Herron Out!!

Democrat State senator Roy Herron sent out an e mail last night letting us all know he will be stepping down from the state senate in November. Here is a link to his press release.

Debate rundown

1. Rick Santorum. Another good showing. Strong, confident and knowledgeable on key issues. Brought the whoopin' stick out on Romney for healthcare. Only down side was not having his wife present, but with 7 kids I couldn't blame her if she slept through the entire campaign.

2. This one was close I almost called it a tie between second and third but Romney gets the tip. Strong showing early and evaded attacks well, you could tell he had stacked the crowd but even the crowd couldn't help him from the merciless beating Santorum gave him. I was expecting the crowd to start to call out "Mercy!, Mercy!" (like at the end of the movie Braveheart) with the gutting Santorum gave him on Obamneycare.

3. Newt, Did OK on attacks and defence but it was more of a wash. Didn't show the cocky swagger and boldness that has propelled him in earlier debates but I think the crowd may have been an issue. Could have played up the Reagan angle a little more but I think he showed he has been rolling up some big endorsements. I was expecting possibly a little more of an attack on the court system when he talked about religion. I think the moon issue was a flop. Played well to the Latino community I am sure, but let Romney off the hook on immigration and other issues.

4. Ron Paul, OK, I know I have been a little hard on Ron Paul in the past but I honestly think this was one of his best showing. He didn't come across all screechy like he has in the past and I think he spoke well on the economy. Still needs to develop a little better long range talking points. He does not look healthy. In fact he looked down right frail.

5. CNN, Missed opportunities to ask about oil exploration in the gulf (Probably a big issue in Florida). I didn't like the question about Ron Paul's health even though he does look bad. The first lady question was a softball and really not necessary. I am getting tired of the candidates talking about the latest personal attacks the campaigns do. Debates are for issues.

Thought of the day.

I was having a real problem logging on to my ipad and then I realized it was an etch a sketch and I don't have an ipad.

Bummer.

Fred Thompson endorses Newt!

I am sure this won't hurt in Tennessee.

Quote of the day.

"If Gingrich wins Florida, the Republican Establishment is going to have a meltdown that makes Three Mile Island look like a marshmallow roast."

John Heilemann

Data good, except for Pre K

Oh Phil, it is so funny when you try to talk conservative but don't have the history to back up what you say.

You say you want the states to use data in education reform? OK, fine. How about we start with the data the state has recovered from the studies we have done on Pre K? Pre K has proven to be expensive, without lasting value and in some cases has actually even had a negative effect on children. Not just in one study, Not twice but three times in a row here in Tennessee. In fact, there has not been one single quantifiable study in Tennessee that has shown a positive net result for our investment.

Plug that into your little computer and see what pops out. Should we continue to keep funding it or put the money somewhere where it will actually help kids improve their educational results.

What does the data tell you?

Walk for life

I will be joining hundreds of pro life supporters today for The Tennessee right to life's annual "Walk for life" today at 2:00. We will be start at Calvary Baptist church at 3200 Kingston pike and walk down to Tyson park just outside of UT. Please feel free to come and join us.

Back from South Carolina

Yesterday I took a trip to South Carolina to try and help Newt Gingrich over the hump. I knew that state was going to be key. South Carolina had picked every Republican nominee since Ronald Reagan. We knew momentum had been building for Newt and a win in SC would really pump him up to the next level.

I was shadowing Newt's South Eastern Chairwoman (Maria Zack). She informed me that that when she first started working on the Newt Campaign "South East" meant everywhere not Iowa and New Hampshire. She said "We had 8 people on the team. Now we have over 70 and it grows every day". The momentum is really moving in the right direction. Maria was quite an interesting person in that she had been working with Newt for decades and had a ton of good background stories. She knew him as just a regular person. And that's how she spoke about him. She said one of the difference between him and other candidates was how hard he worked (She said he was personally putting out signs at 4:30 AM on election day)

When the day started there was real trepidation. There were monsoon type rains going on throughout the day in areas where Newt was expected to win and it was mostly clear where Romney was expected to do well. As the day rolled along though, we kept getting calls that despite the rain people were waiting in the rain, in lines to vote for Newt. The military vote (A huge population in SC) was coming out strong for Newt as well. Sort of a shock to me was how low Ron Paul polled. With his claims of close military ties I expected he might fair better then he did with that population but I learned that the campaigns polling was showing it was just the opposite. The huge active duty and retired military population did not like Ron Paul at all.

