Well, all Hell broke loose among North Alabama Democrats and Progressives last night when our local CBS affiliate - WHNT - went on the fritz.  Yes, we know that every station has problems at some point, but the timing seemed just a little too convenient given the subject matter....

The Case Against Don Siegelman. Need background?  Check out the Left in Alabama archives.... There's probably an official archive, but I can't get to it.  Enter "Siegelman" in the search box & you'll be rewarded with riches!

Anyway, it seemed suspicious to many of us - me included - that somehow some undefined "technical difficulty" would kick in right as the story aired.  We have, after all, been waiting for it since last fall.

In a recommended diary from today, AgressiveProgressive described how the screen went black, then showed a security camera view of the parking lot for 2/3's of the story, then the station aired the last 5 minutes or so.  

We vilified the station then, but they're making good as much as they can.

I would have liked to have posted this Thursday night or Friday, but stupidly stayed in a place without Internet access!! Anyway, finally arrived home in Alabama late last night and thought, well, better late than never......  Iowa was an experience and I wish John had won outright, but we did good work and I don't regret the time or expense at all.
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The caucus process was amazing, as was all the activity in Edwards' Davenport HQ.  There were staffers, volunteers from Iowa, and volunteers from all over the country: Alabama, New York, New Jersey, Texas, Virginia, and Oregon (that I remember).

Here's my first person account of what it was like..... with photos!

This is cross-posted at Left in Alabama

Few are guilty, but all are responsible

Here in Alabama, we're just a few hours before the start of Yom Kippur and I decided to read some essays by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel - one of the greatest rabbis of the modern era and an exemplary voice for peace, justice, and tolerance.

Reading his statements about American involvement in Vietnam, I am chilled at the parallels and his condemnation of those who stand quietly by and "bear graciously other people's suffering."

I knew I had a lot to atone for before, but now, Rabbi Heschel has illuminated just how corrupt and vicious our society has become - and how many of us really "good people" aren't doing enough to stop it.

There was a front-page fracas about Ron Sparks (AL state Agriculture Commissioner and possible Senate candidate) on Saturday here at DailyKos.  Unfortunately, I was slaving in my vegetable garden and missed most of the discussion.

There was a lot of criticism about Ron Sparks' desire to avoid a primary challenge.  Several comments expressed a lot of disappointment, thinking that Sparks just can't take the heat, isn't tough enough, etc.

I don't believe that - and neither do most Alabama Democratic activists. To understand why, you need a bit of info about Alabama politics and election laws.

Can you stomach it?  If so, read on....   Don't have time to read the whole thing?  Skip down to the part on Crossover Voting.  That tells you in a nutshell why many of us are concerned about a primary.

Drifting up like swamp gas from Montgomery is the pungent odor of yet another costly, destined-to-fail constitutional challenge to the First Amendment.

Folks, meet "Christian Heritage Week" in Alabama - aka - proposed House bill #482.  

From the bill's prologue:

"This bill would designate the first scholastic week in November each year as Christian Heritage Week in public K-12 schools and would require daily instruction during that week on the influence of Christianity on the history and heritage of the United States."

Ron Sparks arrived, gave a barnburner speech, and hung out at the blog for a while:

It's a beautiful sunny day in North Alabama and we're all still riding high from President Bill Clinton's Jefferson-Jackson Day appearance in Birmingham last night.

Approximately 2,000 Alabama Democrats gathered to cheer the former President and raise over $350,000 for the 2008 elections.  Yaaaayy!!

So here we are now in Huntsville at the 3rd Annual Madison County Democratic Reunion.  A group of us will be liveblogging the event and posting photos.  We'll also post the results of Alabama's 1st Presidential Straw Poll about 4:15pm CDT.

Read more to see who's coming and what's happening.

Fred Phelps has announced that he's bringing his "God Hates Fags" roadshow to Alabama this weekend to picket the funerals of the high school students killed in the Huntsville, AL school bus accident last Monday morning.

The North Alabama Peace Network is organizing a response.  Since publicity is to Fred Phelps what blood is to a leech, we don't want to dignify him with counter-protestors and attention.  Neither do we want to bring more pain to the students' families and friends.

Instead, we're organizing a positive response!  Read below to find out how you can help.

How often do you get to see a judicial dogfight between members of the same party?  In Alabama, where one sitting justice told a newspaper editorial board that "It irritates me that nobody respectable will run against me in the primaries." and says that Roy Moore is "starting to believe his own gibberish"!

In Alabama, Republicans hold every seat on the Supreme Court and this year, there are a few interesting contested primaries for these seats. There's a fight brewing in the party between the traditional business Republicans and the Moore/Taliban faction.

I think it mirrors a coming split in the national party.  Hey if it can happen in Alabama, it can happen anywhere!

My first diary... be kind please!

Could this article by Amy Ellis Nutt, explain how the growth of right wing talk radio turned otherwise sentient citizens into rabid, prejudiced, gay-baiting, anti-Clinton, and union, etc. etc. zombies?  One snipped below:

In a paper titled Prejudice from thin air, subjects were assigned to "in-groups" and "out-groups" and tested for automatic attitudes by measuring the speed with which they classified a picture as being part of one group or another......Subjects did not express bias when they were in sad or neutral states, but did register prejudice against the out-group when their responses were coupled with anger memories. Anger, in other words created an automatic bias where previously there was none.