Tennessee: God, Guns, Booze

The State's Official Gun (almost)

State legislators aimed this year to define Tennessee via the designation of "Official State _________ " resolutions and came up with some true weirdness.

What did they select to identify Tennessee?

The Bible.
The Sniper Rifle.
Moonshine.

How did Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey describe this legislative session? 

"I have said it before and I will say it again: it matters who governs."

Testing Requires More Testing

The Tennessee Legislature deploys some logic - because so much time in public school is spent on increasing testing scores in science and math and technology, other classes, such as in civics and social studies and history have been hampered. So, now students will have to take a citizenship test to graduate.

Too many tests, it seems, denotes a vital need for more tests. Of course, the new law says a student can take the test as many times as needed in order to pass it. 

The legislation is created by a the Joe Foss Institute.

Maybe students should be directed to learn how lobbying by large national foundations is so effective.

Sen. Ramsey's Attack on the Supreme Court

Why is Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey intent on taking out 3 members of the state's Supreme Court? Is it a political power grab?

The reasons appear quite murky and dubious, and the impact a high dollar political election campaign will have on the state's judiciary branch will likely diminish the role of our third branch of government. Slate offers a good perspective (hat tip to KnoxViews for the link):

"Three justices on the Tennessee Supreme Court are facing an election-year attack, not for any particular decision they have authored or even for any unpopular opinion they have espoused. No, in an ugly campaign in Tennessee that appears to be getting ever uglier, Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey, who is also the state’s lieutenant governor, is attempting to oust three state Supreme Court justices in their Aug. 7 retention elections, chiefly for the judicial outrage of having been appointed to the high court by a Democrat.

"When judicial races turn into spending races, what suffers most is not Democrats or Republicans, but judicial independence and integrity. As has been exhaustively chronicled by one nonpartisan study after another, judges don’t want to be dialing for dollars from the attorneys who litigate before them, and litigants don’t want to appear before judges who dial for dollars. All of the data shows that the effect is a decline in confidence in the independence of the judiciary and a spending arms race that spirals ever more out of control.

POSTSCRIPT: Whatever happened to the "laser focus" on jobs or education?

Attention Knoxville - It's Your Fault

Dear Knoxville voters -

You really, really need to do better in choosing your representatives ... unless maybe you agree with Senator Stacey Campfield that signing up for health care is the same as participating in the Holocaust. The state's Republican Party says his comments are: " ... ignorant and repugnant."

Thank you,
 Ashamed Resident

State Ponders Dropping Out of Daylight Savings Time

A bill has been filed to exempt the state from observing Daylight Savings Time, from Rep. Curry Todd and Sen. Janice Bowling.

I'd sure like the time changes to stop and for us to just have one time system. But there will likely be passionate debate on the topic for and against. Some things, unlike Time, never change.