The race for Majority Leader was actually between two respected conservatives, Reps. Gerald McCormick (R-Chattanooga), and and Jon Lundberg (R-Bristol). McCormick's victory can't be seen as a repudiation either of conservatism or of Lundberg, since both men have outstanding conservative voting records and have served with distinction. Representative Judd Matheny (R-Tullahoma) has been nominated for Speaker Pro Tempore, the second-most powerful position in the house and one that would enable Matheny to cast a tie-breaking vote on committees if need be, just as the Speaker can do under House rules. Matheny also has a clear record of being favorable to gun rights, lower taxes, spending restraint, and has shown an inclination toward socially conservative ideas.
Today we have the personal testimony of a student at Middle Tennessee State University about the dangers to our personal liberty posed by red light traffic cameras:
Perhaps the biggest problem with these cameras is that because no officer of the law sees the alleged offender run a red light, a person who gets a red light camera citation can't be officially charged with a moving violation, which running a red light would normally be considered. That also means that no points can go on an offender's driver's license for getting a camera ticket. While it is easy to say "people are breaking the law," it is also increasingly clear that these cameras aren't meant to make the road safer-there isn't any evidence to suggest that is happening-but the digital spies are racking up a lot of revenue.Now someone could suffer the loss of a license because of two red light camera citations they weren't even aware of.
It was Bill Gibbons, after all, who first attempted to make Bill Haslam's income from Pilot Corporation a public issue, and it was Gibbons who said in a public forum to Haslam "just tell us your income from Pilot Oil right now." Most observers believe that Congressman Zach Wamp was Bill Haslam's biggest conservative foe in the campaign in terms of making his ties to Pilot a kind of political straw man, but it was Gibbons who first tried to raise questions about whether Bill Haslam's interest in his family business was a conflict of interest in a political sense.
Georgiana Vines has stirred a tempest in a teapot by bringing up the fact that-perish the thought-State Representative Frank Niceley referred to Tennessee House Speaker-designate Beth Harwell as "a good lookin' woman."What Niceley actually said to Harwell was a number of years ago was "what you've got going for you is you're good lookin' but women don't hate you." Niceley is not only this writer's State Representative, but is a personal friend and a friend of the work done in this space, and one of the reasons Niceley is consistently re-elected with such large majorities is that unlike many people in politics, there is little to nothing that is phony or a false front about Frank Niceley. He tells you the truth as he sees it, and if you don't like it you don't have to like him. "You might as well be straight with people," Niceley once told this writer, "because there are just some people in politics who aren't going to like you no matter what you do."
While I favor closed primaries in Tennessee, I seriously doubt that the issue is going anywhere anytime soon:
Those of us who live in the ground in rural East Tennessee can attest that this stereotype isn’t necessarily true, as East Tennessee voters tend to be as conservative and sometimes more so than other parts of the State. One thing East Tennesseans are, however, is a stubborn lot, and they don’t like being told by someone in Nashville that they can’t do what they have always done. The very fact that Tennessee primaries have been fundamentally open for such a long time and that voters have been allowed to choose their primary without party registration is the very reason a lot of rural East Tennessee Republicans are saying they don’t like it. “Who the Hell are they to tell me which ballot I can choose and that I have to register? We’ve not done it that way before.”
A conservative journal of social, cultural, and ecclesiatical affairs grounded in a realistic Catholic Christian worldview. It is my hope that this site will be a reflection of Christ,the teachings of His Holy Church, and of the basic vision of a Christian social morality.
