This is a fair overview of the crap we are having to endure with our current Republican party. Scandals be damned, they serve their overlords and ignore the people of Tennessee.

At least 10 Republican House members have said Casada should step aside. In a further sign of eroding trust, Democratic lawmakers have also asked law enforcement to explore allegations that Casada's office spied on House members, charges he denies.

The latest scandal erupted when a news outlet reported that Casada's chief of staff, Cade Cothren, may have tampered with emails to make it look like a black student activist violated bond conditions after he was arrested for participating in protests at the Tennessee Capitol.

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From the Knox News Sentinel:

Sword handed down an effective sentence of 12 years in prison last week for David Lynn Richards Jr., who was convicted by a Knox County jury in February on nine felony counts including rape, incest and sexual battery by authority figure for the repeated abuse of his adopted teenage daughter over nearly two years.

"Nothing says 'good Christian man' like rape & incest," reads a tweet posted Monday by @crushthebigots, a self-described entrepreneur and philanthropist who tweets about legal issues. "The prosecutor recommended 72 years in prison. The judge felt he was a good Christian and gave him 12."

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How likely do you think that is? That the whole network of civilization would collapse?

I would estimate the chances are about 49 percent that the world as we know it will collapse by about 2050. I’ll be dead by then but my kids will be, what? Sixty-three years old in 2050. So this is a subject of much practical interest to me. At the rate we’re going now, resources that are essential for complex societies are being managed unsustainably. Fisheries around the world, most fisheries are being managed unsustainably, and they’re getting depleted. Farms around the world, most farms are being managed unsustainably. Soil, topsoil around the world. Fresh water around the world is being managed unsustainably. With all these things, at the rate we’re going now, we can carry on with our present unsustainable use for a few decades, and by around 2050 we won’t be able to continue it any longer. Which means that by 2050 either we’ve figured out a sustainable course, or it’ll be too late.

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Arithmetic seems to be a lost skill but the numbers tell the story:

Citizens are now paying $8 a month for garbage-pickup service; but once the new contract with Waste Connections goes into effect, that rate will increase to $10.50 a month.

That fee would be added to all customers’ water bills, with no way for residential customers to opt out. However, commercial customers may opt out provided they can prove they have other services to get rid of their garbage, such as a container to handle their garbage service.

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If I could end football as a "sport"in public school I would not hesitate!

Stanley Morgan, 64, once a Volunteer of distinction, a near-legend in 14 years of professional football, is a victim of concussions, maybe more than 30

Stanley is convinced his brain has been damaged. He says he is struggling with depression, mood swings and memory loss. He has good days and bad days and a few that are impossible.

The good ones are when he feels like getting out of bed and doing something. He is grateful that he can walk and play golf. He can’t run. That hurts. Running was what he did.

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Happy Mother's Day from Julia Ward Howe...

Again, in the sight of the Christian world, have the skill and power of two great nations exhausted themselves in mutual murder. Again have the sacred questions of international justice been committed to the fatal mediation of military weapons. In this day of progress, in this century of light, the ambition of rulers has been allowed to barter the dear interests of domestic life for the bloody exchanges of the battle field. Thus men have done. Thus men will do. But women need no longer be made a party to proceedings which fill the globe with grief and horror. Despite the assumptions of physical force, the mother has a sacred and commanding word to say to the sons who owe their life to her suffering. That word should now be heard, and answered to as never before.

Arise, then, Christian women of this day ! Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears ! Say firmly : We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country, to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: Disarm, disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence vindicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of council.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, man as the brother of man, each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality, may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient, and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

— Julia Ward Howe

I have repeatedly said that the GOP looks more and more like a crime family. Speaker Casada has put people on the state payroll who don't work, suppressed evidence in a sexual harassment case against a GOP legislator, and supported the most vile of campaign lies against opponents through his PAC. Now this...

The state confirmed the House Speaker, Lieutenant Governor and the Senate and House Chief Clerks are able to listen to and watch the rooms where committee meetings are occurring.

