Three columns at Yellowhammer News, by Quin (link to the full columns in the headlines below);

Asset forfeiture: inherently abusive, and awful in Alabama

On one of the few issues on which Attorney General Jeff Sessions is dead wrong, his home state of Alabama allows and even encourages the wrong to reach epic proportions.

The issue is “civil asset forfeiture,” the practice in which law-enforcement agencies seize property of those accused of a crime – and then, in practice make it very difficult for the owner to regain his own property even if never found guilty of the crime.

Sessions, going against major trends among conservative opinion leaders, strongly supports asset forfeiture as a “key tool that helps law enforcement defund organized crime, take back ill-gotten gains, and prevent new crimes from being committed.”

He issued an order earlier this year re-expanding the use of asset forfeiture by federal agents, while supposedly strengthening safeguards against abuse of the practice.

Yet, as several recent articles at al.com have shown, those abuses can be mind-boggling, especially in Alabama. ….


Byrne advances bill to help small businesses

U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne of Baldwin County achieved his latest in a string of legislative victories Tuesday afternoon as the House passed a pro-jobs, pro-small-business bill he authored.

The Save Local Business Act, which passed 242-181, would roll back an Obama-era regulation issued by the National Labor Relations Board. Byrne had described the regulation as a “vague and expansive joint employer standard,” and said his law would restore the pre-regulation situation that “provides certainty for local businesses and their employees.”….

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Sue Bell Cobb says new book isn’t campaign tome

Former Alabama Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb, running as a Democrat for governor next year, has a new twist on the common practice of major candidates publishing a book just as their campaigns start.

Today, New South Books announced the publication of There Must Be a Witnessa book about “child advocacy” co-written by Cobb and former Anniston Star reporter Nick Cenegy.

Traditional “campaign books” are either puffed up candidate biographies (or autobiographies) or erstwhile campaign issue platforms masquerading as reform treatises. This one is a little of both, but not entirely either one — sort of a “hybrid-plus.”

The reason it’s different, Cobb told me, is that “this was not written in anticipation of the campaign.” Instead, she said, she and Cenegy began writing the book four years ago, as a project growing out of her work on the board of the advocacy group Alabama Children First…..

 

 

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