After it was announced earlier this week that Blount County Schools would no longer allow student or volunteer-led prayer over the intercom before games, fans were worried that their prayer would be silenced.
However, if Friday’s Locust Fork High School game was any indication, prayer in Blount County will continue.
In a video posted on Twitter, the crowd of students and fans can be seen banding together to use the designated pregame moment of silence to fill the stands with the Lord’s Prayer.
Friday during an appearance on Birmingham’s Talk 99.5’s “Matt & Aunie Show,” Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Saks) weighed in on the current controversy surrounding U.S. Supreme Court associate justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation and how his colleagues in the U.S. Senate are handling the confirmation process to date.
During the segment, Rogers responded to a question about his House colleague Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Fairhope) calling on Sen. Doug Jones (D-Mountain Brook) to vote for Kavanaugh’s confirmation if Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford did not step forward and announce her intentions to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The Calhoun County Republican agreed with Byrne and suggested Jones “represent the majority will” of Alabamians.
Excerpt:
MONROEVILLE – During Alabama’s transition from Democrat to Republican that began in the 1990s and was capped off in 2010 with the GOP finally gaining control of all the branches of government in Montgomery, the local government in Monroe County was one place that was able to resist that trend.
However, the politics of the state could finally be catching up with one of Alabama’s most historic counties.
In a setting that had the feeling of being a throwback to the heyday of political rallies staged by the likes former Gov. “Big” Jim Folsom and former Congressman Frank Boykin, the Monroe County Republican Party hosted a rally featuring Gov. Kay Ivey and Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Fairhope) on the lawn of the old Monroe County Courthouse that is thought to be the inspiration for the courthouse in fictitious Maycomb, Alabama, the scene of Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird.”
The goal of the event was to energize GOP voters headed into the midterm elections and flip major local offices in Monroe County, including district judge, sheriff and probate judge, currently held by Democrats to Republican.
After President Trump’s election, members of the establishment media determined it was time to reevaluate their performance.
Media decided it was more important “Now More Than Ever” they acknowledge that “Democracy Dies In The Darkness.” They decided their job was to check the most powerful person in the world. By focusing on this, they also acknowledged that they weren’t doing that from 2009-2016. Because they refocused their efforts, their results were that 90-plus percent of their coverage has been negative.
Because of this, the president continues to weaponize a term, invented by Hillary Clinton, and call them out. He does this by calling out “fake news media” as “the enemy of the people.” He’s pretty clear he isn’t talking about all news, although admittedly, he and his supporters are often guilty of calling all news they disagree with “fake news.”
This phrasing has caused the stuck pig to squeal, and the news media continue attacking, going as far as having the poster boy for bias and inappropriate behavior, CNN’s Jim Acosta, storm out of a press briefing in a huff because Sarah Huckabee Sanders wouldn’t repeat what he wanted her to and calling her “Un-American.”
These people are so inside their bubble that they don’t even understand it.
I laid this out to people in a White House press briefing.
WATCH:
They did not like this.
Their response to criticism of their profession is to go further into their bubble.
Today, over 350+ newspapers came together for a coordinated attack on the president of the United States. They will be egged on by media reporters and liberal politicians as they further damage their brands.
And because of this foolish nonsense, Americans will point to this day when they want to further undermine them and the silly idea that the American media is not a liberally biased arm of the American Democratic Party.
They have further eroded their trust, which Trump has already smartly weaponized to his benefit.
@TheDaleJackson is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts a conservative talk show from 7-11 am weekdays on WVNN
Police in Mississippi say a man charged in a crime spree that included a killing in Alabama has been apprehended in Houston.
News outlets report U.S. Marshals took 31-year-old Devarian Edwards into custody Friday.
Moss Point police Chief Brandon Ashley told the Sun Herald on Sunday that Edwards awaits extradition to Alabama.
Afterward, Jackson County, Mississippi authorities will extradite him.
Moss Point police say Edwards was among a group of men who carjacked a man and a woman at gunpoint May 25 on Interstate 10.
Jackson, Alabama police say in a statement 19-year-old Scieler McKenzie was shot and killed hours later during a gunfire exchange Edwards was in.
Police say Edwards was firing a handgun and that McKenzie was shot several times.
It is unclear if Edwards has a lawyer.
(Associated Press, copyright 2018)
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Radio talk show host Dale Jackson and Dr. Waymon Burke take you through this week’s biggest political stories including:
— What do the recent polls done on Alabama’s statewide races tell us?
— Is Sue Bell Cobb wise to advocating for the raising of taxes while running for the Democrat Gubernatorial nomination?
— Is Hillary Clinton really blaming her loss in 2016 on her being a capitalist?
Former Congressman Parker Griffith joins Jackson and Burke to discuss the lottery, the problems with Congress, and his parties actual chances on 2018 midterms.
Jackson closes the show with a “Parting Shot” directed at folks who think Trump can actually win the Nobel Prize.
Radio talk show host Dale Jackson and Dr. Waymon Burke take you through this week’s biggest political stories including:
— If Gov. Kay Ivey has a 67 percent approval rating, can she be beat?
— Do members of Congress have any idea what Facebook actually does and do they have any business regulating it?
— How is Democrat Sen. Doug Jones more popular than Sen. Richard Shelby and can this last until Jones’ re-election?
J. Pepper Bryars, editor of Yellowhammer News, joins Jackson and Burke to discuss the role of new media in 2018 and what role it will play in the midterm elections.
Jackson closes the show with a “Parting Shot” directed at folks on the right who are thrilled about Speaker Paul Ryan leaving Congress and he explains what they can expect next.
The countdown is on! What’s happening as the session winds down? Read below to find out!
1. Gun bills might be finished for this session . . .
With time quickly winding down in the legislative session, the House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee had a meeting scheduled on Tuesday to consider several things: a bill that raises the age to by an AR-15 from 18 to 21, a bill that would allow judges to take firearms away from individuals who might use them for self-harm or harm to others, and a bill that would ban the sale of AR-15s and other similar guns. The meeting was canceled due to lack of participation—only 4 of the 11 representatives on the committee showed up for the meeting. Additionally, the house, on Tuesday, left without debating Representative Will Ainsworth’s (R-Guntersville) bill to arm teachers. With the session expected to end next week and with no action on the bills this week, it appears that time has run out for these bills this session. Speaker Mac McCutcheon (R-Monrovia) has said that Ainsworth’s bill will come up again next session, while Ainsworth has called on Governor Ivey to call a special session to consider school safety proposals.
2. But school safety still looks to be a priority of the legislature.
Just because the legislature isn’t making a decision about arming teachers this session does not mean that they are not concerned with school safety. A bill before the legislature would allow school districts to take money from the Advancement and Technology fund. According to Representative Bill Poole (R-Tuscaloosa), “If [the school systems] have some security needs, whether those are security cameras or improving door lock systems or alert systems or whatever the case may be, the local districts will have the flexibility to point these resources to those specific needs.” The bill previously passed the Senate, passed the house this week, and now heads back to the Senate for a conference committee or concurrence vote.
3. A bill that would bring an ethics law change for economic developers is still moving, but maybe not for long.
Remember the controversial ethics bill that the House passed by a large margin during week 9 of the legislative session? As a reminder, this bill would allow economic developers to be exempt from the rules that lobbyists are subject to, which includes registration as a lobbyist, annual training, and reporting of activities. Earlier week, the bill was passed by the Senate Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Development Committee. On Thursday, Senator Dick Brewbaker (R-Montgomery) told reporter Chip Brownlee that there are a handful of senators ready to filibuster the bill in its current form. Brian Lyman reported that there may be a substitute in the works, which would be brought up on Tuesday.
4. BJCC expansion is one step closer to becoming a reality.
You might remember hearing about a proposal to renovate and grow the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex by adding a stadium. Well, in order to fund that project, there is a bill currently before the legislature that imposes a 3% tax on car rentals and leases in Jefferson County. According to Barnett Wright with The Birmingham Times, “The rental tax is expected to generate about $3.5 million a year to help pay the debt service on the project, which the BJCC Authority estimates will be about $21.5 million a year.” The bill, sponsored by Senator Jabo Waggoner (R-Vestavia Hills) and Representative Jack Williams (R-Vestavia Hills), has passed both chambers and heads to Governor Ivey for a signature.
You also might want to know about…
— Governor Ivey signed a few things into law this week, including…
— A bill that would allow death row inmates a third option for execution—nitrogen hypoxia.
— A contract with Wexford Health to handle the medical and mental health care at Alabama’s prisons. If you remember, the legislature held up the signing of this contract several weeks ago.
— A tax break for low-income and middle-income individuals and families in Alabama.
— The Child Care Safety Act, a bill by Representative Pebblin Warren (D-Tuskegee) that allows for more oversight into religious and non-religious day care facilities.
— Senator Bill Hightower’s (R-Mobile) bill to allow Alabamians to vote on whether or not they want legislators to be term-limited did not pass in the Senate this week.
— Alabama is one of only two states that does not have a law mandating equal pay for men and women. A bill by Representative Adeline Clark (D-Mobile) would change that, but since it did not get a committee vote this week, it is unlikely to pass.
— The legislature has approved a bill that will allow UAB to create the Rural Hospital Resource Center, a facility that will be able to provide assistance to Alabama’s rural hospitals.
— In November, voters will get to decide on a constitutional amendment that will allow the display of the ten commandments on public property, including schools.
— After the threat of a filibuster, the stand-your-ground-in-church bill, which was up for debate in the Senate this week, has been stalled.
— The Alabama Rural Broadband Act, a proposal that would offer grants to companies that will bring broadband internet to Alabama’s rural areas, has passed the legislature and is waiting for the governor’s signature.
The Alabama Senate moved one step closer to requiring police officers to get a criminal conviction before taking a citizen’s property, but states that have already implemented such limits have run into loophole: the federal government.
Alabama lawmakers passed their ban through a state Senate committee last week under the impression they had the authority to ban civil forfeiture in their state. New Hampshire passed a bill similar to Alabama’s in 2016, but state and local police are still managing to take property without a criminal conviction.
The federal equitable sharing program, which allows state and local police to partner with federal authorities when making forfeitures, effectively ignores state-level limitations.
“The government ought to be required to prove that criminal conviction before being able to seize stuff,” Republican state Sen. Arthur Orr told the Heartland Institute. “The idea that the government can take a citizen’s property without a criminal conviction does not sit well with most people that I discussed this issue with.”
In New Hampshire, state and local police forfeit property under the authority of the federal government, rather than the state. Despite the federal government technically being the one to take the property, the proceeds of the forfeiture cases remain with local authorities.
The federal stance on civil forfeiture is unlikely to change under President Donald Trump’s administration as Attorney General Jeff Sessions has long argued the practice is essential to combating the drug trade. Most often, officers will find large amounts of cash in cars traveling across state lines and seize it under the assumption that it was ill-gotten.
The program allows police to make the seizure without charging the owner with a crime. To avoid due process concerns, authorities instead charge the property with a crime, allowing them to assume its guilt in court and put the burden of proof on the owner to show that his property was not involved in criminal activity.
Police also argue they use the power responsibly, but law enforcement often directly benefit from the funds they forfeit. Federal authorities took more than $4 billion through forfeiture in 2015, and most states allow departments to keep the vast majority – if not all – of the proceeds from the forfeitures they make. In Alabama, police departments receive 100 percent of the funds they forfeit.
North Dakota and Massachusetts are tied for the worst states in the U.S. on civil forfeiture, according to a study from the Institute for Justice. Both received an “F” from the group on the issue, but the rest of the country isn’t much better: 21 states are tied at a “D-,” including Alabama.
(Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.)
From Lincoln to William McKinley to Theodore Roosevelt, and from Warren Harding through Calvin Coolidge, the Republican Party erected the most awesome manufacturing machine the world had ever seen.
And, as the party of high tariffs through those seven decades, the GOP was rewarded by becoming America’s Party.
Thirteen Republican presidents served from 1860 to 1930, and only two Democrats. And Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson were elected only because the Republicans had split.
Why, then, this terror of tariffs that grips the GOP?
Consider. On hearing that President Trump might impose tariffs on aluminum and steel, Sen. Lindsey Graham was beside himself: “Please reconsider,” he implored the president, “you’re making a huge mistake.”
Twenty-four hours earlier, Graham had confidently assured us that war with a nuclear-armed North Korea is “worth it.”
