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Brian Lyman

@brianlyman.bsky.social

7.1K followers 630 following 4.3K posts

Editor, Alabama Reflector. Podcaster, Becoming Lincoln. 2024 Pulitzer finalist. Past: MGM Advertiser; Press-Register; The Anniston Star; Norwich Bulletin; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Politics, history, science, horrific puns.

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Brian Lyman @brianlyman.bsky.social · Nov 12

Here’s our mission statement at @alreflector.bsky.social. From my first column on launch day in February 2023.

Alabama Reflector: Covering the pain and promise of our home • Alabama Reflector

Laws are made in the State House. Alabama is made outside it. Alabama Reflector will cover these dynamics that shape our home.

alabamareflector.com

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Brian Lyman @brianlyman.bsky.social · 11h

Iliad, Inferno, Candide, Wuthering Heights (not my cup of tea but lots of Big Emotions), Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, The Song of the Lark, The U.S.A. Trilogy, The Great Gatsby, Native Son, The Bluest Eye

Mediocre White Man @prestemon.bsky.social · 13h

Some of the classics are incredibly boring and some are riveting and someone should tell me which are which (beyond everyone telling me Moby Dick is great actually)

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 22h

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

Reposted by Brian Lyman

Alabama Reflector @alabamareflector.com · 14h

Via Maryland Matters: Work began last month to restore the prominent memorial honoring Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, but stopped almost as quickly as scaffolding was erected behind the bronze statue of the Maryland native. https://ow.ly/Ka4L50XaBeN

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Alabama Reflector @alabamareflector.com · 14h

Via Jennifer Shutt and Ariana Figueroa: The Trump administration plans to send paychecks to active duty troops this week, despite Congress not passing legislation to allow it during the ongoing shutdown.

Pentagon to shift research dollars to pay troops during shutdown | Alabama Reflector

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration plans to send paychecks to active duty troops this week, despite Congress not passing legislation to allow it during the ongoing shutdown. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has refused to bring the House back into session to pass a stand-alone bill to provide pay for troops, welcomed the action during […]

alabamareflector.com

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Brian Lyman @brianlyman.bsky.social · 15h

I grant that you can’t trust anything The Party says, and it’s entirely possible Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia are complete fictions.

Brian Lyman @brianlyman.bsky.social · 15h

The geopolitics of 1984 make no sense

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 22h

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

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Brian Lyman @brianlyman.bsky.social · 15h

Congrats on a great run, man.

Reposted by Brian Lyman

Alabama Reflector @alabamareflector.com · 17h

Just three states — Arkansas, Idaho and Virginia — enacted laws this session that establish or amend rules for law enforcement agencies using automated license plate readers. https://ow.ly/Zliy50XaAn0

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Alabama Reflector @alabamareflector.com · 20h

In the wake of a Montgomery shooting, state GOP leaders accused city officials of not taking public safety seriously. Editor Brian Lyman writes that Republicans can't be taken seriously on the issue when they've flooded Alabama with the No. 1 threat to public safety: guns. https://ow.ly/jAgZ50Xa3mo

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Brian Lyman @brianlyman.bsky.social · 20h

My column this week. In the wake of a horrific shooting in Montgomery, Alabama GOP officials accused city leaders of not taking public safety seriously. It's hard to take their concerns seriously when they support permissive state firearm laws that have created nation-leading levels of gun violence.

The GOP outrage over Montgomery isn't about public safety | Alabama Reflector

It's hard to believe that officials scolding Montgomery really care about violence when they've flooded the state with guns.

alabamareflector.com

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Alabama Reflector @alabamareflector.com · 22h

The new HBO documentary, "The Alabama Solution," tells the story of the state's prison crisis through video shot in Alabama's correctional facilities by people incarcerated in them. https://ow.ly/XOU650Xa7HS

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Brian Lyman @brianlyman.bsky.social · 22h

William Lloyd Garrison in a frog suit dancing with Wendell Phillips dressed as a banana

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🎃 public HELLth guy 🎃 @publichealthguy1.bsky.social · 1d

the gutting of the national center for health statistics should be considered its own five alarm fire

Alt CDC (they/them) @altcdc.altgov.info · 1d

Eliminated at NCHS:
❌ Office of Informatics, Governance and Assurance
❌ Office of Information Sevices (communications)
❌ Office of the Director for the Division of Vital Statistics, which is now without all leadership
❌ Planning/Operations in the Division of Healthcare Statistics

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Brian Lyman @brianlyman.bsky.social · 22h

It’s hard to study the minutes of the Constitutional Convention or the Federalist Papers and conclude the Founders wanted a president who could override the other two branches. If anything, their design of the executive branch feels like a way to institutionalize Washington’s aversion to power.