Democrats claim that it gives people in those offices the ability to spy and listen in on any conversation in those rooms. Democrats held caucus meetings at times in those committee rooms that they thought were in private.

Why wouldn't this be a felony?

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A "pissing contest" for real.

This is from TN State Representative Gloria Johnson...

Tennessee, when your friends are calling you asking you to explain who peed in whose chair, I think it is time for folks to really pay attention to who they are voting for.

Yes, a journalist got a tip that someone peed in a legislator’s chair and this is where we are.

To be clear, I never had to deal with this in 27 years of teaching elementary, middle, and high school.

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Finally the biggest damage to Roane County at the hands of TVA is being addressed: the damage to Roane County's reputation and property values as a result of the ash disaster.

Roane County, Harriman and Kingston have filed a lawsuit against the Tennessee Valley Authority and its prime contractor in the cleanup of the nation’s largest coal ash spill. The lawsuit accuses TVA and Jacobs Engineering of hiding from the public internal records showing a coal ash ingredient list of dangerous toxins, heavy metals and radioactive isotopes; destroying evidence including exposure threat test samples, test results, videos and photographs; tampering with exposure threat testing by watering down monitors designed to warn the public — and the EPA and Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation — to lower results; and lying to the public, ratepayers and TVA’s own board of directors about the cleanup and the toxicity of coal ash both at the time of the spill and now.

Roane County legislators, Yager and Calfee voted against vouchers, but there are serious questions about the vote...

NewsChannel 5 has learned that agents are interested in discovering whether anything of value - such as campaign contributions - were offered by anyone in return for votes.

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The Royal Hounds will be at Roane Song in beautiful downtown Rockwood Tennessee Friday May 17. Doors open at 7 PM. BYOB

Yesterday, Under oath before the Senate, Barr testified that he had spoken with Bob Mueller and that Mueller agreed with his statement as to the conclusions of the Mueller Report. Check this letter, unusual in the action of "going to paper" to conradict the Attorney General, and see if you think Mueller "agrees" with Barr?

Did you know that Walmart was selling "Impeach 45" baby clothes? There is a groundswell happening folks.

Then there's this: "In November 2017, the company sold a shirt that read ““Rope. Tree. Journalist. SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED” before being pulled."

Walmart has no morality, just like any other unregulated corporation.

Here's how bad the Democrats are at driving the wooden stake through the heart of a Russian Asset...

Attorney General Barr...What was the Mueller Investigation charge with investigating? ... Regardless of what Barr answers..."The Special Counsel investigation of 2017 to 2019, also referred to as the Mueller probe, Mueller investigation and Russia investigation, was a United States counterintelligence investigation of the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election."

Attorney General Barr can you tell us why your predecessor recused himself from the Mueller investigation and its final report? ...Regardless of Attorney General Barr's answer, "In an opening statement before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, Sessions cited a Department of Justice regulation that he said mandated him stepping aside.

The regulation, 28 CFR 45.2, notes that a Justice Department employee shall not participate in a “criminal investigation or prosecution if he has a personal or political relationship with … an elected official, a candidate (whether or not successful) for elective, public office, a political party, or a campaign organization.”"

Atty Gen Barr, can you tell us if you have represented Russian interests within the United States of America?...Regardless of his answer,..." Barr had spent the last 10 years working in the private sector. During that time, he had associations with Russia-based Alfa Bank and The Vector Group, another Russian company."

So, Attorney General Barr, You did not recuse yourself from a Russian involvement in a USA election investigation, even though you yourself represented at least two of the Russian organizations that are being investigated...Why is that?... Regardless of his answer, Attorney General Barr has violated a number of basic tenets of the Justice Department of the United States of America and should be removed from office via impeachment, for a number of high crimes and misdemeanors, most relevant, "testifying falsely before the Congress of the United States pf America.

And no, that was never said nor done. I wrote it as a "Damn! I wish they had gone down this road!" piece.

