Charles C. Haynes: Push for ‘school prayer’ is about power, not prayer

  Never say die.

  That must be the motto of politicians, religious leaders and school leaders who keep pushing for state-sponsored prayers in public schools more than 50 years after the Supreme Court struck down the practice as a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

  The latest prayer restoration scheme comes from an Alabama state representative who proposed a law last month that would require teachers to read a prayer from the Congressional Record every day to students in Alabama classrooms.

Jacob G. Hornberger: Pardon Martha Stewart and Joseph Nacchio

  The Get Out of Jail Free card that the Justice Department has given to national-security state official James R. Clapper can’t help to bring to mind what the feds did to Martha Stewart.

  Clapper commits perjury before Congress and nothing happens to him.

  Stewart lies to some federal agent when she’s not even under oath and she’s indicted, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to five months in prison and fined.

Paul Larkin: Program offers HOPE for repeat drug offenders

  American prisons hold more than 1.5 million convicts. Ninety-five percent of them will return to the community at some point, and few will be better off than when they have left it.

  One of the holy grails of correctional policy has been to find an alternative to imprisonment that has teeth but doesn’t bite off a leg. Probation has been the traditional alternative, but it doesn’t often work well.

Congress should reassess the importance of two corporate tax breaks

  A series of tax breaks expired at the end of 2013. These tax breaks are all technically temporary, but they are extended so regularly that they are collectively known as the tax extenders. Some of these tax extenders are good policy, such as relief for foreclosure victims, support for energy efficiency and renewable energy, incentives for businesses to hire disadvantaged workers and veterans, and tax credits to revitalize economically depressed areas. Other tax extenders, however, offer fewer public benefits and primarily subsidize big multinational corporations.

Cameron Smith: Pension reform will protect state retirees and our financial future

  In January, the Retirement Systems of Alabama (RSA) released its Comprehensive Annual Financial Reform (PDF) for the 2013 fiscal year. The report was received with little fanfare. During an election year, no politician wants to run afoul of the RSA and the billions it invests in Alabama.

  Unfortunately, this head-in-the-sand approach to public pension accountability is not working, and it will have painful consequences for Alabama’s future. While state politicians have made needed adjustments to the state retirement system over the last several years, they have left the defined benefit structure of the RSA intact.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: The GOP Birmingham club

  There is a cadre of politicos in Birmingham who are approaching their 60s that have been a close knit group of true blue Republicans since the get go. They have probably never been or needed to run as Democrats. More than likely, they were Goldwater Republicans when they were little boys. Most certainly they were Nixon and Reagan Republicans in their youth.

Joshua Field: Hobby Lobby’s potentially slippery slope

  This term, the Supreme Court will rule on whether the religious beliefs of the owners of Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., a for-profit, secular corporation, can be used as justification to deny the company’s employees the contraceptive health coverage they are entitled to under the Affordable Care Act, or ACA. The U.S. Constitution, federal laws such as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and an exemption to the ACA’s contraception rule have historically protected faith-based entities—such as churches and religiously affiliated hospitals and universities—from taking actions at odds with their religious beliefs.

Michael Josephson: Respect means knowing when to back off

  I’ve talked before about the ethical obligation to treat others with respect by attentive listening. Today, I want to talk about the flip side of respect: the duty to back off and accept the fact that while others should listen to us, we can’t demand that they agree with us.

  Such unreasonable demands are especially prevalent when someone in authority (boss or parent) lectures, criticizes, sermonizes, or berates an employee or child well past the point of legitimate communication. But it isn’t just people of authority who seek to impose their ideas through bulldozer tactics.

Nina Hachigian: What joins the United States and China and what divides them?

  Next week, President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet on the sidelines of the third Nuclear Security Summit in the Netherlands. The summit will highlight an issue on which the United States and China have cooperated to a degree in the past: nuclear proliferation. But the bilateral meeting will also cover more touchy subjects, including the current crisis in Ukraine, cyber theft, and regional territorial disputes. Such is the ever-dual nature of U.S.-China relations in the modern era.

Cameron Smith: Five questions to ask Alabama’s state candidates for elected office

  Although Alabama’s primary elections are held in June, the political season is well underway. Positions on religious liberty, gun rights and abortion remain a virtual litmus test for Alabama’s more-conservative voters, but most state politicians are well versed at navigating them every four years.

  Even the clearest answers on those issues leave unanswered questions about critical issues facing the State of Alabama. Here are five additional questions that Alabama’s voters should ask candidates for state office this year: