Excerpt from The Roanoke Times:

When Corey Stewart won the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate last week, he appeared on stage to the sound of “Sweet Home Alabama.”

This would seem a curious song choice for a Virginia politician. We are not Alabama and have never wanted to be Alabama. Granted, there’s a dearth of songs that mention Virginia, and “Sweet Home Alabama” is a rollicking little tune, so maybe we shouldn’t read too much into it.

On the other hand, Lynyrd Skynyrd was a band that worked the Confederate flag into its logo and the National Review once hailed “Sweet Home Alabama” as one of “the 50 greatest conservative rock songs,” so it’s more likely that the song was picked intentionally. Stewart does love Confederate symbols. “Sweet Home Alabama” even takes a shot at Canada — more, accurately the Canadian rock star Neil Young —so it certainly seems to fit the current Trumpian zeitgeist.

Meanwhile, the liberal website Slate cited Stewart’s song choice as just one more example of how he’s pandering to the most atavistic elements of the Virginia electorate. In the Slate writer’s words: “He’s a carpetbagger, but for racism.”

Actually, both of them have it wrong. “Sweet Home Alabama” is not a conservative anthem, and it’s certainly not a cover song for racism. It is, though, one of the most misunderstood political songs of all time, one that’s even been the subject of scholarly study.

Excerpt from WVTM:

The Birmingham Police Department is investigating a shooting that left one man dead at a gas station early Monday morning.

Officers were called to the 1800 block of Bessemer Rd. at about 3 a.m. on reports of a person shot. When they arrived they found one man dead. The victim was later identified as 30-year-old Denorris Rishard Barnes.

Police on the scene said three men were at the gas station changing a tire when someone drove up and fired several rounds of gunshots. Barnes was fatally shot. The other two were uninjured. The suspect fled the scene before police arrived.

Excerpt from AL.com:

A Center Point man stopped for not wearing his seat belt ended up in a lot more trouble.

Jefferson County sheriff’s deputies on Thursday afternoon stopped 36-year-old Anthony Ray Jenkins on Center Point Parkway. As they spoke with him, they spotted a prescription pill bottle on the floor of the car, said Chief Deputy Randy Christian.

They asked him about it, and he said the pills belonged to his aunt and that she must have left the bottle there. Inspection of the bottle, however, showed the name had been scratched off. Deputies then called Jenkins’ aunt, who told them she had not left any medication in his car.