Alabama

I was 11 years old in 1997 when Geoffrey West shot and killed my mother, Margaret Parrish Berry, while robbing the Attalla gas station where she worked. Mr. West was sentenced to death. His execution date is set for tonight, September 25. He is due to be killed by nitrogen gas. But I do not want the state of Alabama to kill him. That won’t bring my mother back; it will only add to the pain I have lived with since the night she was shot. I believe there is a better way.My mother was the person I loved most in the world. Her absence, and the senseless way she died, has cast a long shadow over my life. Even so, the weeks since I learned that Governor Ivey set an execution date for Mr. West have been some of the most unsettling I can recall. My dearest wish is to meet with Mr. West.

On Tuesday, I reported that Congresswoman Terri Sewell, a Democrat representing Alabama's 7th District, will not hold in-person meetings at her DC office with unvaccinated individuals. "PLEASE NOTE: Proof of COVID-19 vaccinations are required for every in-person or in-office meeting with the Congresswoman or with Staff,” read the signature on an email I got ahold of from one of her staffers. You can read that story here. Of course, I gave her office the chance to comment on the piece before it went to publication. I emailed her press secretary my questions with a two-hour deadline, and the piece was not posted until three hours later. The story was picked up by Fox News shortly thereafter. I did not hear from the congresswoman's office until around 9 p.m.

Congresswoman Terri Sewell hasn't been deterred by court injunctions against President Biden's vaccine mandates; instead, the Democratic representative for Alabama's 7th district has instituted her own. Only vaccinated persons may meet in-person with Representative Sewell or her staff, according to an email obtained by The Spectator. Representative Sewell's scheduler recently sent out an offer for congressional staffers to nab some free peanuts from Alabama. For those not in the know, congressional offices regularly receive free promotional products from their state and share or trade with other offices. A note at the bottom of the "FREE SNACKS" email, however, suggests the unvaccinated might not be able to get their hands on those tasty peanuts.

Jeff Sessions had more than just Donald Trump against him in his bid to win back his old Senate seat. He was also facing a Republican party that has been destroyed and remade — in Alabama as elsewhere — severing old relationships and affections. Contrary to what almost all of President Trump’s critics and a great many of his supporters believe, however, the new GOP is not simply Trump’s party. It’s a party that still includes most of the old interests, only newly networked and re-routed. The party is like an ingot that’s been melted down and recast, still the same but no longer familiar. As far as voters were concerned, the same could be said of Jeff Sessions himself. Sessions was a senator for 20 years.

When America’s educated elite imagines what the Republican party will look like after Donald Trump, whether he’s defeated next year or leaves office in 2025, they think in terms of the past. The Grand Old Party will once more be the party of Mitt Romney and the Bush dynasty, those formerly reviled figures now celebrated by the center-left as decent Republicans in contrast to Trump. They are the obvious and inevitable alternative to him. Aren’t they? If you don’t have Mr Hyde, then you must have Dr Jekyll. If you topple Saddam Hussein, then you obviously get a tolerant, pluralistic liberal democracy. America’s educated elite is not really in truth well-educated at all, and it has the moral sophistication of a Star Wars movie.