," he recalls. "I did not run. I was still under control."
He stepped outside and boarded a city bus. The first Freedom Rides had ended, and Person had escaped with his life.
CONTINUED...Remembering the Freedom Rides
In 1961, riders black and white headed South to test... more
-
-
-
A slew of recent bills would expand the ability to deny services based on personal religious or moral beliefs
Energized by the health care debate and fueled by Congress's recent pro-life fervor, state legislators have been dreaming up numerous ways to restrict women's access to abortion and other reproductive health services. One tactic they've resorted to is ramping up on conscience protection laws. The laws shields employees from punishment for refusing to perform certain job duties based on their religion or morals. This would allow government-funded health workers, pharmacists, and insurance companies to refuse to inform someone about care options, give out Plan B contraceptives, or refer a patient to a pro-choice physician, all without retribution.
These "religious refusal" laws, as they are also called, are by no means new, explains Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute. Many states have conscience laws, she says, and they exist at the federal level too. But recently, observes Brigitte Amiri, a senior attorney for the ACLU, "we've seen an onslaught of bills restricting access to abortion at a level we have not seen in the past." The inclusion of insurance companies and pharmacies in the list of those protected by new conscience laws make Amiri particularly concerned.
Certain lawmakers have tried to use religious refusal laws to preserve discrimination in other industries and organizations. Take Iowa, for example, where a recent measure would have allowed small business owners to refuse to sell anything to a gay couple if that businessman felt homosexuality was against his religion. (Luckily, that law "appears dead," but similar bills previously popped up in Louisiana, Kentucky, and Colorado, and more could be on the way.)
Besides further restricting access to women's health care services, broader conscience protection laws could also mean greater opportunities for protected discrimination: not just against women, but against gays and lesbians and anyone else a particular employee feels "violates" his or her personal beliefs. We've rounded up five of the worst offenders, below.
Advertise on MotherJones.com
1. Alabama
Legislation: House Bill 178 (PDF)/ Senate Bill 46, the "Health Care Rights of Conscience Act," gives "health care providers, institutions, and payers right to decline to perform any health care service that violate their consciences." This is one of the most sweeping conscience laws currently on the table, allowing any health care provider or insurance company to refuse to provide referrals, procedures, or payments. If a doctor was working with a woman seeking sterilization for family planning reasons, for instance, he could refuse to treat her, decline to inform her of her options, and refuse to refer her to anyone else if sterilization was against his own beliefs.
Because the term "ethical principle" also appears in the bill's definition of "conscience," explains Nash of the Guttermacher Institute, "you could imagine a scenario where a doctor could say 'I don't want to give you your heart medicine because I think you should lose thirty pounds.'"
Status: Pending committee action in House
2. Arizona
Legislation: HB 2565 would add a "Students' Rights" section to the Arizona Revised Statutes that would prohibit a university from punishing a student in counseling or social work who refuses to counsel another student on a topic that's against her "sincerely held religious belief or moral convictions."
This bill probably arose in reaction to a recent incident in Michigan, when a grad student filed a lawsuit against Eastern Michigan University claiming it had discriminated against her based on her religion. EMU dismissed Julea Ward from its school counseling program after she refused to work with gay or lesbian students because she said homosexuality went against her Christian beliefs. The university argued that she violated American Counseling Association's Code of Ethics, but many have spoken out in Ward's defense, including Michigan's Attorney General (PDF).
Status: Passed through the House and the Senate, but because the bill was amended, it has to come back to the House for the final vote
3. Iowa
Legislation: HSB 50 (PDF), or "The Religious Conscience Protection Act." A reaction to Iowa's legalization of gay marriage, this bill would protect individuals and small businesses from having to "provide goods or services that assist or promote the solemnization or celebration of a marriage," "provide housing to a married couple," or "provide adoption or reproductive services" if doing so went against religious beliefs.
Critics worry that in addition to encouraging discrimination against gay couples, the bill is written in such a vague way that it could have broader implications. "This bill would not just affect LGBT couples, but opens the door to discrimination against interracial and interfaith couples," Troy Price of One Iowa told The Iowa Independent.
Status: The bill is basically dead after a subcommittee meeting drew crowds protesting the legislation. But sponsor Representative Rich Anderson, who earlier this year nominated himself for a seat on the Iowa Supreme Court, told SourceMedia News "we are just going to have to continue to work on it." A month later, Anderson's spokesperson told me that the legislature was not planning to make any amendments to the bill or move it forward.
4. South Carolina
Legislation: HB 3408, the "Freedom of Conscience Act," aims at protecting health care providers who do not want to be involved with or talk about abortion or certain types of stem-cell procedures. Bills like this—aimed at doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies—"allow patients to access religious care providers who share their values," writes pro-lifer and Alliance Defense Fund legal counselor Matt Bowman. Allowing women to have unlimited access to abortions, continues Bowman, would drive "all pro-life health care providers out of business."
But the director of the ACLU's Center for Liberty, Louise Melling, believes a bill like this—which allows doctors with objections to abortion to refuse to even give out information—violates a person's basic rights. "There are certain core things that you absolutely have to get which are emergency care, information, and referrals," argues Melling. "Because with information and referrals, then at least the patient knows other options exist and they have a chance to go seek services somewhere else."
Status: Currently residing in the House
5. Utah
Legislation: HB 353 replaces Utah's freedom of conscience law with a "new and expanded freedom of conscience law." As the Deseret News reports, State Representative Rebecca Chavez-Houck (D) doesn't think this bill is necessary, and finds it "very disconcerting."
The bill's sponsor, Representative Carl Wimmer (R), also engineered a bill that charges a woman who has a miscarriage caused by an "intentional or knowing act" as a murderer. Wimmer isn't exactly covert about his intentions; as he told Alternet: "The goal is to overturn Roe v. Wade, which would allow states more authority to make a decision on abortion."
Status: Signed into law on March 23
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/5-scary-religious-refusal-billsA slew of recent bills would expand the ability to deny services based on personal... more
-
