Beer & Babes… what could be more American? These babes brew!

It certainly seems as if the spirit of entrepreneurship and the conjunction of high quality foodstuffs is enjoying a revival in the United States.

For that, we remain grateful.

Cheers!

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More women are making — and enjoying — craft beers

Associated Press, May 29, 2012

A brew and a bro — it’s the classic pairing, right? Not necessarily.

From the rise of female brew masters to the growth of women’s tasting groups, women are becoming much more than a pint-sized part of the brewing world.

The emergence of women as both beer-lovers and brewers happened as the craft beer scene grew overall by leaps and bounds, and that’s no coincidence, said Lisa Morrison, Oregon-based writer, blogger and author of “Craft Beers of the Pacific Northwest.”

“I think that women are finally discovering, thanks to craft beer, that beer has flavor,” she said.

“When we start getting into the artisan stuff you start realizing that there’s an entire rainbow of flavors that you can enjoy. And because of that

More “Banned in Bama” beverages, aka The Alabama brew hah-hah

That title is supposed to cute. So laugh!

Here’s the deal: It seems the brilliant intellectually challenged folk in Montgomery seem to think that the word BASTARD is somehow bad.

Fat Bastard wines – Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay & Chardonnay-based Blends, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc & Sauvignon Blanc-based Blends

Recall that “bastard” can have several meanings. One, is as it applies to a type of milled file. Two, is as it applies to the child born to an unwed mother. And there certainly seems to be no shortage of those these days. Of course, it’s not the child’s fault, but words describe things, and like it or not, a child of an unwed mother is a bastard.

I guess next up, they’ll have to remove the French Fat Bastard wine, too. It’s been sold in Alabama for quite some time.

Cycles Gladiator wine label, an 1895 poster promoting the Gladiator brand bicycle.

Of course, the astute readers will recall the last international fiasco with the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board with the Cycles Gladiator wine.

The Hahn Family Wines company had to create an entirely different label specifically for Cycles Gladiator wine to be sold in the state. The label was an historic poster from 1895 – and that same year printer G. Massias unveiled one of the great Parisian art posters showcasing the stylish Gladiator bicycle.

Naturally, news of the rancorous decision by Alabama’a ABC drove sales for the wine through the roof, at home, and abroad.

However, I sincerely doubt it’s any complex marketing ploy.

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Alabama won’t allow Founders Brewing Co.’s award-winning ‘Dirty Bastard’ ale on state shelves

Published: Friday, April 13, 2012, 12:40 PM     Updated: Thursday, April 19, 2012, 8:12 PM

By Garret Ellison | gellison@mlive.com

Update: Beverage control board says brewery can appeal

GRAND RAPIDS, MI — As Michigan craft brewers continue to expand their distribution footprint across the country, Founders Brewing Co. is running into some roadblocks in the South.

The Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board is refusing to register two of Founders’ beers after the regulatory agency objected to the word ‘bastard’ on the labels.

“It’s one of those silly things,” said Dave Engbers, Founders vice president.

The Alabama board is

MDs abandon Family Care, NPs step up to Care

A long-term trend in medicine in the United States has been that medical school students continue to abandon Family Care and Rural Practice.

The corollary trend among Advance Practice Nurses & Nurse Practitioners – many whom must also pass National Board Certifications in their area of practice – has been to fill the void formed in the delivery of healthcare by physician abandonment. Typically, the argument given for such abandonment is pecuniary. That is, by the time the medical student graduates from medical school & residency to assume full and independent practice, their debt load is not merely burdensome or impractical, but almost wholly impossible to repay.

More recently, however, medical schools and public health authorities have acknowledged the error of allowing that deterioration and abandonment to occur, and have begun to promote Primary & Family Care among medical schools and their students. Such strategies include not merely the promotion of community and the advantages of rural independent practice, but include full-ride scholarships while in medical school.

