

"[The Gideon Bible Giveaway] is the one event that would be considered religious in context, and it happens once a year," said Sharon Roberts, Lebanon Special School District director. She emphasized that students are not obligated to accept the Bibles, which sit on a display table.Do you think that the School Director would allow copies of the Qur'an or the Book of Mormon or Playboy just to sit on a display table for children to take under the guise that the kids are not "obligated"? I would call Ms. Roberts' definition of obligation irrelevant, since children will pick up any new item made available to them.
[T]he [Metro Arts] commission must realize that there will be citizens who will look at the pieces — for which they paid with their taxes — and shake their heads. They will undoubtedly wonder why — at the very least — they could not have seen the proposals of the eight semifinalists and offered some feedback.Right. So instead, let's just erect the ubiquitous Stratocaster or the portly Junior-Samples-in-bronze to keep some citizens from shaking their heads. The editors are going to have to give a better argument than head-shaking for converting procurement to a popularity contest.
God sides with the poor, not because of their virtue, but because of their suffering; not because of their goodness, but because they have been sinned against. And [Jesus] proclaims them blessed [in the Beatitudes], not because poverty is holy, but because their poverty gives them a perspective to understand Jesus' condemnations of wealth. He declares those who weep fortunate, not because their suffering produces character, but because it opens their eyes .... Indeed, what are the Beatitudes if not a systematic and explicit repudiation of the Domination System? [Engaging the Powers, p. 112].If it weren't for those damned Beatitudes, Jesus would be a swell guy merely taking the role of our personal saviour.
I wish it were true, I wish Ford were a Liberal, unfortunately, he isn't. Is he the most liberal member of the Tennessee Delegation? Perhaps, but that is like trying to figure out who the blackest member of the Beatles is.When It comes to voting for Ford, I intend to be a Yellow Dog Democrat and hold my nose and punch the screen next to his name; but he is most definitely not a liberal.
A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.
[Buck] Dozier's a [R]epublican. He thinks he has a chance because he came in first in the at-large race. But he's Church of Christ, anti-Purcell, pro-developer (not necessarily downtown businesses) and old school Metro. He's Fulton-esque in his approach to letting Metro old-timers run their departments. Purcell, through performance audits and tight budgets, forced a great many of the old-timers out and they're the ones pushing Buck.Council conservatives continue to bar Nashville from a future full of promise.
[Howard] Gentry can't control the council. After five years he still hasn't figured out council procedure, which is something the 20-something new lawyer, Jon Cooper, figured out in a month. He gets schooled week in and week out by Ludye Wallace. If you ever saw Jay West run a council meeting, you would weep at the ineptitude of Gentry's "leadership."
[Bob] Clement is not the sharpest tool in the box, but he's got the support (grudgingly, at best) of the downtown core businesses. They need someone who will be progressive in tourism and attracting business, but still keep up with the quality of life issues that Purcell has been so good at doing.
The major problem that we have in this election cycle is that the current council has thrown up so many d[i]visive issues that everyone on the local level is wounded to an extent. No one has been allowed to climb to the top of the heap.
There are men and women out there who would be great the job, but would be horrible campaigners. Torry [Johnson],
regret[t]ably, is one of those. Bob, is the opposite - great campaigner....
There is a pool of talent, but they are getting smacked around by stupid crap like [Eric] Crafton's English proposal. Issues that don't help do anything but divide and provide crappy candidates for top offices.
I detest all this junk on the telephone: "Press one if you want English. Press two if you want Spanish. Press three if you want Russian," and all that rigmarole.
- - J. B. Loring on why he will vote English-only at Council tonight
So, why not just pass a law against automated phone messages?The council office would point out that this ordinance could result in a substantial cost to the Metropolitan Government, especially schools, if Metro facilities were required to have stone, brick or wood fences.We shall see if money is an object when this bill comes up for a vote on the second of three readings tomorrow night.
While the United States Supreme Court has ruled that it is valid to require that employees of local governments be residents of the jurisdiction of the government, such a residency requirement must be uniformly applied to satisfy constitutional muster. The residency requirement in this ordinance would only apply to those persons working for certain elected officials that make in excess of $100,000, and therefore would not be uniformly applied to similarly situated employees.Looks like Tygard's bill runs the risk of further clogging our courts with frivolous litigation should Metro Council pass it. Why is Council even wasting time on a law that cannot be applied uniformly?
The council office would remind members of council that several of the large publications prepared by various Metro departments are required by council ordinance.
Within the industry, it has been no secret that Red Wagon chef/owner Meg Giuffrida, who had a baby shortly after opening the time-consuming restaurant, wants to gear back and re-focus on catering.My source tells me that this unsecret is news to Ms. Giuffrida (the gear-back-to-catering part; not the baby part). I am also told that Kay West did not attempt to go to Ms. Giuffrida as the source of any of the information about the possible sale of Red Wagon, even though Ms. West claimed that she got "no response to inquiries about the [Craigslist] posting or the future of Red Wagon" in her opportunistic little Scene piece.
[O]ur cities have seen growing numbers of frontline workers who aren't earning enough to get by. But since we passed our city wage laws, we've started to turn the tide. More working parents are able to quit their second jobs and spend time with their kids. Others are able to go back to school and get the education that helps them advance to better-paying jobs. And more are able to pay the rent and reduce their debt.
