The Latest Local Brouhaha

Just up the street from where I live, actually just on the other side of Missionary Ridge, Friday night football has turned into a weekly old time tent revival, and it's getting to be that every Friday night another national news organization makes a stop to check out the little local controversy. This week it was the NY Times. Their story of what's going on in Ft. Oglethorpe, Georgia appeared on their website Monday. ABC News was here a few weeks ago and got quite a bit of mileage out of the story -- about the same time as the Associated Press.  It's always a treat when the folks in the big cities take notice of what's happening down here in the sticks.  I think the last time the national media showed such an interest was when someone found a bunch of bodies lying around a local crematorium. This time around the story is church and state. 

After the 9/11 attacks, the cheerleaders at Lakeview-Ft. Oglethorpe High School, who make the big banners the football team runs through to get out on the field, decided that they would start putting Bible verses on said banners. This has been going on ever since -- for nine straight football seasons, long enough for it to become a tradition.

Finally, this season, word came down from the school board -- no more religious messages on the football field. There are still a lot of people who think the whole Bible verse ban came about as the result of a complaint. But no. The Times reporter got it right. The ban came about from a concerned citizen realizing that "Hey, we might get sued for this." The school board consulted some lawyers who agreed. Yes, Bible verses promulgated by a public school-sponsored club at a public school-sponsored event could be grounds for a suit.  Now, in protest of the ban, the messages are gone from the field, but are ubiquitous throughout the stands.

I might have commented on this earlier, but I just don't care that much.  As a godless heathen (or atheist or realist or freethinker),  I'm not driven to get the word out for these folks.  They're doing just fine on their own with their T-shirts and their Facebook page and their national media attention.

Also, as a son of the South, I'm pretty used to this sort of thing.  I could be offended or try to explain why that wall between church and state is necessary, but it's easier just to ignore it until the day it all blows up and/or blows away.

Also, this particular high school was the biggest rival of the high school I attended a few decades ago, and is the biggest rival of the high school that replaced the one I attended.  I could be petty and say that their Bible verses didn't help them while they were getting beat 34-0, but I won't.

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• Cheerleaders Bring Unnecessary Religiousness? (abcnews.go.com)
• Banner, Check; Bible, No -- God Off Gridiron (abcnews.go.com)
• Bible Verses Banned From Ga. School Football Field (abcnews.go.com)

Freedom Riders

It was a feel-good day in Nashville, Tennessee Friday. The Tennessee Board of Regents voted unanimously to award honorary degrees to fourteen people who had been expelled from Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State College (now Tennessee State University) in 1961 after participating in the Freedom Rides. The students were expelled after being convicted on breach of peace charges in Jackson, Mississippi.

The Supreme Court ruled in Boynton v. Virginia that segregation in public transportation was illegal, a violation of the Interstate Commerce Act. The Freedom Rides went down into the deep South to test the limits of the ruling. The riders ran straight into Jim Crow and mob violence.

The Board of Regents decision reverses a March 28 vote. Then the board voted 7-5 against awarding the degrees, a vote that drew much public criticism. Board members claimed that the earlier vote was more procedural than substantive -- rarely are so many honorary degrees awarded at one time at one school. There was also the issue of what kind of degree to award; they settled on Doctor of Humane Letters degrees.

The PBS American Experience website has a concise, but informative section on the Freedom Rides from their Eyes on the Prize program. The Nashville Tennessean has a Freedom Rides photo gallery.

S-CHIP, the Sequel

According to a CBS News poll, 81% of Americans favor expanding S-CHIP, the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which covers children in working class families, those too rich to qualify for Medicaid and too poor to be able to afford private insurance. Further, 74% of those favoring expansion are willing to pay higher taxes to finance the expansion. Those numbers include sizable majorities of Democrats, Independents, and even Republicans. It's that important.

If you remember, Congress passed an S-CHIP expansion program that the president vetoed. There are enough votes to override the veto in the Senate, but the House vote stayed the same. Not a single Repub who voted against the original bill changed their vote this time around. Billions for an inane war, but working-class children without health insurance can go to hell.

