 All the art and news that fits ... and then some: Connecting the dots and telling it like it is... January 17, 2008Locust Fork News and Journal RedesignPardon our progress, but at long last, the Locust Fork News and Journal redesign is up. This Moveable Type blog is no longer being updated. Bloggers and search engines should change their links ASAP. The new links are: The Locust Fork News The Locust Fork Journal We are still working on some things and figuring out how to manage this new interface, but right away you will notice some changes - and we trust improvements - to the site. For starters, the news page is now the main domain site page at LocustFork.Net. After almost three years of experimentation, it is now obvious that this page is the most popular page on the site, in part since it combines a fast and tasteful news layout with the blog interface like no one else on the Web. You will need to update your favorites, bookmarks or your homepage link in your Web browser if you use the Locust Fork World News as your start page. We will continue updating the locustfork.net/news page briefly to allow everyone to get changed over, but at some point in the next few days, that page will no longer be updated. As for the Locust Fork Journal, we have finally abandoned the Moveable Type software that was the hottest and best thing going three years ago, and moved into Word Press, we think the best blog software on the market right now. This will be good news to anyone who has had problems making comments in the past. We hope the comment section is now way easier to use and we look forward to reading and responding to your comments. We still reserve the right to delete anonymous and/or offensive comments and ban commenters who abuse this site to push a personal or political agenda. We are far more interested in constructive dialogue than flame throwing. As entertaining as that might seem to some folks, it's not our cup of tea. We are also about to be THE FIRST independent news and blog Website in Alabama and perhaps the American South to be sponsored on a full-time, year-around basis by local advertisers. While we have been a profitable news company from the outset and pioneered both the format of news sites and the funding mechanism behind it, these changes we are announcing today will help us continue this pioneering Web Press venture into the coming months and years. And it will help provide the resources to do ground breaking investigative journalism as well as entertaining literary news features with high quality digital photography. If you have thoughts or comments on the redesign, give our new comment section a try... For spammers and commenters, no more spam will be allowed on this site either under trackbacks or comments. Comments should be added to the new blog. This one is being disabled. Posted by Glynn Wilson at 12:52 PM | TrackBack (0) January 16, 2008White House Fights Navy Sonar LimitsFor the 717th time since he captured the United States presidency, George W. Bush has decided he is the "decider" in trying to override the law. The Bush White House is trying to overrule a federal court's decision limiting the Navy's use of sonar in training exercises off the East and West coasts by exempting the service from complying with two major environmental laws, the Coastal Zone Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. Environmentalists sued to limit the use of loud, mid-frequency sonar, which can harm whales and other marine mammals. The now say the Bush exemptions would be unprecedented and lead to a larger legal battle over the extent to which the military has to follow environmental laws, a battle I've been in on myself in the past back in the early 1990s when the Navy wanted to locate a high powered, low frequency nuclear pulse simulator called the EMPRESS II in the Gulf of Mexico to test ships hardening against an atmospheric nuclear blast. Joel Reynolds, the attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said the organization, which obtained the injunction against the Navy, would contest the White House orders in court. "The president's action is an attack on the rule of law," Reynolds said. "By exempting the Navy from basic safeguards under both federal and state law, the President is flouting the will of Congress, the decision of the California Coastal Commission, and a ruling by the federal court." In a court filing Tuesday, government attorneys said President Bush had determined that allowing the use of mid-frequency sonar in ongoing exercises off southern California was "essential to national security" and of "paramount interest to the United States." Federal District Court Judge Marie Florence-Marie Cooper ruled earlier this