Joey Kennedy

Joey Kennedy, a Pulitzer Prize winner, writes a column each week for the Alabama Political Reporter. You can email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter.

A legacy for the ages

In a column on Wednesday, Alabama Political Reporter Editor-in-Chief Bill Britt noted that Gov. Kay Ivey’s time is now to do big things for Alabama. That may well come to pass. Ivey, Britt noted, wants to do great things, and among those great things are overhauling “significant portions of the state’s education system,” opening three … Continued

January 31, 2019

Boysplaining bad behavior

Here’s what’s substantially missing in most of the talk surrounding the young white teens from Northern Kentucky’s Covington Catholic High School accused of mocking a Native American leader in Washington, D.C., this week after they attended a pro-life march: The red MAGA hats. It is true — these are really only boys, albeit, privileged white … Continued

January 24, 2019

Let’s put a wall around petty Donald Trump

How can one quantify how petty our infant-acting president, Donald J. Trump, really is? Trump is so dim, he actually may be an unwitting tool of Russia. Hard to believe somebody as thin-skinned and brain-challenged as Trump could be working for the Russians intentionally. Yet, he may be doing that, too. Evidence looks strong. Trump … Continued

January 18, 2019

“Cussing” the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute

Leaders of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute ought to be ashamed. They have tarnished the institute’s standing in a way that may be hard to recover from. Last fall, the board of the BCRI voted to honor author, activist, and scholar Dr. Angela Davis, a Birmingham native, with its Fred L. Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award. … Continued

January 10, 2019

Stupid is as stupid does

I hate new years. Not because it’s another year. That’s going to happen, regardless of what we might want. The calendar days end, and the new calendar days begin. We can’t stop it. I hate new years because of the silly expectations. We expect the new year to encourage us to exercise more, or to … Continued

January 3, 2019

We don’t matter, because we don’t want to

I generally don’t make New Year’s resolutions. I have a few times, but not too often. The last New Year’s resolution I made was in 2012, about this time of the year, just before the world became 2013. I had just seen Les Miserables, the big-budget movie musical, and I loved it. I’ve seen the … Continued

December 28, 2018

A real “enemy of the people”

I’m pretty fortunate, in that I’ve got two great careers. I write for this great news organization each week, continuing the mostly political columns about Alabama I wrote for a more than a quarter of a century for The Birmingham News, back when The News was a newspaper. I also write the monthly back-page column … Continued

December 20, 2018

Do what’ll really help: Expand Medicaid

We’ll certainly see whether state Sen. Greg Reed’s support of the new Medicaid Integrated Care Network is worthy and that the program does what is promised. Let’s hope it does, but pardon my cynicism, because any health care program these days that promises to do more for millions of dollars less falls under my “too-good-to-be-true” … Continued

December 13, 2018

Protest is an American right, deserves respect

Overkill is probably a bad word to use in this context, but it’s accurate. Law enforcement is out in huge numbers to quell protests that continue in Hoover in the wake of the literal overkilling of Emantic “E.J.” Bradford Jr. on Thanksgiving night. The resources being used to divert or “contain” the generally small and … Continued

December 7, 2018

Three things. Three ugly things

Three events that should worry us this week: HOOVER SHOOTING Transparent. That’s a pretty clear term for most of us. A dictionary definition is equally transparent: “Open, frank, candid.” But to many (most?) governments, “transparent” is just a word. Hoover officials have been vowing transparency since they learned that 21-year-old Emantic Bradford Jr. was not … Continued

November 29, 2018