This is for my people, my party people...

Pro-teacher rally yesterday at the State Capitol.

The next rally is Saturday, March 5 at Bicentennial Mall from 12-3pm.

Embarassment: Example #2,653,127

From the Tennessean...

2 Tennessee GOP lawmakers want presidential candidates to prove citizenship

MURFREESBORO — Two Rutherford County legislators are sponsoring a bill that would require U.S. presidential candidates to prove to the state of Tennessee that they were born U.S. citizens to run for the nation's highest office.

State Sen. Bill Ketron said he proposed the bill because he thinks President Barack Obama might be hiding the fact that he was born in another country.

"Why can't he (Obama) come forward and show he is a citizen?" Ketron said Friday, adding that he has read articles stating Obama has spent $2 million from his campaign fund fighting lawsuits to keep from showing his birth certificate.

Ketron and state Rep. Rick Womick, both Murfreesboro Republicans, filed the bill that would attempt to force those running for president to file a sworn affidavit with Tennessee's secretary of state proving they meet "constitutional residency requirements."

Ten other states are considering similar legislation. Ketron said when the bill was brought to him for sponsorship, he decided it would give the state of Tennessee a chance to vet the matter and determine if it needed legislation.

But he added that if Obama has spent $2 million protecting his birth certificate from lawsuits, "I would lean on the side of he's trying to hide something and he's not a citizen."

Ketron's doubts mirror those of "birther" activists who believe Obama has refused to show the long form of his birth certificate because he was born in Kenya, the homeland of his father, and isn't eligible to be presidency.

Critics of the movement say birthers are fanatics whose claims have been repeatedly disproved and who won't accept any evidence that Obama is a U.S. citizen.

Womick said he decided to sponsor the bill in response to some 250 requests. He likened the requirement for seeking the presidency to requiring children to show their birth certificates to participate in youth sports such as football or Little League.

The bill is designed to make sure candidates for the nation's highest office are following constitutional mandates of Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution, Womick said.

"We don't have the federal government enforcing it or the Supreme Court upholding it," Womick said.

Article 2, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution says: "No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."

Womick said the bill is not targeting any particular candidate.

"I believe President Obama has a birth certificate," Womick said. "He says he does."

An investigation by snopes.com determined claims were false that the Obama campaign provided a forged certification of live birth three years ago.

It notes that the certificate from the state of Hawaii made available on the Internet in 2008 shows his full name as "Barack Hussein Obama II" and lists his father's race as "African" and his mother's race as "Caucasian" while reporting his birthplace as Honolulu.

Womick noted that U.S. Sen. John McCain, Obama's Republican opponent in the 2008 election, was born in Panama.

"Whether it's John McCain or Barack Obama, you have to prove you meet Article 2, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution," Womick said.

Artsy fartsy

Toe the line

Can the TN GOP toe the line? Will they really focus on jobs, or on guns and gays?

From State Senator Jim Kyle (D-Memphis):

“I think the social conservatives are going to win out. If they do prevail, it is to the long-term detriment of Tennesseans. Ultimately, Tennesseans will realize that this last election was not about jobs, but it was about directing lifestyle choices from a centralized government, and eventually Tennesseans will rebel and say that the Republicans are not on their side.”

Good article from the usually conservative-leaning Nashville City Paper.

Blackburn for sale!

Front page on the Tennessean today!

Blackburn's leadership role brings surge in PAC giving

Rep. Marsha Blackburn's donations from special-interest groups skyrocketed during the last election cycle as she assumed a leadership role on a powerful House committee. But her fundraising is standard in several ways for a lawmaker seeking to advance in Congress.

What an inspiring legacy she'll leave...

Smack down

Congressman Marsha Blackburn's free market mumbo-jumbo regarding tech policy is torn to shreds in this article on the Huffington Post.

I haven't pasted because it's got some neato graphics, but I DEFINITELY recommend you viewing if you wanna see what this Marsha + net neutrality thing is all about.

I found this comment from a HuffPost blogger pretty interesting....

Yes, Blackburn basically runs errands for Verizon, AT&T and Comcast. Even before becoming a member of the House Commerce Subcommitt­ee on Telecommun­ications and the Internet she was known to appear suddenly in chambers whenever a hearing was going bad for the telcos, to muscle her way to the podium and read from a statement apparently just faxed to her offices by industry lobbyists. The Politico puffery missed that little detail.