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Brian Lyman @brianlyman.bsky.social · 23h

“Originalism” was never a coherent philosophy and simply a means of protecting and expanding power outside public or constitutional accountability.

Originalist ‘Bombshell’ Complicates Case on Trump’s Power to Fire Officials

www.nytimes.com

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Brian Lyman @brianlyman.bsky.social · 1d

Bjarni Herjolfsson Day: Celebrating the spirit that ventures into the sea; stumbles upon an inhabited land and says “This isn’t my dad’s house; let’s turn around.”

Bjarni Herjólfsson, the Man Who Got Lost and Found America - Historic Mysteries

We were taught that Columbus was the first European to discover America. But it turns out Bjarni Herjólfsson may have found it 500 years earlier by mistake.

www.historicmysteries.com

Reposted by Brian Lyman

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

federal agents stealing children and sending them south. where have i heard about that before?

Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 1d

ICE kidnapped a 7th-grader with a pending asylum claim and spirited him out of state without notifying his parents, seemingly with the cooperation of the local police in Everett, MA.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/12/m...

Everett 13-year-old arrested by ICE and sent to Virginia detention facility
By Marcela Rodrigues Globe Staff,Updated October 12, 2025, 44 minutes ago

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A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Everett after an interaction with members of the Everett Police Department and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia, according to his mother and immigration lawyer Andrew Lattarulo.

The boy’s mother, Josiele Berto, was called to pick her son up from the Everett Police Department on Thursday, the day he was arrested. After waiting for about an hour and a half, she was told her son was taken by ICE, Berto told the Globe in a phone interview.

“My world collapsed,” Berto said in Portuguese.

From the police department, the boy was taken to ICE’s holding facility in Burlington on Thursday evening, where he spent a night before being transferred by car to the Northwestern Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Winchester, Va., on Friday morning, his mother said. The juvenile facility is more than 500 miles away from Everett.

The boy is a 7th-grader at Albert N. Parlin School in Everett, his mother said. The teen and his family, who are Brazilian nationals, have a pending asylum case and are authorized to work legally in the United States, Lattarulo said.

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Aubrey Gilleran @aubreygilleran.bsky.social · 1d

Well golly it sounds like you should let long-standing precedents stand until you rule on the merits, then. That is not what you’re doing!

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Amy Coney Barrett defends heavy use of the shadow docket: "If we wrote a long opinion, it might give the impression that we have finally resolved the issue, and in none of these cases have we finally resolved the issue."

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Brian Lyman @brianlyman.bsky.social · 1d

The federal courts have degenerated into places for far-right charlatans to bypass democracy, and democratic reforms must start there.

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Brian Lyman @brianlyman.bsky.social · 1d

“One of them, Albert ‘Skip’ Caissie Jr., 78, said in a phone interview that he wasn’t aware that he was involved in a Supreme Court case.”

Who Are the Louisiana Voters Behind a Major Supreme Court Challenge?

www.nytimes.com

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Alabama Reflector @alabamareflector.com · 1d

Via Inside Climate News: Despite opposition from residents, local and state environmental groups and the NAACP, the entire Bessemer city council—save one absent member—voted last week to amend the city’s zoning code to allow the location of data centers in certain areas. https://ow.ly/7K3250X9Sac

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Brian Lyman @brianlyman.bsky.social · 2d

Auburn announcers absolutely furious at the refs letting Smart get backsies on the timeout.

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Brian Lyman @brianlyman.bsky.social · 2d

The worst thing these refs can do is make me sympathetic to Hugh Freeze.

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Brian Lyman @brianlyman.bsky.social · 2d

Rooting for Auburn is how we do French absurdism in Alabama

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Cathy Newman ⚜️🐘 @cenewman0.bsky.social · 2d

University of Alabama Anthropology students showing kids how to carefully dig for artifacts at the Moundville Native American Festival in Moundville, AL

Moundville Archaeological Park on the Black Warrior River

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Brian Lyman @brianlyman.bsky.social · 2d

NEW YORK — Twelve people were injured and an estimated $3.4 million in property destroyed after a riot erupted at the premiere of Phillip Glass’ latest work,

Quintessa Knight @quietblkgrl.blacksky.app · 2d

What would be the wildest concert for a fight to break out at?