Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Can Robert Bentley break the curse?

  If Robert Bentley wins the governor’s race in five weeks he will be the first legislator in the course of state history to ascend directly from the legislature to governor. Only a handful of governors have ever served in the Alabama House or Senate. It is basically a graveyard or dead-end street in Alabama politics.

  Let me take you back 100 years and give you the prior experience of our governors to prove that legislative experience is not a stepping stone. Starting in 1906 Braxton Bragg Comer was an industrialist and very successful businessman. His only political experience had been as president of the current day Public Service Commission. Emmet O’Neal was a lawyer and President of the Alabama Bar Association, with no elected office experience.

Ian MacIsaac: Americans don't learn lessons: The Moral failures of conservative leaders and the intellectual failures of average Americans

  “Here is a guy who understands the world through black liberation theology, which is oppressor and victim… it’s Marxism disguised as religion.” – Glenn Beck

  “What if Obama is so outside our comprehension that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior can you begin to piece together his actions? [Obama] happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president.” – Newt Gingrich

  “Here is a man who spent his formative years—the first 17 years of his life—off the American mainland, in Hawaii, Indonesia, in Pakistan, and in multiple subsequent trips to Africa.” – Dinesh D’Souza

  Barack Obama is not like you. He’s not normal. We’re not exactly sure what it is about him, but something just isn’t right.

  God, you’ve been hearing that a lot, haven’t you? The above quotes are just a sample of the nonsense spread over the past month or two about the president. Maybe it was all inspired by this Ground Zero mosque hubbub, but there seems to be a pretty consistent and united effort on the part of conservative talking heads nowadays to paint Obama as both (a) foreign and (b) untrustworthy. There was a lot of this before the election, but at least within my sphere of news it had steadily declined after he’d actually taken office, and people began to get interested in real issues again….

Gary Palmer: Tea Party outrage must carry over to state elections

  The latest version of the revolt taking place in America is showing up at the ballot box.

  When Christine O’Donnell won the Delaware Republican Senate primary over liberal Republican Congressman Mike Castle, it caused more shock than when Scott Brown won the Senate seat held by the late Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts.

  Brown’s win was widely touted by Republican leaders as evidence of voters swinging to the Republican Party. They were wrong.

  Brown admitted during his victory speech that his win was not a Republican victory; it was a victory for independents fed up with the out-of-control spending by both parties. In the Massachusetts election, the voter turnout was the highest in 20 years for a non-presidential election and independents voted for Brown by a 3-1 margin.

Tom Powell, Jr.: What the Republicans fear is the loss of fear

  Fear is a tool that is used far too often in politics. Both major parties use fear from time to time, but it seems that Republicans use fear way too often as a tool to manipulate us, and more importantly, they lie about what to fear.

  They want you to fear the foreign government that is going to come here and kill us. Now this is something that we should always be mindful of as a nation, but we shouldn't be making widespread lies to strike fear into the hearts of Americans so that we can invade and occupy a nation for a decade that hasn't done anything to us. They go on TV and tell you that this guy has biological weapons and this guy has nukes and if you don't elect us, these evil entities will come to your home town and erase it from the map. They used this fear tool so effectively in 2004 that we as a nation re-elected the dumbest president we have ever had to a second term. That is how fearful they had us.

Eric Alterman: Inequality and America’s antiquated politics

  It’s ironic—though perhaps that’s too kind a term—to note that at the moment the U.S. poverty rate is reaching a 15-year high the nation is engaged in whether to offer additional tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 per year. (For a single adult in 2009, the poverty line was $10,830 in pretax cash income. For a family of four it was $22,050.)

  This despite the fact that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analyzed the short-term effects of 11 potential options for dealing with the present unemployment crisis and found that retaining the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy offered the least powerful “bang for the buck,” owing to wealthy people’s proclivity to save rather than spend additional income. And yes, it just so happens that the Forbes 400 came out during the same week, and lo and behold, “The super-rich got even wealthier this year.”

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: What makes you qualified?

  One would have to wonder what our current governor and legendary governor, Big Jim Folsom, have in common. Riley is quiet and calculating whereas Big Jim was loud, gregarious and somewhat uninhibited. However, both were given humiliating rebukes in their efforts to work with the legislature.

  In the 1950’s Big Jim called for a special session to rewrite the Constitution and reapportion the legislature. The legislature met only one day and adjourned. A few years ago Riley called for a special session within the regular session. The current members of the legislature simply ignored him. Another similarity between the two is that neither had ever served in the legislature nor did they know many members personally.

  Alabamians have a history of electing governors who basically have no governmental experience much less legislative experience. Please excuse the fact that I might be somewhat prejudiced in my next statement having served 16 years in the Alabama House, but it might serve a governor in good stead if he or she had legislative experience.

Ken Paulson: The Truth about lies and the First Amendment

  Xavier Alvarez never played hockey for the Detroit Red Wings.

  He wasn't secretly married to a Mexican starlet.

  And he certainly wasn't an ex-Marine who had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

  But Alvarez claimed to be all three. And it was the lie about his military honors that led to his being charged with a felony under the Stolen Valor Act of 2005.

Michael Ciamarra: The Checklist - Where are your papers?

  A document from the National Conference of State Legislatures recently came across my desk innocently entitled, "State Legislators' Check List for Health Reform Implementation." I was astonished, to say the least, at the check list of sweeping mandates, requirements to change state law to 'conform,' questions on who will run state high-risk pools, Medicaid funding ratios and dozens of different complex challenges for 2011 state legislatures in order to comply with the newly enacted Obama health care law.

  The Obama Administration will move forward with this implementation, along with the creation and expansion of 159 new federal offices charged with administering, which also means Alabama's new governor will be faced with multitudes of complications to be implemented as required by federal law.

Sam Fulwood III: Race and Beyond: Whistling Dixie

  Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour just can’t let his old South memories wither and die without a fight for redemption.

  Barbour, who is considered a leading contender for the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nomination, said in a recent interview with the conservative magazine and website Human Events that it wasn’t people like him who fostered opposition to school desegregation. No, it was all those “old Democrats” in the South who stood in the door to prevent blacks from attending public schools across Dixie.

  “By my time, people realized that was the past, it was indefensible, it wasn’t going to be that way anymore,” said Barbour, who at 62 is old and politically astute enough to know better than to say something so clearly inaccurate. “And so the people who really changed the South from Democrat to Republican was a different generation from those who fought integration.”

Steve Flowers: Inside The Statehouse: Political dynasties

  Unlike Britain we do not have royalty who have historically inherited political positions of power. However, you would not think there was much difference in our country and England when you look at the history of our political office holders. It is very much a family business in America. You need only look at the list of our presidents to realize that political offspring benefit immensely from being the sons or daughters of a famous father.

  This American tradition began with John Quincy Adams following his father John Adams to the White House. The tradition continued with George W. Bush following his father George H.W. Bush as president. Many expect that Jeb Bush is waiting in the wings to pursue the GOP nomination for president in 2012.

  Author Stephen Hess has written a recent book that chronicles an amazing 700 American families with two or more members who served in Congress. We have had our share here in Alabama. A walk down the halls of the Statehouse today reveals numerous young lawmakers that have fathers who preceded them in politics in Alabama. Folsom, Wallace, deGraffenried, Tyson, Hilliard and Poole are just a few of the names that have been recycled here in Alabama.