“All the damage that would come from a war would be worth it in terms of long-term stability and national security,” said Graham.
A steel tariff terrifies Graham. A new Korean war does not?
“Trade wars are not won, only lost,” warns Sen. Jeff Flake.
But this is ahistorical nonsense.
The U.S. relied on tariffs to convert from an agricultural economy in 1800 to the mightiest manufacturing power on earth by 1900.
Bismarck’s Germany, born in 1871, followed the U.S. example, and swept past free trade Britain before World War I.
Does Senator Flake think Japan rose to post-war preeminence through free trade, as Tokyo kept U.S. products out, while dumping cars, radios, TVs and motorcycles here to kill the industries of the nation that was defending them. Both Nixon and Reagan had to devalue the dollar to counter the predatory trade policies of Japan.
Since Bush I, we have run $12 trillion in trade deficits, and, in the first decade in this century, we lost 55,000 factories and 6,000,000 manufacturing jobs.
Does Flake see no correlation between America’s decline, China’s rise, and the $4 trillion in trade surpluses Beijing has run up at the expense of his own country?
The hysteria that greeted Trump’s idea of a 25 percent tariff on steel and 10 percent tariff on aluminum suggest that restoring this nation’s economic independence is going to be a rocky road.
In 2017, the U.S. ran a trade deficit in goods of almost $800 billion, $375 billion of that with China, a trade surplus that easily covered Xi Jinping’s entire defense budget.
If we are to turn our $800 billion trade deficit in goods into an $800 billion surplus, and stop the looting of America’s industrial base and the gutting of our cities and towns, sacrifices will have to be made.
But if we are not up to it, we will lose our independence, as the countries of the EU have lost theirs.
Specifically, we need to shift taxes off goods produced in the USA, and impose taxes on goods imported into the USA.
As we import nearly $2.5 trillion in goods, a tariff on imported goods, rising gradually to 20 percent, would initially produce $500 billion in revenue.
All that tariff revenue could be used to eliminate and replace all taxes on production inside the USA.
As the price of foreign goods rose, U.S. products would replace foreign-made products. There’s nothing in the world that we cannot produce here. And if it can be made in America, it should be made in America.
Consider. Assume a Lexus cost $50,000 in the U.S., and a 20 percent tariff were imposed, raising the price to $60,000.
What would the Japanese producers of Lexus do?
They could accept the loss in sales in the world’s greatest market, the USA. They could cut their prices to hold their U.S. market share. Or they could shift production to the United States, building their cars here and keeping their market.
How have EU nations run up endless trade surpluses with America? By imposing a value-added tax, or VAT, on imports from the U.S., while rebating the VAT on exports to the USA. Works just like a tariff.
The principles behind a policy of economic nationalism, to turn our trade deficits, which subtract from GDP, into trade surpluses, which add to GDP, are these:
Production comes before consumption. Who consumes the apples is less important than who owns the orchard. We should depend more upon each other and less upon foreign lands.
We should tax foreign-made goods and use the revenue, dollar for dollar, to cut taxes on domestic production.
The idea is not to keep foreign goods out, but to induce foreign companies to move production here.
We have a strategic asset no one else can match. We control access to the largest richest market on earth, the USA.
And just as states charge higher tuition on out-of state students at their top universities, we should charge a price of admission for foreign producers to get into America’s markets.
And — someone get a hold of Sen. Graham — it’s called a tariff.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.”
COPYRIGHT 2018 CREATORS.COM
The House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill on Thursday to protect children from cyberbullying in honor of a 10-year-old boy who committed suicide last year.
Fifth grader Jamari Terrell Williams took his own life after he was bullied online last October. Rep. John Knight, a Democrat from Montgomery, sponsored the bill to add cyberbullying and harassment off school grounds to the current law protecting students from bullying at school.
Bipartisan House members expressed support for the bill because of similar situations of cyberbullying and student suicides in their own districts.
Williams’ mother Monique Davis was present in the statehouse for the bill’s passage. The bill had 88 co-sponsors in the 105-member House and now moves to the Senate.
(Image: Pixabay)
(Associated Press, copyright 2018)
In today’s world of texting and instant messaging, soft skills are still important. High school students will need to have a firm grasp of these concepts to ensure their future career success in the highly competitive job market.
The young people will be America’s future workforce. By the year 2022, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the number of employees the U.S. economy needs will grow to 161 million – a 10.8 percent increase since 2012.
Employers need motivated and highly skilled employees to lead their organizations. Successful employers today often focus on maximizing profit margins and meeting the bottom line. They develop strong workplace cultures and recruit the best talent available.
Many top business experts believe the most important skills that employees must have today include time management, motivation and communication skills. These skills are essential to effectively planning and organizing projects with supervisors and co-workers.
Equipping high school students with essential skills (what soft skills are often called today) is a top priority for Alabama’s Career and Technical Education programs and student organizations – the National Future Farmers of America Organization; JROTC; SkillsUSA; Health Occupations Students Of America-Future Health Professionals; DECA; Future Business Leaders of America-Phi Beta Lambda; Jobs for Alabama’s Graduates; Family, Career and Community Leaders of America; and the Technology Student Association.
Alabama’s CTE program offers middle and high school students the chance to participate in more than 300 career-related courses and programs statewide. Students can earn college credit (while still in high school) through dual-enrollment classes. They can also earn nationally recognized credentials, such as Adobe Certified Associate, Microsoft Office Specialist, and Certified Nursing Assistant. Hundreds of other credentialing opportunities are available for students.
Essential skills are emphasized in our state’s CTE programs and classrooms. Students often work in “project teams” to complete class assignments. Some teachers and classes even require students to officially “clock in” to simulate a real-world work experience.
Students also engage in hands-on learning. They apply the core math and science concepts they have learned in the traditional classroom to real-world scenarios and class projects. They begin to build good problem-solving skills and techniques.
Some classes even have designated team leaders and managers to simulate an actual work environment. Students learn responsibility and practice good communication with peers.
The average graduation rate nationally for high school students concentrating in CTE programs is 93 percent, while the national graduation rate for students not participating is 86 percent.
AlabamaWorks, a new and highly respected state initiative that unites the many components of workforce development, is also providing students, parents and even experienced professionals with helpful tips and information on workplace requirements, expectations and credentials. This initiative has excellent resources for students, prospective employees and employers.