month in Los Angeles that the Navy's plan to limit harm to whales - especially deep-diving beaked whales that have at times stranded and died following Navy sonar exercises - were "grossly inadequate to protect marine mammals from debilitating levels of sonar exposure." A federal appeals court had previously ruled as well that the Navy plan was inadequate, and sent the case back to Cooper to set new guidelines for the exercise, according to a Washington Post analysis. In her ruling, she banned sonar use within 12 nautical miles of the coast and required numerous procedures to cut off sonar use when marine mammals are spotted. Following the ruling, the Navy indicated that the guidelines would render the exercise useless, despite the judge's opposite conclusion. The NRDC said the situation does not constitute an emergency, since the Navy is allowed to continue sonar training under Cooper's ruling. Navy officials have argued that they must step up sonar training because a new generation of "quiet" submarines has made it increasingly difficult to detect underwater intruders. The Navy says more than 40 nations now have relatively inexpensive diesel-powered submarines, which cannot be detected with passive sonar and can only be located with sonar that emits the loud blasts of sound. The Navy trains sailors in sonar use on an underwater range off southern California and wants to build another range off the Carolinas. White House Fights Ruling Limiting Navy's Use of Sonar Posted by Glynn Wilson at 06:22 PM | TrackBack (0) January 15, 2008Troubled Actor Brad Renfro Dies at 25We do not cover a lot of celebrity, tabloid-style news on this Web Press, but it's different if we know someone who pops up in the news, especially when that someone dies tragically and unexpectedly. Brad Renfro, the young actor from Knoxville, Tennessee who broke into the movies from a DARE theater program for troubled kids in the 1990s with a major role in "The Client," based on John Grisham's novel, was found dead Tuesday morning in Los Angeles. He was 25. The cause of death was not immediately determined, according to sources, but an autopsy was planned. Renfro had reportedly been partying with friends the night before, which is not surprising, since that's how he spent a lot of his time based on my experience knowing him in Knoxville from 1996-2000. He was a nice, soft spoken and even shy young man. As well as showing some talent as an actor, he was a decent guitar player who showed up for the Wednesday night weekly blues jam at Sassy Ann's on a regular basis. I played the drums several times in the same ad hoc combination, and partied with him a number of times, but never really got close to him. He came from a relatively poor and troubled home and could be quite distant when asked questions about himself and his family. I tried several times to do a formal interview with him but he always declined. Renfro's lawyer, Richard Kaplan, told the Associated Press he was on the road to recovery from addiction. "He was working hard on his sobriety," Kaplan said. "He was doing well. He was a nice person." Renfro recently completed a role in "The Informers," a film adaptation of a Bret Easton Ellis novel that stars Winona Ryder, Brandon Routh and Billy Bob Thornton, according to the AP. "Brad was an exceptionally talented young actor and our time spent with him was thoroughly enjoyable," Marco Weber, president of the film's production house, Senator Entertainment, said in a statement. Renfro had his share of run-ins with the law over the years. He served 10 days in jail in May 2006 after pleading no contest to driving while intoxicated and guilty to attempted possession of heroin after being arrested on Skid Row while attempting to buy heroin from an undercover agent in 2005. He was placed on probation in January 2001 and ordered to pay $4,000 for repairs to a 45-foot yacht he and a friend tried to steal in Florida in August 2000, the month I left Knoxville for New Orleans. I was told a wave of crack addictions hit Knoxville about that time and destroyed the lives of a number of talented musicians from East Tennessee. He was arrested again in May 2001 and charged with underage drinking, violating the terms of his probation, and was ordered into alcohol rehabilitation the following March. In 1998, Renfro was charged with possession of cocaine and marijuana. He avoided jail time in that case due to a plea deal, aided in part by his sponsors in the DARE program and in Hollywood. His other movie credits included "Sleepers" and "Deuces Wild," as well as "Apt Pupil" and "The Jacket." AP: Troubled Actor Brad Renfro Dies at 25 Posted by Glynn Wilson at 11:46 PM | TrackBack (0) January 13, 2008Crazy In Alabama?
