Free Republic

GINGRICH: No. It just means that we're going to have to pick up all those delegates in late May, just before the California primary, when we hope to pick up more delegates out here. That still means that on super-Tuesday, we're looking at Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, we're looking at Ohio. It means the week after super- Tuesday, we're looking at Alabama and Mississippi. Now, we have hopes that we're going to keep picking up delegates everywhere and continue. This race is going on for a long time, I think. And what Texas moving back means, combined with California being in...

MONTGOMERY, Ala.—Hundreds packed the Alabama Statehouse courtyard on Tuesday to rally against the state's tough immigration law, with organizers saying they chose to send a message on Valentine's Day that lawmakers need to love and respect immigrants. People bused in from across the state to demand repeal of the law that aims to be tough on those in the country illegally. Protesters carried signs reading, "Gov. Bentley, don't you have a heart?" "No Juan Crow" and "Una Familia, Una Alabama" while chanting in Spanish and English "no more HB56" (the bill that became the law) and "one family, one Alabama."...

WASHINGTON, D.C., February 13, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Within weeks, the top lawyers in a dozen states may file a federal lawsuit against the Obama administration’s controversial requirement that all insurance plans include access to abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization, the attorney general of Nebraska told LifeSiteNews. Jon Bruning told LifeSiteNews.com that 12 states had signed onto a scathing critique of the mandate and were preparing to take more serious action. Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning On Friday, ten state attorneys general addressed a scathing letter to President Obama, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis....

n his New York Times bestselling book, Throw Them All Out, Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer revealed how members of Congress enrich themselves and their relatives using earmarks and insider information. Now, the Washington Post, following in Schweizer’s footsteps, has conducted a study that found 16 members of Congress have used their power of the purse to benefit companies, colleges, and community groups tied to their relatives. *snip* Among those cited in the Washington Post report were the following (below):

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — A dream honeymoon to scuba dive on Australia's Great Barrier Reef turned into a terrible nightmare, and the horror is about to play out years later in a courtroom in Alabama. An Alabama man who already served prison time in Australia after pleading guilty to a reduced charged in the death of his bride goes to trial Monday, accused of murdering her for insurance money. Tina Thomas Watson drowned during a scuba dive on the reef just days after her wedding in October 2003.

(CNN) -- Websites affiliated with the CIA, Mexico's mining ministry and the state of Alabama were down Friday, allegedly done in by hackers, government officials and a well-known hacking group reported. A message Friday on a Twitter page and Tumblr feed affiliated with the hacking group known as Anonymous celebrated that the Central Intelligence Agency's website had been taken down. The posting read: "CIA TANGO DOWN: https://www.cia.gov/ #Anonymous." A later one pointed to a news story indicating "#Anonymous hackers hit CIA, U.N., Mexico websites." Numerous outside reports indicated the CIA's website was down, and CNN's attempts from late Friday afternoon...

HANCEVILLE, Alabama, February 9, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Lawyers for the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) say that the broadcasting network has taken the Obama administration to court over a mandate forcing Catholic employers to pay for birth control, sterilization, and abortifacient drugs. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty announced that it had filed suit Thursday morning on behalf of EWTN, considered the largest religious media network in the world. “The federal government cannot force people to violate their religion like this,” said Mark Rienzi, Senior Counsel at the Becket Fund and a constitutional law professor at the Catholic University of...

“There will come a day, a point in time, when that frog is cooked, and all our rights and all our freedoms and all our liberties are going to be gone, folks,” comments made by Ashe County Commissioner, Gerald Price, in support of a motion he had made to not ban the carrying of concealed weapons on county property. His motion was made after listening to nineteen speakers share their beliefs, pro or con, during a public hearing on the issue. Rita Prevette, director of Ashe County Parks and Recreation Department, was one of three speakers who encouraged the Commissioners...

TUSCALOOSA | State Rep. Alan Harper of Aliceville is switching to the Republican Party. Harper, who was selected Monday night to be Northport’s economic development director, has been a Democrat throughout his time in the Legislature. He was first elected to represent District 61 in the House in 2006 and was re-elected in 2010. “This is a decision that has taken many months of deliberation and thought,” Harper said. “In the end, I made the decision because it is best for District 61. I was elected to serve my district to the best of my ability and this decision reflects...

American kids denied food stamps in Alabama under immigration law By Liz Goodwin Some U.S.-born children with parents who are illegal immigrants have been denied food stamps under Alabama's new immigration law, Southern Poverty Law Center President Richard Cohen told Yahoo News on Monday. Five people have called into the group's Alabama hotline to say they were denied food stamps because they couldn't prove they were legal residents, even though the food stamps are for their children, who are citizens. Cohen says the civil rights group, which has already filed two lawsuits against Alabama over the law, will most likely...