At 7 PM sharp we were getting exit polls that said it was already over and Newt was going to win hands down. WOW!! No one was expecting that! The news shot through the building like a lightening bolt. It was HUGE! The place erupted! People were shouting and cheering. Reporters from all over the nation and world were running all over the place asking questions of anyone and everyone they could grab ahold of. The crowd waiting to see the Newt victory speech were electrified and jacked up. Cheers of "USA! USA! USA!" were mixed in with chants of "Niki who?, Nikki who?, Nikki who?" For SC governor Nikki Haley who had come out for Romney and had been campaigning for him across the state.

As the numbers rolled in a double digit victory blew everyone away and sent everyone to another level of excitement. They were singing the "Pump up" music songs, Waving signs, lifting little children into the air to see Newt as he came in and was shaking hands. National and local dignitaries were all over the place.

Rick Santorum had a funny mix in the crowd. While his concession speech was being played the crowd chanted "Drop out now! Drop out now!" but I did not get the sense it was because they disliked Rick. More it was they saw the need to consolidate the conservative vote to elect a conservative in the primary. Sure enough when Newt spoke of his fellow competitors in the primary (He had kind words for all) The chants of "V.P., V.P., V.P." were quite strong when Newt spoke of Rick.

Newt just smiled.

Filed under "I told you so"

Well what do you know. It seems the Iowa caucus was actually won by Rick Santorum after all. I hate to say it but I told you so the day they announced Romney the winner. Now, entire precincts are missing but even Romney is conceding Santorum won it.

Smart move on his part.

Romney already got all the bump he needed from the early claimed victory. Now, no one cares and the bump in cash and momentum it could have brought Santorum is all sucked up. The only change is in SC. Romney is now trailing as Newt is starting to collect the divided conservative vote. Romneys big hope is to re energise the flailing Santorum campaign and hope Rick can pull off enough support from Newt to let Romney squeak by for another victory. Conceding an empty Iowa victory to Santorum is his throwing a starving dog a bone in the hopes it eats his rival (Gingrich) in the end.

Grumbelings

I am starting to hear grumblings about what I warned about 2 years ago.

Tenvesco.

The Tenvesco plan was a state taxpayer backed and funded "Bank" for loans to private companies who would "bring in jobs" into Tennessee. The down side was there was little to no recourse to recoup funds if the business failed to live up to expectations. A few years ago the state went ahead and pumped tens of millions of dollars into this plan in the name of "Economic development".

You may recall I feared it would turn into a slush fund for cooperate friends of government and never produce the jobs it promised. Frank Nicley did a great job railing against it on the house floor.

Sure enough, just like the switch grass fiasco, Tnvesco is following down the same path of failure. After all the money invested, under 200 jobs have been created. Cost for each job? Almost a million dollars each.

Let the investigations begin.

Hensly vs Cobb

Rep. Joey Hensley has signed up to run for the new state senate seat in southern middle west Tennessee. Joey has been a long time conservative voice in the state house (I would rank him as probably among the 3-5 most conservative). He is also the state legislatures only medical doctor and has been a voice of reason for conservative medical legislation.

Former one term Democrat Rep. Ty Cobb has also decided to run for the seat. You may remember Cobb for the one bill he passed in his time in the legislature. Allowing fish tanks and bird cages in barber shops (no, I am not kidding). I think it was the key part of the Democrats "Jobs package".

Dems vote against giving Tipton Co. a Senator.

Tipton county will have a senator.

The county was inadvertently left out of the legal wording for the senate redistricting plan and the plan had to be recalled from the governors desk to have the wording put back in. It was an accident by a heavily loaded, tired legal team and not a plot to punish Tipton County for sending Jimmy Naifeh to the state house for so many years.

Oddly, when the vote was made to add the wording back in, senate Democrats voted against the move. I guess Democrats really don't want Tipton County to have a senator after all.

Post debate wrap

1. Santorum. Played the down home, underdog, Rudy Ruettiger angle great. I expected him to pull out a hard hat, a lunch pale and talk about mom and apple pie if the debate went much longer. He had the facts and points that really ran the debate and had a great closing. Unfortunately for him I don't think it really came across as presidential. He looked studied and all, just not quite ready. A little too underdog. Sorry, I think its back to the J.V. bench after Saturday Punky Brewster.

2. Gingrich. Great opening. Strong. You can never go wrong whacking CNN. Not quite an explosively huge night like last time but still a strong night. When he talked about big ideas and big change he came across as quite presidential to me. I about bust a gut as he contemplated if it was better saving the liberal media or letting them collapse. Oh, too dream....

3. Romney. He looked better then most of the time. Not quite as timid as usual but still on the defensive. A little dodgy. When he didn't like the question he would attack Obama instead of responding directly. Handled the Gingrich X wife question with class. Flopped on dealing with his tax records.

