Craig Ferguson has canceled five shows set for this weekend at the Comedy Club Stardome in Alabama. The comedian and former late-night host was set to perform on Friday, Jan. 10, through Sunday, Jan. 12, at the venue, 1818 Data Drive in Hoover.
Ferguson had two performances scheduled each night on Friday and Saturday, and one performance on Sunday. It’s unclear why the shows were canceled, but the dates are listed as canceled on the Stardome website and tickets are no longer on sale via Etix. Tickets were priced at $30 general admission, $50 for premium seating, plus fees.
“If an event is canceled and not rescheduled, upon formal notification from the event promoter, we will email all online customers and refunds will automatically be applied to the credit card used by the customer at the time of purchase,” the Etix website says.
See more info on Etix’s refund policies here. To reach the Stardome’s box office, call 205-444-0008.
Ferguson, 62, is best known as the host of the CBS series “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson” (2005-2014). He has hosted game shows such as “Celebrity Name Game” (2014–2017) and “The Hustler” (2021), as well as the historical talk show “Join or Die with Craig Ferguson” (2016). His TV credits also include a breakthrough role on “The Drew Carey Show” (1996-2004).
Ferguson has earned a Peabody Award, two Daytime Emmy Awards and three Grammy nominations. He hosted the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2008 and is the author of a 2009 memoir, “American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot.” Ferguson was born in Scotland and is a naturalized American citizen.
The start of a new year means that tax season is just around the corner.
The deadline for filing 2024 income taxes with the Internal Revenue Service is April 15, 2025. The date when the IRS will begin processing returns has not been announced – it’s typically late January – but Free File Guided Tax Software will be available Friday, Jan. 10.
Starting Jan. 10, the IRS will begin accepting tax returns via IRS Free File. The free software tools offered by IRS Free File partners can be accessed via IRS.gov.
“The IRS remains committed to its partnership with Free File Inc. to ensure taxpayers have free and secure options for filing their taxes electronically,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel. “Taxpayers have multiple filing choices, including trusted tax professionals, tax software, Free File, Direct File or free preparation services through IRS partners.”
IRS Free File is available for taxpayers with an Adjusted Gross Income of $84,000 or less in 2024. It will allow taxpayers to prepare and file returns now and will hold them until they can be electronically filed on the opening date. Some of the Free File providers include state tax return preparation and filing as well.
Taxpayers with AGI of more than $84,000 can use the Free File Fillable Forms starting Jan. 27.
OK, Texas. The eyes of the SEC are upon you. Or will be, all the livelong day Friday, unless it turns out to be a snow day in the Dallas Metroplex. It’s time for you to justify your existence in the Southeastern Conference.
Along with Oklahoma, you were gifted a spot in the SEC, which didn’t need to expand and may one day come to regret that decision. In your first year in the conference, you were gifted the easiest schedule in memory, maybe in modern history, and still you didn’t win the league because you went 0 for 2 against a Georgia team in decline.
You were gifted a playoff path that began with the two lowest-ranked teams in the field, and after struggling to put away Clemson and barely surviving Arizona State, you’ve been gifted a semifinal in your home state.
Oh, sure, it’s against Ohio State, the hottest team still standing, and though it’s called the Cotton Bowl, it’s not being played in the Cotton Bowl, but you do get to bring Bevo.
All things considered, even though you haven’t completed your pledge period, you’re the SEC’s last hope. The rest of the country already has started dancing on the league’s grave. If you lose, the Big Ten may stage a New Orleans-style funeral for SEC football on Peachtree Street in Atlanta as a lead-in to the National Championship Game.
No pressure, Steve Sarkisian, but it’s about time a Nick Saban disciple other than Kirby Smart rises to the occasion this deep in the season.
Which is really the point of this tough-talk pep talk to the Burnt Orange Nation. The rest of the country is missing the point as it delights in delineating all the reasons for the purported death of the SEC’s dynastic control of college football.
