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Editor’s column: Slatery’s tenure as AG shows mixed legal bag
A week or so ago, a tweet about Tennessee government caught my eye: “We don’t legislate by law, we legislate by lawsuit,” wrote someone in response to another story about Gov. Bill Lee’s legal woes. I don’t remember which one of the Lee administration’s suits to which the Twitter wag referred, and that’s the problem: […]
Editor’s column: Presidential precedent exists for drastic action in times of crisis
On Thursday, President Joe Biden announced a six-prong strategy to try to get the current surge of COVID-19 under control. His platform includes fairly non-controversial steps that include making home COVID testing kits more readily available and extending the mask mandate in commercial air travel. But the leading piece of Biden’s plan is one that […]
Chattanooga Times Free Press announces conversion to all-digital format
The Chattanooga Times Free Press, one of Tennessee’s largest daily news outlets, is converting to an all-digital format with the exception of a Sunday print edition, publisher Walter Hussman announced Saturday. The daily print edition will cease by mid-2022. Hussman announced the changes to newspaper staff Friday afternoon and editor Alison Gerber told subscribers in […]
Odessa Kelly picks up national SEIU endorsement
Odessa Kelly, candidate for the Democratic nomination for Congress in Tennessee District 5, has picked up the national endorsement of Service Workers International Union on Thursday. Kelly, who is taking on incumbent Congressman Jim Cooper, is member of SEIU Local 205 in Nashville through her work with the Metro Nashville Parks Department. “I’m a proud […]
Editor’s Column: In Williamson County’s underbelly, everything old is new again
Recently, a recording of a Williamson County School Board meeting went viral after anti-mask parents mobbed physicians after the meeting, screaming at the doctors and threatening them. National news outlets, including CNN, The Washington Post, the New York Times and Esquire, covered the disgraceful incident and many locals shared their feelings of distress on social […]
Editor’s Column: COVID comes home
My husband is a bull of a man. He’s rarely sick and I’ve never known anything to scare him. He joined the Chicago Carpenters Union at 18, swinging a hammer for years before working his way up to superintendent. When a nail went through his work boot into his foot, he pulled it out and […]
Editor’s Column: Welcome to Absurdistan!
Christopher Buckley is known for writing novels of absurdist political fiction, with titles like “No Way to Treat a First Lady,” in which the First Lady is accused of killing her husband, the president, and “Thank You for Smoking,” which was turned into a 2005 film. Buckley’s 2007 book “Boomsday,” revolves around a public relations […]
Editor’s column: The hottest ticket in town
Political tongues have been flapping all over Nashville since community organizer and activist Odessa Kelly announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination in the 5th Congressional District in early April. Kelly is taking on incumbent Jim Cooper, who has served in the 5th District seat since his election in 2002 (and in the 4th Congressional […]
Commentary: The curious case of Dr. Fiscus
We began the week in the soap opera that is Tennessee with the firing of the Tennessee Department of Health’s chief immunization director. Dr. Michelle “Shelley” Fiscus, a pediatrician by training, was unceremoniously sacked on Monday after four years of service with the state. Fiscus said her termination letter gave no reason for her firing […]
Save Nashville Now sues Davidson County Election Commission
The other shoe has dropped in the ongoing dispute over a proposed referendum in Nashville to change the Metro Government Charter and undo a property tax increase levied by Metro Council in 2020. Save Nashville Now, a coalition of city business, community and faith leaders has filed a lawsuit against the Davidson County Election Commission, […]
Commentary: Recapture the flag
When I was a kid, the American flag was a big deal in our house. We had a heavy cloth flag that, unlike flags now, wasn’t just a design printed on flimsy fabric. The red and white stripes were sewn together and the stars individually stitched onto the blue background. When it wasn’t hanging from […]
Editor’s column: America has too little education on race, not too much
When I got out of college in 1987, I realized I was an educated idiot. For the past five years, I’d crammed my head with a lot of facts and knew about the politics of Latin America and the Soviet Union, political theory going back to Plato and Aristotle, the plays of Shakespeare and bawdy […]