Birmingham Blues

HB308, the constitution convention bill, failed to gain enough votes today in the Alabama House of Representatives. The House voted 46-44 in favor of a budget isolation resolution that would have allowed consideration of the bill, short of the required 3/5 majority. The bill would have allowed the citizens of the state to [...]

This week, the Alabama Legislature passed two bills to address dangerous dogs in unincorporated Mobile County. Yep, that’s how our legislators are forced to spend their time, addressing local issues. The 1901 Constitution prohibited home rule, concentrating power in the Legislature and the rich white power brokers who controlled it. (Over the [...]

No word on the vote count in this report.  Yahoo!  Now it goes to the full House.

The House Committee on Constitution and Elections will hold a hearing on HB308 this Wednesday at 8:30 AM on the 8th Floor in the House Chamber. This bill, and its companion in the Senate SB243, would permit the people of Alabama to vote on whether or not they want the legislature to call a [...]

My pal Hill Carmichael, Coordinator of the Constitutional Reform Education Campaign at Greater Birmingham Ministries, has a great piece in today’s Birmingham News. Hill’s great-grandfather was a delegate to the 1901 constitutional convention.
…According to convention President John B. Knox, the delegates set out “to establish white supremacy in this state.” To accomplish their goal, [...]

John Archibald, the metro columnist for the Birmingham News, has written an excellent column on constitutional reform and the need for bipartisan cooperation and action in Alabama, wrapped around the OTM Dems forum on Tuesday night.
Fixing Alabama’s constitution will be hard. It will require work, good sense, tenacity, selflessness and faith in people who [...]

I was really pleased with last night’s Constitutional Reform Forum, which was sponsored by the Over the Mountain Democrats. Approximately 150 people turned out for a high-level discussion of the nuts and bolts of the reform process and the obstacles that stand in the way of a new, improved constitution that would better serve [...]

UPDATE: Times corrected for tonight’s events.   7:00 at Mountain Brook HS, 6:30 at Hoover HS.
Okay, we’ve talked pros and cons long enough. Anyone who doesn’t think Alabama needs a new constitution either hasn’t been paying attention or is benefiting way too much from the bloated, cumbersome, power-concentrated-in-Montgomery status quo. Really — this [...]

I’m sure there’s a prescription medication to treat it, but I’m too busy to find one. 
I attended the first annual Bailey Thomson Awards Luncheon today to hear Pulitzer-Prize winner and Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker.  Great speech, excellent company, and an opportunity to recharge the batteries for the ongoing struggle to [...]

The citizens of Alabama are still stuck with our 106-year-old Constitution, a document that has been amended nearly 800 times since its (almost certainly) fraudulent ratification.  The Birmingham News is not happy, and neither am I.
This past week 106 years ago, powerful, affluent white men began plotting Alabama’s future.
Beginning May 21, they met in Montgomery [...]