Everybody can pay players now, as if the SEC were the only conference with generous boosters prior to the introduction of NIL money. The transfer portal has dented the SEC’s talent advantage, as if the top three and seven of the top 10 high school recruiting classes in the early signing period don’t belong to SEC programs, as do three of the top four and six of the top 10 portal hauls.
There will be a question to be asked if Texas loses Friday, which would make the National Championship Game SEC-free for a second straight year for the first time since 2004 and 2005. That question won’t be whether SEC football as we know it is dead and buried, gone, GONE! It’ll be this:
Can SEC football dominate the national landscape if Alabama isn’t dominating the SEC? Because the former has never happened without the latter.
Consider. The 2024 SEC football media guide says league schools have won 28 national championships, starting with Tennessee in 1951. Remember that the conference began in 1933, and it counts only those titles awarded by a wire service media poll, coaches’ poll, the Football Writers Association of America, the BCS and the College Football Playoff.
In the 46 years from 1951 to 1996, the SEC lists 13 national championships. Alabama won seven of them, six under Bear Bryant and one under Gene Stallings. Six other league schools added one each: Tennessee (1951) Auburn (1957), LSU (1958), Ole Miss (1960), Georgia (1980) and Florida (1996).
That stretch alone tells us the SEC didn’t truly begin to own college football until the BCS began in 1998 with Tennessee winning it all. From 1998 through 2022, the conference won 15 national titles in 25 years. Alabama captured six of them, all under Saban, and he added a seventh at LSU.
More than any other single event, Saban’s arrival at LSU in 2000 and his return to the conference at Alabama in 2007 forced the rest of the conference to step up or fade out. Since his BCS championship at LSU in 2003, five different conference schools have earned a banner. Four of them – Alabama (6), LSU (3), Florida (2) and Georgia (2) – have hung more than one. Auburn added the other in 2010.
But now that Saban has retired to become Pat McAfee’s professional sidekick and Coach Prime’s commercial running buddy, there is a serious void at the top of the SEC food chain. Is there a future GOAT candidate among his disciples Smart, Sark and Lane Kiffin? Can his successor, Kalen DeBoer, turn a rocky start in Tuscaloosa into a lengthy, rewarding stay?
Is the SEC even capable of re-establishing its hegemony if Alabama proves incapable of leading the way in a post-Saban world?
There’s one thing we know for sure that the rest of the country seems to have forgotten. Football is too important at too many places in the SEC for the sport to roll over and play dead for long. Texas, given the deep pockets of its big cigars, is on the short list of realistic candidates to be the Alabama of the future, if that kind of dominance is even possible in an NFL Lite environment.
But first things first. Friday presents an excellent opportunity for the other UT to prove it belongs and to demonstrate the SEC is not going away. You’ve been warned, Longhorns. Around here, coming up short on the big stage is not alright, alright, alright. A’ight?
One year ago, the unthinkable happened for many Alabama football fans – Nick Saban’s legendary tenure as the Crimson Tide head coach came to an end. The year that followed featured new names and faces, some excitement, and plenty of shock as Alabama fans tried to adjust to their new reality. Paul Finebaum joins us to look back at Alabama’s first year in the post-Saban era and gives his thoughts on where the program is headed under Kalen DeBoer.
Later, Michael Casagrande and Matt Stahl share their memories as reporters handling that fateful day when Saban made his announcement.
Beat Everyone is available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on your favorite platform to automatically receive new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Beat Everyone is brought to you by Broadway Joe’s Fantasy Sports.
Expected at former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral are the five living men who have also served as president: Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
There are also incoming, current and former vice presidents, including JD Vance, Kamala Harris, Al Gore, Mike Pence —and of course Biden, who served alongside Obama.
Biden and his wife Jill took their seats next to Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff. There were no visible greetings, but the former presidents were all together in a private room ahead of their entrances into Washington National Cathedral.
Obama took his seat next to Trump, chatting with his successor in office, who did not stand to greet him but shook hands. They were engaged in conversation as Harris entered the cathedral.
Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence shook hands as the president-elect took his seat with wife Melania, just in front of his former vice president.
One of the dignitaries missing from the former president lineup is Michelle Obama.
Ahead of the funeral, CNN reported that the former first lady had a scheduling conflict and remained in Hawaii, where she had been on an “extended vacation.”
Nearly a decade ago, intense protests over racial injustice rocked the University of Missouri’s flagship campus, leading to the resignation of two top administrators. The university then hired its first-ever vice chancellor for inclusion, diversity and equity. Tensions were so high that football players were threatening a boycott and a graduate student went on hunger strike.
Today, the entire diversity office is gone, an example of changes sweeping universities in states led by conservatives, and a possible harbinger of things to come nationwide.
“I feel like that is the future, especially for the next four years of Trump’s presidency,” said Kenny Douglas, a history and Black studies major on the campus in Columbia, Missouri.
Student Kenny Douglas poses for a photo at the University of Missouri where he is a a history and Black studies major, Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024, in Columbia, Mo. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)AP
As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office, both conservative and liberal politicians say higher education changes in red parts of America could be a road map for the rest of the country.
Dozens of diversity, equity and inclusion programs have already closed in states including Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas. In some cases, lessons about racial and gender identity have been phased out. Supports and resources for underrepresented students have disappeared. Some students say changes in campus climate have led them to consider dropping out.
The University of Alabama’s former Safe Zone Resource Center was empty as students prepared for their first week of classes on Aug. 19, 2024. Officials closed the space to comply with a new state law. AL.com / Rebecca GriesbachRebecca Griesbach
During his campaign, Trump vowed to end “wokeness” and “leftist indoctrination” in education. He pledged to dismantle diversity programs that he says amount to discrimination, and to impose fines on colleges “up to the entire amount of their endowment.”
Many conservatives have taken a similar view. Erec Smith, a research fellow at the free-market Cato Institute whose scholarship examines anti-racist activism and Black conservatism, said DEI sends the message that “whiteness is oppression.” Diversity efforts are “thoroughly robbing Black people and other minorities of a sense of agency,” he said.
The New College of Florida, a tiny liberal arts institution once known as the most progressive of Florida’s public campuses and a refuge for LGBTQ+ students, became a centerpiece for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “war on woke.” DeSantis overhauled the school’s Board of Trustees in 2023, appointing a new majority of conservative allies, including culture war strategist Christopher Rufo.
Many faculty departed last year, leaving vacancies that the new leadership has filled with a variety of conservative academics — and non-academics, including British comedian and conservative commentator Andrew Doyle, who will be teaching a new course this January called “The Woke Movement.”
“This is only the beginning,” Rufo wrote in the forward to school President Richard Corcoran’s new book, “Storming the Ivory Tower.”
Trump’s opponents dismiss his depictions of liberal indoctrination on campuses as a fiction. But conservatives point to diversity programs and the student debt crisis as evidence colleges are out of touch.
“What happens if you are an institution that’s trying to change society?” asked Adam Kissel of the conservative Heritage Foundation — the group behind Project 2025, a sweeping anti-DEI blueprint for a new GOP administration that Trump has disavowed while nominating some of its authors for administrative roles. “Society will push back on you.”
Pushback is exactly what DEI programs have faced.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, in March signed into law a bill barring state funding for public colleges that advocate for “divisive concepts” including that someone should feel guilty because of their race or gender. The law also states people at schools and colleges must use the bathroom that matches their gender assigned at birth.
The effects of the anti-DEI law rippled through campuses including the University of Alabama and Auburn University, the state’s two largest four-year colleges. DEI offices and designated areas for LGBTQ+ and Black students closed when classes started in late August — just before the law took effect.
Dakota Grimes, a graduate student in chemistry, was disappointed when Auburn University closed the campus’ Pride Center, a designated safe space for LGBTQ+ people and allies. Grimes’ organization, Sexuality and Gender Alliance, still meets regularly in the library, she said, but LGBTQ+ students don’t feel as welcome on campus. Students are subjected to homophobic and transphobic slurs, Grimes said.