by Glynn Wilson Have you ever wondered why so many movies depicting the South also contain an underlying crazy theme? I guess that's what they think of us in New York and LA. One of my favorites is Crazy in Alabama, featured on HBO recently. It's a comedy-drama released in 1999 written by Mark Childress, based on his own 1993 novel of the same name. It stars Melanie Griffith as an abused wife who flees small town life in the South for California to become a movie star - with her dead husband Chester's head in a hat box. Meanwhile back in Alabama, her nephew, the story's narrator, has to contend with a racially-motivated murder involving a corrupt sheriff during the Civil Rights Era. It's an interesting model for any would-be Southern writer thinking of trying to get New York editors interested in stories that will also play well on the big screen. I've been mining the movie field of late thinking of stories to tell myself. One of my favorite books written by a Southern author and then made into a movie is The Prince of Tides, based on a 1986 novel by Pat Conroy. It tells the story of the narrator's struggle to overcome the psychological damage inflicted by his dysfunctional childhood in South Carolina and stars Nick Nolte as a football coach and Barbra Streisand as a New York psychiatrist. While changes to the film upset some Conroy purists, it was a box office smash and put Streisand on the map as a director. It was also recently featured on HBO. Conroy is probably the premier Southern author of the late 20th century whose work has been both financially successful and also acclaimed in literary circles, unlike John Grisham's work, which is relegated to the legal thriller genre. In spite of the film's flaws, The Prince of Tides does capture both the character of the South and New York in the introspective times of the 1980s, making it an irresistible tale that will last - like Robert Penn Warren's All The King's Men. But neither of those movies is what draws me to the keyboard tonight. I doubt if it qualifies for the National Film Registry, but another innocent little tale caught my attention today. Sometimes when the cable offerings are weak, it's worth stopping on the story of Doc Hollywood, or Dr. Ben Stone, played by Michael J. Fox, not my favorite actor by a long-shot.
But in this one, which reminds me of a story from my own life, he plays a hotshot young doctor who longs to leave the drudgery of the emergency room and finally leaps at his chance at more money and less work on the West Coast. But along the way he gets off the Interstate and smashes his 1956 Porsche Roadster into a judge's fence and is forced into community service at the small town of Grady, South Carolina's general hospital. There he meets and falls in love with an ambulance driver named Viloula but called "Lou," sexy and smart and played by Julie Warner, who has in incredible nude scene emerging from one of Grady's famous fishing lakes. The town is also known for its squash, which the mayor uses to explain a slice of life in his attempt to lure the doc to stay in town - as he bets him $10 that he will not score with Lou. The story is perhaps just a bit too cute for serious movie critics. But it reminds me of a time when I was 23-years-old and just out of college working in a small town at my first professional newspaper reporting job. It was 1984. The town was Bay Minette, Alabama. The paper was The Baldwin Times. Upon graduating from the University of Alabama in Bear Bryant's last year, I had lofty goals of one day working for a great newspaper like the New York Times. But in those days, the mobility of college students was far more limited than it is today. I advised students at Loyola New Orleans from 2000-2002 who were able to make the leap to New York, DC and LA. But being poor and from Alabama during Ronald Reagan's first term as president, and George Wallace's last term as governor, some of the best opportunities to break into newspapering came working for weeklies in small towns across the South. The movie about Grady reminds me of those times, not because the stories are totally similar, but because some of the experiences and emotions ring true of being a young person trying to decide whether to make a life in a small town, where the living can be easy but perhaps not so lucrative, or making a break for the big city life and the big time bucks. I also have to laugh at all the machinations people in small Southern towns will go to trying to lure young professionals to stay. This kind of scene plays out, still, in many towns across the country, as the out migration of the young and educated continues apace today. It is as true of Alabama today as it was in 1984, I'm sure, and can lead to some incredibly funny stories. There's not enough space and time here to tell them all. Maybe one day if I get around to writing a memoir. Let's just say I had a number of experiences with young women there, like Lou, who either wanted to seduce me to stay in Bay Minette - or to hook up with someone who could get them out. I'm