Jacob G. Hornberger: The wall of a dictator

  On Wednesday President Donald Trump ordered the construction of his much-ballyhooed wall along the U.S-Mexico border to begin. Obviously Trump doesn’t see any need to go to Congress to seek approval for his gigantic, socialist, public-works, multibillion-dollar edifice. He’s the president. He can issue “executive orders.” He can do whatever he wants. Who needs congressional approval? Anyway, Congress might turn him down. Or they might delay construction by deliberating and debating the issue. Who needs all that when one can simply issue an executive order to get the wall built?

  This is how dictators have always operated — simply by decree. They don’t need legislatures and, therefore, they either ignore them or they abolish them. And they expect the judiciaries to fall into line and support whatever they do.

Craig Ford: Are our schools really failing?

  A lot has been said about the state of Alabama’s public school system. And for the last six years, state leaders have been obsessed with defining public schools as failing, even going so far as to require by law that at least six percent of all schools must be labeled as failing.

  Making the situation worse is that students and schools have seemingly been set up to fail.

  To decide which schools are failing, the state requires students to take the ACT Aspire test. But the ACT Aspire test is not designed to test accountability or academic progress, and no other state in the entire country uses the ACT Aspire like Alabama does.

Richard Cohen: Trump’s whisperer-in-chief is treading on dangerous ground

  The chief strategist in the White House, a man who rallied a growing white nationalist movement behind Donald Trump, is now telling the news media to “keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.”

  We should all be outraged – and more than a little unnerved.

  We all know that conservative politicians have been trying to delegitimize the mainstream press for decades. And, indeed, conservatives have created a constellation of alternative media more to their liking – Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, to name the most obvious.

  But with Trump, we’re witnessing something different, something more insidious. Something that seems pathological.

Cassidy-Collins ACA ‘replacement’ plan forces states to choose from three bad options

  When Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) promoted his ACA “replacement” proposal, introduced this week with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), he said, “Republicans think that if you like your insurance, you should keep it.” Yet a review of the Cassidy-Collins legislative text shows that the bill falls short on that promise.

  Under the proposal, the Patient Freedom Act of 2017, states must choose from one of three options: (1) to continue implementing the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, albeit with reduced funding for the financial assistance that makes coverage affordable for lower- and moderate-income individuals; (2) to opt for the legislation’s preferred State Alternative Option; or (3) to reject any federal funding, though the state would still have to follow some ACA provisions.

Jacob G. Hornberger: Copying the communists

  The biggest mistake the American people ever made was the conversion of the federal government from a constitutionally limited republic to a national-security state, a type of governmental apparatus that characterizes totalitarian regimes. A national-security state consists of a large, permanent military establishment and a secretive “intelligence” agency with omnipotent powers and whose purported mission is to gather “intelligence” about supposed threats to the country.

  That fateful decision ended up costing the American people their founding governmental structure of a republic. Even worse, it stultified the consciences of the American people, leading them to defer blindly to the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA as those three components of the national-security establishment led the country increasingly toward the dark side that characterizes totalitarian regimes.

Preserving international justice in the age of Donald Trump

  The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States imperils many of the accomplishments of the post-Cold War international order. Of these, perhaps none is more fragile than the project of international criminal justice and, in particular, its flagship institution: the International Criminal Court, or ICC. Since 1993, the United Nations—with strong support from the United States—has established tribunals with jurisdiction over war crimes and other human rights abuses committed in Bosnia, Croatia, Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Lebanon, and Cambodia, along with the ICC, whose jurisdiction is currently recognized by more than 120 countries. Collectively, these bodies have investigated more than 300 cases, prosecuted more than 200 defendants, and obtained more than 150 convictions.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Alabama's glass ceiling was shattered in the 1950s

  Hillary Clinton’s quest to break the proverbial glass ceiling in American politics came up a little short. More than 100 men have been nominated for president by the nation’s political parties over the past 220 years. She was the first female to be the nominee of one of the two major parties.

  After Hillary became the Democratic nominee last year, former Colorado Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder, who ran for president in 1988, said it best, “It’s been the ultimate tree house with a 'no girls allowed sign' posted on it.”

Michael Josephson: Meanness and bullying

  Though intensive media attention on bullying has died down, the problem persists in many forms, and it continues to diminish the lives of tens of thousands of young people every day. According to a recent survey, roughly half of all high school students said that in the past year they were bullied in a manner that seriously upset them. A similar number said they had bullied someone else.

  That’s an awful lot of meanness.

12 Faith leaders to watch in 2017

  The 2016 elections drew immense attention to religious identities and values. The news reported on a flood of hateful rhetoric about immigrants, women, people with disabilities, people of color, and religious minorities. Muslim Americans experienced the highest levels of hate crimes since the period immediately following 9/11. And state legislatures across the country introduced and passed an onslaught of anti-LGBT and anti-choice legislation.

  People of faith did not stand idly by. They are activists, advocates, educators, and organizers working tirelessly as forces for social change across many issues areas, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, or LGBT, rights; reproductive justice; racial justice; religious liberty; economic justice; and education. The country will need them more than ever this year.

Gene Policinski: An 'open letter' to the rest of us

  Sending an “open letter” to President Trump has been in vogue these days.

  Social activists, business moguls, media chieftains and political leaders all have penned a multitude of them since the November election. Some offer advice, some raise alarms, some offer praise and some just convey insults.

  All well and good – those exchanges and more are in the “free speech and free press” ethos protected by the First Amendment of speaking “truth to power” – even if the response from Trump more often and not has been to vigorously tar unfavorable messages as “untruth.”