AlabamaWorks also focuses on dual-enrollment opportunities for students and promotes essential skills development. AlabamaWorks is bridging divides between employer and employee expectations.
Soft skills are still relevant, important and needed today. This term has been re-branded, but it continues to serve the same great purpose – preparing our young people for a lifetime of success!
To learn more about AlabamaWorks’ partner programs, visit www.alabamaworks.com.
(Collie Wells is the interim deputy state superintendent of education, career and technical education at the Alabama Department of Education.)
Authorities said they are investigating a fatal shooting at an Alabama high school as apparently accidental, lamenting the death of a 17-year-old female student in the incident that also left a 17-year-old boy injured.
Birmingham Interim Police Chief Orlando Wilson said investigators are seeking to piece together the exact circumstances surrounding Wednesday afternoon’s shooting at dismissal time at Huffman High School, one of the city’s largest. He added that the probe will involve scouring school surveillance video for clues and completing interviews among students and staff at the large magnet school.
“At this particular time, we are considering this accidental,” the police chief said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon just hours after the shooting. “Right now, we have a lot of unanswered questions.”
The shooting prompted a brief lockdown though students were subsequently released late Wednesday and authorities said they had subsequently determined that the shooting was not perpetrated by “someone from the outside” the school.
Wilson declined to say who fired the gun or to identify what firearm, adding it had been recovered by authorities.
No arrests were immediately reported, and the two students weren’t identified.
“We are asking questions from the staff, the students, anyone who was in that area,” Wilson said. “This should not happen in schools.”
He said police have already questioned students but declined to say how many. Wilson did confirm metal detectors were in place and functioning in the school.
Huffman High in northeast Birmingham is one of the largest high schools in the city. The Birmingham City School system said in a statement that the shooting prompted a brief lockdown and added two students were involved as school was letting out. It later said the schools would be open Thursday even as civic leaders and others were mourning the loss of life.
Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said the deceased student would have turned 18 in about 30 days and was a senior “who had aspirations and dreams to be a nurse.”
“We are not just talking about some person, (we’re) talking about losing a part of our future. Our hearts are heavy,” Woodfin said.
Birmingham City Schools Superintendent Lisa Herring said her goal was to support the family of the teen who died and to reassure parents about the safety of their children.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey released a statement Wednesday evening that she was saddened by the student’s death.
“I am praying for the family of this young lady who has tragically lost her life way too early … it reaffirms that there is no place for students to have firearms or other weapons on campus.”
The shooting took place just a day after Ivey created a school safety council in Alabama to make recommendations on security. The security plan would ensure schools have an updated security response plan for sharing information about potential threats. It also would require schools to train students and school employees on how to respond to an emergency situation.
Multiple bills also have been proposed in the Alabama legislature after 17 people were killed last month in a shooting rampage at a Parkland, Florida, high school. Varying proposals by Republicans would arm either teachers or volunteer security forces in schools. Meanwhile, measures sought by Democrats would seek to limit or ban the sale of assault weapons. The proposals face a tight deadline before the end of Alabama’s legislative session this election year.
(Associated Press, copyright 2018)
If selling construction tools is not the kind of thing you would expect female entrepreneurs to do, you don’t know the Head family of Birmingham.
Maryam “Mimi” Head bought the Ram Tool Construction Supply Co. in 1984 with no prior distribution experience and methodically built the small company into a major force in the Southeast, adding product lines and acquiring competitors, according to a history on the company’s website.
Daughter Hillery Head, one of the Yellowhammer 2018 Women of Impact, joined the firm in 1993 and became CEO in 2009 when her mother retired.
Under the younger Head’s leadership, Ram Tool’s growth has accelerated. It acquired Marco Supply in 2012, expanding into three cities in South Carolina, Charlotte, N.C., Washington, three Virginia cities and Charleston, West Virginia. Ram Tool also opened a new store in San Antonio.
Ram Tool has bought new companies or expanded into new locations every year since. Last year, it celebrated its 50th anniversary.
Today Ram Tool operates in 36 cities. According to the company website, on one project, it made 1,740 deliveries, with orders arriving every day for more than six months.
“So needless to say, going the extra mile is just the beginning for us,” the company says.
In 2016, Head told BHM BIZ that the toughest challenge she faced as CEO was working through the Great Recession, which crushed the construction industry.
“We were forced to tighten our belt quickly and dramatically,” she wrote.
Head, a Yale University graduate, told Business Alabama that her mother picked Ram Tool despite a lack of experience in the field because she wanted “a legitimate, real business” that offered growth opportunity. She said her mother taught her never to settle for easy answers.
“Another thing she taught us was to not have ‘analysis paralysis,’” she told the publication. “Better to go ahead and make a decision quickly and move on with that. If it’s the wrong decision, it’s easier to back up and to reverse than to just sit around and not do anything. So it’s important to make decisions quickly and then move to execute them quickly.”
Head also told the publication that her company’s sales team tries to stay a cut above the competition by saying “yes” to customers even when they want tools not in stock. She recounted one time when the firm found an aerial drone for a client in Dallas.
“We always try to say, ‘Yes, we can’ and to do it quickly,” she told Business Alabama. “A lot of times the customer just needs to know that we’re working on it and that we’re on it.”
Brendan Kirby is senior political reporter at LifeZette.com and a Yellowhammer contributor. He also is the author of “Wicked Mobile.” Follow him on Twitter.
When he was a sophomore in high school, Lew Burdette was kidnapped, stabbed, thrown down into a well, shot in the head and left for dead.
Burdette miraculously escaped and survived to tell the horrible tale as his testimony of faith and to use it as his grounds for empathizing with the abused children and mothers who become residents of King’s Home.
“I was the victim of a very violent act,” Burdette, the president of King’s Home, told Yellowhammer News. “It wasn’t abuse, but I can relate on some level to being subjected to a violent act, being the victim of a crime. Things like that that happen to you are no fault of your own, but don’t become a victim, you know, get over that victim mentality that you have your whole life in front of you and there is hope.”
King’s Home is a Chelsea-based ministry of 22 therapeutic group homes and independent-living facilities stretched out through Shelby, Jefferson, Tuscaloosa and Blount counties, all of which house residents who are fleeing domestic violence or other abusive situations.