Some have asked whether our cities are different ... But when we were considering our wage laws we heard the same warnings ... "If you raise the minimum wage, retailers will build outside the city" .... [O]ur cities have easily accessible shopping areas just outside the city limits. But 10 ... are today paying a living wage at their stores in San Francisco. And 11 more -- including Wal-Mart, Target, Sam's Club and Lowe's -- are doing the same at their stores in Santa Fe.
No large retailer has closed a store because of our wage laws, and several are opening new ones, including Home Depot in San Francisco and Wal-Mart in Santa Fe.
- - San Francisco and Santa Fe administrators in a response to a Chicago proposal to raise retail minimum wages
[T]here never was a clear shot at Osama before 9/11, let alone one rejected by Clinton officials. But there was a clear shot in December 2001, when Al Qaeda's leader was trapped in the caves of Tora Bora. He made his escape because the Pentagon refused to use American ground troops to cut him off.
This Johnny Space Commander mask here is a pure fantasy toy. I mean, you know, kids can have a lot of fun with a toy like this, you know? Let me show you.. [puts the plastic bag over his head, then wraps the rubber band around it] "Hello, hello, this is Johnny Space Commander. I'm in deep space, I'm gonna land the rocket now!" You see what I mean? [takes off the plastic bag] You see what I mean? It's a pure fantasy toy!
[Fort Worth, Texas, Sept. 11] The Disney/ABC television program, The Path to 9/11, which began airing last night, is inaccurate and irresponsible in its portrayal of the airport check-in events that occurred on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
A factual description of those events can be found in the official government edition of the 9/11 Commission Report and supporting documents.
This misrepresentation of facts dishonors the memory of innocent American Airlines employees and all those who lost their lives as a result of the tragic events of 9/11.
You can’t sit there as ABC and say, 'Gee, we don’t have any responsibility.'... They should make a good faith effort to get this as close to the facts as possible…They can’t claim it’s just entertainment. This is going to have an impact on the national political scene.
- - Bob Kerrey, 9/11 Commission Member
Josh Marshall is reporting that several ABC affiliates around the country, upon receiving protests about ABC's fiction, "The Path to 9/11," are responding that they do not have a choice but to air the mini-series.
And what of Nashville affiliate, WKRN? It would be understandable that WKRN (Channel 2) might not be able to refuse if it were owned and operated by ABC, but it is merely an affiliate and it would seem to have the choice whether to air the program. I e-mailed WKRN's General Manager last night and requested that the local station not air "The Path to 9/11" so that Channel 2 might avoid the appearance of helping to politicize 9/11 during an election cycle.
He has already said that Channel 2 intends to air this potentially divisive program and he encourages us just to change the channel if we don't want to watch. He compares a politically biased portrayal of the greatest terrorist attack on American soil to Ellen DeGeneres' sympathetic portrayal of a personal decision to come out-of-the-closet. I think that such a comparison is false. The contrast between a deadly catastrophe politicized to score ratings points (and influence an election?) and a public expression of personal identity could not be more stark. And yet, GM Mike Sechrist refuses to distinguish between the outcry now and the outcry then.
I encourage readers of Enclave to contact WKRN at phone numbers: 615.369.7266 (programming) or 615.259.2200 (main) or 615.369.7222 (main). Ask politely, but firmly that it not air "The Path to 9/11" mini-series to be shown by ABC on September 10 & 11. WKRN recently disappointed me with their slant to the right in the hiring of Steve Gill as the exclusive source of political commentary on the station. Passing along right-wing propaganda in the form of a network "docudrama" would only further erode WKRN's credibility as an impartial media source for some of us in its viewing audience; for what it's worth.
09/10/2006, 12:10 a.m. "No Savvy There, Either" Update: No Silence Here's Michael Silence linked my post and charged that I favored censorship for encouraging people to call WKRN and ask them not to air the mini-series. It is ridiculous to conflate organizing citizens to call with government crackdowns on free speech. Calling public pressure on media "censorship" basically invalidates any power citizens might claim while trying to influence the media at all. He's trivializing the seriousness of true censorship by defining it so broadly. We'll just refer to it as "playing the censorship card" from here on out. And that goes for Glenn Reynolds' own rubber stamp, too; I prefer "non-idiot" rubber stamps.
Democrats [like those who started the Faithful Democrats website] have finally figured out that they left social conservatives behind as they pushed their national liberal agenda in Tennessee and across the country.Looks like this partisan wonk has willfully missed the point that Faithful Democrats is an effort to organize liberal Christians "to put their faith to work for the common good." Here's the memo Devaney missed, clearly stated over at the FD website:
We don't believe that good Christians have to be Democrats. Nor do we believe that one religion has a monopoly on faith. But we make no apologies for rooting our identity as Democrats in our faith as Christians. That is who we are. And we are eager to act on our beliefs to make the country we love a more just and compassionate place.That sounds more generally faith-friendly and less like the dumb Devaney deduction that there is some covert courtship of social conservatives, whom he seems to see as the only ones who really count as "Christian."