Charles C. Haynes: ‘I am America’

  “I am America,” Muhammad Ali famously declared. “I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me – black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own. Get used to me.”

  And get used to him we did. So much so that when Ali is memorialized this week, millions of people throughout the United States and millions more across the globe will join in honoring the man known simply as “The Greatest.”

Robert G. Wilkerson: Memorial Day's missing note

  It’s good to remember and honor those who died in our many wars. However, as some of us know, the good is often the enemy of the best. We have recently observed Memorial Day. Through television, we have seen memorial services, both large and small, near and far. Through thousands of speeches, we have been encouraged to remember the fallen. Yet, there has been one supremely important note missing from most speeches.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Goat Hill memories

  While observing the Alabama Legislature the other day, I fondly remembered a very eventful day as a young man. As a teenager, I grew up working at the Capitol as a page in the House and Senate.

  Albert Brewer had been elected to the House from Morgan County in his late 20’s and became Speaker in only his second term. He would eventually let me sit beside him in the Speaker’s box and tell me why certain bills were assigned to certain committees and the probable fate of each piece of proposed legislation.

Darrio Melton: We can do big things if we do them together

  On June 4, 1968, California voters went to the polls and resoundingly supported a man who has been regarded as an icon of their generation: Robert F. Kennedy. Only four hours after the polls closed, Kennedy declared victory and addressed his supporters. As he made his way out of the ballroom, he was shot and fatally wounded.

  Yesterday was the anniversary of his death, and with today being the California primary, I can’t help but think about the legacy “Bobby” left, summarized succinctly in one of his most famous quotes: “The purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better.”

Mel Jackson: Is the Electoral College outdated?

  In the infancy of the United States of America and while forming the Constitution, our Founding Fathers solved a dilemma - how to elect our very first president to lead a nation consisting of thirteen individualized states, distrustful of centralized governments, and desiring to have their own rights. The nation was small, with less than four million inhabitants of mostly rural communities, and relatively uneducated. Transportation, communication, and the daily news was slow. The Founding Fathers felt that the average citizen may not have been able to gather the needed information regarding the various candidates from the different states to select a president with the popular vote. It was assumed that each state would want to elect their "favorite son" which would give the most populated state the wining advantage. So, they created the Electoral College.

Richard M. Ebeling: Individual liberty and the rule of law

  We live at time when, increasingly, the U.S. government operates in arbitrary and discretionary ways. Government regulatory agencies seemingly have unrestrained powers over land-use, business manufacturing and enterprise, the workplace and the environment under broad legislative mandates. And proposals are now frequently being made for ad hoc restrictions and prohibitions on freedoms of speech, press, religion and association.  The principle and practice of individual liberty, therefore, is under serious attack.

  The history of liberty and prosperity is inseparable from the practice of free enterprise and respect for the rule of law. Both are products of the spirit of classical liberalism. But a correct understanding of free enterprise, the rule of law, and liberalism (rightly understood) is greatly lacking in the world today.

Gene Policinski: ‘A journalist by any other name’ … should just report

  Donald Trump is mad at the press. Many in the press are mad at Donald Trump. And much of the public apparently is mad at both.

  Whew.  Welcome to the “marketplace of ideas,” 2016-style. Lots of heat. Occasionally, a little bit of light. And this year, all taking place at the hyper-space speed of social media.

  It’s not like we haven’t seen this before — long before — in the heady air around the presidency, just slower. Revolutionary War writer and activist Thomas Paine and second term President George Washington traded insults of “hypocrisy and treachery” and “careless, ungrateful, virulent” in a Philadelphia newspaper in 1796, near the end of Washington’s second term.

Craig Ford: Are we truly honoring our veterans?

  As we remember those who sacrificed all on the battlefield, let's not forget those who still suffer every day.

  As you celebrated Memorial Day this week, how did you take time to honor our veterans and, specifically, those who did not come back home alive?

  Our country officially recognizes two days out of the year, set aside in remembrance of those who have served our country. Veterans Day, celebrated in November, is in honor of all those who have served, whether it was in peace time or war, while Memorial Day is specifically set aside to remember those who died in service to our country.

Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1512: It’s graduation time!

  It’s graduation time - high school graduations, middle school graduations, elementary graduations, kindergarten graduations, college graduations. It’s graduation time.

  I was the commencement speaker at a kindergarten graduation, but I’m not going to write about that graduation. I attended an elementary school graduation, a first grade graduation, a second grade graduation and a community college graduation, but I am not writing about these graduations. I am writing about one graduate - an extraordinary graduate. It’s graduation time.

  This graduation story commenced in 1951, nearly 65 years ago. The Graduate was one of eight children – seven born in the marriage of Elvira Harrel and Arthur Coleman, Sr. and one outside the marriage. Seven of the children, a mother and a father, lived in a three room shotgun house – a kitchen, a middle room and a front room - in Marion Junction, Dallas County, Ala. The Graduate’s family was not just poor; they were “po.”

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: With the Alabama Legislature, sometimes less is better

  Sometimes the best thing that the Alabama Legislature can do in a session is to pass very little legislation. That can be said of this year’s regular legislative session, which ended several weeks ago. Not many bills made it through the legislative labyrinth.

  Gov. Robert Bentley made a proposed $800 million prison construction bond issue the cornerstone of his legislative agenda. It failed, but it wasn't surprising given Bentley’s irrelevance in the legislative process. The surprising aspect is that the proposal got any traction at all.