COTTONDALE, Ala. (WIAT)- A gun-fueled battle in West Alabama injures six people, leaving two in critical condition. A birthday celebration at Eddins Estates apartment complex on Ken Sealy Drive turned volatile when two men entered the home, demanded money, and opened fire. "When I came home there was, like, blood stains all over my building, like on the gorund. You could tell where something just happened," says Trent Gray, a resident of Eddins Estates. When Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Deputies arrived they found four victims in the apartment and another in a seperate unit. The sixth gunshot victim is one of...

Video shows Lawrence Wallace Junior hours before he fatally stabbed the police officer. Handcuffed with his arms behind his back, Wallace is very talkative, playing to the news cameras. It's as though he's enjoying telling us what he's getting ready to do. News 5 has shared this video with Mobile police, when we slow it down, Wallace appears to fold the pendant and slide something out of it and slip it in between his fingers. This is what he says afterward, "I'll be out before I reach down there." After he gets in the back of the police car, and...

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - The tables were turned on a suspected would-be robber early Monday morning. It was after 4 a.m. when Eddie Richardson pulled up in front of his house on Center Street. But before he could get out of his car, he said two armed men were at his window with guns drawn. "What they said when they walked to the car; they said, 'Give it up,'" Richardson said. The robbers surprised Mr. Richardson, but he had a surprise of his own for them. "I took my pistol out, and I shot his (expletive)," Richardson said. One of...

Reuters) - Alabama's crackdown on illegal immigrants, widely seen as the toughest in the United States, could cost the state's economy up to $10.8 billion, according to a new study. The Alabama law, passed in June, requires police to detain people they suspect of being in the U.S. illegally if they cannot produce proper documentation when stopped for any reason, among other measures. The cost-benefit analysis by University of Alabama economist Samuel Addy estimated up to 80,000 jobs could be vacated by illegal immigrants fleeing the crackdown, costing Alabama's economy up to $10.8 billion. The lost jobs would cost Alabama...

Go ahead, call it shooting fish in a barrel. As soon as Ed Schultz mentioned at the top of his MSNBC show this evening that Alan Grayson would be a guest, you knew the former Dem congressman from Florida would say something outrageous. Sure enough, the guy who was roundly defeated last time around—but is giving it another go—delivered, claiming that Newt Gingrich is running "the most overtly racist campaign" since George Wallace. Grayson also managed to work in a reference to the Ten Commandment's prohibition of adultery. View the video here.

’Bama fan in video accused of sexual battery now in NOPD custody The Crimson Tide fan accused of committing sexual battery on a passed out LSU fan is now in the custody of the New Orleans Police Department...

A Wetumpka man was acquitted of a murder charge Tuesday afternoon when an Elmore County jury returned a not guilty verdict in less than two hours after the closing statements were given. Bobby Stokes, 64 at the time of the incident, was arrested and charged with murder in the 2009 shooting death of Johnny Leonard in Stokes’ home. Stokes was watching television in his 1200 block Holtville Road residence around 12:50 a.m. Dec. 16, 2009, when his common law wife Christina Walker and Leonard walked into the home, according to court records. During the trial it was revealed that Leonard...

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A judge holds a hearing Thursday on whether to sign a court order declaring Natalee Holloway dead more than six years after she disappeared in Aruba.

A man thought to be an Islamic extremist is believed to have shot the windows out of at least two businesses in Alabama City early Sunday to lure police officers to the area and engage them in a shootout. Luis Ibarra-Hernandez, 21, from Albertville, was charged today with attempted murder, according to a news release from the Gadsden Police Department. “After the man was taken into custody, he reported that he knew he must do something extreme to draw attention to Islam and himself, so he planned to shoot police officers,” Gadsden Police Capt. Regina May said.

MONTGOMERY, AL (WSFA) - Call it a burglar's third strike. Mr. Holloway who doesn't want his face shown, says enough is a enough. After a third burglary attempt on his home he said he took matters into his own hands. He says a male suspect rang his doorbell and didn't expect anyone to be at home. "I proceeded to my doorbell. Once I got to the door I didn't see anybody. During that time, I looked over through the kitchen area, to my right, and I seen somebody trying to pry my window open. At the time, I seen two...

