An early autumn view of Devil’s Den looking downstream from the waterfalls in the Talladega National Forest (click on the image for more photos)
There will be a public meeting at the Heflin Park and Recreation Department near the Georgia line in Heflin, Alabama Monday night at 6 p.m to to discuss a possible sale of oil and gas leases on 43,000 acres in the Talladega National Forest and the Conecuh National Forest in South Alabama.
According to several non-profit environmental groups, including WildSouth.Org and the Southern Environmental Law Center, the state Bureau of Land Management is “putting thousands of acres of publicly owned national forest land in Alabama at risk by allowing potential oil and gas drilling in the Talladega and Conecuh National Forests,” and the groups fear the plan could open the area to up to the controversial practice of “fracking,” where water, sand and chemicals are pumped under pressure into the ground.
In a letter of protest, the Southern Environmental Law Center, representing Wild South and the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the agency is relying on outdated environmental analyses done by the U.S. Forest Service in 2004 as part of the revised management plan for Alabama’s national forests. Among other deficiencies, these stale analyses fail to assess the environmental impacts of drilling using high-volume hydraulic fracturing, known as “fracking.”
This form of gas drilling, in which millions of gallons of water and chemicals are injected underground to fracture shale and release natural gas, has caused significant and widespread environmental problems in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and elsewhere.
Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist E.O. Wilson talks about the rise and domination of Homo sapiens on Earth. He spoke at the Free Library of Philadelphia on C-SPAN.
He explains where we came from and who we are, two of the big three questions, the other being where are we going. And he talks about the need for a decline in organized religion with their creation story myths, written long before modern science was even invented. It’s a must see for anyone who wants to call themselves an educated person.
Edward Wilson, an Alabama native, is the Pellegrino University Professor Emeritus at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. He is the author of several books, including “Sociobiology: The New Synthesis,” “On Human Nature,” the winner of the 1979 Pulitzer Prize, and “The Ants,” the winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize.
EDITOR’S NOTE: When government operates behind closed doors and the people are not paying attention — or being adequately informed by the press — the result is inevitably corruption of the democratic process. Such is the case with the Alabama Legislature. There is only one more working day left in this year’s legislative session, according to AP, although there is an indication there will immediately be a costly “special session” called to redistrict the state to guarantee one-party Republican control for the next decade — and to consider this.
by David Underhill
MOBILE, Ala. — Control of the legislature and the governorship by a newly empowered Republican party with an ambitious agenda has startled the nation — and some sectors of Alabama.
This state with a tiny immigrant population now has the nation’s most stringent law aimed at undocumented aliens. Women’s rights seemingly secured are under challenge again. The judge evicted from office for installing a monument to his religion inside the supreme court building is returning to that office. And the legislature currently in session is performing radical surgery on the state’s budget, hacking away at education, health care and other essentials with a grim abandon never before seen in Montgomery.
So it came as no surprise when a source inside the Capitol passed along a bill radical beyond anything done to date by the ideologically inflamed Republicans dominant in state government. Not yet formally introduced, it is circulating among sympathetic legislators.
Like Republican presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney, Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker finds himself at the center of a big story he claims he can’t remember his part in. Where, as Amy Sullivan puts it, “Romney knows for sure he didn’t think the guy was gay in the incident he doesn’t remember,” Scott Walker “[doesn't] remember all of the particulars” of the incident we have on video, in which he told a billionaire donor that taking collective bargaining rights from public workers was “the first step” in a bigger plan, “because you use divide and conquer.”
So if you are a union member, do you really want to vote Republican? Think about it.
Jennifer Granholm calls out Mitt Romney for his bullying past and present, wondering aloud whether Romney thinks about the people he has hurt while pursuing his personal ambitions and suggesting he has never faced consequences for his actions. Romney, she says, “is focused like a laser on the problem at hand: How to get elected president. Nothing else matters.”
The tea party, rednecks and snake haters everywhere will have a field day with this. Obviously the federal government is totally out of control and the Obama administration has lost it.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Wednesday it wants feedback on whether to list the eastern diamondback rattlesnake as a threatened species so it can designate critical habitat areas for the venomous creature under the Endangered Species Act. I can’t wait to read the comments on this.
This move stems from a petition submitted last summer by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Coastal Plains Institute Inc., Protecting all Living Species and One More Generation.
The petition presents substantial scientific or commercial information indicating that listing the eastern diamondback rattlesnake may be warranted, so the agency will undertake a comprehensive review of the snake’s status throughout it’s range to determine whether it should be listed.
Job numbers for April came out Friday, showing the U.S. unemployment rate at 8.1 percent. A total of 115,000 jobs were added to the job market last month.
On this week’s “Newsmakers,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka discusses these numbers and what that means for America’s workers.
He also talks about how unions see the jobs issue playing out in the presidential race and in congressional campaigns. Labor’s relationship with the President and how the AFL-CIO is using its political action committee this year are also discussed.
It’s overcast and quiet on the screened-in porch, with just a little low down piano jazz accompanying the trilling of the lady cardinals this Sunday morning as I gather my thoughts for the weekly commentary in this space. My dog Jefferson is sitting quietly watching the backyard and I’ve got about an hour and a half before it’s time to cook brunch. Hang on while I pour another cup of coffee and I’ll tell you what I’m thinking about today.
It has become quite obvious that the American public, hey maybe the world public, doesn’t read much anymore. At least nothing much longer than a Twitter Tweet, a Facebook sentence or a short, snarky blog post. So why do us writers keep on doing it?
I write now, like I always have, for little old ladies who still like to read something well crafted with substance. Mature women have always been the best audience for writing. They always bought the most books, the most magazines and spent more time with a newspaper than men.
While corporate news organizations are still obsessed with trying to titillate the young into reading their sensationalism, the only thing they are accomplishing is to turn off the people who actually read. That has been one of their big financial problems for years, but the numbers crunchers, who we used to call pencil pushers, never seem to ferret this information out with all their research. About the only thing you can do to get men interested is to run some sexy photos of a woman or track down a sex scandal. They can’t help it. It is in their genes (or their jeans).
During the Bush years, we specialized in covering the politicization of the U.S. justice system as much as any news organization. Our archives are about the most comprehensive for anyone researching the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, and the original case against Richard Scrushy, which Glynn Wilson covered for The New York Times.