You misunderstood my partisanship

From Politico...

Will Marsha Blackburn be GOP’s next tech policy champion?

In the first few weeks of 2011, Rep. Marsha Blackburn didn’t just test the tech policy waters, she dove in head first.

On the opening day of the 112th Congress, the Tennessee Republican reintroduced a bill to bar the Federal Communications Commission from instituting net neutrality rules. Days later, she spoke on an online privacy panel at the geek equivalent of the Oscars: the International Consumer Electronics Show. Last week, she keynoted the State of the Net conference — the biggest tech policy fete in the capital so far this year.

Blackburn’s turf, however, is far from the tech hubs of Silicon Valley, New York’s Silicon Alley or Boston’s Route 128 corridor. She’s from Brentwood, Tenn., a suburb of Nashville, known more for producing country music than silicon chips or Web startups.

The tech community has taken notice.

“She seems to be doing more keynote addresses and taking much more of a visible role,” said Darrell West, founding director of Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation. “There’s been great public interest in tech, and she’s taken advantage of that to carve out a niche in tech policy.”

Blackburn says she’s been active all along.

“Maybe some people just weren’t paying attention,” Blackburn told POLITICO. “But I’m glad they are now.”

Blackburn’s opposition to net neutrality — she calls it “the Fairness Doctrine for the Internet” — dates back to 2006, when Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced a bill to keep the Internet open. She said the content community in Nashville feared the federal government would control Internet traffic, and it wanted to deal directly with service providers.

Today, Blackburn says the burgeoning health and energy IT sectors in her district are concerned the FCC will use net neutrality to regulate their businesses.

With her district’s country music roots, Blackburn has been involved in intellectual property issues since her election to the seat in 2002, serving on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. She also founded the Congressional Songwriters Caucus — for which she serves as chairwoman — “to shine a light on some of the concerns with intellectual property.”

But her keynote at the State of the Net rubbed some the wrong way because it was partisan; the word “conservatives” popped up nearly a dozen times.

“Beginning with the coming repeal of the FCC overreach, conservatives should apply our philosophy to the broader arena of tech policy,” Blackburn said in her speech. “We must do so in the spirit of our classic defense of free markets and property rights, while guarding against needless regulation and federal intervention.”

Net neutrality aside, the tech sector often boasts bipartisan support. “Nobody wants no regulation, and too much regulation and the wrong kind can be damaging,” said Ed Black, president and CEO of the Computer & Communications Industry Association.

Blackburn, however, says she was misunderstood.

“Defense of free markets is where we need to be when establishing a vision for national technology policy,” she said.

Congressman Blackburn gives me that warm, fuzzy feeling inside

From the Indiana Daily Student...

Clean Air Act to be reviewed
By Colleen Sikorski

On the 112th Congress’ second day in session, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., introduced a bill that would amend the Clean Air Act in a way that has environmental groups seething.

H.R. 97, the Free Industry Trade Act, amends the Clean Air Act so that nothing in the act regulates global warming or climate change.

H.R. 97 also excludes greenhouse gases from being defined as “air pollutants.”

Indiana Representative Todd Young, R-9th District, has signed on as a co-sponsor of H.R. 97.

Trevor Foughty, communications director for Young, said Young co-sponsored the bill in order to stop future Congresses from enacting cap-and-trade “schemes.”

“That legislation would have been crippling on the economy, especially in southern Indiana which is heavily reliant on the coal industry for jobs and electricity,” Foughty said in an e-mail.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s website, cap and trade sets a mandatory limit on emissions and allows sources to buy and sell amounts of pollutants they can emit.

Foughty said there are other technologies that could reduce emissions without hurting the job market, specifically mentioning carbon sequestration clean coal technology.

According to reports by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, carbon sequestration clean coal technology is the process of removing carbon from the atmosphere to be released in a reservoir. Carbon is released when coal is burned for fuel.

Two other Indiana congressmen, Dan Burton, R-5th District, and Mike Pence, R-6th District, have also signed on as co-sponsors. As of Thursday, H.R. 97 had 100 co-sponsors.

Two days after H.R. 97 was introduced, Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, who is also a co-sponsor, became the chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, the Environment and Related Agencies. The subcommittee oversees funding for the EPA. In a statement, Simpson declared the EPA was “the scariest agency in the federal government” and had “run amok.”