UPDATE: An Alabama Court has announced that it will hear arguments as to whether Barack Hussein Obama II is in fact eligible to appear on the State Presidential Primary Ballot. Several Alabama citizens have filed a lawsuit within the Alabama Circuit Court to "prevent certification of President Barack Obama for 2012 Alabama ballot access pending final hearing based on factual evidentiary hearings."

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Ten young whooping cranes and the bird-like plane they think is their mother had flown more than halfway to their winter home in Florida when federal regulators stepped in.

Montgomery Police say a homeowner in the Vaughn Meadows subdivision shot a suspected intruder after an attempted vehicle break-in. It happened at 3:45 Tuesday morning in the 3100 block of Corwin Drive. Police say the homeowner spotted an intruder trying to break into his vehicles parked in the driveway. They say he confronted the suspect with a gun, got into a fight with the suspect and in the scuffle, the suspect was shot in the leg and the homeowner injured his knee. Neighbors say they feel uneasy about the crime. "You feel like your privacy has been invaded and you...

An Alabama schoolteacher was jailed on charges of sexually abusing a fourth-grade female student, and police said Thursday the man told them he molested more than 20 other girls over his 25-year career. Alabaster police said Daniel Montague Acker Jr., 49, was charged with three counts of sexual abuse, and additional charges were possible. "This is not a one-time event," said Deputy Chief Curtis Rigney. "This happened over a period of 25 years." Acker taught fourth grade at three schools and drove buses in the Shelby County school system from 1985 until he retired in 2009. He was investigated on...

Former Democratic congressman Artur Davis, who has been a thorn in the side of Democrats in the aftermath of his loss in the 2010 Alabama gubernatorial primary, is a man without a political party. In an interview with The Fix, Davis openly speculated about running for office as an independent or even a Republican. In both cases, he suggested his decision not to make the switch has as much to do with the difficulties involved as any desire he has to remain a Democrat. “I’ve heard some people at the national level encouraging me to run as an independent for...

Mayor Sam Jones was the talk of town after he held a burglary suspect at gunpoint at his home in Mobile. But not everyone was impressed. In a twist, at least one pro-gun rights group accused Jones of being a hypocrite. Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, took issue with the fact that Jones is part of a coalition of U.S. mayors who have campaigned for stricter gun regulations. Jones is a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, an organization established to reduce violent crime by blocking criminals from illegally obtaining...

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, could face a primary challenge. According to the Birmingham News, Scott Beason, a conservative firebrand in the state Senate, is seriously considering a run. Bachus has bucked his party on a variety of issues, working early on with Democrats on the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which bailed out Wall Street, and admitting publicly that he thought Wall Street executives should be limited in their executive compensation. Beason is best known for his controversial bill targeting illegal immigration in the state, and could prove a tough challenger for Bachus...

Alabama’s unemployment rate fell at a record pace in November amid stepped-up efforts by President Barack Obama’s deputies to frustrate enforcement of the state’s popular new immigration reform. The state’s unemployment rate fell 0.6 percent in November to 8.7 percent, according to new state reports, partly because the state’s employers opened up jobs to Americans after shedding illegal immigrants. The unemployment rate is far below October’s rate of 9.3 percent and September’s rate of 9.8 percent. “The continued drop is proof that people — American Citizens [and] legal migrants, have suffered at the hands of politicians who choose politics over...

“These people are going to end up rioting about this,” says Sheila Tyson, a community activist in Jefferson County, Ala. “If they let this stuff happen they are going to get the biggest riot the South has ever seen . . . I can see it coming.” That’s a pretty serious prediction. What could possibly start a riot that big? She’s talking about the likelihood of Jefferson County increasing its water and sewage bill rates. Oh. Is it really all that bad? “If the sewer bill gets higher, my light might get cut off and if I try to catch...

Now comes citizen Newt, clear of voice, deepened in his determination to tackle an issue that is basically his alone to tout; because unlike his leading rival Romney who can not get his arms around something that he can’t take two different positions on; Newt is the real solid constitutional deal. Iowa is not the only state where this should be stirring some turbulent political waters. Conservatives in states like South Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, and Michigan, as well as other GOP political king making states, should be taking careful notes. Core values issues like preserving life, a...

This is a prime example of the way “the few� can ruin it for “the many.� Because a few parents have sent their kids to school bearing over-the-top presents for Teacher, the State of Alabama Ethics Commission has decided that some Christmas gifts equate to bribes. A new ruling from the Commission prohibits teachers from accepting certain gifts, including gift cards, hams and turkeys. The Washington Post’s Janice D’Arcy has more: Many states and some individual schools ask that parents and teachers respect certain gift-giving guidelines, but Alabama’s law is far tougher than most. A teacher who is caught in...

