Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Labor Day in Alabama

  With Labor Day approaching, it signifies that the long hot summer will soon be coming to an end. It seems that the summers are getting hotter and hotter. I was born and raised in south Alabama, so I was accustomed to long, hot summers. I remember when there was no air conditioning in houses or cars. It was hot, but seems hotter today. I think we have gotten softer. It also seems that we do not have the spring or fall seasons anymore. All of a sudden one day in mid-May, it is 86 degrees and it never goes below that through mid-September, or maybe even October. We have about 5 months out of the year where the temperature is mostly in the 90s.

  This Monday is Labor Day. It usually does not cool off much, but we Alabamians seem to think that Labor Day marks the unofficial end of summer. I guess it is because it also usually marks the beginning of college football season. For those of us who are political junkies, Labor Day also marks the beginning of the political season.

Extremist File: What is the Alt-Right?

  The Alternative Right, commonly known as the Alt-Right, is a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that “white identity” is under attack by multicultural forces using “political correctness” and “social justice” to undermine white people and “their” civilization. Characterized by heavy use of social media and online memes, Alt-Righters eschew “establishment” conservatism, skew young, and embrace white ethno-nationalism as a fundamental value.

Michael Josephson: Too poor to give

  When Teresa, a widow with four young children, saw a notice that members of her church would gather to deliver presents and food to a needy family, she took $10 out of her savings jar and bought the ingredients to make three dozen cookies. She got to the church parking lot just in time to join a convoy going to the home that was to receive the congregation’s help.

  The route was familiar, and she was stunned when the cars pulled up in front of her house. When the pastor saw her, he said, “We never expected you to join us, Teresa. We know it’s been a great struggle since your husband died, and we all wanted to support you.”

Jacob G. Hornberger: Do you want a peaceful and prosperous society or not?

  Every Sunday at my church, we are exhorted to pray, among other things, for peace in the world and for the men and women who serve our nation — i.e., the military and the CIA. Naturally, the priests who craft the prayer, along with most of the congregation, fail to see the irony of those two prayers. That is, they fail to see that it is the Pentagon and the CIA whose activities around the world, especially in the Middle East and Afghanistan, are a major reason that Americans live without peace and prosperity.

SPLC backs consumer protection rule restricting forced arbitration

  The Southern Poverty Law Center joined 286 advocacy groups on August 23 voicing support for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) proposal to restrict the financial industry’s use of forced arbitration – a tactic employed by Wall Street banks and predatory lenders to prevent consumers from challenging illegal practices in court.

  In a letter submitted on the final day of the proposed rule’s public comment period, the groups lauded it as “a significant step forward in the ongoing fight to curb predatory practices in consumer financial products and services.” The CFPB will consider the public’s comments before issuing the final rule.

The Dividends of coastal conservation in the United States

  In his 2015 Earth Day speech at Everglades National Park, President Barack Obama hailed America’s national parks, proclaiming, “We are blessed with the most beautiful God-given landscape in the world.” He is not the only one who feels this way.

  In 2015, more than 1 million people visited the Everglades National Park to enjoy its mangrove forests, sawgrass prairies, and extraordinary wildlife. Located on the southern tip of Florida, it is just one of hundreds of coastal and marine parks, wildlife refuges, and marine sanctuaries in the United States. All of these places were designated to preserve America’s publicly owned natural and cultural treasures, both along its shores and under its seas and Great Lakes. Not only do these jewels of American natural and cultural heritage hold immeasurable intrinsic value, but they also provide bountiful economic benefits to their surrounding communities and to the U.S. economy as a whole. The 1.08 million visitors to Everglades National Park in 2015 spent more than $103 million in nearby communities, helping sustain 1,521 jobs and diversify the economies of the surrounding counties.

Gene Policinski: Trump, Clinton show value of a free, independent press

  Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton may well be the best things that have happened to a free press in a long time.

  “Best” not in terms of ratings, circulation, advertising or such, though some media will see a temporary bump up.  And it’s certainly not because the pair are singing the news media’s praises.  Far from it. Trump finds time seemingly every day to slam the “corrupt, dishonest, media.” And Clinton hasn’t had a news conference in … well, several reporters covering her campaign said in recent days they have lost track after about 250 on how many days it’s been since she last sat for one.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Is this the end of television's political power?

  In 1960, television was a new medium. Most Americans did not have televisions in the early 1950s. However, by 1960 the majority of the country had fallen in love with Lucy and TV.

  Presidential races had been run by party bosses in urban enclaves like New York and Boston. Political parties and party conventions were extremely important. The parties were controlled by longtime political pols and insiders. Powerful governors and senators would control their state delegations at the nominating conventions and would yield inordinate power at a critical point in the process.

Richard Cohen: Donald Trump, poll watchers and voter fraud

  The strangest presidential campaign is getting even stranger.

  Donald Trump has recently raised the specter of massive voter fraud, saying that he could lose in Pennsylvania only if “in certain sections of the state they cheat.” And he’s proposed a remedy: volunteer poll watchers.

  It’s a remedy that’s now being trumpeted by white supremacists and far-right conspiracy theorists.

  The great irony here is that we have far more to fear from efforts to combat voter fraud, including the potential for an army of Trump poll watchers, than we do from any actual voter fraud.

Sam Fulwood III: Police gone wild

  The U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation of police misconduct in Baltimore is 163 pages of horror reading.

  Almost Kafkaesque—albeit in a dry, statistic-laden prose—the report details how Baltimore’s nearly 3,000-member police force acts like an occupying military force in some unruly wilderness. The feds wasted no time in getting to the point—indeed, in the opening paragraph of the executive summary, the investigators “[conclude] that there is reasonable cause to believe that [the Baltimore Police Department] engages in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the Constitution or federal law.”