Moe Lane

In lighter news: it turns out that Steve Cohen of Tennessee just had a lot of bad behavior on his part over the years… rewarded… by the Tennessee legislature.  While the federal redistricting process from Tennessee didn’t look particularly unusual at first glance (the 7R/2D Congressional split after the last election was more or less locked in by the process), it turns out that the state legislature’s new Congressional map removes switches out a bunch of Democratic voters used to Cohen for a bunch of Democratic voters who are not – and that part of the voters being moved include a key voting and fundraising bloc (Memphis Jewish voters) from Cohen’s district.  If you’re wondering why that’s important, it’s because Steve Cohen is a white Democrat who has been representing a majority-minority district since 2007… and every primary election since then has been vicious.  Extremely vicious.  So much so that his likely primary opponent this go-round (Memphis Urban League leader  & school board member Tomeka Hart) is apparently planning to play it a good deal smarter: which is to say, a good deal less race-baiting.  Which, paradoxically – and coupled with the aforementioned switching of voters around – could seriously threaten Cohen this time.

Personally, I think that Steve Cohen deserves to get destroyed in the primary: he’s a nasty man who tells vicious lies about people who saved Jews from the Nazis (no, I haven’t forgotten this one).  It may take ten more years to root him out of that district, but I’ll see the bigot gone at some point, and then I will cheer.  And I applaud the Tennessee state legislature for giving us all some hope that it will happen this year…

(Full disclosure: I am an Amazon.com Affiliate for Maryland.)

Glenn Reynolds noted this apparent contradiction in what Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam’s position actually is with regard to having Amazon.com collect sales tax: is the Republican Governor for it, or against it?  I say ‘apparent’ because there isn’t one, really; there’s just not enough context.

Basically, the position that Haslam is taking is that the state of Tennessee trying to impose an Amazon tax would probably wreck ongoing negotiations between the state and Amazon.com when it comes to getting a couple more job-creating distribution centers built in-state (which it probably will).  Haslam also thinks that a national, standardized system for sales tax is both necessary and proper:

[Haslam] said Tennessee is already losing between $300 million and $500 million a year on untaxed Internet sales — a growing number since the states and Congress have been unable for more than a decade to agree on a “streamlined sales tax” process enabling online retailers to collect taxes easily for the nation’s thousands of state and local taxing jurisdictions.

“It’s not going to begin eroding the state’s tax base; it already is. Something has to happen nationally. The whole streamlined sales tax is a big deal, and I’m more than willing to play a leadership role,” Haslam said. “It has to be addressed on a national level or we’re going to keep playing these kinds of move-around games.”

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The alternative is ‘deliberately inflammatory in a very literal sense because they want to see Tennessee burn.’  Which is a bit of a mouthful.

Based on their latest email blast, the Tennessee Democratic Party seems to have a problem understanding what “fascism” is, not to mention “terrorism.”  Apparently, Tennessee Democratic chair Chip Forrester and House Democratic chair Mike Turner seem to think that these terms are appropriate for describing several reform bills currently being considered by the Tennessee legislature.  Presumably they mean HB 2012 and HB 0130; the first is a tenure reform bill that introduces merit into the tenure process and the second is a collective bargaining reform bill that removes the Tennessee Education Association’s privileged status as the only permissible agent for bargaining with school boards.

Or perhaps Forrester and Turner don’t mean those bills, given that neither actually does anything like set up a system for mass murder of inconvenient minorities, create a totalitarian state that controls every aspect of life, and/or start aggressive wars of conquest.  It’s a bit of a puzzler – unless you assume that this is just a cynical ploy to get money, which is a notion that Jim Geraghty is cynically suggesting and I am just as cynically endorsing.

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(Via Instapundit) The race-baiting, trash-talking Steve Cohen (D, TN-09) may continue to enjoy the effects of earned karma* by facing yet another candidate in the Democratic primary ready to win it by… race baiting and trash talking.  May Cohen have everything he deserves in the next two weeks.

That is a… hold up. 

Charlotte Bergmann for Congress.

That is all.

Moe Lane

*He may also continue to pog mo thoin.

She’s running in Steve Cohen’s district, and for some reason* she’s very, very annoyed that Rep. Cohen is going around accusing Tea Partiers of being racist, would-be Klansmen.

Charlotte’s site is here: please check it out.

Moe Lane (more…)

UPDATE: Hotline has more.

DOOM.

After more than a quarter-century of public service to his home state of Tennessee, U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon announced his plans to retire from Congress when his current term ends in 2010.

“I feel honored that the people of Middle Tennessee have allowed me to serve them for the past 25 years,” said Gordon. “Every decision I have made in Congress has been with their best interests in mind. I hope the people here at home feel that I have served them as well as their good advice and views have served me.

“When I was elected, I was the youngest member of the Tennessee congressional delegation; now, I’m one of the oldest. In fact, I have members of my staff who weren’t even born when I took office. That tells me it’s time for a new chapter.”

One where he isn’t making ski junkets on the taxpayer’s dime, no doubt.

(Via Instapundit.)

Moe Lane

PS: Dale Dave Evans [Oops! - ML] is running for this seat.  There may be others.

Wait, what?

(via @BrianFaughnan) Contra the New York Times, there are no racial overtones to this challenge. It’s pretty much the melody line:

The black candidate, former Mayor Willie W. Herenton of Memphis, has argued that Tennessee needs a black voice in its currently all-white delegation. He is running a blistering campaign against Representative Steve Cohen, a fellow Democrat with a precarious hold on the majority black district.

“To know Steve Cohen is to know that he really does not think very much of African-Americans,” Mr. Herenton said in a recent radio interview on KWAM. “He’s played the black community well.”

