December 8, 2005

Today's Reading List

The War: Lance Frizzell has pictures of U.S. soldiers "going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children" in Iraq, just as Sen. John Kerry described. And, man, do the kids look skeered.

Politics: The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has snubbed Gov. Bredesen's call for the TBI to fully investigate a ticket-fixing scandal at the Tennessee Highway Patrol. ... Also don't miss Frank Cagle's column in the latest Metro Pulse explaning the partisan fight over ethics reform in the state legislature. Excerpts:

For the first time in memory Republican legislators seem to be winning the public-relations battle in Nashville. House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh and his leadership team are continually being cast in the role of obstacles to ethics reform, continually voting against ethics proposals put forward by Minority Leader Bill Dunn of Knoxville. The Democrats have been accused of a failure to “get it” or to realize that “the party’s over.” But they do get it. The problem for Speaker Naifeh is that there isn’t much he can do about it.

Ethics reform is about more than ethics. Transparency in the operation of the legislature will result in a loss of power. Open meetings, recorded subcommittee votes and reducing the power of a handful of super lobbyists is an assault on the system that allows the legislative leadership to rule with an iron hand. The more the public is informed as to the way the legislature operates, the harder it is to bring the hammer down. This is not so much a Republican-versus-Democrat fight. The Democrats are on their heels because they have been the party in power for decades.

The Media: Terry Heaton says the new dean of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism is wrong about what it will take to fix journalism.

Charlie Brown: Nashville blogger Tim Morgan has applied science to calculate the volume of Charlie Brown's head. Hilarious.