Bill Johnson, a former top state official who made a failed bid for governor in 2010, has been living a secret life in New Zealand as a sperm donor for lesbian couples, a New Zealand newspaper reported today. Johnson, a Republican from Prattville, has spent much of the past year in Christchurch, New Zealand, as a contractor working on the recovery effort from a deadly earthquake that struck the city in February. The New Zealand Herald reported in its Sunday edition that Johnson, who is married, has been using an alias to meet women who want help getting pregnant. The...

Justice Department Warns Alabama Law Enforcers On Immigration By Pete Williams and Kari Huus The Justice Department has sent a letter to dozens of local law enforcement agencies in Alabama that receive federal money, warning them that they risk losing that funding if they're not careful in how they enforce the state's tough new immigration law. The Obama administration has already sued the state, claiming that the law is unconstitutional. Now it's keeping the pressure on by addressing how the law is carried out. The law, HB56 passed by the Alabama Legislature in June, attempts to combat illegal immigration by...

LEEDS, AL (WBRC) - Voters in parts of Jefferson and St. Clair Counties head to the polls today. It is for a special election to fill the District 45 seat in the Alabama House of Representatives. The election was necessary after the death of Republican Representative Owen Drake of Leeds. The Republican nominee is Drake's brother, 65-year-old Dickie Drake of Leeds. The Democratic nominee is 49-year-old Paige Parnell of Leeds. Parnell was Miss Alabama in 1980 and the first runner-up for Miss America in 1981. The polls close at 7:00 p.m. Tuesday.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — If the goal of state immigration laws was to make life so uncomfortable for illegal immigrants that they leave on their own, it may be working under HB 56 in Alabama. "HB 56 has caused a chain reaction that prevents Hispanics from living with dignity," said Trini Garcia, who came to Alabama on a tourist visa 15 years ago and stayed after it expired."I never thought Arizona’s law was going to come to Alabama," she said. "Now it’s created chaos among Hispanics in Alabama." Garcia was one of several speakers Monday at a hearing called by congressional...

Unemployment rates have fallen in Alabama amid new legal pressure on companies to comply with a popular immigration reform law. September was the first full month that the reform was in force, and the unemployment rate fell from 9.8 percent in September to 9.3 percent in October, according to a Nov. 18 report from the state government. The rates fell from 9.9 percent to 9 percent in Etowah County, from 8.8 percent to 8.1 percent in Marshall county, and from 11.6 percent to 10.6 percent in DeKalb county. “The latest fall in unemployment numbers is proof that American citizens will...

Herman Cain once again walked back his joke about building an electrified fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, telling Univision in an interview that the comment “wasn’t intended to offend” Latinos.Then Cain outlined a border policy he supports – relying on state-level initiatives to control illegal immigration – and specifically praised the Arizona and Alabama immigration laws that Latinos loathe: SANDRA PEEBLES: Mr. Cain, many Latinos were offended by your comment on the electric fence. I understand that you support legal immigration, but regardless of the fact there are 11 million undocumented people in this country. What do we do with...

Editor's note: Martin Luther King III is president and chief executive officer of The King Center in Atlanta. Richard Trumka is president of the AFL-CIO. (CNN) -- It is one of the painful ironies of our time that in the same season Martin Luther King Jr.'s memory is finally honored with a memorial in our nation's capital, the state where he began to lead the civil rights movement is once more the center of an ugly conflict over racial injustice. The passage of Alabama's anti-immigrant legislation, HB 56, invokes inhumanity reminiscent of the Jim Crow South. And the police state...

A strong storm system that produced several suspected tornadoes hit the Southeast on Wednesday, damaging dozens of homes and buildings. At least 15 people were injured in Mississippi. Suspected tornadoes were reported in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Four homes were damaged in western Alabama, about 60 miles southwest of Tuscaloosa. It was the worst bout of weather for that state since about 250 people were killed during a tornado outbreak in April. < SNIP >

About 100 demonstrators gathered outside the Alabama state Capitol in Montgomery to call for passage of the DREAM Act and to protest the state’s new anti-illegal immigration law, widely regarded as the toughest state law crafted to combat illegal immigration. Illegal immigration has been a volatile topic in Alabama since the legislation known as HB 56 was signed into law by Republican Gov. Robert J. Bentley in June. Anecdotal evidence suggestions that many illegal immigrants have fled the state. The demonstrators took a far different approach Tuesday. “Undocumented, unafraid!” they chanted. Eleven protesters sat down in the middle of a...