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Nurse practitioners look to fill gap with expected spike in demand for health services

By Sarah Kliff, Published: May 12

President Obama’s health-care law is expected to expand health insurance to 32 million Americans over the next decade. Health policy experts anticipate that

BCS playoff system set to die. Will NCAA football ever be the same again?

No use crying over spilled milk, eh?

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BCS Head Calls Status Quo Dead

• April 25, 2012, 6:09 PM ET

Late Wednesday afternoon, Bowl Championship Series executive director Bill Hancock said the words that many college football fans have been waiting more than a decade to hear: “The BCS as we know it with the exact same policies will not continue.”

PAC-12 Commissioner Larry Scott / Associated Press

Hancock made the declaration at the end of a day of meetings of BCS leaders at a hotel in Hollywood, Fla., to negotiate possible new formats for when the BCS’s current TV contract expires after the January 2014 bowl games. College football’s 11 major-conference commissioners plus Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick will meet again Thursday and hope to release a shortlist of formats under consideration.

Hancock clarified that

Off duty cop in hoodie gets roughed up in Montgomery, Alabama

Shades of Trayvon…

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Off-duty Montgomery police officer claims racial profiling over hoodie incident at mall

Published: Monday, April 23, 2012, 10:56 AM     Updated: Monday, April 23, 2012, 11:44 AM

By Kent Faulk — The Birmingham News

MONTGOMERY, Alabama — A Montgomery police officer claims in a lawsuit that he was off-duty in plain clothes at a Montgomery mall last month when security officers assaulted him after ordering him to remove his sweatshirt hoodie.

Terence Scott, 26, filed the lawsuit April 11 in Montgomery County Circuit Court against ERMC, a Chattanooga, Tenn.,-based company that provides security for Eastdale Mall. The lawsuit also names one security guard and two other unnamed security guards as defendants.

Eastdale Mall is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit that seeks unspecified amounts in damages.

Efforts to reach an attorney for ERMC have been unsuccessful this morning.

Among the claims in Scott’s civil lawsuit are negligence, assault and battery, wantonness, and that security guards used

Alabama state Rep Lynn Greer (R-Rogersville) demonstrates GOP idiocy

More GOP stupidity.

I’ll save the diatribe.

Just read.

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Fire officials, fireworks industry divided over proposed overhaul of state regulations

Published: Wednesday, April 18, 2012, 6:10 PM
Updated: Wednesday, April 18, 2012, 6:13 PM

By George Altman
Press-Register

MONTGOMERY, Alabama — A proposed overhaul of state fireworks regulations drew firefighters and fireworks industry representatives to a public hearing in a House committee this afternoon, but each group was divided internally over the legislation.

More than a dozen people spoke either for or against House Bill 579 during a House Commerce and Small Business Committee meeting.

Representatives of the state’s municipalities came out strongly against the proposal, saying it would sap their control over regulating what fireworks can be sold and used locally.

“If something’s not broke, why (do) you want to fix it?” Kenny Clemons, executive director of

Hammad Memon, Huntsville Alabama Murder Suspect Caught in Dallas Fleeing with Mother

The murderers parents are now criminals.

Hindering prosecution is a Class C felony in Alabama.

Code of Alabama, 1975 – Section 13A-10-43

Hindering prosecution in the first degree.

(a) A person commits the crime of hindering prosecution in the first degree if with the intent to hinder the apprehension, prosecution, conviction or punishment of another for conduct constituting a murder or a Class A or B felony, he renders criminal assistance to such person.

(b) Hindering prosecution in the first degree is a Class C felony.

(Acts 1977, No. 607, p. 812, §4636; Acts 1979, No. 79- 471, p. 862, §1.)

http://alisondb.legislature.state.al.us/acas/codeofalabama/1975/13A-10-43.htm

Bend over, and kiss your career and life ‘bye-bye.’

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UPDATE: Local doctor charged with aiding teen murder suspect flee

Dr. Iqbal Memon, MD, booking photo, Madison County Sheriff Department, Huntsville, Alabama

April 16, 2012

By Kelly Kazek kelly@athensnews-courier.com

MADISON — A doctor who practiced in Athens was arrested Friday night by Madison police, accused of hindering prosecution for allegedly aiding his teen son, a murder suspect, in an attempt to flee Alabama.

