The primary elections of June 3, 2014 could bring change for many of Alabama’s elected office holders. It will definitely bring a change in voter identification requirements. In previous elections, voters could simply provide a utility bill or a fish ...
SCOTUS Decision a Narrow Win for Religious Freedom
On Monday, May 5th, the United States Supreme Court upheld the practice of Greece, a small town in the State of New York, to open monthly town meetings in prayer. The two plaintiffs (one a Jewish woman and the other an atheist woman) filed suit ...
Restoring Alabama’s Gulf Coast
After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, BP pledged to restore the Gulf Coast region. Four years later, many businesses with valid claims against BP remain in limbo awaiting a decision while tar balls still wash up along the Gulf Coast. While i ...
Minimum wage increase is a good intention with a disastrous result
Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman once said, “...one of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” The federal minimum wage is no exception to Friedman’s maxim. Last month, Presid ...
Tax Season Reflections on the Growing Cost of Prisons
With the Governor’s sign-off, the state’s budgets for both the Education Trust Fund and the General Fund are now set for fiscal year 2015. Of the $1.8 billion budgeted for the General Fund, spending on corrections is the second largest line ite ...
The Changing Objectives of Government Assistance
Under the Obama Administration, "reforms" to federal assistance programs have simply increased the programs' recipients and spending rather than implementing more oversight or accountability. Specifically, the Administration has taken proactive steps ...
Medicaid Overdose: Bigger is not Better
Much has been made about the continual refusal by Governor Robert Bentley to expand Medicaid. In the push to pass the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), President Obama explained in 2009 that “we can’t simply put more people i ...
Push for Pro-Life Priorities Goes Beyond Alabama
On January 22, thousands gathered on the National Mall in Washington for the annual March for Life that takes place on the date that Roe v. Wade was decided by the Supreme Court. The same week, the Republican National Committee decided that it ...
Silencing Religious Expression Through Courts and Legislatures
Within the last couple of weeks, federal judges in three conservative states have ruled that those states’ bans on gay marriage are unconstitutional. These bans were instituted in legislation passed by the Legislature and state constitutional amend ...
The Debt Bomb and Other Election Year Problems
"If you want to tackle a tough issue, wait until after the election.” This is one of the most understood ‘rules’ in politics. Unfortunately, elections never stop and oftentimes, the “tough issues” just get set aside in hopes that the problem will go ...