Skinning, gutting, and cutting up catfish is not easy or pleasant work. No one knows this better than Randy Rhodes, president of Harvest Select, which has a processing plant in impoverished Uniontown, Ala. For years, Rhodes has had trouble finding Americans willing to grab a knife and stand 10 or more hours a day in a cold, wet room for minimum wage and skimpy benefits. Most of his employees are Guatemalan. Or they were, until Alabama enacted an immigration law in September that requires police to question people they suspect might be in the U.S. illegally and punish businesses -

(Reuters) - From corrupt and incompetent local officials to Wall Street's credit crisis and toxic bonds, there was plenty of blame to go around on Thursday, a day after Alabama's Jefferson County declared the biggest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. The county, once a leading industrial hub in the U.S. Deep South, filed for bankruptcy court protection after failing to reach final agreement on terms of a preliminary deal with creditors led by JPMorgan Chase & Co in September to settle $3.14 billion in sewer-system debt. [Read the whole story]

U.S. Representative Spencer Bachus (R-AL) had access to highly sensitive financial information during the 2008 bailout debates that may have helped him earn tens of thousands of dollars by trading stock options, even as most Americans’ portfolios took a beating. On Sunday, Rep. Bachus’s trading behavior came under fire in a 60 Minutes report based on Throw Them All Out, the book by investigative journalist and Breitbart editor that has triggered a political earthquake in Washington. Bachus’s trades during debate over the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) raise serious questions about whether he invested based on information he acquired as...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - Two Spanish language radio hosts are joining NAACP leaders for a rally on Saturday in Birmingham to protest the state's tough crackdown on illegal immigration. The Birmingham News reports that Jose Antonio Castro and Orlando Rosa of La Jefa radio are in the middle of a 14-day walk across the state to oppose the law. The pair will meet with leaders from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on Saturday. First, they will place flowers on the grave of the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. The civil rights icon died in October at age 89....

Alabama's Jefferson County, home of the state's largest city and 650,000 Alabamians, filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy after defaulting on a massive and corrupt sewer project. Some 22 local officials were found guilty for taking sweetheart deals from Wall Street speculators. The bankruptcy will test whether the Legislature's tough-love ploy – refusing to bail out the county – will work. And the bankruptcy is the biggest test yet of Chapter 9 laws devised after the Depression to help indebted cities manage the conflicting priorities of paying back creditors while providing public services to taxpayers. "The last time we saw ......

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- The Jefferson County Commission has just voted 4-1 to file an estimated $4.1 billion bankruptcy, the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. The commission's action came after it spent approximately six hours over two days meeting with its lawyers to discuss legal options, including a Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing and a settlement with creditors on the county's $3.14 billion sewer debt. Commissioner Jimmie Stephens made the motion to file bankruptcy, which was seconded by Commissioner Sandra Little Brown. " "It is time to resolve this once and for all," Stephens said. Another factor in the decision appears...

Utility company PROHIBITING illegal immigrants from obtaining electric, gas, water or sewer service in Alabama... A major utilities company in Alabama is now prohibiting illegal immigrants from receiving electricity, gas, water or wastewater services to heated reactions on both sides, but they're just following the law. The Decatur Utilities company is now one of many in the state that follows the newly signed immigration law which prohibits business with illegal immigrants in the state or its subdivisions. 'We did not [originally] document or confirm whether or not they were citizens or aliens here legally,' Stephen Pirkle, Decatur business manager and...

Henry Perkins is giving Occupy Wall Street the old college try. The 21-year-old University of Alabama junior has been earning college credits while living in the open-air, crime-riddled frat house of Zuccotti Park.

WASHINGTON – The Justice Department on Friday told Alabama's attorney general that it has the "express authority" to investigate potential federal civil rights violations in Alabama's public schools authorized by the state's controversial new immigration law. Assistant US Attorney General Thomas Perez informed Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange of the federal government's powers two days after Strange requested that the Justice Department cite what legal authority it had to collect enrollment data on Hispanic students in his state's public schools. "The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is tasked with investigating potential violations of civil rights laws that protect...

MOBILE, Alabama -- A former Citronelle police officer violated the law when he kept a pair of handguns he took from motorists during his 11-year tenure on the force, a federal jury here decided this afternoon. The jury convicted Bill Eugene Newburn guilty of 2 counts of possession of a stolen firearm. Under a preliminary calculation of advisory guidelines in his case, he faces at least a year and 9 months in prison and as much as 2 years and 3 months behind bars. U.S. District Judge Kristi DuBose scheduled his sentencing hearing for Feb. 10. Police Chief Shane Stringer...