[snip]

“This seat was set aside for people who look like me,” said Mr. Herenton’s campaign manager, Sidney Chism, a black county commissioner. “It wasn’t set aside for a Jew or a Christian. It was set aside so that blacks could have representation.”

TN-09 being a D+23 district, the Democratic primary race is going to be of special interest – and this is… well. It’s not so much the sentiments as it is the utterly unselfconscious way that they’re being presented. Remember that full and frank discussion of race we were promised? – because I suspect that this is not what people had in mind.

Moe Lane

PS: And one last thing: Steve Cohen did not “consider joining” the Congressional Black Caucus; he was told that he couldn’t join because of his skin color. They’re doing the same thing to Rep. Joseph Cao (R, LA-02), too – although I suspect that changing the ‘R’ to ‘D’ there might have caused them to reconsider.

Crossposted to RedState.

To quote Cool Hand Luke, what we have here is a failure to communicate:

‘Global warming is baloney’ signs put the heat on Burger King

A row between the fast food giant Burger King and one of its major franchise owners has erupted over roadside signs proclaiming “global warming is baloney”.

The franchisee, a Memphis-based company called the Mirabile Investment Corporation (MIC) that owns more than 40 Burger Kings across Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi, has described Burger King as acting “kinda like cockroaches” over the controversy. MIC says it does not believe Burger King has the authority to make it take the signs down.

The Guardian shoved in as many cooking allusions as it could – which they shouldn’t have, but it’s forgivable – but the, ah, meat of the matter is that the Burger King spokesman says that they have the right to shut down this kind of signage on the part of its franchisees, and that the franchisee has agreed to take down the signs; while the franchise spokesman says that Burger King doesn’t have the right to shut down these signs, and that Burger King can… deal with it. The word ‘cockroaches’ was used in the latter’s response, as was an explicitly cheerful willingness to drag it out in court for the next ten years.

[[John]] McNelis added: “The [restaurant] management team can put the message up there if they want to. It is private property and here in the US we do have some rights. Notwithstanding a franchise agreement, I could load a Brinks vehicle with [rights] I’ve got so many of them. By the time the Burger King lawyers work out how to make that stick we’d be in the year 2020.”

Which is why I figure that somebody’s getting fired. You usually don’t have people in marketing making statements that are that direct unless they’re either sure that they won’t get fired, or that they’re sure that they will…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

If you might remember, back in February it was reported that Bart Gordon (D, TN-06) went to Europe on taxpayer money to… essentially, ski.  He wasn’t on any relevant committee that would justify his presence in that particular junket, but he is a twelve-term Democrat whose party overwhelmingly controls Congress right now, which apparently is justification enough.  Now Dave Evans, Gordon’s most likely Republican challenger in the general election, has come out with an estimate that Gordon’s travel costs were approximately $7,250; he’s calling for the Congressman to give that money back, fully disclose how much was spent by Gordon and his family on the trip, explain why he didn’t disclose earlier, and explain why the Congressman was on this junket in the first place.

What makes this potentially damaging is that Bart Gordon is a Blue Dog Democrat; their primary distinguishing feature is supposed to be fiscal conservatism.  While this has been overshadowed by their willingness to vote for things like the miscalled “stimulus” bills – which Gordon voted for – individual members of that caucus still hope to run on individual records of financial probity.  Which is quite probably why Gordon has been notably uncommunicative about his reasons for going to Europe at taxpayer expense.  If there was anything resembling a valid reason for it, he would have said so by now.  Early days yet for the race, but that’s sometimes necessary when a long-time incumbent is being challenged.

Dave Evans’ site is here; his Twitter is @DaveEvans_TN6; and here is an account of his participation in the Nashville Tea Party.  You can check out his priorities here – the man’s a retired Army Reserve general – and then there’s this picture, which should serve as a pretty good shorthand for many readers here.  Check him out, and here’s his donation page.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Costs five bucks: in exchange, you get a tea bag sent to Washington on April 10th with your 200 character message attached, a bumper sticker, and a buck sent to one of several charities. It’s all being run out of the house of a Tennessee mom, and I personally think that it’s a clever idea.

Via Little Miss Attila and No Silence Here.

Crossposted to RedState.

Apparently, he’s going to be part of quite the throng. Via Red County and Dave Evans for Congress comes this WaPo report:

Hurry, hurry, hurry. Congress will begin its 2009 travel season in earnest this weekend with two spectacular codels — trips for House congressional delegations — that are not to be missed.

On Saturday, Rep. John Tanner (D-Tenn.), chairman of the House delegation to NATO’s parliamentary assembly, and his wife will lead a delegation of 13 lawmakers — plus 10 spouses — on a fine nine-day jaunt starting at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels.

[snip]

The huge number of members, spouses and staffers, plus military escorts, will require taking one of the bigger military jets, but we’re told these trips are an important use of taxpayer money.

No, of course he has no obvious legislative reason to go. As Dave Evans further notes: (more…)

(H/T: Technomancy for Fun and Profit)

Quick background: last year, USMC Sgt. Michael Ferschke was killed in Iraq while conducting door-to-door searches. He left behind his Okinawan-born, pregnant wife Hotaru Ferschke, who he had married a month before by proxy; and, of course, there were problems with her visa. Wizbang wrote about it here and here; Senator Lamar Alexander‘s (R-TN) office has been working on getting this fixed from the start, of course (I understand that some other (Tennessee?) lawmakers also assisted, but I couldn’t find details); between them and the USMC, they’ve made arrangements for Mrs. Ferschke to enter the country on a temporary visa, now that her son is born (more here).
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