Sally Steenland: Religious liberty + marriage equality = Harmony, not dissension

  Sometimes the way an issue is framed matters as much as the facts. Take the so-called battle between marriage equality and religious liberty. Many activists against marriage equality claim that the two are inherently opposed to each other. According to their argument, if one side wins, the other loses.

  The problem with this oppositional framing is that it isn’t true. In reality, marriage equality and religious liberty can support and strengthen each other. And this is true even when people are conflicted about same-sex marriage. Even then, they still believe that gay and lesbian couples should be treated fairly under the law.

Eric Alterman: The mainstream media and the slowly boiling frog

  Late August is when Americans tend to take their relatively meager vacations—workers in other social democracies tend to enjoy six paid weeks of vacation rather than just two weeks, a tendency that American news rarely recognizes. Since the vacation-bound mainstream media is preoccupied with Egypt, Syria, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Obamacare, and a possible government shutdown, the fact that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report was leaked to Reuters and The New York Times will almost certainly fall through the cracks.

Michael Josephson: Competition in the arts

  Competition often brings out the best performance but it doesn’t always bring out the best in people.

  Even in the arts, actors, singers, dancers, and musicians must survive and thrive in a competitive community as rude and rough as any. Ambitious parents often introduce toxic gamesmanship and back-biting attitudes very early as their children are judged and ranked by the awards they receive, the parts they get, and the schools they are admitted to.

Scott Lilly: The choice Congress won’t face up to

  Back in college, I had a textbook entitled Decision by Debate. The underlying premise of the book was that if you had a good debate, you were likely to end up with a good decision. It strikes me that the inverse of this lesson – that if you have a bad debate, you’ll end up with a bad decision – may explain much of the problem this country is having with budget policy.

  Much of what is commonly being said about the federal budget – including the causes of the mismatch of  revenues and expenditures and the options we have for resolving that imbalance – is either mischaracterization or flatly wrong. When you slice through all the heated rhetoric, the budgetary choices we face may be painful, but they are actually much simpler to make than the debate would suggest.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: College football is king in Alabama

  As we approach Labor Day, foremost on most Alabamians’ minds is the beginning of college football season. Traditionally, Labor Day has also marked the kickoff of the political campaign season.

  As we head into the Labor Day weekend of 2013, my suspicion is that more of you are excited about this Saturday’s first games of the season than who is going to run for governor or any other state office.

Jacob G. Hornberger: The dictatorial power to punish a dictator

  President Obama is considering what military action the U.S. government should take against Syria in retaliation for its purported use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people. At the risk of asking an indelicate question, where in the Constitution does it authorize the president to undertake such action?

Robert Wilkerson: Good news, bad news

  There is a great deal of good news for almost all Americans. Unemployment is coming down. Last month our workforce increased by 175,000 jobs. Over the past four years, the unemployment rate is down from 10% to only 7.6% in Alabama.

  Home prices have risen and continue to rise. This makes it possible for homeowners to recover some of the value lost during and after the Great Recession. Home prices in April rose 12.1%, which was the largest year-to-year increase since 2006. Factories are getting more orders. Production is increasing. People are returning to work, and new jobs are being created.

Emily Goff: The top 10 ways Washington wastes money

  Whether it’s negotiating over how much to spend on government operations or the government’s borrowing limit, we hear a familiar refrain in Washington these days: There is absolutely no room to cut federal spending. This is not the case.

  Many people remember the millions spent on the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere.” But how about the millions of dollars in federal spending on caviar promotion, keeping empty bank accounts open, and creating “Star Trek” parody videos? Yes, those are a few examples of your tax dollars at work.

The March on Washington: Looking back on 50 years

  August 28 marks the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. It is a time to celebrate a movement, a speech, and leaders who influenced generations of people around the globe and achieved genuine progress for diverse groups of Americans.

  There is no doubt that America has come a long way since the civil rights era. But while the indignities of segregated public accommodations have largely disappeared, another significant theme of the march remains highly relevant half a century later: the struggle for economic opportunity and equality. It was perhaps due to the march and the great success of the larger civil rights movement that opposition to this sort of equality was immediate, persists to this day, and is reflected in all three branches of the federal government.

Michael Josephson: Why are young people so cynical?

  Agree or disagree? “In today’s society, one has to lie or cheat at least occasionally in order to succeed.”

  This is a fundamental and revealing question on our surveys about personal ethics and integrity. Most interesting is that the level of cynicism is closely related to age. In an online survey on integrity (with 16,000 responses) we found that 43 percent of the respondents age 17 and under (there were 862 of them) believe lying is sometimes necessary, 35 percent of those in the 18-24 age group agreed, and 21 percent of those 25-40 agreed. But the percentage drops sharply after that: 12 percent of those 41-50, and only 10 percent of those over 50, think lying is necessary to success. (By the way, the survey is available here if you want to take it yourself.)