Failure to recognize Hull is a travesty (07/03/09)
I read with great dismay the article on the front page (of the Nashville newspaper) headlined; "Gore, Hull statues voted down." The article dealt with the legislature voting down erecting statues for the two Nobel Laureates from Tennessee. I agree with not erecting one to Al Gore during his lifetime. ...

Nuclear waste needs answer; so does its fear factor (07/03/09)
When the nuclear reactor broke down at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, some residents near there got in their cars and drove away as fast and as far as they could. Some ran out of money and gasoline when they got to Richmond, Va. I was announcing radio news in Roanoke, Va. at the time and later was the morning newsman at a station in Lynchburg, Va., where there's a big Babcock & Wilcox plant that manufactured the boilers for the Three Mile Island reactor...

Alexander's federal band coming here (06/26/09)
U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, one of Tennessee's former governors, a man who's served as the federal education secretary and, among other achievements, a Republican who ran for his party's nomination to run for President, is to be in Lewisburg next week...

ACORN, by any name, still stinks (06/26/09)
ACORN, the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, is changing its name. Why? Because the ACORN franchise has become so tarnished they feel they can't continue under the original name. The Washington Examiner reports that ACORN has changed its name to "Community Organizations International." Shall we call them "coy?" If they were "Community Organizations National" we could call them "con" because that's still exactly what they are. A con by any other name is still a con...

Finding scholarship dollars (06/26/09)
Only 10 percent of full time college students had a scholarship in 2007-08. The average for those who did was less than $3,000. Why? Well, you might think that the simple answer is because they're stupid. But, not so. Many were qualified to receive scholarships-yet they paid the full tuition themselves. ...

Take time to get to know your father (06/19/09)
My father was 70 years old when he broke 25 targets straight shooting a round of skeet. He had been practicing for years, not to excel at skeet, but to improve his ability to kill birds out hunting. The certificate he got from Williams Gun Club in Flint, Mich. after achieving that perfect round of skeet, is one of the few mementos I have from a man who was, and remains, something of a mystery to me...

Gov't doesn't need to run healthcare (06/12/09)
From the people who brought you Government Motors comes the coup de grace of government takeovers: Government-owned healthcare. President Obama has sent a letter to Congress to let his desires be known. He wants to pass this thing before the country comes to its senses...

Hot lead, cold beer mixed to make news (06/12/09)
After Bill Clinton signed the 1996 income tax reform into law, pundits were calling it the accountants' full employment act of 1996 because it was so complicated that folks who'd been doing their own tax returns were going to tax services for help. Now, the new gun laws coming from the Tennessee General Assembly have generated a great deal of controversy with advocates criticizing editorialists, and others of course, who warn that permitting guns in restaurants where alcoholic beverages are served is a bad idea.. ...

Reasons for and against unionization abound here (06/05/09)
You don't have to look much further than a couple of our recent front-page stories to pollinate a conversation about union representation for workers. It's probably obvious that one example is the General Motors plant in Spring Hill, if not GM and the United Auto Workers union in general. The other example is the Marshall County Schools System...

Obama just like Jimmy Carter? (06/05/09)
Is Barack Obama the Jimmy Carter of the 21st century? At least one Asian security expert thinks so. India-based analyst Bahukutumbi Raman says the Obama administration is on track to achieve in one year what it took Jimmy Carter three years to accomplish and that is to portray the United States as a "confused and soft power."...

Obama 'win' not a victory at all (05/29/09)
Only about 6 percent of the $800 billion stimulus package has been spent so far and that's probably a good thing. Yet, the Obama Administration is already starting to claim victory for an economy they say is turning around. To get an idea of how this will play out one needs only look at the tobacco settlement money. ...

They called him 'The Kid' (05/29/09)
My cell phone rang and I spoke with the caller who was trying to reach someone else named Clint during the Memorial Day weekend. It turned out to be Sarah Dean, grandmother of Daniel B. McClenney, the U.S. Marine who was killed by enemy gunfire from two ambush positions on June 24, 2004 in the Konar Province of Afghanistan...

Ouch! But for every pet, it's the right thing (05/15/09)
As much as the thought pains me, it seems only right to advocate something that's come to an end on the Marshall County Courthouse grounds, encircled by Lewisburg's public square. Courtney, the courthouse cat, has been neutered. Tribune readers may remember that several of the ladies who work at the Courthouse noticed that a black and white cat had been roaming the grounds during the dead of winter. ...

Remember the counting of hanging chads? (05/08/09)
Some of the most famous news photos include raising the flag at Iwo Jima, the sailor kissing the nurse when the war ended, and the man examining a ballot in Florida, looking closely at the now infamous hanging chad. The photo on the subject of voting doesn't have the excitement of victory in war, but it's part of our American way of life and it's frequently identified as one of the freedoms we have because our military service men and women are willing to sacrifice for it...

Go vote in Lewisburg's election on Tuesday (05/01/09)
Practically everybody likes to gripe about government and here in Lewisburg there's a city election on Tuesday. Early voting ended yesterday. Your Constitutionally guaranteed right to do something about your gripe comes again on Tuesday. 
According to a cursory examination of early voter turnout and a comparison to similar turnout four years ago, it's entirely possible that there will be fewer people voting in this city election compared to the number who voted in the similar race four years ago.
So, as the saying goes, if you don't vote, you really don't have any standing to gripe about City Hall.
Our recommendation is that city residents go to the polls Tuesday and exercise their right to vote. ...

Let's cut our dependence on foreign oil (04/24/09)
In a speech last week, Vice President Joe Biden said, "If you add the actual price of oil, it's probably $10 more a barrel just by the military we have to provide to be able to ensure those oil lanes stay open." Biden was talking about the Middle East and he argued we wouldn't have nearly the troops stationed over there were it not for oil. ...

The Chalkboard: What are the Tennessee Standards of Learning? (04/17/09)
Have you heard your child or child's teacher talk about Tennessee Standards of Learning? Did you wonder what all the fuss was about? Why does your child learn certain things in each grade? Last month in The Chalkboard we outlined the mission of Marshall County School District. Today, we will focus on the standards movement in public education...

Why Home Ownership May Not Be Wise (04/17/09)
For decades, the common wisdom has been that's it good to own a home. Tax laws have been structured to encourage home buying. (Owners get tax deductions on their mortgage interest.) The net result was that by 2004 about 70 percent of Americans owned their own homes. But, there is such a thing as turning virtue into vice...

Tea parties had merit, but short on alternatives (04/17/09)
The Tax Day Tea Parties have come and gone. What were they really about, again? A so-called "collaborative, grassroots effort," the tax-day parties were designed to give Americans a chance to voice displeasure with the stimulus bill, the budget and general unhappiness with the state of affairs in Washington...