“They don’t feel safe just sitting in the student center because of the kind of environment that a lot of students and even teachers create on campus,” Grimes said.
Julia Dominguez, a political science senior at the University of Alabama and president of the Hispanic-Latino Association, said funding for the group’s annual Hispanic Heritage Month festival was pulled two weeks before the event in September. Students who were once excited about being at a school that celebrates Latino culture, she said, are now feeling dejected and disillusioned.
The organization isn’t giving up, Dominguez said.
“We are still present,” Dominguez said. “We are still doing the work. It’s just harder now. But we’re not going to allow that to steal our joy because joy is resistance.”
In Idaho, DEI programs have been under attack for years, with Republican lawmakers blasting efforts to build an inclusive culture as “divisive and exclusionary.” In recent sessions, the Legislature has blocked colleges and universities from using taxpayer dollars on campus DEI programs. A 2024 law banned written “diversity statements” in higher education hiring and student admissions.
Nick Koenig, a University of Idaho doctoral student who teaches in climate change and sociology, poses for a photo on Thursday, Dec. 12, 2024, on campus in Moscow, Idaho. Koenig moved to Idaho in 2022 and fears that UofI will soon follow the example of other colleges and universities in Idaho and shut down their equity and diversity centers in favor of generically renamed centers designed to cater to all students. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)AP
In December, the State Board of Education scrapped DEI offices, causing shockwaves at the University of Idaho. Doctoral student Nick Koenig is considering leaving the state.
“Where do your true values lie?” asked Koenig, who decided to move to Idaho to research climate change after a Zoom call with the then-director of the school’s LGBT center. “It’s not with the students that are most marginalized.”
So far, nearly all of the threats to DEI have come from state legislatures, said Jeremy Young, of the free-expression group PEN America.
“There hasn’t been much support at the federal level to do anything,” he said. ”Now, of course, that’s going to change.”
Young anticipates that diversity considerations will be eliminated for research grants and possibly for accreditation. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights typically investigates discrimination against people of color, but under Trump, that office could start investigating diversity programs that conservatives argue are discriminatory.
Republicans also may have more leeway to take action at the state level, thanks to an administration that’s “going to get out of the way of red states and let them pursue these policies,” said Preston Cooper, a senior fellow who studies higher education policy at the American Enterprise Institute.
Colleges are also cutting some programs or majors seen as unprofitable. Whether politics plays into decisions to eliminate certain courses of student remains to be seen.
Douglas, the University of Missouri student, is concerned. He said the promise of change that followed the earlier protests on the Columbia campus has dissipated.
This fall, a student group he is part of had to rename its Welcome Black BBQ because the university wanted it to be “welcoming to all.” The Legion of Black Collegians, which started in 1968 after students waved a Confederate flag at a football game, complained the change was erasing its visibility on campus.
For Douglas and many others, the struggle for civil rights that prompted diversity efforts isn’t a thing of the past. “White people might have moved past it, but Black people are still experiencing it,” he said.
Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., has told Senate Republicans there appears to be enough Democrats to move forward on legislation seeking to impose stricter measures on undocumented migrants who commit crimes in the United States, her office confirmed Wednesday.
The measure known as the Laken Riley Act has the needed “eight Democrats who are currently expected to vote yes on the initial procedural vote” on the legislation, Britt spokesperson Grace Evans said. The motion to proceed requires support from 60 senators to overcome a filibuster, and there are currently 52 Republican senators in office.
The eight Democratic senators Britt’s office named as considered to support advancing the bill are John Fetterman of Pennsylvania; Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly of Arizona; Gary Peters and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan; Jacky Rosen of Nevada; John Hickenlooper of Colorado; and Jon Ossoff of Georgia.
A procedural vote in the Senate is expected Thursday. The House on Tuesday voted 264-159 to pass that chamber’s version of the legislation.
Although the House passed a similar bill last year, the Senate, when it was still under Democratic control, did not take up the measure.
