The people's voice of reason
The people's voice of reason
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April 2, 2026 - AUBURN, Ala. - Dismissal proceedings are underway at AU against a high-profile Professor who has publicly criticized and disciplined administrator malfeasance. The charge is reportedly "repeated acts of insubordination" - i.e., this professor voiced inconvenient things effectively enough to disturb power brokers [grubbers] enjoying substantive wealth redistributions. Proceedings were initiated by Vini (Interim-to-Permanent) Nathan, an illegitimately serving Provost whose installa...
In the summer of 2016, retired Alabama state trooper Joe W. Champion decided he needed a level spot to park on his steep property on Lake Jordan in Elmore County. He ordered a 12 yard truckload of unsorted road gravel from a pit near the River Parkway Toll Bridge near Prattville to fill it in. As he spread it out, he looked through the gravels for interesting rocks, like agates and chunks of petrified wood. Every once in a while since then, he gave his new gravel addditional searches. About the...
On April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia, one week prior to almost certainly the most tragic Easter in Southern history. Joseph Johnston, Richard Taylor, and other Confederate commanders soon followed. After an unsuccessful four year effort to gain independence, the South faced a bleak future. The Union’s total war policy had added insult to injury by making war on non-combatants and property. Abraham Lincoln and U.S. Grant approved this strategy, which r...
"Defend the Guard" is proposed State-level legislation prohibiting overseas deployment of National Guardsmen to combat operations without formal congressional declaration of war. Authority to declare war is specifically assigned to Congress according to Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution. Since unconstitutional creation of the National Guard (further decaying State sovereignty) the federal government has wrongfully mobilized National Guard personnel without war declarations....
April is upon us... time for another Scholarship Banquet at the Marriott Grand National in Opelika [https://southernprepacademy.org/scholarship-banquet/] to showcase The Southern's recent accomplishments and prepare for next year's cohort designed to support promising students preparing for their future. Come hear the President's (Col. Corey Ramsby, pictured below at last year's banquet) update on moving forward out of SoPrep's 'Winter at Valley Forge'... rebuilding ranks and enrollment for the...
Rep. Troy Stubbs's House Bill 580 [HB580] promises to give Alabama public university governing boards more power over faculty. Some AU faculty forecast higher labour and legal expenses along with reduced grant revenue. Stubbs, a financial advisor from Wetumpka (on the Ways and Means Education Committee) filed HB 580 on March 5. The bill does three things: (1) strips faculty senates of any authority beyond "advisory" (2) establishes governing board control over every course taught at public...
Amy Howe's Supreme Court strikes down tariffs, SCOTUSblog (Feb. 20, 2026, 11:00 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/02/supreme-court-strikes-down-tariffs/ was among the first to report on the SCotUS ruling on Trump tariffs, widely viewed as unconstitutional by those with a fundamental understanding US tariff history. In their ruling on presidential power, the Supreme Court struck down disuniform tariffs President Trump wrongfully imposed via executive orders. The 6-3 vote asserted these...
The month of February venerates Valentine’s Day. A holiday (dare I type Holy Day?) evoking remembrance of executing Saint Valentine by 3rd Century Roman Emperor Claudius II for secretly marrying Christians. In similar oppressive zeitgeist, February is also known for annual Auburn University Board of Trustees [BoT] meeting in Montgomery, rather than in Auburn as usual. This year’s February BoT meeting fittingly fell on Friday the 13th and was uniquely wicked as the Trustees promoted a hos...
Recent military actions in Iran since my last SoPrep Report [https://www.alabamagazette.com/story/2026/02/23/opinion/southern-preparatory-academy-report-plowshares-to-swords-andamp-vice-versa/10169.html] illustrate yet another iteration of 'plowshares into swords' upon us. The Gazette column on Valley Forge Military Academy's closure in Pennsylvania, leaving The Southern https://southernprepacademy.org/ one of a dozen remaining prep schools in the nation with a Corps of Cadets (military)...
As Presidents Day approaches, we often ask, who was our greatest President? Perhaps we should ask a deeper question: by what criteria should our presidents be rated? Historians often rank the presidents, but being mostly left of center, they usually rate the based upon how much they expanded the scope of government, how many new government programs they ushered in, what social changes they forced upon the nation, and how many wars they brought us through. But are these the criteria that make a...
Back in 1968, former Stanford University Professor Paul R. Ehrlich wrote a controversial book titled “The Population Bomb.” Due to rapid worldwide population growth, many people were encouraged to bear fewer children and have smaller families to prevent catastrophic overcrowding and shortages of everything from food to living space. Since the book’s publication, fertility rates worldwide have actually dropped. People started to display signs of relief. But the drop has not been equal. It has bee...
After his presidential election as a sectional candidate in November 1860, Abraham Lincoln faced considerable resistance. The fledgling Republican Party, heavily influenced by protectionists from the defunct Whig Party, was seen as an economic threat to the agricultural South. [Protectionism—what Frederic Bastiat called “legal plunder” -- is detrimental to agriculture and high tariffs are paid primarily by consumers.] Many Republicans, closely connected to influential corporations, e.g., railr...
