The week Down in Alabama, where they know a man's weak spot

The daily news update "Down in Alabama" is available for your Alexa flash briefing or as a downloadable podcast on iTunes and other platforms (see the bottom of this post). Much of the news roundup below is adapted from AL.com reports that were covered on that show.

Struggling Dems stay the course:

Nancy Worley is still the state Democratic Party chair after a 101-89 vote by the executive committee last weekend -- and despite Sen. Doug Jones' terse words and nomination of Montgomery lobbyist Peck Fox for Worley's job.

After the election here's what they had to say:

Jones: "Our candidates are going to have to go it alone, just like I did. We need to have a party. We don't have a party. There is no social media. There's no outreach. There's no get out the vote effort. There's no organization. There's no field. And the vote today was simply to keep that."

Worley: "As the newly re-elected Chair of the Alabama Democratic Party, I thank the courageous members of the State Democratic Executive Committee who stood up and voted for me in spite of extreme 'arm twisting.'"

Hear Leada Gore and Ike Morgan talk about this political face-off and more on the weekend episode of the podcast:

Integration now:

University Charter School (K-8) in Livingston began classes this past week.

With small majority of black students (just under half the students are white), it's the first school in Sumter County to be fully integrated in practice as well as in the legal sense.

Looking great at 108:

The oldest professional baseball stadium in America -- Birmingham's Rickwood Field -- is now 108 years old. It opened on Aug. 18, 1910.

Quote of the week:

"I grabbed him between his legs. I grabbed him good between his legs. That's always been my plan because that's a man's weak spot."

-- Brenda Stinson, 74, who reportedly fought off a would-be robber along with the help of others outside the Midfield Piggly Wiggly.

Civility is dead, Part I

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was in Houston last weekend and had a dinner at El Tiempo Cantina, according to the Washington Post.

The restaurant posted a photo of Sessions with one of the restaurant's owners on its Facebook page. The text in the post thanked Sessions for dining there and said the restaurant was honored to serve him.

The reaction and threat of boycott from those opposed to the Trump administration was so strong that, according to the Houston Chronicle, the restaurant shut down its social-media pages, and one of the co-owners said he's even received death threats.

Civility is dead, Part II

Alabama's Democrat Senator Doug Jones was heckled at a town hall in Birmingham over his waiting to decide whether to vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

A woman started hollering at the senator and told him that he would be voting "no" on Kavanaugh.

She said, a number of times, that if he chose to vote yes, he was invited to kiss her backside. Then she threw a pair of stuffed lips toward Jones.

Sisters of the week:

It was recruitment week for college sororities. The week culminates in Bid Day, when the women find out which Greek organizations had selected them.

And then they run and scream. A lot.

This week's news that we're relieved this didn't happen in Alabama:

We might root for the ball team of a college we never attended (which is absolutely OK to do, by the way). But hopefully not many of us would fib about getting a degree from a school -- especially if we're running for office.

Melissa Howard dropped out of her race for a seat in the Florida Legislature and admitted she didn't really graduate from Miami (Ohio), but not before she had tried to dig out of the hole by releasing a photo of herself with a "diploma" -- which prompted the school to let reporters know that it was a fake.

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