4. Paul. Not quite as way out, mean spirited, screechy as usual. Stuck to being anti war....On all issues....Again. As Huntzman was mister 1% I think Ron Paul is turning into mister 1 issue. I think even he realizes he can not explain a clear, positive vision for America moving forward that people relate to. More a consistant voter then a leader.

5. CNN. Come on! First question of the night is an attack against one candidate on his personal life in the form of a presidential question? When will the president vote on that? Well, they got Newkt as they deserved. The rest of the questions were good and the format was great until they tried to cut Paul out of the pro life question and got ripped by the crowd. Of course after the Santorum rebuttal I bet Paul wished they had let him go.

Tindell OUT!!

State rep. Harry Tindell has announced he will not seek reelection in 2012. With the population shifts and the required changes needed to make the districts constitutional his district went from a 55-45 democrat leaning district to a 55-45 Republican leaning district.

PERRY OUT!!!

Texas Governor Rick Perry just got off the phone with Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey telling him he did not need to come to SC. to be part of the post debate spin room. He is stepping aside in the presidential race.

Word is he will be supporting Newt Gingrich.

Anybody want to rank these

The Tennessean has compiled the per diem totals for legislators. Unfortunately they are in no real order. Does anyone want to rank these by most per diem used to least?

Tonights debate

First let me say I missed about the first 40 minutes of it so take that into account.

1. Newt. WOW! Crushing and I mean crushing debate. I cant say I have ever seen a standing O in a debate much less 3 of them. It was like he was throwing candy to kids in a parade or drilling a solo at some rock concert. Luckily, no underwear was thrown on to the stage.

2. Perry looked good. Still have not seen his daughter Katie in the crowd though.

3. Santorum. Boring and poorly designed wordy attacks on Newt had little effect.

4. Romney. I need to think of a level beyond extra boring but I can't. Looked twitchy like a long tailed cat in a rocking chair factory for a while.

5. Ron Paul. I think he only has about 2 responses and uses them no matter what the question is. I swear I think they could ask him what his favorite breakfast cereal was and he would say "We need to get out of these cereal wars and bring our troops home!" He is anti war. We get it. We got it the first 800 times he said it.

Good from the Duke

Is this the job of government?

As the Tennessee bill saying teachers should stay out of the homosexuality issue altogether is set to advance in the state house, left leaning editors and bloggers are now openly saying they plan to push their agenda in schools.

Children will be taught to endorse the homosexual agenda despite the beliefs of their parents, the managing editor of a homosexual newspaper in Canada has said.
Writing in the online edition of Xtra Vancouver, Robin Perelle blasted parents with traditional beliefs saying “your outdated morals are no longer acceptable, and we will teach your kids the new norms”.

Resilient
Last year it emerged that Stonewall, a homosexual pressure group in Britain, had been sending controversial teacher training packs to some primary schools....


Indoctrinate
Writing on an LGBT blog, Daniel Villarreal said: “I and a lot of other people want to indoctrinate, recruit, teach, and expose children to queer sexuality AND THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT.”

He also said: “We want educators to teach future generations of children to accept queer sexuality. In fact, our very future depends on it.”

He added: “Why would we push anti-bullying programs or social studies classes that teach kids about the historical contributions of famous queers unless we wanted to deliberately educate children to accept queer sexuality as normal?”

Court battles slow immigration verification

"Sunshine" lawsuits have hindered police from asking about immigration status of people who have been arrested who can not show any proof of their citizenship.

“As far as we’re concerned, we accomplished what we wanted to do, which was to eliminate the POST Commission policy,” he said after the meeting. “We consider this to be a victory — that’s not to say that we don’t have problems with the Secure Communities Program.”
The rules went into effect Jan. 1 after legislators last year enacted a law requiring the commission to create guidelines to deal with immigration issues at county jails. The guidelines boiled down to two questions asked of every suspect booked: “Where were you born?” and “Are you a U.S. citizen?”

Judicial hair splitting

According to title VII Tennessee employers can willfully discriminate against transgender persons but the courts have taken their own point of view on the issue.



Creative plaintiff lawyers have successfully filed charges of discrimination based on gender identity issues by framing them as prohibited sex discrimination. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals recently reaffirmed its long held position that Title VII does protect employees from discrimination based on "sex-stereotyping."

In the case, an openly homosexual employee in Nashville was harassed by a co-worker. When he complained to his union, the union quit referring him jobs. He sued claiming discrimination and retaliation based on his sexual orientation.