H.R. 97 is currently being reviewed by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Sierra Club is one of the environmental groups opposed to H.R. 97. Officials sent out a press release that said “it took Republicans one day ... to declare an all-out war on the Clean Air Act and the EPA.”

One of the Sierra Club’s main concerns is that H.R. 97 would decrease the EPA’s ability to protect the environment and health of Americans, said David Graham-Caso, an associate press secretary for Sierra Club.

“This is a division of our government that is supposed to protect people from pollution,” Graham-Caso said. “Pollution that harms and pollution that kills. Trying to prevent protecting people from pollution is obviously a bad thing for every single American.”

Sierra Club is also concerned about the technological and economic implications of H.R. 97.

“Any legislation that blocks the EPA’s ability to regulate CO2 keeps our country reliant on old energy technologies and delays technology investments that can create new jobs,” said Lyndsay Moseley, a federal policy representative for Sierra Club.

IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs professor James Barnes said H.R. 97 would hurt the EPA’s ability to enforce fuel economy standards for automobiles that it developed last year with the Department of Transportation.

“They’re designed as fuel economy standards, but the effect of the fuel economy standard was also to lower the greenhouse gas emissions,” Barnes said. “That move was going to give us more fuel efficient cars and was going to be a help to our automobile industry in terms of developing technologies.”

Brutal honesty from West Tennessee

You repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie... and you get someone shooting up a public meeting.

How would you cut the debt?

H.R.68
Latest Title: To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit Federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting after fiscal year 2013.
Sponsor: Rep Lamborn, Doug [CO-5] (introduced 1/5/2011)
Cosponsors (12)
Related Bills: H.R.69
Latest Major Action: 1/5/2011 Referred to House committee.
Status: Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
COSPONSORS(12), ALPHABETICAL
Rep Bishop, Rob [UT-1] - 1/12/2011
Rep Blackburn, Marsha [TN-7] - 1/12/2011
Rep Broun, Paul C. [GA-10] - 1/12/2011
Rep Coffman, Mike [CO-6] - 1/12/2011
Rep Duncan, Jeff [SC-3] - 1/12/2011
Rep Foxx, Virginia [NC-5] - 1/12/2011
Rep Garrett, Scott [NJ-5] - 1/12/2011
Rep Gibbs, Bob [OH-18] - 1/12/2011
Rep Hayworth, Nan A. S. [NY-19] - 1/12/2011
Rep Herger, Wally [CA-2] - 1/12/2011
Rep Olson, Pete [TX-22] - 1/12/2011
Rep Ribble, Reid J. [WI-8] - 1/12/2011

H.R.69
Latest Title: To prohibit Federal funding of certain public radio programming, to provide for the transfer of certain public radio funds to reduce the public debt, and for other purposes.
Sponsor: Rep Lamborn, Doug [CO-5] (introduced 1/5/2011)
Related Bills: H.R.68
Latest Major Action: 1/5/2011 Referred to House committee. Status: Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
COSPONSORS(18), ALPHABETICAL
Rep Akin, W. Todd [MO-2] - 1/12/2011
Rep Bartlett, Roscoe G. [MD-6] - 1/12/2011
Rep Bishop, Rob [UT-1] - 1/12/2011
Rep Blackburn, Marsha [TN-7] - 1/12/2011
Rep Broun, Paul C. [GA-10] - 1/12/2011
Rep Burton, Dan [IN-5] - 1/12/2011
Rep Chaffetz, Jason [UT-3] - 1/12/2011
Rep Coffman, Mike [CO-6] - 1/12/2011
Rep Duncan, Jeff [SC-3] - 1/12/2011
Rep Foxx, Virginia [NC-5] - 1/12/2011
Rep Franks, Trent [AZ-2] - 1/12/2011
Rep Garrett, Scott [NJ-5] - 1/12/2011
Rep Gibbs, Bob [OH-18] - 1/12/2011
Rep Hayworth, Nan A. S. [NY-19] - 1/12/2011
Rep Herger, Wally [CA-2] - 1/12/2011
Rep King, Steve [IA-5] - 1/12/2011
Rep Ribble, Reid J. [WI-8] - 1/12/2011
Rep Schmidt, Jean [OH-2] - 1/12/2011