Top 10 ways the House of Representatives’ environmental spending bill would ruin your summer

  While millions of Americans are relaxing and unwinding at parks, on beaches, and in backyards across the country this summer, the House Appropriations Committee is launching a massive assault on their public health and summer vacations. The Fiscal Year 2014 Interior and Environment Appropriations Bill is full of provisions to block the enforcement of clean-air and water safeguards, eliminate protection for America’s public lands, and make it easier for Big Oil and coal companies to pollute.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Will Ivey and Strange return in 2014?

  Last week we handicapped the 2014 governor’s race but it is definitely not the only race on the ballot next year. In fact, all constitutional offices are up for election as well as all 140 seats in the legislature and all 67 sheriffs. Indeed, this is the big election year in Alabama.

Charles C. Haynes: A right for the religious is a right for the nonreligious

  Government in America must be neutral among religions and neutral between religion and non-religion – at least that’s how the U.S. Supreme Court interprets the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

  But escalating conflicts involving government treatment of the nonreligious – atheists and humanists – reveal that far too many government officials are confused and conflicted about the meaning of “neutrality.”

Michael Josephson: The dangers of absolutism

  The world of ethics spreads from the borders of the absolutists, who think every moral question has a clear and single answer, to the coast of the relativists, who believe ethics is a matter of personal opinion or regional custom.

  In distinguishing right from wrong, absolutists don’t see much of a difference between mathematical calculation and moral reasoning. They’re extraordinarily confident about their ethical judgments, which can range from uncompromising commitment to truth, responsibility, and authority of law to ideas about religious beliefs, abortion, premarital sex, protecting whales, and even body piercing and breastfeeding. Although absolutism is often associated with conservatism, radical liberals can be just as rigid.

Gene Policinski: Rolling Stone cover offers exercise of free speech for everyone

  Don’t like the latest Rolling Stone magazine, featuring “glam, rock-star” photo treatment on the cover of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev?

  Don’t buy the magazine.

Katherine Robertson: The evolution of mandatory minimums

  Mandatory minimums, when assigned to a crime in the penal code, set the lowest available punishment that a judge may sentence an offender to for a specified crime. Typically a defined term of imprisonment, mandatory minimums have been in place and utilized by our national and state criminal justice systems since the early days of the United States.

  The very first mandatory minimum terms of imprisonment were enacted by Congress in 1798 as part of the Sedition Act and imposed a minimum sentence of six months for “opposing or impeding a federal officer by means of insurrection, riot, or unlawful assembly.”

David A. Bergeron: The bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act would protect our students

  This week the Senate will vote on the Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act, a bill written by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, or HELP, Committee. Sen. Harkin worked with Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Tom Carper (D-DE), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Richard Burr (R-NC), Angus King (I-ME), and Tom Coburn (R-OK) to develop this bipartisan compromise, which would lower interest rates for the 11 million student-loan borrowers who either have taken out or will take out a new federal student loan after July 1, 2013.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Ticking down to 2014

  Whether you realize it or not the 2014 election is upon us. The call to arms began in June which is when campaign fundraising can officially begin.

  Under Alabama law, candidates can begin raising money exactly one year prior to the elections. That has been interpreted to mean one year prior to the primaries. The primary next year is in early June. That is proper and fitting since we are now a one party state. Winning the Republican Primary next June in any statewide race is tantamount to election in the Heart of Dixie. The November election will be a formality or coronation.

Michael Josephson: Acting on principle and good intentions

  I once heard a story about an emergency medical technician I’ll call Jake who was summoned to help an unconscious woman. When he arrived, she had no pulse. From her color and dilated eyes, he could tell she’d suffered serious brain damage.

  Still, he did his job exceptionally well, trying over and over to restart her heart. She finally regained consciousness.

Gene Policinski: Fear after violent incidents imperils our core liberties

  At various times, every American likely has wished for less of some things that the First Amendment protects. Less hateful speech. One less noisy protest group. Or maybe even the swift departure of a media outlet or personality whose stance or voice is just grating on a personal level.

  But for the most part, those wishes come and go – or the targets do, as media fortunes or political trends wax and wane.