An Alabama legislator has a solution to the controversy over execution by lethal injection. Republican Cam Ward wants to bring back the electric chair. The proposal would let Alabama use the electric chair for executions if the state is unable to get the drugs needed for a lethal injection. State senator Ward of Alabaster filed the bill ahead of the legislative session that begins in March. Alabama switched from the electric chair to lethal injection in 2002 as the state's primary form of capital punishment. However, Alabama has not executed an inmate since 2013 because of a drug shortage.
The White House is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act by earmarking $50 million to restore key civil rights areas around the nation. A-P-R’s Stan Ingold has more…
The president's budget includes money for the national historical trail from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, which commemorates in part the "Bloody Sunday" attack by police on civil rights demonstrators. Their march was portrayed in the Oscar-nominated film "Selma." The attack was a boost to the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which helped take away some barriers to minority voting. The money for site restoration is part of a $4 trillion budget sent by President Barack Obama to Congress on Monday. The plans still have to be approved by the Republican-controlled House and Senate. Obama plans to visit Alabama in March to commemorate the anniversary.
A Federal court stay on same sex marriage to set to end on Monday. But, one couple in Mobile doesn’t want to wait. Attorney David Kennedy is asking Federal judge Callie Grenade to lift her stay which is delaying a decision that Alabama’s same sex marriage ban is unconstitutional. Kennedy is representing the Mobile couple who challenged the ban in the first place. The three-judge panel from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals set the stage of ending Alabama’s ban by denying Attorney General Luther Strange's request for a stay. Alabama wants to keep Granade's order on hold until the U.S. Supreme Court takes up the issue.
The suspense is ending today for sports fans of the University of Alabama, Auburn, and colleges across the country. Today is signing day when high school athletes officially decide who they’re playing for in the Fall. The final jostling and negotiating typically generates a lot of last minute buzz as the signed letters of commitment come over a fax machine. BJ Millican is the Assistant Sports Director at WVUA in Tuscaloosa. He says it is not uncommon for players to change their mind at the last minute.
“You know every school that is on these prospects are continuing to try to flip them and get them to change their mind so uh it’s a constant battle even up until the last minute before they sign that form and fax it in.”
The University of Alabama is expected to have the top class in college football for the fifth year in a row. And Auburn will probably close with one of the best players in the country, Byron Cowart.