thinking of one particular young woman now about my age at the time who openly displayed a crush on me. I won't reveal her name. She may still be there - or maybe she got out. One night she displayed this crush a little too openly at a Christmas party, held at the Holly Hills Country Club, when, after a few too many glasses of wine, she tripped on the hem of her long dress and fell right into my arms. It was a classic scene of a drunken Southern debutante right out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald or Tom Wolfe novel. As she fell toward me - and I still recall the scene in real-life slow motion, in part probably due to my own inebriation - the top of her bright red dress slipped down off her left breast, fully exposing the nipple for virtually everyone at the party to see. It bordered on a scandal, since she also happened to be the chamber of commerce president's daughter, making her the perfect ambassador to try grabbing me for life. Perhaps like Doc Hollywood I should have more actively pursued that road, but there were complications. Now at 50, do I harbor any regrets about leaving small town life there? Only one. And it happened many years later. In 2002, back when it was announced that the Alabama governor's race results came down to 3,000 votes in Bay Minette, I went back there from New Orleans for The New York Times - to investigate the election. But when Siegelman conceded, I was pulled out of Bay Minette and sent back to New Orleans. Knowing what I know now, since the Jill Simpson affidavit came to light, I wish I had stayed and worked my sources. I learned how to cover a courthouse and develop sources there, in that courthouse. It was the best school in the world for getting hands-on experience in that world, in more ways than one. Don't even ask about the secretaries in those days. But of course it takes time and money to really work a story like the election, just as it takes time and money to work up a full scale relationship with a fine smart woman - in a small town or anywhere else. And in the news game, there ain't never enough time - or money. Life blogs on… Now that I think about it, there's plenty of craziness to go around and write about in this world. And it's not all in the South. I'm thinking now of a crazy New York editor, a woman, in part a figment of my imagination. And I'm also thinking, if I had stayed in Bay Minette, either time, none of this would have ever happened - the good or the bad. Perhaps there is no stopping fate in any event - if there is such a thing. I'm not convinced. Life is not like a box of chocolates or cherries. It's more like a full-blown meal. How good it turns out to be any given time is complicated and turns on choices and chance, luck and timing. It can be as scrumptious as the fried green tomatoes in mushroom sauce at Jacquimo's in New Orleans, or as spare as the BLT at the drugstore in Bay Minette. And I'm convinced, politics and government do matter - in all kinds of ways many people don't even seem to fathom, certainly not in a crazy place like Alabama. Maybe you have to be a little crazy to try to break out - or to try making a difference here. Maybe you have to be a little crazy to try making art - or a living - as a writer in this world, if you didn't start out in it rich. I can only wish good luck to the striking writers in New York and LA. I hope they win that fight to get part of the proceeds from sales on the Web Press. One of these days maybe I'll get a share of my own in that world, after we get rid of George W. Bush. I understand Childress did it while working a day gig at Southern Living, not exactly a bastion of great journalism. Long live the movies… Posted by Glynn Wilson at 02:10 AM | TrackBack (0) January 09, 2008Elvis Spotted in East Birmingham
Posted by Glynn Wilson at 11:22 PM | TrackBack (0) January 08, 2008Severe Weather Threatens Net ConnectionsA line of severe thunderstorms continued making its way across the South into Tuesday night as the New Hampshire primary votes were coming in, causing some power and Internet outages. Experts say it's best to shut down high speed broadband modems when lightening passes overhead. Earlier in the day, the same storms fed by warm weather continued spinning off unusual January tornadoes, killing a man in Arkansas and carrying a cow close to a mile, according to the Associated Press. More Tornadoes Interrupt A Warm January Meanwhile in science, scientists have discovered genetic information that helps explain how monarch butterflies find their way from Canada to winter nesting grounds in the mountains of Mexico in a study published online Tuesday in the PLoS Biology Journal and the Public Library of Science, which found that the butterflies' biological clocks help them use the sun as a compass. Inner Clock May Lead Monarch Butterflies Posted by Glynn Wilson at 11:13 PM | TrackBack (0) January 07, 2008Guest Blog: Fuller Makes Siegelman's Case for Himby Roger Shuler Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman probably thought