Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – Few of us will ever venture past the 60-mile boundary that separates Earth and outer space. If you do, though, you’re likely to experience something known as “the overview effect” — a cognitive…
OPINION
Investigating Anti-Government, Anti-Tax Groups is the Job of the IRS
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Where’s the Scandal in That? The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – Sitting here on the porch listening to the coverage of the so-called IRS “scandal” on National Public Radio, also reading the latest Associated Press story on the…
Let’s Count the Ways President Obama is Not as Bad as Bush
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By Stephen D. Foster Jr. – President Obama and President Bush should never be compared to one another. Ever. These men couldn’t be more different when it comes to policy, personality, and decision-making. In fact, let us count 100 different…
A Mother’s Day Gift of Words
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The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – There are no famous quotations published anywhere that capture what my mother means to me. Not on any Website, anyway, or in any book, newspaper or magazine either. Certainly not on any…
Big Oil Uses the Republican Party to Subvert American Democracy
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By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – In a surprise move, the eight Republican members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee yesterday blocked a floor vote on President Obama’s nominee, Gina McCarthy, as U.S. EPA Administrator. In doing so…
Americans Are Interested in Jobs and Effective Government, Not Gun Laws and Immigration Reform
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ANALYSIS – By Glynn Wilson – While Congress is spending lots of time and resources trying to make laws to limit access to guns and bullets and reforming immigration, public opinion survey research indicates that more Americans think they should…
A Beach Hotel Conference Center is Not Coastal Restoration in Wake of BP Gulf Oil Disaster
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The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – It’s been about three years since BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010. By the time engineers finally figured out how to cap the…
The Sun Is Rising in the West on Alternative Energy
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Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – When Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced a few weeks ago that his city would be off coal power entirely by 2025, it was both exciting and, as Al Gore put it, “a…
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: But There Will Be Video
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“…I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know … that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m…
Remembering Workers on Memorial Day
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Workers’ Memorial Day – By Al Henley – Alabama workers are encouraged to join the AFL-CIO in recognizing Workers’ Memorial Day on Sunday, On April 28. Each year on Workers Memorial Day, working people throughout the world remember those who…
Fracking Leases Proposed for National Forests White Washed at ‘Public Meeting’
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Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management on the Hot Seat – Steve Lohr, Forest Supervisor, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service – By Glynn Wilson – MONTGOMERY, Ala. – A so-called “public meeting” on oil and gas leases proposed for…
A Path to the Future on Immigration Policy
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Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – In 1849, an eleven-year-old boy moved with his family to the United States. More than four decades later, that boy co-founded the Sierra Club and served as its president for the next 22…
Camping With WiFi in the Talladega National Forest
Get Involved to Stop Fracking on Public Land – The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – CANE CREEK, Ala. — Sitting here by the creek listening to the water flow over the rocks and the birds sing in the…
E.O. Wilson: Many Great Scientist Are Not Good at Math
Here’s a secret: Discoveries emerge from ideas, not number-crunching – By E.O. Wilson – For many young people who aspire to be scientists, the great bugbear is mathematics. Without advanced math, how can you do serious work in the sciences?…
Tea Party Republicans Continue Attacks on Labor, Push Ten Commandments Bill
“The people who must never have power are the humorless. To impossible certainties of rectitude they ally tedium and uniformity.” – Chris Hitchens – By T.W. Bigler – MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Who needs comedy when the state legislature is in…
Birmingham, Alabama: ‘Shoot Yourself in the Foot Town’
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Bomingham. The Magic City. The Tragic City. The Murder Capital of the South? What’s next? Shoot Yourself in the Foot Town? I met Birmingham’s Mayor William Bell at a…
Confessions of an Unread Book Reviewer
By Jim Reed – As a reviewer, it’s hard not to cheat. Some publisher or hopeful author sends me a package of material, including a book, and hopes that something within that package will inspire me to write a review.…
Ennui and Anomie in the Deep South
“San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. . . . So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and…
Senators Question Sally Jewell, Obama’s Choice for Secretary of the Interior
By Michael Brune – Sierra Club Executive Director – Watching the members of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources question Sally Jewell, President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of the Interior, brought to mind John McPhee’s classic Encounters with…
Climate of Uncertainty: Planning for the Hoax Apocalypse
By David Underhill – MOBILE, Ala. – Deniers and doubters of global warming, frequent bedfellows with haters of the government, have the government to thank for opportunities to make money off global warming. The accursed feds concluded years ago that…
Spring Forward: An Alternative Plan for the Future
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – While the vernal equinox and the first day of spring is still 10 days off, since Daylight Savings Time begins today and the weather has warmed up and the sun’s shining for…