“It’s a way to start over in life,” Burdette said.
Twelve of the homes are for teenagers, and those homes are headed by couples who have children of their own.
The homes offer the children stable home environments and opportunities to deal with their pasts and move on with their futures.
“The issues and coping issues that teenagers are having today are so much different than they were even fifteen years ago when I started with King’s Home,” Burdette said. “The horror that some of these kids go through is really devastating.”
The other ten homes are for adult mothers with children.
Burdette connected the dots between his own experience and the experience of King’s Home residents.
“We’ve all needed help somewhere along the way in life, and we’ve all had things that have happened to us along the way in life,” he said. “The life that you’ve experienced in the past doesn’t have to be that way.”
His own story is almost as extraordinary as the success of the ministry.
“One kid came into my office before Christmas, he said, ‘Hey Mr. Lew I just want you to know how much it means living here at King’s Home because I never dreamed I’d be able to play football and he’s the starting safety on his high school football team.”
Last May, King’s Home saw twelve kids graduate high school. Ten went to college, one joined the military, the other got his welder’s certification and is already making over $20 per hour.
For more information about King’s Home, click here and to read more about Lew Burdette’s story, click here.
Manufacture Alabama announced Monday that it has endorsed Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall in his campaign to retain his office, according to a news release from the group.
“Steve Marshall has proven himself as a champion for manufacturers and has a distinguished track record of advocating for our members,” said George Clark, president of Manufacture Alabama.
Marshall is running for the GOP nomination against Alice Martin, Chess Bedsole and Troy Kong.
Manufacture Alabama is “focused on the competitive, legislative, regulatory and operational interests and needs of manufacturers and their partner industries and businesses” in the state, the release said.
“Manufacturing is incredibly important to our state’s economy, and I am honored to have received the endorsement of our state’s only manufacturing association,” Marshall added.
The Republican primary is June 5.
(@jpepperbryars is the editor of Yellowhammer News and the author of American Warfighter)
Dr. Nancy Dunlap may not be a household name, but her impact in the field of medicine has extended far beyond Alabama’s borders.
Dunlap, an emeritus professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is among the women to be honored this month at the Yellowhammer Women of Impact event.
Dunlap was special adviser to the Alabama Medicaid Advisory Commission and served on the National Health Policy Conference Advisory Board. Also a member of America’s Top Doctors, she served under former Alabama Gov. Bob Riley as secretary of the Emergency Response Commission to Address the Health Care Crisis.
In 2013, the National Governors Association tapped her to serve as physician-in-residence at the organization’s Center for Best Practices Health Division, where she helped develop recommendations for states to contain health care costs, manage diseases and improve technology.
“Her expertise and long-standing dedication will be very beneficial to our work for the nation’s governors,” National Governors Association Executive Director Dan Crippen said in a statement announcing her appointment at the time.
Later in 2013, Dunlap left Alabama to take a job as interim dean of the University of Virginia School of Medicine while the school searched for a permanent replacement. She served in that capacity for 18 months and then returned home to Alabama.
It is not just in medicine where Dunlap has made her mark, however. She has served the broader community in a number of ways. Most recently, she participated on a search committee that selected Melanie R. Bridgeforth to take over as president and CEO at the Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham.
Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin also tapped her after his election last year to co-chair an advisory committee on social justice issues to help the incoming administration set priorities for the first 100 days.
Dunlap in 2016 joined the board of Southern Research, a nonprofit that works on drug discovery and development, advanced engineering research, and energy and environmental research.
Dunlap participated in a Women in Pulmonary Symposium at UAB and talked about the need to nurture women in science fields.
“I do believe that there is a tendency in every professional field to believe that women, particularly when they have families, would have balance issues. As a result, women aren’t put in leadership positions and fall behind their male peers,” Dunlap said, according to a report on UAB’s website. “If you haven’t held those leadership positions at a certain point, you fall behind professionally and can’t catch up. That’s why it is very important to nominate young faculty members to professional organizations.”
Those young female faculty members looking for a role model could find few better than Dunlap.
Join Women of Impact honoree Gov. Kay Ivey and special guests from across the state for a Birmingham awards event March 29 honoring the 20 Yellowhammer Women of Impact whose powerful contributions advance Alabama. Details and registration may be found here.
Brendan Kirby is senior political reporter at LifeZette.com and a Yellowhammer contributor. He also is the author of “Wicked Mobile.” Follow him on Twitter.
A recent study commissioned by the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) of Alabama reveals that the commercial construction industry had a total output impact of $11.8 billion in 2015, but industry experts say unless young people who do not plan to go to college receive trade and craft training and go into construction-related fields, those numbers won’t be sustainable.
“We have an aging workforce, and we were like, we have got a problem and we have got to do something about it,” said Jay Reed, president of ABC Alabama, in an interview with Yellowhammer News. “We could not continue to be a $12 billion industry in Alabama if we did not start filling the pipeline.”
That’s why industry partners have created the Academy of Craft Training program, a public/private partnership between the construction industry and the State of Alabama’s K-12 education system.
The partnership involves support from local school boards, state workforce training programs, and the construction companies.
“We’re paying for the teachers, local schools pay for transportation, AIDT is paying for the building,” Reed said.
A construction-education partnership is already a natural fit — Reed said the most surprising piece of data from the ABC study showed the industry contributed an estimated $444 million to Alabama’s Education Trust Fund in 2015.
For the 2016-17 school year, 16 Birmingham-metro area high schools sent students to the simulated workplace at the Alabama Workforce Training Center to receive NCCER construction-related training in building construction, masonry, HVAC/plumbing, welding and electrical.
This year, 26 schools are participating and districts in Huntsville and Mobile are looking to participate as well.
Gov. Kay Ivey visited the AIDT Workforce Development Training Center, where the Academy training is held, and said, “The jobs of tomorrow are going to require a postsecondary certificate or degree, or it’s going to require students getting hands-on training that prepares them to enter the workforce immediately after graduation from high school.”
Reed said he sees support for the program in Montgomery.
“The state’s investment in these kids will be paid back in three years. Anyone who knows business knows if you get a return on investment in three years, it’s a good investment,” Reed said. “This is the future of construction training.”