Look, Democratic elected officials, we are at war for the heart and soul of America. Get your war outfit on and fight for us!

May Day – an ancient spring festival in the Northern Hemisphere – is an astronomical holiday. It’s one of the year’s four cross-quarter days, or a day that falls more or less midway between an equinox and solstice, in this case the March equinox and June solstice. The other cross-quarter days are Groundhog Day on February 2, Lammas on August 1 and Halloween on October 31. May Day also stems from the Celtic festival of Beltane, which was related to the waxing power of the sun as we in the Northern Hemisphere move closer to summer. At Beltane, people lit fires through which livestock were driven and around which people danced, moving in the same direction that the sun crosses the sky.

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Fun Read...If you aren't worried about open and honest government and Democracy in America...

If the governor has to start buying votes on his first major legislation in his first session of the legislature, one wonders what he will have to offer next year, and the next and so on.

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Nullification of local city and county laws by the state legislature seems to me the height of nastiness and hypocrisy. How do you justify a state rep or senator from Johnson City telling Knoxville how to run their school system? Ony in the Republican world, I guess.

The Education Savings Account (ESA) legislation violates Article XI, Section 9 of the Tennessee Constitution because it is arbitrarily limited to only a portion of the state when the Constitution requires any Act of the General Assembly to apply statewide unless approved by a local legislative body or through a local referendum.

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Looks at this and tell me what you see?

I see that Democrats have $90 million, over two times the money that Trump has, with the majority coming from small donors. No if they can somehow target Trump instead of each other.

Here's the article

If there is any true life incarnation of Satan, it is the unregulated corporation. As Republicans fall all over each other to destroy regulations, our drinking water gets dirtier, our air gets more toxic, and our schools are sold off to charter corporations beholding only to their shareholders' money.

For voting AGAINST the voucher bill.

In the face of a Department of Justice policy that prohibited him from indicting a sitting president, Mueller drafted what any reasonable reader would see as a referral to Congress to commence impeachment hearings.

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Planet Earth will still be here for another several billion years. Humans most likely will not. Tennessee average temperatures have already risen nearly 2 degrees C since the 1950's.

"Use the search box or click on the map to see how the average annual temperature has changed at that location. The colored overlay shows average temperatures from 2004–2018, compared to the average from 1951–1980. Darker orange and red show areas that have warmed the most."

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Russia, a hostile foreign power, hacked the Democratic Candidates emails and provided them to the Trump campaign and further interfered in the Presidential election process in order to elect Donald Trump President of the United States of America!

"U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal unveiled on Monday a bill dubbed Robocop that would require phone companies to verify the accuracy of caller ID numbers and provide customers with free technology to block robocalls.

The Repeated Objectionable Bothering of Consumers on Phones is the second robocall bill Blumenthal (D-Conn.) has before the U.S. Senate, after the proposed Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act. If put into law, the TRACE bill is designed to promote call authentication and blocking and stiffen penalties among other measures."

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I know you were just sitting around watching the teevee and vegetating, so I post this to get you old people up and dancing. Well, swaying, anyway...

“It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.”
― Joseph Goebbels

Trump started the monstrous policy of ripping children from their parents and holding them in cages...blames Obama.

He fired his Homeland Security Chief Kirsjten Nielson because she was too weak to order her subordinates to break the law...Says he ended the policy of child separation.

Children are still locked in cages.

So please, Governor Lee, if you’re not going to promote responsible educational legislation, at least quit pretending you’re the one who’s engaged in a noble effort to lift up the underserved. The dishonesty is appalling and insulting.

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The Rockwood City Council approved the appointment of Dana Scott Pemberton as city judge. Wife of Circuit Court Judge Mike Pemberton, she will finish the term of Judge James “Jim” Smith, who passed away recently.

Our awareness of Dana Pemberton is that she is an excellent attorney and well qualified to serve.

On a vote of 6-4 on Wednesday night, the Roane County School Board selected Coffee County Director of Schools Dr. LaDonna McFall to be the next Director of Schools.