The University of Alabama has experienced unprecedented growth over the past few years and not one of us has been spared the growing pains. Crimson Ride buses packed to claustrophobia-inducing levels...

Election-year pandering by state politicians is not usually newsworthy, but a recent effort to “reinforce” religious freedoms in Alabama schools by state Sen. Gerald Allen (R-Tuscaloosa) is so hopelessly...

The Medicaid expansion debate in Alabama has centered almost exclusively on cost concerns and states’ rights arguments, and Gov. Robert Bentley did not depart from these predictable talking points in...

There is a lot to like about The University of Alabama in the fall. The campus surges with electricity and pulses to the rhythm of our stadium shakers as every week and weekend is scripted by the rise...

Legendary Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: “If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought – not free...

How much is your college degree worth? By extrapolating the “cost of attending” figures from The University of Alabama’s website and assuming the trend of rising education costs will continue, in-state...

I wrote this on an airplane napkin, as my handwriting – jerked and jolted by turbulence – meandered and bounced like an ECG graph or a lie detector. I was trying to keep still, but simply couldn’t...

I was born and raised in New England, and you can probably tell. But despite my admitted Yankee tendencies, I have loved my time here in Tuscaloosa. My college experience has confirmed most of the positive...

Any credible policymaker, regardless of party affiliation, will concede that legislating environmental and energy initiatives is a balancing act. On the one hand – with over 23 million Americans unemployed,...

The Collar family of Wetumpka, Ala., is mourning the loss of their son Gil this week after the freshman was gunned down by a campus police officer at the University of South Alabama on Oct. 6. There is...

In case you haven’t heard, Roy Moore is seeking to reclaim his former position as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court next month. Besides raising fundamental questions about the rationale behind...

My generation has known nothing but war. We’ve grown up expecting to see updated body counts in the newspapers every day for over a decade. Who was killed today? Where was he from? Declaring war and...

According to a recent Gallup poll, about 46 percent of Americans don’t believe in evolution. Apparently, the Alabama Department of Education isn’t quite sold on it yet either. Besides claiming that...

For over 350,000 Chicago schoolchildren, vacation has never seemed so politically charged. While the economy continues to limp towards something resembling recovery, the Chicago Teachers’ Union spurned...

Do unborn children have rights? It depends on who you ask. According to the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, a zygote is endowed with some legal protections as a “child in utero” from conception –...

No one likes being told how to spend his or her money. Americans are an especially individualistic lot and this libertarian streak runs through most of us, regardless of whatever specific political sympathies...

Anyone who has ever built a sandcastle at the beach is familiar with the two main oceanic forces that work to bring about the castle’s destruction: the intermittent, forceful collisions of powerful waves...

In our society, sports coaches and university administrators are in positions of incredible power. They are charged with the shaping of young minds and are called to mold impressionable students into men...

Americans love their cars. I’m not entirely sure whether this bond was forged out of some vague sense of American individualism or perhaps was simply the offspring of our nation’s industrial genius,...

As the nation watched and waited, years of research, debate and speculation came to a head last month when the Supreme Court finally issued a ruling on National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB)...

Earlier this month, three Auburn students were gunned down at an off-campus pool party by Desmonte Leonard, a man who had already been convicted of carrying a firearm without a permit in 2008. In light...

If I were to tell you a recent poll had pinpointed one issue involving Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney that would cause almost 30 percent of the electorate “concern,” what might you guess...

When grassroots activists from Canada began protesting corporate greed in New York’s Zuccotti Park last September – initiating what came to be known as the “Occupy Wall Street” movement – they...

Less than a year after House Bill 56 shocked the national consciousness (and drew a federal lawsuit) with its stringent and unprecedented anti-illegal immigration measures, lawmakers in the state of Alabama...