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  Fresh photos from today's Harriott II cruise on our Facebook page! Don't forget to 'like' us: https://www.facebook.com/CapCityFreePress. We like to get our tweet on, too: https://twitter.com/TheCCFP.  Happy Mother's Day!

9 Reasons why progress on stronger gun laws is within reach

  In the weeks that followed the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, this past December, advocates for stronger gun laws focused their efforts on a proposal to require background checks for most gun sales between unlicensed buyers and sellers to prevent criminals and other dangerous people from easily buying guns with no questions asked. Three weeks ago, however, the Senate came six votes short of the 60 votes required to advance this legislation, known as the Manchin-Toomey amendment, that would have expanded gun background checks to all gun shows, online purchases, and advertised sales.

Gene Policinski: Watergate Era: ‘A’ peak in journalism

  Forty years ago this week, The Washington Post – and its self-described “young and hard-digging reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein” – took home a Pulitzer Prize for public service for coverage of the Watergate scandal.

  Other winners in journalism that year included the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times and Knight Newspapers, and entries from several local newspapers  –all part of what we today would call “mainstream media.”

Steven Horwitz: The Problem with political heroes and villains

  It’s sometimes hard to tell the coverage of politics from the coverage of sports. People seem to root for political parties as though they were sports teams, cheering Team Red or Team Blue on to victory with the same passion they bring to the Super Bowl. Individual team members are followed with the same intensity as are star players in basketball or football.

  Similarly, the guys on your team are always the heroes, and the guys on the other team are the villains. Political discourse in America today is filled with this sort of rhetoric, with one group saying the other group is a bunch of racist troglodytes who hate poor people, and the other group saying the first group is a bunch of crypto-Communists out to destroy America. Both sides yell and scream about how bad the people on the other team are, and there is little serious talk about the real issues facing Americans today.

Sam Fulwood III: When the facts no longer matter, democracy is at stake

  In what might be called something of a policy-political family squabble, the Heritage Foundation crossed signals with fellow conservatives by releasing Monday a controversial, cost-benefit study related to comprehensive immigration reform. I wish this was a joking matter, but it’s a gravely serious concern.

  The newsy tidbit in the conservative think tank’s document isn’t the erroneous attempt to attach a $6.3 trillion price tag to legislation under consideration to allow a path to citizenship for some 11 million undocumented immigrants. Numerous reviewers, including an excellent takedown by The Washington Post’s editorial board, attacked that miscalculation and set the record straight.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Is the Democratic Party dead in Alabama?

  On the night of the November 2010 elections I was in my regular post as the political analyst for the Montgomery CBS affiliate WAKA Channel 8. Around midnight as it became evident that the Democratic ticket had been annihilated my cohort, longtime anchor Glenn Halbrooks, looked over at me pensively and asked, “What do you think the Democratic Party does now?”  I candidly responded, “They can turn out the lights and leave the keys on the mantle. The Democratic Party is dead in Alabama.” My off the cuff response was not intended to be flippant or humorous but I had just witnessed the devastating denunciation of the Democratic Party in the Heart of Dixie.

Charles C. Haynes: When students protest abortion, can schools draw the line?

  Students with deep religious convictions are fast turning public schools into the newest battleground over abortion – much to the dismay of beleaguered school officials.

  The most recent controversy involves Annie Zinos, a sixth grade student in Minnesota, who was prohibited by her school from sharing pro-life literature with her classmates. Last week, Annie and her family filed suit against school officials for violating her First Amendment rights.

Sally Steenland: The Ever-evolving institution of marriage

  The connection between marriage equality and cell phones is not immediately apparent, but Justice Samuel Alito made the link during a Supreme Court argument on California’s Proposition 8 in March.

  As Justice Alito said to Solicitor General of the United States Donald Verrilli:

       Traditional marriage has been around for thousands of years. Same-sex marriage is very new. There isn’t a lot of data about its effect. And it may turn out to be a good thing; it may turn out not to be a good thing, as the supporters of Proposition 8 apparently believe. But you want us to step in and render a decision based on an assessment of the effects of this institution which is newer than cell phones or the Internet?

Ken Paulson: Ten Commandments controversy revisited

  It’s been almost 10 years since the Rutherford County, Tennessee, lost a very expensive lawsuit over the posting of the Ten Commandments in the county courthouse.

  The American Civil Liberties Union sued the commission, contending that the posting was an unconstitutional promotion of religion. U.S. Judge Robert Echols agreed and ordered the Ten Commandments removed in 2004.  It will “stay down,” County Mayor Ernest Burgess said at the time, calling it “the end of the story.”

Sam Fulwood III: Jason Collins’s anticlimactic announcement

  In a widely discussed article posted Monday on the Sports Illustrated website and published in the May 6 edition of the magazine, professional athlete Jason Collins declared, “I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay.”

  We interrupt this column for other breaking-news developments: The world did not come to an end yesterday, and the sun rose in the east and set in the west. Also, we’re reliably informed by our sources at the Federal Aviation Administration that all airliners departing from U.S. airports landed safely at their destinations. And, closer to home, Fido bit a mailman on Main Street. Back to you, Sam, for more details on the not-so-shocking story about the gay basketball player.