Fetterman is a supporter of the bill, and on a Fox News appearance called the bill common sense. “If you’re here illegally and you’re committing crimes, I don’t know why anybody thinks that it’s controversial, that they all need to go,” Fetterman said.
Gallego, newly sworn in as a senator, said in a news release Wednesday that he supports the bill and would join as co-sponsor. He voted for the measure last year when he was a member of the House.
“Arizonans know the real-life consequences of today’s border crisis,” Gallego said. “We must give law enforcement the means to take action when illegal immigrants break the law, to prevent situations like what occurred to Laken Riley. I will continue to fight for the safety of Arizonans by pushing for comprehensive immigration reform and increased border security.”
A Kelly spokesperson, Jacob Peters, said the senator’s support for the bill is part of a hope to reach bipartisan consensus on immigration issues.
“Senator Kelly will vote for the Laken Riley Act and looks forward to working with Republicans and Democrats on it and other solutions to secure the border and fix our broken immigration system,” Peters said.
Hickenlooper is also counted among the eight, although a spokesperson for the Colorado Democrat said that support for the time being is limited to ending a filibuster and not support for the legislation itself.
“The senator has not said he will vote for the Laken Riley Act,” said Anthony Rivera-Rodriguez, a Hickenlooper spokesperson. “He said he’s interested in voting to proceed to the bill to amend it. But he does not support the Laken Riley Act in its current form.”
Slotkin is considered a “yes” vote based on support for the legislation as a House member, according to Britt’s office. Later Wednesday, Slotkin’s office sent out a news release that said she plans to vote for the bill.
“Like many bills, this one isn’t perfect, and I’m hopeful there will be an amendment process,” Slotkin said. “But no matter what, this bill certainly doesn’t address the root causes of our broken immigration system, which we need to do to ever truly deal with immigration issues writ large in this country.”
Ossoff’s office pointed to comments he made to CNN on Tuesday indicating he’s “planning to vote to get onto the bill and see where (the) process goes from there.” Those same comments quote Slotkin as saying she’s “reviewing” the legislation.
In the Senate, Britt has taken the lead on the measure, which is named for a 22-year-old woman murdered last year by an undocumented immigrant who had been released after an arrest.
The legislation has two main components. One part requires the secretary of Homeland Security to issue a detainer for undocumented immigrants arrested for or convicted of burglary, theft or shoplifting. The other part lets states sue the federal government if they feel U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement doesn’t enforce the previous component of the bill.
Democratic support for the bill comes to the consternation of immigration advocates who say the measure would have a negative impact on immigrant families in the United States.
María Teresa Kumar, president of Voto Latino, said in a statement the legislation is a “chilling first step toward widespread family separation” and disregards due process.
“We can recognize that the immigration system is broken, and we’re open to thoughtful modernizations that prioritize fairness,” Kumar said. “However, this bill’s severe provisions would cause irreparable harm to longstanding families who have built lives and contributed to this country.”
The legislation also appears to seek to overturn a recent Supreme Court precedent ruling that individual states do not have a right to file lawsuits over immigration enforcement, which is under the jurisdiction of the federal government.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, wrote in an op-ed for MSNBC the bill would give incredible power to the federal courts and state attorneys general considered hostile to immigration, such as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
“Under a provision of the bill that has gotten little attention, federal courts in places like Texas and Louisiana could hear lawsuits seeking to impose sweeping bans on all visas from countries such as India and China,” Reichlin-Melnick said. “State officials could also seek court orders forcing the government to deport a specific individual without the sign-off of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.”
When Whisky Advocate magazine distilled a compendium of “America’s Top Whisky Bars,” one Alabama venue made the list of 125.
The lone Alabama spot that made the cut is in Mobile, a Dauphin Street storefront where quite a few people would have started (or finished) their art walk perambulations on Friday evening, if the monthly downtown event hadn’t been canceled due to winter weather. It’s also a place well known as the epicenter of annual Tiki Week celebrations: The Haberdasher.
