Pryor's appointment gets court clearance
By Staff
Bob Ingram, Alabama Scene
MONTGOMERY---The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that President Bush did not act improperly when he appointed former Alabama Atty. Gen. Bill Pryor to that court during a recess of the U. S. Senate.
By a vote of 9-2, the court ruled that the Pryor appointment was constitutional. However, the jurists who voted for the seating of Pryor noted that the U. S. Supreme Court could review the decision.
U. S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass, the most outspoken opponent to the Pryor appointment, said he disagreed with the ruling but was pleased that the door was now open for the Supreme Court to consider recess appointments.
Moore called the high court "hypocritical" for not hearing his case while agreeing to hear two others of a similar nature.
Venable, a former member of the Auburn University Board of Trustees, says he expects to be back in the House chamber when the Legislature returns to Montgomery early in 2005. He chairs the powerful House Rules Committee.
The long-time lawmaker is owner and publisher of the Tallassee Tribune.
Several weeks ago the ASU Board…after indicating it would buy into a new program to test prospective teachers…abruptly reversed its position and rejected the proposal.
But after taking a terrible pounding in the press for its reversal the same trustees did an about face and have approved the proposal.
The Montgomery Lions Club, the long time sponsor of the event, has confirmed that the lack of a title sponsor for the game may mean an end to the event.
One of the major contributing factors to the demise of the game…if it in fact is gone forever…has been the proliferation of bowl games in recent decades. With so many teams playing in post-Christmas bowls, this drastically reduced the number of "name" players who could play in the Blue-Gray game.
Because of this, Mobile's Senior Bowl…played well after the bowl games…stole most of the luster from the Blue-Gray Classic.
The new inductees are Vera Hall of Sumter County and Juliette Hampton Morgan of Montgomery.
Hall, while little known in Alabama, was an internationally acclaimed blues and black folk singer. Many of her recordings are now preserved in the Library of Congress.
Morgan, a Montgomery librarian, led a lonely and persecuted life as a white Civil Rights activist from the mid-1930s until her death in 1957 at the age of 42. She was a prolific writer of letters to newspapers, and her unpopular views on racial segregation resulted in constant harassment including threats and cross-burnings in her yard. Appropriately she will be honored during the 50th anniversary year of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which she strongly supported.
