All the News That's Fit to Share
A bona-fide member of the Fifth Estate, practicing Mobile Journalism (MoJo) every chance we get...
Assistant U.S. Attorneys General Tony West and Thomas E. Perez of the Civil Rights Division will be in Birmingham, Alabama, on Monday, Nov. 28, to meet with business and community leaders and discuss the impact of H.B. 56, Alabama’s immigration law, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorneys office in Birmingham.
A delegation of African American labor and civil rights leaders from the AFL-CIO arrived in Birmingham Wednesday to investigate Alabama’s recently-passed anti-immigrant law.
With the passage of House Bill 56, Alabama has taken a huge step backward into the 1950s, according to a statement from the AFL-CIO’s Website.
They are calling the law one of the harshest immigration laws in the country and saying it “invokes inhumanity reminiscent of the Jim Crow South.”
by Glynn Wilson
A federal judge with close ties to former president George W. Bush failed Wednesday to strike down Alabama’s strict new immigration law, even though the Obama Justice Department argued that it violated the Constitution and usurped the federal government’s authority to set immigration policy.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn, who dated Bush in 1972 when he was in Montgomery avoiding service in Vietnam, was appointed to the court in 1991 by then-President George H.W. Bush. In Wednesday’s ruling, she upheld some provisions of the law, while withholding a final ruling on others, including the one concerning church objections to feeding and transporting those in the country without a green card.
The ruling appears to be politically crafted to give the churches what they want, big business what they want, and to grant police unlimited power to target and even profile Latin Americans. The unions are also screwed by this ruling, since they wanted the provision to hold companies accountable, and trial lawyers will not be able to sue companies for hiring illegal immigrants.
In apparent violation of federal law, the Alabama Department of Transportation failed to fully account for the environmental impacts of the massive, high-priced Northern Beltline highway proposed to circle Birmingham, non-profit environmental groups said in a lawsuit filed Monday in federal district court.
The proposed cost of the 52-mile beltline was recently increased to $4.7 billion, a 38 percent hike from the original estimate. Much of the money would come from federal road dollars, but state taxpayers would be responsible for nearly $1 billion in matching funds. At about $90 million per mile, the beltline would be one of the most expensive interstate highways in U.S. history, according to the Black Warrior Riverkeeper.
The group is suing the agency for violating the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires a thorough evaluation of environmental impacts and alternatives in order to identify the most cost-effective and least damaging alternatives for projects funded with federal money.
“We have been waiting for years for ALDOT to do its homework before proceeding as required by federal law,” said Gil Rogers, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, which represents the river group in the lawsuit. “Unfortunately, this expensive and outdated highway project continues to move forward without a study of the most cost-effective way to bring economic growth to this part of the state.”
I caught up with Manuel Cuevas at the Day of the Dead celebration on Birmingham’s Southside Tuesday night and got him to explain the purpose behind the event.
Manuel is the designer who turned Johnny Cash into the “Man in Black” and put Elvis in a jumpsuit, according to biographies on the Web, including a story from National Geographic and Wikipedia and his own Website.
An Air Quality Alert has been declared for Birmingham, Ala., for Wednesday, Aug 4.
The air will be Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups due to Ozone.
Continuation of high pressure over the area will allow for partly cloudy skies, with highs close to 100 and heat index values as high as 108. There’s a 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms after 1 p.m. Calm wind becoming south around 5 mph. Ozone will be in the ORANGE range Wednesday, while PM2.5 remains in the upper yellow range.
Defer using gas-powered engines. Walk, bike, carpool, or use transit if possible. Link errands into one trip. Conserve energy.
Do your share for cleaner air!
For more info, click here.
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| Glynn Wilson |
| A yellow-crowned night heron feeding on the section of Village Creek that intersects the Roebuck Golf Course, just down stream from the destroyed dam. |
by Glynn Wilson
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a Notice of Violations to the City of Birmingham Thursday for killing 11,760 watercress darters, an endangered species protected by the Endangered Species Act, and also for injuries to some 8,900 additional darters killed when a city park manager ordered a beaver dam removed on Village Creek in Roebuck Springs.
The Service is seeking a civil penalty totaling $2,975,000.
The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources also has a claim against the City for $1,062,786.21 for the death of watercress darters, plus the deaths of more than two million individuals of a protected species of snail.
The ADCNR is contemplating a lawsuit against the City to collect that claim, according to a press release.
The Service’s action stems from an incident that happened September 19, 2008, when a City maintenance crew removed a beaver dam from the Roebuck Springs pool in Hawkins Park. The crew also breached an underlying earthen dam that formed the spring pool where more than 20,000 of the small endangered fish lived.
Breaching the dam quickly drained the spring pool and stranded and killed thousands of watercress darters among a mass of drying aquatic plants.
“The massive fish kill resulted in the loss of more than half of the largest known population of this species,” said Cynthia K. Dohner, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Southeast regional director.
Watercress darters are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act and are a trust resource protected by Alabama law. The only populations in the world are found in five spring pools and spring brooks in Jefferson County, Alabama, within the metropolitan area of Birmingham.
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| Eric Clapton |
Legendary bluesman and folk rock guitar player, singer-songwriter Eric Clapton is coming to Birmingham, Alabama and will perform on Sunday, Feb. 28 in the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex arena.
Clapton will be performing solo in the U.S. for a headlining tour in a string of concerts to feature vocalist Roger Daltrey of the British rock band Who as the opening act.
To check the availability and purchase tickets, go to this ticketmaster link.
Meanwhile, here’s a video I found of Clapton performing one of my favorite blues numbers to play on the drums, Little Wing by Jimi Hendrix.
This features Sheryl Crow on vocals and David Sanborn in a saxophone solo.
A light snow fell on parts of Middle Alabamaland last night and this morning, but due to temperatures above freezing, it will melt away pretty quickly, forecasters say.
The last remnants of fall color in sharp contrast with the first snow of winter…
The National Weather Service is predicting sunny skies and a high temperature of 44 today, presenting no travel problems for the Southeastern Conference title game in the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. The overnight low will be around 26.
More photos at Facebook.
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