Dr. Iqbal Memon, who occasionally wrote medical columns for The News Courier several years ago, was arrested after his son, Hammad Memon, 17, was captured in Dallas with his mother and 6-year-old sister. Authorities said Hammad had a Pakistani passport in his possession.

The family members apparently left Alabama Wednesday or Thursday after an express mail delivery person reported Hammad had signed for an envelope believed to contain a passport, which was a violation of the terms of Hammad’s bail on a charge of shooting to death classmate Todd Brown, 14, at Discovery Middle School in 2010. Brown lived in Madison with his mother at the time; his father Michael Brown is from Tanner.

Dr. Iqbal Ahmed Memon, MD practices with Children's Associates, 108 Sanders St #B, Athens, AL 35611 (256) 216-8863.

The Memon family lives in Madison, where Memon had a second physician’s office.

Hammad was 14 at the time of the shooting but was to be tried as an adult on June 18.

Dr. Memon was charged with hindering prosecution after Madison Police investigators suspected he was not being forthcoming about his family’s location.

Alabama Legislators do a “Deliverance” move on it’s Citizens

Readers may want to refer to an earlier entry entitled, “I won the Alabama Lottery!” in which I added that, “…and all I got was this lousy governor and inept Republican legislature.“

One must wonder if going to Montgomery is cause of intellectual deprivation, or if it is evidence of the same.

Either way, Alabama sucks hind teat. (That’s a colloquial farming aphorism referring to the suckling which finds itself in a very disadvantaged position.)

God help us.

The Republican legislature is doing a “Deliverance” move on its citizens. Only thing is, they’re not asking us to squeal like a pig.

It’s just what Alabama needs in the midst of 10.6% proration… more

I won the Alabama Lottery!

I won the Alabama Lottery, and all I got was this lousy governor and inept Republican legislature.

Alabama Governor, Robert Bentley, MD - (R)

His official state of Alabama web page states, “After one year in office, Governor Bentley still does not accept a salary – and still works to put Alabamians back to work. And it seems to be working.”

“Seems to be working”?

Oh, come on!

Across America, unemployment rates are generally lowering. Lower unemployment rates in Alabama is not because of anything this governor or legislature has done.

Here’s another example of their ineptitude.

An official state news releases on 21 March 2012 read Governor’s Mansion Doors to

Corruption in Alabama politics: Oh yeah… they’re Republican.

This is the same 57-year-old Jane Smith, Circuit Court Clerk for Madison County, Alabama who plead guilty to three federal misdemeanors in federal court recently for sharing her high-level password to the state’s judicial system computer records in 2009, avoided jail time, was fined $5000, and placed on one year probation.

She was first elected in 2000, and to her credit, is widely credited with modernizing the clerk’s office and making it among the most efficient in the state.

Jane Smith, Circuit Court Clerk, Madison County, Alabama

Madison County Circuit Clerk plans to stop processing passport applications, cites confusion over fees

Published: Friday, March 30, 2012, 7:08 AM

By Brian Lawson, The Huntsville Times

Madison County Circuit Clerk Jane Smith (Submitted photo)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama — Madison County Circuit Clerk Jane Smith said Thursday she will soon stop collecting passport applications, which include a $25 processing fee she is personally allowed to keep.

Federal law sets the fee, and under Alabama law circuit clerks are allowed to keep passport handling fees. Smith said the law was in place before she was elected in 2001. The office began collecting the fees in 1977.

But Smith, who won a third term as clerk in the Republican primary March 13, said ongoing cuts to state court budgets and “continuing confusion over using these fees for official expenses” led her to decide to stop collecting the applications as of May 1.

The funds are not public, though they are collected as part of a public official‘s duties. Smith has said she deposits the collected fees into her bank account and