Gene Policinski: Who “owns” the news in a digital age?

  Who owns the news?

  The glib answer is “no one.”  But of course, the full answer is more complicated than that.

  Famously, news is “who, what, when, where and why”– the “five Ws.”  That mantra was drilled into the minds of generations of journalists, the essentials around which a news report is constructed.

Erik Stegman and Katie Wright: Low-income victims of domestic violence facing a political super storm

  Americans across the country are bracing for the impact of the sequester, the automatic across-the-board spending cuts to domestic programs—including vital human-needs services—set for this Friday, March 1. The nation faces dire consequences should these cuts take effect, but it’s even worse for low-income women and their families suffering from domestic violence.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Echoes of George Wallace in Shelby County

  The 1960s was a tumultuous time in southern politics. Race, segregation and voting rights were the paramount issues.

  George Wallace came on the scene and won the governor’s office with the most anti-integration rhetoric in history. He threw down the gauntlet with his January 1963 inaugural speech declaring, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever.” White Alabamians shouted their approval.

Death to the World: Scaring up a modern slasher film in Montgomery

  The following is the Capital City Free Press’ exclusive interview with Shane Gillis, director of the forthcoming film, Death to the World.

CCFP: What is your background in filmmaking?

  Shane Gillis: I've wanted to make movies for as long as I can remember, but really got motivated in the mid to late 90s with the introduction of the Mini-DV format. That was the first type of camera I bought for myself. It was also around this same time that non-linear video editing became accessible to pretty much anyone with a computer and capture card. Before that, I was always interested, but never had the equipment to shoot or edit film. I began reading everything from Rick Scmidt's Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices to boring manuals on how cameras worked, film and digital. So really, I was just a movie fan that got obsessed and blindly started learning by doing.  Lots of terrible shorts and half a feature from those days….  Luckily our house got robbed and all that was stolen.

Larry M. Elkin: Republicans, lacking direction, cannot steer the country

  President Obama has finally come of age politically, and he knows where he wants to go. His political adversaries do not.

  The president served notice in his second inaugural address, and again in his State of the Union speech, that he intends to follow the path blazed by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, two fellow Democrats who insisted that expanded government could improve most American lives. They pushed the costs of their programs onto future generations, but most citizens nevertheless came to cherish government-subsidized pensions, disability and unemployment insurance, and medical care for the elderly and poor.

Charles C. Haynes: When do student prayers cross the First Amendment line?

  Students are free to pray in public schools – except when they aren’t.

  If this sounds confusing, pity school administrators charged with figuring out if and when to draw the line on student prayers.

  Current controversies in two regions of the country illustrate how complicated this line-drawing has become:

  School officials in Birdville School District, near Fort Worth, Texas, allow students to offer prayers before football games, claiming that since the students freely choose to do so, the prayers are not endorsed by the school.

Teresa Tolbert: First they came for women’s reproductive rights

  How do you decimate the rights of women in Alabama? You do it one bill at a time.

  Tuesday women all over this state were busy, as we are most days going about our everyday lives. Home, kids, work… for most of us it’s a continuous balancing act just to make it through the week. Who has time to worry about what some legislators in Montgomery are doing when we all lead such busy lives? But while we were all distracted Tuesday with the important tasks we do every day, our legislators were busy too — busy stripping away our rights one bill at a time.

Joseph O. Patton: Luther Strange: Political thug

  Amendment 744 to the Alabama Constitution is written in simple, Sesame Street level English. It spells out charitable bingo gambling in Macon County. Even a former Washington corporate lobbyist posing as the state’s attorney general could understand it… you’d think.

  Yet Tuesday, like a disgusting re-run from Bob Riley’s reign - replete with storm troopers - Luther Strange ordered a raid of Milton McGregor’s VictoryLand. Despite countless measures to ensure the legality of their operations and backed by national gaming experts, Strange seems to think his arbitrary, politically-driven opinions trump the facts and the law. Like crashing a crack house, Alabama State Troopers confiscated money and machines, even blocking the road to the business and cutting its electricity.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Alabama Legislature lacks women, white Democrats

  It is amazing how fast a year flies by, especially the older you get. This week marks the end of the first one-fifth of 2013.

  We are in the opening days of the 2013 Regular Session of the Alabama Legislature. Just prior to the beginning of the session, Alabama received acknowledgement from the U.S. Department of Justice that under the auspices of the Voting Rights Act the new legislative districts drawn last year have been approved.

Michael Josephson: The Presidents Day Un-Celebration — Honoring not just the great, but all U.S. presidents

  If you’re not going to school or work today, it’s because it’s a national holiday. The country used to celebrate the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln separately, but in 1971 Richard Nixon and Congress, in order to create a perpetual three-day weekend, merged the two holidays into a brand new one called “Presidents’ Day,” to honor all U.S. presidents.