These are the bastards (all Repubs) who don't give a damn about your families, your finances, and most importantly, your children. Please remember them when they come to you next year begging for your vote.

Aderholt Akin Alexander Bachmann Bachus Baker Barrett (SC) Bartlett (MD) Barton (TX) Biggert Bilbray Bilirakis Bishop (UT) Blackburn Blunt Boehner Bonner Boozman Boustany Brady (TX) Broun (GA) Brown (SC) Brown-Waite, Ginny Burgess Burton (IN) Buyer Calvert Camp (MI) Campbell (CA) Cannon Cantor Carter Chabot Coble Cole (OK) Conaway Crenshaw Cubin Culberson Davis (KY) Davis, David Deal (GA) Diaz-Balart, L. Diaz-Balart, M. Doolittle Drake Dreier Duncan Everett Fallin Feeney Flake

Forbes Fortenberry Foxx Franks (AZ) Frelinghuysen Gallegly Garrett (NJ) Gingrey Gohmert Goode Goodlatte Granger Graves Hall (TX) Hastert Hastings (WA) Hayes Heller Hensarling Herger Hoekstra Hulshof Hunter Inglis (SC) Issa Johnson (IL) Johnson, Sam Jones (NC) Jordan Keller King (IA) Kingston Kline (MN) Knollenberg Kuhl (NY) Lamborn Lewis (CA) Lewis (KY) Linder Lucas Lungren, Daniel E. Mack Manzullo Marchant Marshall McCarthy (CA) McCaul (TX) McCotter McCrery McHenry McKeon Mica

Miller (FL) Miller, Gary Musgrave Myrick Neugebauer Nunes Paul Pearce Pence Peterson (PA) Pickering Pitts Poe Price (GA) Putnam Radanovich Reynolds Rogers (AL) Rogers (KY) Rogers (MI) Rohrabacher Ros-Lehtinen Roskam Royce Ryan (WI) Sali Saxton Schmidt Sensenbrenner Sessions Shadegg Shimkus Shuster Smith (NE) Smith (TX) Souder Stearns Sullivan Tancredo Taylor Terry Thornberry Tiahrt Walberg Walden (OR) Wamp Weldon (FL) Weller Westmoreland Whitfield Wicker Wilson (SC)

Included in this list and highlighted are my representative, who "serves" northwest Georgia, and the Tennessee congressman whose district includes Chattanooga.

TN: Smokers Targeted

On July 1, Tennessee's cigarette tax increased from 20 cents to 62 cents per pack. All eight states that border Tennessee now have lower cigarette taxes. Tennesseans have been traveling to neighboring states and stocking up and the Tennessee Department of Revenue is now taking aim. Agents had been staking-out out-of-state stores to “get a feel where problem areas are." Now, they're getting serious... (Knoxville News Sentinel)

The idea is for the monitoring agent to spot a person buying cigarettes in volume at an out-of-state market, then departing in a vehicle with Tennessee license tags. Starting today, monitoring agents spotting such a suspect will call an arresting agent who will stop the car when it enters Tennessee, he said.

The agents will work “in roving teams at random times,” he said.

“This shows once again that Reagan Farr and the Department of Revenue are more interested in turning Tennessee into a police state than doing their job of collecting taxes,” said Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.

Farr said the program is partly an “education initiative” to make people aware of tobacco tax provisions in state law and a response to complaints from Tennessee tobacco retailers about “streams of Tennessee license plates crossing the border” from out-of-state retailers.

“I don’t think (Johnson) or anyone else wants to see the commissioner of revenue deciding which laws passed by the Tennessee Legislature to enforce and which not to enforce,” Farr said. “If that were the case, they (legislators) could just tell the commissioner ‘get me $11 billion’ wherever you think best.”

WARNING: If you are a Tennessee resident and transport more than two cartons of smokes into the state without paying Tennessee taxes, you are breaking the law. You could be fined, imprisoned, and even have your car seized.