Commentary
Commentary: Stumbles by both Tennessee House caucuses bode no good for Tennesseans
This week Tennessee General Assembly opened the 112th legislative session and it’s been notable for the messes in which both House of Representatives caucuses commenced the new year. The supermajority Republicans had a scandal in the making even before Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton gaveled in the session. On Jan. 8, just days before […]
Red Reckoning
Thanks to recent events, cogitation about the future of the Republican Party is now a growth industry bursting at the seams. How Trumpy will the party remain now that the Trump brand wafts the stench of insurrection? What political price will be paid by the stop-the-steal dead-enders in Congress who even after the mayhem of […]
Commentary: Personal responsibility? Any Tennessee Republican leader ready?
“Personal responsibility” is a favorite slogan for Tennessee Republican political leaders. Until it comes to their own words and actions. After the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday Tennessee GOP leaders issued their obligatory statements of condemnation. U.S. Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty said: “Yesterday was a shocking day of lawlessness… Last […]
Commentary: MNPD Chief Drake is misleading the public about 2019 bomber investigation
Early Christmas morning, we saw again that Nashville’s police officers represent the best of their profession. The six heroic men and women who ran towards danger to evacuate Second Avenue in the minutes before the suicide bombing acted with bravery and resolve. Unfortunately, in the week that followed, their leaders have demonstrated neither. Since the bombing, […]
Commentary: Tennessee congressional delegation in destructive denial
Just hours before he would take the oath of office as a U. S. Senator from Tennessee, Bill Hagerty made another pledge, one of loyalty to the deranged notions of Donald Trump to challenge documented results of the 2020 presidential election. Hagerty, like Sen. Marsha Blackburn and nearly all of our state’s Republican members of […]
2020 was a huge taker
‘Twas the night before the new year, the last few minutes of 2019 and I had stayed awake way past my bedtime to enjoy my birthday. Trump was freshly impeached, and it felt like an early birthday present. My family and I made plans for all things we would do in the New Year and […]
Commentary: Knox County Board of Health endangered by viral nonsense
Monday night, the Knox County Commission will vote on an ordinance that effectively would abolish the county’s Board of Health, resurrecting a zombie version of it as only an advisory body. The signs are not promising the Board of Health will survive COVID-19 viral misinformation loose in the body politic. The commission voted 8-3 last […]
Editor’s column: Gov. Bill Lee does his best Ebenezer Scrooge impression
Nothing warms the heart at the holidays like viewings of Christmas fare like “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and adaptations of the Charles Dickens classic, “A Christmas Carol.” Each features a villain lacking in holiday spirit and empathy for his fellow man — or Who, in the Grinch’s case — but who comes to realize […]
Column: Go home, Lamar.
Culminating 18 years of distinguished mediocrity in the halls of power, Lamar Alexander took to the Senate floor last week to give what was billed as his (capital F capital S) Farewell Speech. As public address it was comically self-delusional, projecting an inflated sense of accomplishment and self-satisfaction that in normal times we might easily […]
Commentary: Blackburn bluster is incoherent about social media
U. S. Senator from Tennessee Marsha Blackburn recently has been obsessed with one topic—social media platforms and their supposed unfairness to right-wingers. She spent an inordinate amount of time and space in her Nov. 20 newsletter flogging the point. She included five clips of herself (one from a congressional hearing, one from the Senate floor, […]
Commentary: Hungry Tennesseans deserve to have burden eased
I recently ran for office, because I was concerned about what I saw happening in my community. When I was campaigning, I posted a video on social media that I took on the way home one day showing a food line near my district. It stretched for blocks and blocks, hundreds of cars, full of […]
Editor’s column: Welcome to Tennessee! Now y’all go home.
In my Tennessee home town, every time there’s a move towards something progressive — removing the Confederate flag from the county seal, for instance, imposing a mask mandate or changing the name of a school mascot to something not offensive to a third of the school’s graduates — the comments on social media usually include […]