U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller never would do him a favor. But Fuller has inadvertently done just that. The point of Fuller's recent 30-page memorandum opinion was supposed to be that Siegelman should remain in federal prison pending appeal. But the opinion does just the opposite. In fact, Fuller actually makes Siegelman's case for him--showing that, under the law and the facts, Siegelman must be released from prison pending appeal. How could a federal judge, someone you assume to be rather intelligent, make such a gaffe? My only explanation is this: People who are attempting to cover up wrongdoing are prone to step in doo-doo. And if you actually read Fuller's opinion with a somewhat critical eye, it becomes clear that the judge has stepped in doo-doo big time with this one. And that makes me think he is doing his darnedest to cover up a sham of a prosecution. With two recent posts, we have shown that Fuller's own memo proves that Siegelman, by law, should be released from prison pending appeal. And it's not even a close call. Fuller worked up a 30-page memo in an apparent effort to make this look like a complicated matter. Well, it isn't. All you need to do is read roughly three pages of his opinion, conduct some quick legal research and . . . presto, you see that Judge Mark Fuller is blowing some serious smoke. Here's an easy way to sum it up: * The key question is: Does the appeal raise a substantial question of law or fact that, if found in the defendant's favor, would result in reversal or an order for a new trial. * Fuller's own words show there is a substantial question of law on both key charges--federal-funds bribery and honest-services mail fraud. * On bribery, Fuller indicates there is some question whether 11th Circuit law requires a quid pro quo, a "something-for-something" arrangement, in order to have a conviction. And as we have shown from a 2007 case--U.S. v. McCarter, 219 Fed. Appx. 921--there is no question about it. The language in McCarter is clear: "To prove a defendant is guilty of bribery, the government must prove there was a quid pro quo--a specific intent to give or receive something of value in exchange for an official act." And McCarter is based on a 1999 U.S. Supreme Court decision, so its grounded in pretty solid stuff. So there you have it: The judge's own words show there is a question of law that should be decided in Siegelman's favor. Score: Siegelman 1, Fuller 0. * On honest-services mail fraud, Fuller indicates that he has no clue what he is talking about. He states that there is some question whether a quid pro quo is required for a mail-fraud conviction. And as we have shown, a quid pro quo has nothing to do with mail fraud. It is not remotely an element of the crime. Once again, the judge's own words show there is a question of law that should be decided in Siegelman's favor. Score: Siegelman 2, Fuller 0. * As for questions of fact, all facts are in question because there is no transcript of the case--and there won't be one for at least another two months. Fuller spends almost 16 pages of his memo reciting his version of facts in the case. But those are not facts, in a legal sense, at all. And one can only wonder what dark crevice he pulled them from. Score: Siegelman 3, Fuller 0. I would say Siegelman is pitching a shut out, and Fuller is toast. Does this mean the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals will be releasing Siegelman from prison any moment? Of course not. That court is made up of judges, and the whole point of this blog is to show that judges often are the last people you want to trust with the law. And for all I know, the 11th Circuit might consist of justices whose respect for the law may be no greater than Fuller's. But if the law still means anything in the Age of Rove--and that's a mighty big if--Don Siegelman should be out of prison pretty darn soon. Mark Fuller's own words prove it. Originally posted at LegalSchnauzer.com Locust Fork News and Journal editor and publisher Glynn Wilson is still in holidaze vacation mode, thinking about a novel idea... Posted by Glynn Wilson at 10:51 PM | TrackBack (0) January 04, 2008US Joins Russia and China on Anti-Privacy Nation ListAs if there were not enough evidence already out there that the Unites States is NOT the most free country in the world under president and would be king George W. Bush, in contrast to the public statements of U.S. politicians, public perception and conventional wisdom, Privacy International now provides definitive evidence in the form of a report called the International Privacy Ranking. This is a national disgrace. Wake up people!
Key Findings on the U.S.
Links Harper's: What do Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush and Hu Jintao have in common? Wired Magazine: World's Top Surveillance Societies The 2007 International Privacy Ranking Report Posted by Glynn Wilson at 12:57 PM | TrackBack (0) Reserve this banner ad spot for only $99 a week, $299 a month or $2,999 a year.
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