“Tucked in a hole-in-the-wall downtown, this rustic speakeasy is a hidden gem,” says Whisky Advocate, “known for hosting lively whisky-fueled crawfish boils several times a year in its chic, cozy atmosphere.”
In all honesty, rare whiskey might not be the beverage of choice for someone clawing through a heap of crawfish and spicy fixings like a hungry raccoon. But the blurb does help get the point across that The Hab is refined enough to serve you an elaborate artisanal cocktail full of house-made flavorings and high-end liqueurs, without being too snooty to serve up some mudbugs. Or Spam fries, if it’s Tiki Week.
“We are extremely proud, and humbled, by this nod from such a well respected and widely read publication,” Haberdasher General Manager Roy Clark said in a statement issued by The Haberdasher. “It can be difficult to gain national attention in such a small market. Our team works hard every day to maintain a standard that we feel is worthy of this award. Our loyal customers are our greatest asset and I feel like they are instrumental in helping spread the good word.”
The venue is owned by Naude Gouws and Elise Poche, with Tasha Tupa as bar manager and Zane Phillips as executive chef. The team “will be releasing a number of hard to find and well-sought after whiskies throughout the month of January” to celebrate the recognition.
The Haberdasher team says it stocks more than 100 different whiskies from the United States, Scotland, Ireland, Japan and Canada. But there’s more to it that having bottles on the shelf: “The Haberdasher strives to not only bring in the best bottles available, but to also give their hard-working staff the knowledge and experience to foster their appreciation for fine spirits,” said the announcement. “The bar crew have visited well over a dozen distilleries and countless bars worldwide and have participated in numerous national festivals, educational events and seminars. The team has also had the opportunity to participate in five whiskey ‘barrel picks,’ at which they choose — along with makers of the whiskey — an unblended barrel of whiskey that is available exclusively at the Haberdasher.”
Thursday morning was very cold across Alabama, with lows ranging from the teens to 20s across the state.
One of the lowest temperatures overnight was 15 degrees in Gadsden, according to data from the National Weather Service.
Other cold spots were Decatur, Haleyville and Talladega at 17 degrees.
Here are the lowest temperatures from midnight until 6 a.m. (but not official lows) Thursday courtesy of the National Weather Service:
* Alexander City: 27 degrees
* Anniston: 21 degrees
* Auburn: 22 degrees
* Birmingham: 19 degrees
* Decatur: 17 degrees
* Demopolis: 23 degrees
* Dothan: 26 degrees
* Evergreen: 25 degrees
* Gadsden: 15 degrees
* Haleyville: 17 degrees
* Huntsville: 19 degrees
* Mobile: 27 degrees
* Montgomery: 24 degrees
* Muscle Shoals: 22 degrees
* Ozark: 26 degrees
* Prattville: 23 degrees
* Talladega: 17 degrees
* Troy: 22 degrees
* Tuscaloosa: 21 degrees
The weather service expects highs to reach only the 40s again across Alabama as cold air remains in place. (See the high temperature forecast for today at the top of this post.)
A developing weather system will bring slightly warmer temperatures tonight to the state, but also the possibility of ice and snow, especially for north and central Alabama.
Winter storm warnings and winter weather advisories will go into effect at midnight for the northern half of the state.
Here are the expected lows tonight, when that precipitation will begin moving in:
Here are the expected low temperatures tonight into Friday morning.NWS
It will remain very chilly through the weekend, with Saturday night-Sunday morning looking very cold as well. In fact, there’s a chance Sunday morning will be a degree or two colder than today for some areas. Here is the forecast for Saturday night-Sunday morning:
Saturday night and Sunday morning are also going to be extremely cold. Here is the low temperature forecast.NWS
Forecasters expect next week to remain on the chilly side as well, with higher probabilities for below-average temperatures. Here is the Climate Prediction Center’s eight- to 14-day temperature outlook for Jan. 16-22:
More below-average temperatures are expected in Alabama from Jan. 16-22.Climate Prediction Center