The court held that while Title VII does not protect against discrimination for sexual orientation, employees who are discriminated against because they do not conform to traditional notions of what is appropriate for one's gender can sue for sex-stereotyping. Thus a male employee who is very effeminate may be able to successfully claim sex discrimination.

Oregon bans campus gun ban

Another state over rules campuses from banning guns on campus for legal handgun carry permit holders.

A three-judge panel of the Oregon Court of Appeals said that an Oregon University System ban on guns exceeds its authority and is invalid.

That means people with permits can pack concealed guns, said Di Saunders, spokeswoman for the university system.

"We don't have the authority to kick them off campus unless they show the weapons," she said.

But anyone brandishing a gun on campus would be approached immediately by security, she said.

Kevin Starrett, executive director of the Oregon Firearms Educational Foundation that filed the suit challenging the gun ban, said as a practical matter the ruling does not change much.

"There are students and staff and visitors carrying guns on every campus of every college in this state every day," said Starrett, whose nonprofit group fights for Second Amendment constitutional rights. "My interest is having people who have power over other people conform to the same rules that everyone else is expected to conform to and not use their bureaucratic position as a way to harass, intimidate and humiliate people who are doing nothing wrong." ....

....The lawsuit grew out of a controversy in early 2009 over Western Oregon University's suspension of a student for packing a handgun, even though he had a permit.

The court ruled that while the State Board of Higher Education has authority to control and manage its property and to enact administrative rules, it cannot override a state law that says only the Legislature can regulate the use, sale and possession of firearms.

The university system rule that bans guns on university property "exceeds the agency's authority," the court wrote. The gun ban was developed in the 1970s and modified in 1991.

Rep. Kim Thatcher, R-Keizer, supported the firearms foundation in its suit and called the ruling a vindication for gun owners. She said she was concerned both about the university system's restrictions on guns and its overstepping its authority.

"How many other agencies are out there making up rules outside the law?" she asked. "I don't have a problem with someone carrying a gun on campus. That should make it safer to be on campus, to have a law-abiding citizen carrying a gun."

Thought of the day.

"Better to speak truth with metaphor....than to cater to the likes of an editor."

The race for second place

The big fight in the senate was not Republican vs. Democrat. It was Democrat Vs Democrat. The senate had to take several long breaks as democrats were given time to see if they wanted any adjustments withing the boundaries that were democrat controlled. Jimmy Kyle made moves to stick a knife in Beverly Morrero by drawing himself into her district and making some other population changes.

As you can imagine she was not too happy with this plan.

In the end, many don't think it will matter at all either way. The district has grown into a majority minority district (Something minorities have wanted for decades but refused under the Democrat rule that gerrymandered minority number for political gain) The Republican plan allowed minorities what they had asked for for. A more centralized State senate district.


Now Kyle
and Morrero
both live in that @70% minority district....






But so does State Rep. G.A. Hardaway.











I see a change in the not too distant future.

Is that Senator Hardaway I see?

Dems Clash in Wake of Redistricting: MyFoxMEMPHIS.com

Kelo in Tennessee

From the "It can never happen here" file, the stealing of land from one private owner to give to another private owner is having huge negative blowback in Tennessee. In just one case costing tens of millions of dollars. Money that the government subsidised to pay for land taken to give to a private developer.

But guess what? A jury has now said the land was worth twice what was paid when taking it.

A Nashville judge last month upheld a jury ruling that said MDHA vastly undervalued a piece of property owned by Tower Investments. MDHA, which was in charge of acquiring land for the Music City Center project, said the land was worth $14.8 million. But a jury said the fair value was $30.4 million.
The jury’s ruling busted MDHA’s budget for land acquisition and put the budget for the entire project in serious jeopardy. Most of the project’s miniscule $15 million reserve would be nearly entirely sapped if the jury’s verdict is upheld.

I could almost cry.....

But I won't.

I see a bail out in the future

If ever there was a reason for a bail out. This is it.

Frank lets fly

The battle of ideology is pretty cut and dry in this one.

A Republican candidate for Anderson County mayor said she wouldn't have supported the property tax increase county commissioners approved last year.

"You don't raise taxes in a down economy," Terry Frank told attendees at an Anderson County Tea Party-sponsored forum Thursday night. Frank also vowed to veto any proposed tax increases over the next two years if elected mayor.

Frank's rival in the March 6 Republican primary, County Commissioner Tim Isbel, defended his motion to raise taxes by 16.2 cents last year

Hey, I know that dude!

No, not the one on the left. The third guy from the right sitting down. That's Justin Wilson Tennessee comptroller of the treasury featured in the USA Today photo. Justin flew up to NH last week for a few days to check out Newt.

UT CRs won't get fooled again