Some readers may recall previous columns chronicling the slow erosion of accountability specifically at AU and more generally across Alabama's politburo. The ‘rinse and repeat’ playbook cycle is a familiar pattern in many arenas across our State even more so in Lee County. Comrades Britt, Hubbard, Ivey, Richardson, Shelby, Tuberville, et al make claims where the record/documents affirm a different narrative. Institutions tasked with oversight, fail to look and/or act, further enabling pol...
My February Alabama Gazette column https://www.alabamagazette.com/story/2026/02/01/opinion/winter-at-valley-forge-academy/9988.html 'kicked off' posting SoPrep Reports. Citing Valley Forge Military Academy closing in Pennsylvania leaves The Southern one of a dozen remaining prep schools with a Corps of Cadets (military) program in the nation. We're blessed to have this gem right here in Sweet Home Alabama, located at Camp Hill just off US Hwy 280 in East Central Alabama. In our current...
Urging the U.S. Senate to ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), also called the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Admiral Robert Papp Jr. said not ratifying the treaty is “almost like having a winning lottery ticket that you don’t cash in.” Maybe. But before cashing in a lottery ticket (or anything else), one should always read the fine print on the back. And the LOST has a lot of fine print: 475 pages, 17 Sections, 320 Articles, 9 Annexes, and over 158,000 words. Draf...
In July, 2024, Germany’s federal office for information security issued an urgent warning to order all government agencies to disconnect all windows 11 computers from its network. Several other countries quickly followed suit. The EU launched an immediate investjgation. Despite not running Microsoft for 17 years, Bill Gates was dragged into an emergency PR meeting and blessed out with, “This is the stupidest decision in company history, because this isn’t just a privacy scandal. This is Micro...
Semiquincentennial of united colonies will begin with celebrating the 250th anniversary of declaring independence from British hegemony. Of the most gripping episodes in this hard fought victory, won a quarter millennium ago to break from the King of England was the 1777–8 winter campaign at Valley Forge; a crucible for Gen. Washington's newly minted Continental Army, strategically placed to keep watch over British forces in occupied Philadelphia. Enduring brutal cold, fatal disease, hunger, l...
After Abraham Lincoln’s death, his long-time friend Ward Hill Lamon noted how Lincoln’s deification “took place with showy magnificence.” Union Officer Donn Piatt stated, “I hear of him, I read of him in eulogies and biographies, but I fail to recognize the man I knew in life.” The American education system and a long line of “Court Historians” have kept the Lincoln Myth alive. Inconvenient truths about Lincoln are generally ignored and anyone who points them out is typically attacked and vi...
Federal agents recently arrested three activists after disrupting a Minnesota church service, charged with conspiracy to interfere with other people's constitutional right to worship. Headlines from this case (re)affirm a long-standing principle upheld by the US Supreme Court; our First Amendment civil right protects one’s right to speak, not the right to prevent others from speaking. That principle was designed to be uniformly applied across all levels of government and public institutions. O...
Response to the first AU Perspective piece suggests more regular submissions apropos. As President Roberts enjoys long overdue federal court decisions, his minions continue to decay this once noble university. I'll focus on the CoA [College of Agriculture] in this installment as I plan to address topics later this month on impressive Phi Beta Kappa efforts, School of Osteopathic Medicine, etc. more aligned with the Auburn Creed's letter and Spirit. Prof. Yi Wang was hired [2015] as an integral p...
How would we define our most dangerous criminals? Obviously they would be the ones who do the most destruction—like murder, terrorism, arson, kidnapping, chld molestation, piracy, etc. For such actions, we have strong laws and heavy penalties for people who commit them. Of these, who would be the most dangerous? Picking through the list and others not listed, the “most” might not be obvious. But we can use one definition to sort them out. Believe it or not, we have loopholes where certain types...
“The contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions may be wrong but they are the general opinions of the English nation.” London Times, November 7, 1861 The modern world reflects how Lincoln’s consolidation of power has produced the fruits of empire identified in the 1861 Londo...
Some missed Thanksgiving/Christmas columns this season appreciating lack of AI content/feel reading “Think” submissions to the Gazette. Not sure how to take that... further observation of poor wordsmith skills which have grown more endearing? Certainly not my human text superior to artificial. This piece emphasizes 400 years of silence in Old Testament biblical writings; prolog to Jesus enlightenment in His teachings and wisdom on the journey to Calvary/Pascha. Every January 6th or 19th, dep...
Four hundred five winters have passed since the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, 404 winters since they hosted the Wampanoag at that memorable Thanksgiving feast. As they drafted the Mayflower Compact that laid the foundation for the colonies, the states, and the nation that would follow them, they bequeathed a heritage that we should be proud of. But would the Pilgrims be proud of us? If William Bradford, their Governor and historian, could speak to us today, he might say something like this:...
What are our most sacred possessions? Obviously ourselves, our families, and our health would top the list. For most people, the most precious material possessions are their homes, especially for the ones who have lived in them for many years amd have spent much of their lives improving and fine-tuning them to specifically match their needs and lifestyles. For this reason, a home should NEVER be violated. Invading a person’s home is an absolute NO. Everybody has a RIGHT to protect his home f...