(Opinion) A bill sponsored by Rep. Chris Pringle (R-Mobile) that would raise the state’s minimum age for all tobacco purchases from 19 to 21 years old has gained the support of five Alabama physician groups, and it has a good chance of passing.
“Smoking remains one of the most preventable causes of heart disease by making the heart work harder and raising the blood pressure, which can trigger a stroke,” Medical Association President Jerry Harrison, M.D., said in a statement of support for the bill earlier this month. “So, raising Alabama’s legal tobacco age limit by a couple of years in order to add years to our children’s lives only makes sense.”
Putting aside the question of whether Pringle’s bill would actually mitigate tobacco use, and particularly cigarette use, among teens, the bill and the primary arguments used to support it are bad for this reason: they treat all tobacco products as equally dangerous.
All tobacco products are not created equally, and it’s not even close. Cigarette smoking is quite obviously dangerous, responsible for some 480,000 deaths each year in the United States, according to the CDC. An estimated 41,000 of those deaths are connected to secondhand smoking. There’s no avoiding that harsh reality, and there should be a serious debate about the freedom to smoke vs. public health.
It is important, though, to note the CDC’s precise language: cigarette smoking is responsible for an estimated 1 in 5 deaths annually, not tobacco use.
We all know this, but cigarette smoke is dangerous because it is riddled with harmful chemicals and because most cigarette smokers smoke habitually, the effects of those chemicals upon the respiratory system and the heart are catalyzed.
Pipe tobacco and cigars are not consumed in the same fashion as cigarettes and simply do not carry the same risks. Pipe tobacco and cigar smoke are not typically inhaled and do not contain the carcinogens that cigarettes do.
As for chewing tobacco, it presents dangers of lip and gum disease but does not bring with it risks of lung cancer and heart disease which, again, are what kill smokers.
Unfortunately, because cigarettes contribute to so many deaths and because they are the most commonly consumed form of tobacco, they distort debates about tobacco policy. If we are going to regulate tobacco use because of the harm it causes, we must be responsible enough to make distinctions between cigarettes and other forms of tobacco which are not nearly as harmful.
Jeremy Beaman is in his final year at the University of Mobile and also writes for The College Fix. Follow him on Twitter @jeremywbeaman.
The national association for Republican state attorneys general recently endorsed Steve Marshall is his campaign to remain Alabama’s top law enforcement officer.
Marshall, a former district attorney in north Alabama, was appointed attorney general last year when Luther Strange left for the U.S. Senate.
He is now running in the Republican Primary against former U.S. Attorney Alice Martin, former Attorney General Troy King, and Mobile lawyer Chess Bedsole.
Key quotes from the Republican Attorneys General Association:
— “The Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) is proud to stand with Attorney General Steve Marshall and offer him our association’s full endorsement. Like President Donald J. Trump, he values our law enforcement, is strong on crime and is dedicated to keeping Alabamians safe.
— “Marshall has been serving Alabama – protecting their communities and fighting crime – for years. First, as the District Attorney of Marshall County, and now as attorney general. Marshall has been a tireless advocate for a safer Alabama, working directly with local law enforcement to combat violent crime and collaborating with Governor Kay Ivey’s and President Donald J. Trump’s administrations to tackle the opioid epidemic.”
— “Marshall has been an impressive new addition to the RAGA community, joining his colleagues from his very first day in office to fight federal overreach and restore state sovereignty. In his first year, Marshall has emerged as a dynamic leader and an ardent defender of the Constitution and the rule of law.”
The Republican Primary is June 5.
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During a tele-town hall held Monday night, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Huntsville) said the possibility of balancing the federal budget is up to American voters.
“Yeah, it’s possible,” Brooks said, “if the American people do a much better job than they have been doing of electing congressmen and senators who will vote for a balanced budget constitutional amendment that forces us to do the right thing on the one hand, or on the other hand, will vote for senators, congressmen – and I should add presidents in that list – who are more conscious of our financial limitations, thereby forcing us to make the tough decisions where we prioritize what we want to spend money on and those things of the lowest priority simply don’t get the money because we don’t have it.”
Brooks said many voters aren’t sending the right people to Congress.
“But unfortunately, the people across America, particularly in the major cities, the people that they’re sending to Washington, D.C., they are wholly and completely financially irresponsible,” he said, calling them “debt junkies.”
Brooks also entertained the idea of an Article 5 Convention, which would allow states to bypass Congress in order to amend the Constitution to include a balanced budget provision.
“If you know people who are in different states around the country, try to get them to talk to their legislators to get that resolution passed so that the states can bypass Congress,” he said.
Brooks and U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Hoover) were the only two members of Alabama’s congressional delegation who voted against Congress’s recent budget deal, which would add an estimated $320 billion to the deficit over the next decade. Brooks has called it the worst piece of legislation he has voted on since being elected to Congress, with no close second.
At his town hall meeting in Chickasaw last week, Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Fairhope) met with a room full of constituents who wanted to know why Nicholas Cruz was able to massacre 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and what could be done to prevent future mass shootings.
Byrne discussed the shooter’s mental state, as well as the FBI’s lack of response to repeated warnings about him, but he quickly pivoted to the years-old conversation about violent media and their ability to incite violence in their consumers, an issue about which there is significant debate.
“It bothers me every time I see one of these video games, or one of these movies or television shows, that we’ve allowed to get violence to the point of where it’s a fantasy,” Byrne said. “Violence has been fantasized and that feeds into the immature minds of young men.”
President Donald Trump raised the same concern last week during a meeting with state lawmakers.
“We have to do something about maybe what they’re seeing and how they’re seeing it. … We may have to talk about that also,” he said.
Cruz was evidently an avid player of violent video games. Last week, a neighbor told the Miami Herald that Cruz “escaped his misery” by playing violent video games.
“It was kill, kill, kill, blow up something, and kill some more, all day,” the neighbor said.
Byrne expressed that large media companies hold blame.
“We’ve got people who make billions of dollars in this country off of feeding that to our young people,” he said.
“I think that we’re going to have to have a hard look in Congress, and we already are, at what’s happening on all of these websites and all of these digital platforms like Google and Facebook and all of that,” Byrne said. “I think they have been irresponsible.”
Most notably, Byrne expressed what absolute free speech advocates fear more than anything.
