A new Locust Fork Band date has just added for Frida, April 7, at Fletcher’s on Birmingham’s Southside, formerly Dugan’s, at 8:30 p.m.

The Black Warrior Riverkeeper group is urging citizens to reject the reappointments of Sam Wainwright and Dr. John Lester to the state Environmental Management Commission and urges people to contact their state senators and lobby to keep Pat Byington on the commission and reject Laurel Gardneron.

The Alabama Senate Confirmations Committee did not vote on Governor Riley’s proposed appointments to the commission Thursday, due to calls from the opposition, according to Nelson Brooke, a spokesman for the group. Senators Rodger Smitherman and Ted Little led a filibuster that helped prolong the vote, he said.

The Senate Confirmations Committee may make their decision on next Tuesday.

For more information, check out BlackWarriorRiver.Org

Read the AP story here.

Thousands of people are expected to converge on Atlanta on Saturday, April 1, for the Southern regional “march for peace in Iraq and justice at home,” according to organizers.

About 75 Alabamians will meet in Birmingham to take the “Peace Bus” to this event, including riders from Birmingham, Huntsville, Montgomery, Anniston and smaller towns around the state, accirdubg to Diane McNaron.

The bus going to Atlanta will leave Saturday morning at 7:30 a.m. from the Ullman parking lot at UAB between 12th Street and 13th Street South on University Blvd. The bus will stop in Oxford/Anniston to pick up riders as well.

In Atlanta, marchers will gather at the King Center at noon and march to Piedmont Park for a rally. Headlining the list of almost two dozen speakers will be Representative John Conyers of Michigan; Dr. Joseph Lowery, convenor of the Coalition for the People’s Agenda; U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney; Ann Wright, former U.S. Army colonel and diplomat who resigned in opposition to the Iraq war; and Damu Smith, cofounder of Black Voices for Peace.

Organizers promise a “vibrant, colorful” march with giant puppets, hundreds of signs and banners and drumming groups of different cultures. Exhibits at the rally will include “Eyes Wide Open,” created by the American Friends Service Committee, hundreds of combat boots and civilian shoes commemorating the 300 plus US National Guard and 100,000 plus Iraqi civilian war deaths; the Iraq Memorial Wall with the names of 2200 plus U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq; and a 500-foot Peace Ribbon honoring slain U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians.

The April 1 date was chosen because it falls between two anniversaries: The U.S. attack on Iraq on March 19, 2003, and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968.

“Dr. King knew that poverty, hunger, homelessness and lack of health care in America would never be solved as long as thousands of lives were being wasted on war,” said Rev. Timothy McDonald of First Iconium Baptist Church of Atlanta. “He knew that cities and levees could not be rebuilt while billions of dollars were being spent on destruction.”

Over 125 peace, civil rights, faith, student, labor, veterans and other groups from six Southern states (including the Alabama Peace and Justice Coalition) have endorsed the march, including Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Concerned Black Clergy of Metropolitan Atlanta; Atlanta-North Georgia Labor Council; United Auto Workers Region 8; Military Families Speak Out; Iraq Veterans Against the War; the Democratic Party of Cherokee, Gwinnett and Harris Counties (GA); People’s Hurricane Relief Fund; and student groups at Decatur, Grady and Paideia high schools and at Georgia State University, University of West Georgia, Oxford College and University of Tennessee.

Many groups will be represented at the march, including the National Lawyers Guild, the North Alabama Peace Network, the Alabama Peace and Justice Coalition, the Birmingham Peace Project, NOW Central Alabama Chapter, Alliance for Democracy, The Politically Incorrect Cabaret, The Campaign to End the Occupation, The Birmingham Freethought Society and the Progressive Democrats of America, Alabama Chapter.

More information about this event is available online at Georgia Peace.Org

All I have to say right now is, after phase two of spring cleaning in The Bunker: “The Bush years,” that’s what it is. We will look back on this as “the Bush years.”

I guess if you are selling a lot of insurance these days, or high priced gas, or legal drugs as a pharmaceutical company – not a local druggist now losing money or the pharmacy technician training with him doing more computerized paperwork under the Bush get reelected drug plan –- you might like “the Bush years.”

Maybe if you are an arms merchant you like the Bush years.

Me? I’m staining the concrete floors and putting in a urinal … piss on it …

To the editor:

The Alabama legislature is well on the way to passing a fetal protection bill which will make it murder to kill a fetus – meaning that if a pregnant woman is killed that the killer will be charged with two murders. Unfortunately, this will not protect the fetus from being killed.

But another bill on the way to passage can protect those fetuses. This bill will protect anyone who kills someone they think is threatening them in their home or vehicle.

The answer to the weakness of the fetal protection bill will be solved if we just add the word “womb” to the “home or vehicle” clause in that bill. They we can require doctors to implant little guns in every pregnant woman so that little bugger can defend itself.

That’s the Alabama way, at least in an election year.

