8 Facts you should know about the criminal justice system and people of color

  The nation’s criminal justice system is broken. People of color, particularly African Americans and Latinos, are unfairly targeted by the police and face harsher prison sentences than their white counterparts. Given the nation’s coming demographic shift, in which there will be no clear racial or ethnic majority by 2044, the United States cannot afford for these trends to continue. Not only could the money spent on mass incarceration—$80 billion in 2010—be put to better use, but the consequences for people who become entangled in the criminal justice system are also lifelong, leading to barriers to employment and housing, among many other things.

Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1459: The Alabama Legislative Session is coming to an end

  It’s coming to an end. We have six days left in the 2015 Regular Session of the Alabama Legislature. That’s about two legislative days per week for the next three weeks. The projected last day is June 11. The 2015 Legislative Session is coming to an end.

  As the end of the session approaches, so many things change. Therefore, I want to share several legislative matters that I participated in during the past week.

  Item # 1 – I had challenged a bill that would abolish marriage licenses in Alabama. Under this bill, Alabamians would marry by contract which would be filed in the county probate office. Probate judges would not have to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples or anyone else.

Gene Policinski: After 800 years, does the Magna Carta’s legacy of freedom persist?

  The signing of the Magna Carta was a major step toward the concept of speaking truth to power in the Western world – and was neither a rock band nor has anything to do with volcanoes, both responses the other day from a quick set of man-on-the-street interviews in Washington D.C.

  In fact, the Magna Carta is an 800-year old document setting out certain baronial rights in England in 1215. Granted, at first thought, that occurrence may not necessarily set our collective Colonial toes to tapping. But perhaps it should.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Marriage equality - it's all over by the shouting

  This has been an eventful year. Thousands of tourists have flocked to Alabama to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery March for Civil and Voting Rights. The events that happened in Alabama spurred the enactment of the landmark acts that broke down the legal barriers prohibiting African Americans from voting in the South.

  The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made it unlawful to discriminate based on race. It was followed up the next year with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that assured African Americans the right to vote.

Craig Ford: Dear Senators, what would Jesus do?

  Before the Alabama Senate votes on the General Fund budget, the senators need to ask themselves, "What would Jesus do?"

  We are often reminded that this nation was founded on Christian principles, and certainly a majority of the representatives in the Alabama Legislature are Christians. So when the General Fund budget, which finances all government services and agencies outside of education, came up for a vote last week, I couldn’t help but think about that popular phrase from the 90s, “What would Jesus do?” The “WWJD” phrase has been used to guide Christians through a lot of tough decisions. So it only makes sense that most members of the Alabama House should have asked themselves that question before they voted on that budget.

It’s time to hit the panic button on pension reform

  Over the past 10 years, Alabama’s public retirement system has seen its liabilities overtake its assets by more than $15 billion. This means the system has only 66 cents for every dollar owed to current and future retirees.

  Worse still, the shortfall has been growing by $4 million each day that our elected officials fail to tackle three of the biggest contributors to the problem.

Sam Fulwood III: Choosing our words carefully

  Not long after the violent shootout at a Twin Peaks Restaurant in Waco, Texas, my Twitter newsfeed lit up with comments that linked what many media outlets termed a “brawl” to the public protests and disturbances last month in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray. The comparison was largely unfavorable, as many noted a race-tinged discrepancy in the language used to describe two separate acts of lawlessness.

  In Baltimore, the activity involved black people and the language was less than subtle, typically describing the looters as “thugs” and their behavior as a “riot.”

Katherine Green Robertson: If everything is a priority then nothing is a priority

  As the debate over Alabama’s General Fund budget shortfall continues, four schools of thought have emerged on how to solve this problem: a) tax increases, b) gambling revenue, c) unearmarking, d) and across-the-board cuts. Each one of these proposals has been deemed the obvious, simple solution to the problem, but none would actually be that straightforward. As proposed, three of the four would require the second, overlooked step of prioritizing spending—a difficult task in a currently fragmented Republican majority.

Right-to-Work takes us in the wrong direction

  Anti-union state and local policymakers in communities across the country are attacking an already weakened labor movement by enacting so-called right-to-work laws that inhibit workers from bargaining for better wages and benefits. Wisconsin became the 25th state to enact a right-to-work law this spring. Following on its heels, the Republican-led Missouri legislature enacted a similar law last week. And where statewide legislation has previously failed, a new strategy has emerged among anti-union lawmakers. These laws are going local in Kentucky and Illinois, with city and county governments enacting ordinances to create local right-to-work zones.