“I think we do have a right in government to go to them and say ‘we’re going to regulate you so that you don’t harm American society and the American public,’” he said. “I do think there are things that we can legitimately, legally, and constitutionally do with some of these platforms that are basically putting stuff out there that’s like poison for young minds.”
The Supreme Court has decided that not all types of speech are guaranteed protection under the First Amendment, including obscenity, slander, and child pornography among others. Even so, Byrne acknowledged a tension between enacting such policies restricting violent media and the freedom of speech.
“I’m not for trampling first amendment rights any more than I’m for trampling second amendment rights,” he said.
Byrne discussed improving the NICS system (National Instant Criminal Background Check System), arming teachers who want to be armed and encouraging the FBI and other law enforcement to better share information as possible solutions, while arguing that he didn’t think stricter gun laws would have prevented the killing in Parkland.
Ultimately, Byrne said the problem is a societal and cultural one.
“We’re not talking about that because that is a symptom of the breakdown of American society, and we need to start rebuilding our society beginning with our families,” he told Yellowhammer.
“We’ve got to talk about how the glorification of violence, the fantasy of violence, is infecting young minds,” he said. “And it’s infecting young minds to the extent that some of them are willing to go off and do what this kid did.”
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CHICKASAW — After meeting with constituents at his 106th town hall this week, U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Fairhope) spoke with Yellowhammer News about a number of issues facing Congress, beginning with health care.
“I don’t think we’re done with health care,” Byrne said. “We repealed the individual mandate and we passed tax reform, but I think we’ve got a lot of other things we need to do.”
The congressman fielded at least one question from a constituent about the recent budget deal, which he voted for. Conservatives criticized Republicans in Congress for passing the deal because it significantly increased the deficit and debt, something they voted firmly against under President Barrack Obama.
Only two Republican members of Alabama’s Congressional delegation voted against the budget — U.S. Reps. Gary Palmer of the Birmingham area and Mo Brooks of Huntsville.
“I had great concerns,” Byrne said. “Gary Palmer and I had the same concerns, and he fell one way, I fell the other.”
The problem, he explained, was the U.S. Senate.
“Essentially when you have a Republican Senate that requires 60 votes and you’ve got to get a deal with the Democrats, you’re going to end up with bad deals,” he said. “In order for us to get the money we needed to adequately fund our military, we had to agree with a bad deal with the Democrats.”
Pressed on whether he voted for a bad deal, Byrne made a distinction.
“It’s a good deal for defense. It’s a bad deal for domestic discretionary,” he said.
Ultimately, Byrne said it was appeals from the administration that quelled his deficit concerns.
“Yes, talking to (White House Chief of Staff) Kelly and talking to Secretary Mattis convinced me that on balance, the better decision was to make sure that we protected America first,” he said.
Asked what he thinks is the most important piece of legislation passed during this session, Byrne didn’t equivocate — the National Defense Authorization Act.
“It was in that act that we turned America back around to making the appropriate choices to defend the country,” he said. “And we did it in such a way to where we actually went beyond what the president wanted us to do, but we knew it was the right thing to do.”
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Local and state governments in Alabama are not awaiting action from the federal government, as the nation scrambles to enact policies to prevent more mass shootings like the one that occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last week.
On Monday, the Hoover City Council unanimously approved a request from Mayor Frank Brocato to hire two new reserve school resource officers, an addition that will give Hoover’s school district a total of 28 officers.
“I think having armed, trained police officers in our schools ready to intervene is key,” Brocato told Yellowhammer News.
This move came a day before Rep. Will Ainsworth (R-Guntersville) introduced a bill in the state legislature that would authorize school administration personnel and teachers to carry pistols on campus, a proposal that Mayor Brocato does not support.
“I’m not able to embrace that suggestion at all. I think that’s an incredible burden to put on them,” he said.
“I just simply don’t have any comfort in that particular suggestion. I understand it. In some ways it sounds good and makes sense to have more and more people armed. I just don’t know that that is the position that we should put our teachers in.”
Leaders around the state are demonstrating unity in their desire to do something to better protect our schools, but they are not united on a solution.
Last week, Rep. Ainsworth told Yellowhammer News that providing an adequate number of officers at schools is neither financially nor logistically possible.
“The amount of security you would need to properly do that would be a lot,” he said.
Over the years, Hoover has prioritized school resource officers as a chief safety measure.
“This is a commitment the city has financially,” Brocato said. “We spend about $2 million a year towards this effort.”
The investment may be paying off. An online forum that ranks our nation’s schools and neighborhoods using data measures from various federal and private agencies ranked Hoover City Schools the ‘safest school district in Alabama’ and the fifth safest nationwide.
Mayor Brocato said he doesn’t have all the answers but expressed his confidence that equipping schools with officers will help keep students safe.
“These are Hoover police officers here. They’ve got the highest training you can possibly get. They understand the threat. They understand how to take care of the threat.”
Entrepreneurial skills lend themselves to all kinds of ventures in life, not just to making money.
They certainly lent themselves to Bart Smelley – you may recognize the name: Bart’s son Brad played tight end for the University of Alabama and his other son Chris was a quarterback at the University of South Carolina and played baseball at Alabama – who founded the Tuscaloosa-based Christian ministry organization Filter of Hope that creates household water filters for families living in poverty.
The story:
Before he started Filter of Hope, Smelley was a successful businessman who got involved with a ministry that did a lot of aid work with the people of the Dominican Republic. Commonly voiced among their needs for education and jobs was a desperate need for clean water.
“Bart is kind of a long-time entrepreneur, before he got into ministry. He just kind of got stuck on the clean water thing,” Davis Looney, director of campus partnerships for Filter of Hope, told Yellowhammer News.
Smelley’s clean water efforts originally began with facilitating installation of biosand filters, which simply mimic natural filtration processes, but those filters require significant attention and care.
Looking for something more utilitarian, he began using a method which takes a porous ceramic pot-like container, infuses it with various filtration mechanisms and allows the filtered water to seep through the pores.
“Again, it cleaned water really well, but they were ceramic. You take it up a mountain in the back of a truck with bad roads and the thing is going to be broken by the time you get up there and put it in a house with eight people,” Looney said.
Smelley finally came across the technology of hollow fiber membranes, primarily used for mass scale waste water treatment. Working with engineers, Smelley developed a filter particularly for filtering drinking water and obtained a patent for it.