Rev. Jack Zylman
Southside, Birmingham

Powerful Democrats rarely agree on much, but I’ve discovered a glaring exception: they all believe Democrats can either work for impeachment or we can work to elect Democrats in November, but we absolutely cannot do both, according to Bob Fertik at Democrats.Com.

He says it is possible to do both, and makes an argument for how and why here.

The death of Caspar Weinberger is prompting warm eulogies for Ronald Reagan’s former Defense Secretary. But more significant to U.S. history was the lost opportunity to learn the secrets of Reagan-Bush arms shipments to Iran and Iraq in the 1980s that might have been revealed if Weinberger had faced trial for Iran-Contra crimes in 1993. But George H.W. Bush blocked those disclosures – and potentially spared his family political damage – by pardoning Weinberger and five other Iran-Contra defendants on Christmas Eve 1992.

Read the full story about the secrets that George Bush Sr. protected at ConsortiumNews.Com

Almost two months ago, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales came before the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer questions about President Bush’s authorization of illegal domestic spying by the National Security Agency. The Judiciary Committee learned very little from the Attorney General, who stonewalled and evaded questions, frustrating senators’ attempts to perform their oversight obligations, according to the People for the American Way.

The Judiciary Committee is holding a follow-up hearing today, and has scheduled hearings on Senator Feingold’s resolution to censure the President for this coming Friday.

The President’s illegal wiretapping program is just the tip of the iceberg – the Bush administration has placed itself above the law time and time again. PFAW continues to call for the Bush administration to be held accountable for wrongdoing in the NSA case and has started a new Web site:

Imperial Presidency.Org

Also, the group supports the immigration bill moving to the U.S. Senate floor.

Comprehensive Immigration Reform Goes to Senate Floor

After a remarkable marathon session, the Senate Judiciary Committee came to an agreement on a comprehensive immigration reform bill that includes a path to earned citizenship, an accelerated family reunification program, and a guest worker program. This bill complicates Senator Frist’s attempts to ram through an enforcement-only measure intended to bolster his 2008 presidential bid.

The Judiciary Committee’s action comes after an incredible groundswell of grassroots support for fair and realistic immigration reform, including the almost 30,000 messages sent by PFAW activists. Yesterday, students walked out of classes in states from Michigan to Texas to Virginia in protest of Senator Frist’s approach. Massive protests have erupted from coast to coast in recent days: Over 500,000 people surrounded Los Angeles’ City Hall this weekend; 100,000 marched in Denver; and more than 50,000 turned out for a rally last weekend in Chicago. Milwaukee, Phoenix, Trenton, and many other cities have seen some of the largest rallies in recent memory.

The group says to support this historic movement, call your senators today to tell them to support the Judiciary Committee’s bill. Comprehensive immigration reform will help control our borders while honoring American traditions as a nation of immigrants that value hard work and fairness.

In Alabama, that would be:
Sen. Richard Shelby
Phone: (202) 224-5744
Sen. Jeff Sessions
Phone: (202) 224-4124

Budget Process Begins in the House

Having just rammed through $40 billion in cuts to student loan programs, Medicaid, and other programs for America’s families to give more tax breaks to the wealthy, members of the House of Representatives are licking their chops over the prospect of more program cuts, the group says.

This week, the House begins preparing the Budget Resolution, the blueprint for the budget in the coming year. The Senate already passed its Resolution, which, while forcing deep cuts to programs for low-income and middle-class families, is not as severe as some right-wing House members would like. They’ll propose even more severe cuts this week and attempt to get their colleagues to sign on when it comes to the floor next week.

To call on your representative to oppose cuts to programs in order to pay for more tax cuts for the wealthy, use this toll-free number:

Budget Hotline: 1-800-459-1887
 

Election Protection Katrina

As Louisiana legislators came back into session this week, they still appeared unlikely to postpone the New Orleans municipal elections until satellite voting centers can be set up in the cities outside Louisiana with large numbers of Katrina evacuees. As many as 195,000 of New Orleans’ 300,000 registered voters are estimated to be unable to return to their hurricane-ravaged city.

As People For continues to work with its coalition allies to convince legislators to reconsider their decision to go ahead with elections in which a majority of the city’s voters could have trouble participating, the PFAW Foundation is working with the NAACP and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (LCCRUL) to facilitate absentee voting and has set up a toll-free Voters’ Hotline and 15 NAACP Voter Assistance Centers in the cities with the largest numbers of Katrina evacuees, and providing the materials, training, and person-power necessary to educate Katrina survivors about their voting rights and options for casting a ballot in the upcoming elections. The Voter Assistance Centers have absentee ballot request forms on hand and fax machines for sending them in.

“We hope that this direct assistance to voters, along with a publicity campaign to educate evacuees about their rights, will maximize participation in these elections,” the group says in a press release. “The city leaders elected this spring will chart the course for New Orleans’ reconstruction.”

PFAW Support New Orleans