Posts by Allen Mendenhall

One suspects that special interests – the defenders of CON laws, the education establishment, the AHSAA – will prove less accommodating than Kris Kringle. But then, serious policy reform was never supposed to be easy. It requires not the magic of Christmas morning, but the harder work of persuasion, legislation, and sustained political will. 

Of this much I’m certain: Legislative oversight of the textbook process has become not merely advisable but necessary. Gov. Tommy Tuberville, when his apparent time comes, will surely bring a much-needed housecleaning to such affairs.

What remains of Christmas past is this: the feeling of those weeks, compressed now into something both smaller and larger than they were. How the waiting itself became the thing we waited for. How we rushed toward events that we also wanted never to arrive, because arrival meant ending, and ending meant the long, ordinary months that followed.

At Christmastime, we watch “The Sound of Music” because we need to believe that these small rebellions matter, that Maria and the Captain and those seven children made it over the mountains to freedom, that somewhere in the darkness, edelweiss still blooms, small and white and impossibly brave.

When European governments approach us, hands extended, seeking aid or additional funds for Ukraine, we should politely note that one cannot simultaneously sanction and supplicate.

Lee had that rarest of gifts: an ear for authentic Southern idioms and an eye for telling details. Even in these earlier efforts, she wrestles with how to render a setting that was simultaneously her home and her subject of critique. She loved the South – one cannot read her work and doubt that – but she loved it clear-eyed, without the sentimentality that has ruined lesser fiction.

Perhaps corporate governance isn’t boring after all; it’s where values meet the balance sheet.

The state that once changed the nation’s moral direction can do so again – but only if it shakes off its guilty conscience and reclaims the moral confidence of its own history. Alabama doesn’t need to atone forever. It needs to lead. 

Jenny has managed to bottle something more than mere jelly. She’s captured a certain quality – call it care, call it craft – that has become increasingly rare in our expedient age.

The SPLC has, in my view, spent decades inflicting harm upon this country, weaponizing the language of civil rights to silence legitimate dissent and stigmatize conventional conservatism. That injury will not be quickly undone.

The state that once sent Hugo Black to the Supreme Court and produced towering figures in America’s constitutional drama now languishes in civic educational mediocrity, trailing states we should regard as intellectual inferiors.

This capacity for indignation over minor inconveniences is perhaps our greatest luxury. To come from a place so organized, so systematized, so relentlessly functional that a gate change feels like chaos? That’s not a character flaw. It’s extraordinary fortune.

They had shared this experience: the hope, the heartbreak, the inexplicable loyalty to something larger than themselves. They had learned that to love anything – a team, a person, a dream – is to accept the risk of loss.

Perhaps this is the lesson golf was trying to teach me all along: that love, true love, means stepping back far enough to let people become themselves.

Ultimately, this was never about attacking Regions Bank. It was about helping the institution become even better. That it chose to listen, learn and adapt speaks well of its leadership and augurs favorably for its future relationship with the communities it serves.

A ninth-place finish is cause for measured satisfaction, not complacency. The real test lies ahead: whether we have the resolve to build upon this foundation and create an educational system worthy of our considerable promise.

The Yellowhammer State’s failure to translate electoral supremacy into policy coherence merely exemplifies a nationwide malady: the hollowing out of conservative governance where conservative rhetoric abounds.

If the law is the architecture of liberty, then community is the mortar that holds its stones together.

While other Republican-led states have taken comprehensive action to protect their citizens and pension funds from ideologically driven investment practices, Alabama has fallen dangerously behind in safeguarding its financial interests.

August persists, yet autumn whispers its arrival with the subtlety of a lover’s first confession.

The Trump administration will provide at least some temporary relief from political debanking.... But Democrats have discovered that debanking works like a charm for silencing political opponents.

If banks are going to enjoy the immense privileges that come with government backing, they must also accept that they cannot operate as if they are entirely free of accountability.

If we are serious about building safer workplaces and more successful companies, we need to stop asking how diverse our teams look and start asking how well our people work.

Here’s the dirty little secret: many Christian colleges have become more hostile to traditional Christianity than their secular counterparts.

Regions has the chance to become the bank that Alabamians genuinely want and deserve: one that serves customers without political litmus tests, invests based on sound financial principles rather than social agendas, and treats all people with equal dignity and respect.

The time has come to expect more from Regions – and from any institution that benefits from Alabama’s trust while betraying Alabama’s values. 

It’s time for Regions to abandon political posturing.