All of this happened while Smelley was at his previous ministry, and when people began continuously approaching him about buying his filters to use in their ministries around the world, he decided to start his own.
“He saw that the filter itself had potential to do a lot more than what he was doing with it,” Looney said.
And so about four years ago, Smelley started Filter of Hope aiming to sell filters to any and everyone who seeks to do water-related initiatives around the world and to use those revenues to help fund Filter of Hope’s ministry efforts.
Over the years, churches, humanitarian organizations, and disaster relief groups have taken the filters to 56 countries around the world. A couple of hundred were sent to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico within the last year.
As for their own on-the-ground ministry efforts, Filter of Hope works in Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
Looney was brought on to establish a college-aged presence in the organization and to facilitate ministry trips. In 2016, 220 college students traveled to three different countries to deliver filters. Last year, Filter of Hope took about 530 students to do the same and this year, it’ll be about 850.
“In this next month, we’ll take students from Oregon State University all the way to South Florida,” Looney said.
“We want them to have an experience that’s beneficial to the people and country where they’re providing people with clean water, they’re sharing their faith, they’re equipping the local church to better serve their areas.”
Follow this link to learn more about Filter of Hope.
When a member of the Lee County Democrats reached out to her on New Year’s Day, Mallory Hagan thought it was the same old thing.
“I genuinely thought that they were going to ask me to endorse a candidate because I’ve been asked to do that before,” Hagan, former Miss America, said in an interview today with Yellowhammer News.
“She said ‘no no no, we want you to run.’”
Hagan launched her campaign for Alabama’s 3rd congressional district on February 6.
Unseating popular Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Saks), who was first elected in 2002, will be a long shot.
Rogers has been reelected every term since then by winning more than 60 percent of votes cast in most campaigns.
Hagan also committed a cardinal sin in Alabama politics last week: she was critical of the National Rifle Association.
In the shooting in Parkland, Florida, she called Rogers out for accepting money from the NRA.
The gun issue has been the subject of much of Hagan’s campaigning in the last week. She held a gun safety discussion yesterday in Auburn, where she toed that line of respecting her potential constituents’ conservative sensibilities on guns and freedom, while advocating a solution to mass violence.
“The problem that we’re having is nuanced,” she said. “It involves several different aspects of our society and of what’s available in our society. The most common thing that came up in last night’s discussion was access. We had licensed psychologists there, we had school counselors there, and the concept of mental health is a huge part of the conversation when it comes to access to guns. But all of it boils down to that, that we can too easily access firearms. We want to make sure that access to a firearm is a process that requires thought and is very deliberate.”
“If you ban a certain type of firearm, there’s only going to become a way to make something into something that it’s not already,” she said. (Think bump stocks.)
“That’s not the answer here. The answer is, if you want to own a firearm, an extensive background check and a waiting period. Those things are proven, a majority of Americans agree with that, and it’s something that needs to be across the board. That ease of access is, to me, the problem. It’s not the firearm itself.”
But Hagan is not relying upon her position on guns to propel her towards victory.
“I think my path to victory is being authentic. I stepped into this fire, if you will – the fire of politics – but I genuinely care about the people who live here and I genuinely care about hearing their concerns and as I said, all of us collectively coming together.”
Hagan also stressed what she did as Miss America among her qualifications.
“During my time with the Miss America organization, I really honed in my advocacy skills and really honed in the ability to understand how much it takes in order to get a law passed or a budget restored. I was on Capitol Hill quite a bit with the National Children’s Alliance. I lobbied there several times and ultimately was able to be a part of restoring the 2014 budget for our child advocacy centers across the country. Those are the types of things that I was most proud of during my time as Miss America, but also the types of things that have prepared me. Those are the skills that I’m bringing into this, as someone who cares about our kids, the type of world that we’re creating for them.”
For Hagan, it’s about the children.
“Every single policy issue that we have, and everything that comes up as a concern, ultimately is a concern of our kids.”
Regardless of her seemingly moderate positions, Hagan will have a tough time convincing conservatives in her east Alabama district to vote for a Democrat.
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The 7 Things You Should Be Talking About Today
1. Media is obsessing over Donald Trump’s response to the latest Mueller investigation news, not the news
— President Trump acknowledged that Russians meddled in the election but the media wants him to admit that there still might be collusion.
— The reality is that there has not been one piece of evidence or decision made by the special prosecutor that alleges any knowledge from anyone in Trump’s campaign or administration was involved.
2. Russian investigation has new developments, still no allegations of collusion
— 13 Russians were indicted for meddling in the election of 2016, starting in 2014, nor do they mention that most of the spending was done post-election.
— Rick Gates reportedly is close to a deal and testifying against Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort
3. Pretty much everyone missed the signs that the shooter in Parkland, Florida was a troubled soul
— The FBI missed warnings that Nikolas Cruz might attack, they failed to act on a call just weeks before Cruz attacked the school.
— The Florida Department of Children and Families investigated Cruz in 2016 after Snapchat posts showed him cutting his arms and saying he wanted to buy a gun. They still deemed him low risk.
4. Schools in a district in Texas and a district in Alabama allow their teachers to be armed; it’s been proposed in Alabama
— While Alabama considers a law to allow teachers to arm themselves, we often forget one school system (Franklin County) already does this.
— The Alabama law lets teachers and others to be trained as Reserve Deputy Sheriffs and carry firearms on school grounds.
5. More Alabama sheriffs are under fire over excess money from inmates’ food budget, it’s legal for now
— Alabama law allows sheriff’s to pocket money they do not spend feeding inmates. This obviously has led to some problems.
— One sheriff pocketed $110,000 dollars, another lent $150,000 to a now bankrupt used car dealership.
6. NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley puts his money where his mouth is to help black Alabamians
— Barkley told ESPN’s “First Take” that athletes should be giving back to their community.
— In late 2017, Barkley said he was pledging $1 million to minority startups because “black women really came out and supported Doug Jones” but he added, “That does not mean restaurants and hair salons, black women.”
7. “Black Panther” kills at the box office
— The latest Marvel film had the fifth-highest-grossing debut ever behind only “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” ”Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” ”Jurassic World” and “The Avengers.”
— The movie made $387 million worldwide.