Elisabeth Lina Stewart

Alabama’s SB361 — a bill designed to strengthen protections for dogs kept outdoors — received its scheduled hearing on March 18, 2026 before the House Agriculture & Forestry Committee. As of today, the bill has not yet advanced and remains listed as “Pending in Committee.”   This means the committee has not taken a formal vote, and no report has been posted. The bill is still alive, and public support is still urgently needed. What SB361 Would Do SB361 creates clear, statewide standards to ensure dogs kept outdoors are treated humanely. The bill would: - Establish safe tethering rules to prevent choking, injury, and dangerous confinement   - Require adequate shelter, food, water, and space   - Prohibit heavy chains and unsafe restraints   - Empower animal control officers to intervene when dogs are at risk   - Protect working dogs (hunting, herding, K‑9 units) through reasonable exemptions   These are basic, common‑sense pr...

SB361 is a 2026 Alabama bill focused on improving the safety, treatment, and living conditions of dogs kept outdoors. It sets basic humane standards, restricts dangerous tethering practices, and gives animal control officers the authority to enforce these protections.   Why SB361 Matters - It prevents cruelty before it happens by defining what safe outdoor care looks like.   - It protects dogs from injury, neglect, and life‑threatening conditions caused by improper tethering.   - It empowers local animal control officers to intervene when dogs are at risk.   - It creates clear, statewide standards, so every dog in Alabama receives the same basic protections.   Key Protections in SB361 1. Safer Tethering Rules The bill requires that dogs may only be tethered using safe, humane methods.   Examples include: - No chains or heavy restraints that can choke or injure a dog.   - Collars and harnesses must be properly fitted —...

There was a time when “buyer beware” meant reading the fine print. Today, it means bracing yourself every time you click, browse, download, or even look at a product online. Somewhere along the way, the United States quietly slid into a new era — one where deception isn’t an exception but a business model. We didn’t vote on this shift. We didn’t approve it. We simply woke up one day and realized the wild west had moved into our inboxes, our phones, our bank accounts, and even our property records. This is the new normal. And it’s costing Americans everything. The Rise of the Unasked‑For Package It starts small. You research a product, read a review, or click on something out of curiosity — and suddenly a package shows up at your door. You didn’t order it. You didn’t authorize it. But the company is banking on one thing: that you’ll keep it rather than deal with the hassle of returning it. This isn’t customer service. It’s psychological pressure disguised as convenience. And the worst p...

 Across the United States, millions of domestic pets enter shelters every year, but nowhere is the crisis more severe than in the Southern states. While the early months of the COVID‑19 pandemic briefly emptied shelters, the years that followed brought a steady rise in intake, overwhelmed facilities, and an increase in euthanasia that rescuers on the ground have felt every single day. This is not simply a cultural issue. It is a structural and legislative failure, and it is solvable. A System Without Consistency or Accountability Government‑run shelters across the South operate with little uniformity. Intake procedures, holding periods, and lifesaving efforts vary dramatically from one county to the next. Some shelters work tirelessly to build networks of fosters, rescue partners, and transport groups. Others function more like temporary holding facilities, where animals have only 5 to 7 days if strays, and if surrendered, less before being euthanized due to a lack of space. Outdat...

                                These are dark days in America — not because of one event, one administration, or one ideology, but because we have allowed ourselves to become spectators in a game of red versus blue instead of guardians of truth. When loyalty to a team outweighs loyalty to justice, a nation begins to lose its way. Another human life has been lost to a senseless act fueled by fear, force, and unchecked emotion. What happened was not an abstraction. It was the result of a state being overwhelmed, invaded by forces operating without transparency, and denied the ability to gather the evidence needed to understand what truly transpired. When a state cannot stand for truth, fairness becomes impossible.                                   For years, there has been a relentless effort to divide this nation, to t...

There was a time in American business when leadership meant presence, accountability, and human connection. I lived through that era — not as an observer, but from inside companies whose leaders shaped the early architecture of the information age. I saw it at Universal Data Systems , founded by Mark C. Smith , with George Grumbles , John Jerenko, and Lonnie McMillion on the leadership team. I saw it again when UDS was acquired by Motorola , and George Grumbles continued in his role as CEO under the Motorola umbrella. And I saw it in the global vision of Patrick McGovern , founder of IDG, who recognized people with a kind of intuitive clarity that is almost extinct in today’s corporate world. These leaders shared a philosophy that feels almost foreign now: Leadership is a relationship, not a reward.  Leadership in the 1970s and 1980s: Human, Present, Accountable The leaders I worked with didn’t hide behind layers of management or corporate messaging. They showed up. Patrick McGov...

Across the United States, especially in rural towns far from the headlines, a quiet transformation took place over the past two decades. Places once written off as “ghost towns” — hollowed out by factory closures, aging populations, and the flight of young people — found new life because of immigrants. Not by accident. Not by policy design. But because families seeking opportunity were willing to move where others had already given up. According to national economic analyses, rural America saw its most meaningful revival in years because immigrants — both documented and undocumented — filled essential jobs, opened small businesses, and kept schools, farms, and local economies alive. In towns like Beardstown, Illinois, researchers found that immigration didn’t just add workers; it rebuilt community life, strengthened local institutions, and restored hope in places that had been fading for decades. These families didn’t just contribute economically. They became neighbors, church members,...