From the Brady Campaign, which takes criticism for keeping up with such things, we learn about two more killings by licensed gunmen. In Houston, some guy in a fit of road rage shot a 13-year-old girl in the head. And in Ohio, a drunk shot a woman after she asked whether his gun was loaded. "Let's see," the drunk replied. Then he pointed it at her, fired and hit her.
Our politicians don't want anyone to know it, but there have been killings by handgun permitees in Tennessee too, of course. As the Brady Campaign points out:
Despite stories like these, state legislators in Tennessee, Arizona, and now Virginia are expanding the places people can legally carry weapons. As we allow firearms to permeate our entire culture more and more, we can unfortunately expect to see more and more of these stories.
When Elliot Lash jumped to his death in an atrium at Saint Thomas Medical Center in December, the story of his gruesome death, and later revelations that he was a pedophile, were all over the news. But another aspect of the tragic saga -- how Lash's wife Sheri managed to overlook all of the glaring warning signs -- went untold.
In this week's Scene cover story, Sheri Lash shares her heartbreaking story with reporter Brantley Hargrove. Lash is unflinchingly honest, admitting that her love for Elliot Lash led her to ignore the horrendous clues to his secret life that were staring her in the face. Disturbing as it is, Sheri Lash's story is a compelling and eye-opening look into how love and dependence can cause someone to turn a blind eye to even the most conspicuous red flags.
Vandals spray-painted insults on a mosque overnight and left a hate-filled letter to Nashville's Muslims. Islamic leaders blame Channel 5's sensationalized two-night report about a crackpot organization's unfounded accusations of terrorist ties against a Middle Tennessee Muslim community.
"Muslims Go Home" and a Crusade-style cross were scrawled across the front of Al-Farooq Islamic Center on Nolensville Road, says Salaad Nur, a spokesman. He says the mosque, which primarily serves members of the Somali community, has contacted the police and the FBI.
If you're on a plane and seated next to this man, be afraid--but only if you're an incompetent thespian.
On his blog, Sports Media America, Scene theater critic Martin Brady shares a recent travel experience in which he misses his flight to visit his family because...well, he's turned up on the FBI Watch List.
He muses about the possible reasons: Did they confuse him with an Irish terrorist of the same name? Is it because he always pays his taxes late? Too much porn surfing?
One possibility he failed to consider: Perhaps his association with us radical socialist ne'er-do-wells at the Scene flagged him for suspicion.
Martin's ultimate conclusion?
If only my name had been Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Then I might've skated.
As for us, we're not sure which is more bizarre--that Martin Brady is on the FBI Watch List, or that the Scene theater critic has a sports blog.
At around 2 p.m. last Wednesday, Metro Police got a call from concerned citizens who claimed alternately that a robbery was in progress at a home on the 1000 block of W. Eastland and that a couple was having sex behind the same house.
As officers converged on the scene, they discovered the vacant house was intact. The 2002 Dodge Durango parked behind it, however, was a-rockin'. Inside, a 31-year-old man and a 24-year-old woman both had their pants down, in the throes of fee-for-service passion, the report says. When officers announced their presence, the man dismounted from both his soiled dove and his Durango and bolted, likely tugging at his pants as he waddled. He was caught two blocks away.
He was charged with patronizing prostitution. The woman was charged with prostitution. Life goes on.
The owners of Music Row watering hole Tin Roof are suing a local attorney, claiming he besmirched the bar's reputation with a defamatory Facebook update, E. Thomas Wood at the Nashville Postreports. The lawyer represents a man who was allegedly beaten senseless by bar manager Wesley Stephens, a former arena football player.
According to Wood, the Tin Roof's owners say the defendant "has continued to post and publish false and defamatory information" about the nightspot. To support his claims, however, attorney Brian Manookian supplied the Post with a list of police reports detailing alleged incidents investigated by Metro police, including 17 simple or aggravated assaults since 2003 and numerous reports of theft and vandalism.
Okay, it's a bar. Pith gets that. But a rape case in April 2008? A suicide in June 2008 and an alleged kidnapping in August 2007?
It has been a big week for the plaintiffs in the trial of the federal lawsuit against Nashville's new student assignment plan. Let's review:
Expert witnesses testified the plan isolates hundreds more children by race and socioeconomic status and contradicts decades of social science on how to teach poor urban kids. That research shows students learn less in schools where poverty is concentrated. That's because teachers are overwhelmed by all the problems these children face--poor health, hunger, drugs, gangs and violence, and a culture that scorns education. Poor students learn more in middle-class settings where aspirations are higher and the teachers typically are more experienced, these witnesses said. Neighborhood schools actually hinder learning for children in poverty-stricken, high-crime sections of the city.
Given all that, why did the school board adopt the rezoning plan? The plaintiffs think they know the answer: White school board members were knuckling under to pressure from white parents and the Chamber of Commerce to end the busing of black children from north Nashville to Hillwood's schools.
He's baaaaaack. And just when you hoped you'd surely heard the last of Pedro Garcia nearly two years after his ouster as schools director.
One of Garcia's now-infamous memos, which he left behind like ticking time bombs, has blown up in the trial of the NAACP-backed lawsuit accusing the school board of illegally discriminating against black children in the new student assignment plan. In the memo, Garcia paints the school board as a gang of conniving segregationists who tossed him out on the street for taking a principled stand against racism.
Eleven years after winning release from desegregation decrees, Nashville's school officials are being dragged back into federal court beginning today to face accusations they're discriminating against black children. The issue is whether race was a consideration in the student assignment plan that went into effect this school year, and much of the city's white officialdom is on trial.
Did school board chairman David Fox openly advocate segregation in community meetings? Did he say, as the plaintiffs' attorneys allege, that we should "put African American students back in north Nashville where they live?"
The Tennessee Supreme Court is in sync with Chief Justice John Roberts on this one: The law shouldn't grant drunken drivers "one free swerve" to endanger the public.
The state court ruled yesterday anonymous tips are sufficient reason for police to stop suspected drunken drivers. But Virginia's Supreme Court tossed out a drunken-driving conviction in an almost identical case. The police officers who made both arrests didn't see any traffic law violations but made their stops based on anonymous tips.
Steve McQueen in The Great Escape, Jan Ray is not. A few days ago, during an East Nashville bust, Ray was given a golden opportunity to pull a fast one and vanish into the urban ether. She had almost everything in her grasp to make a clean getaway. Criminal instinct? Check. Knowledge of the mechanics of a squad car door? Check. Physical prowess? Er...lacking.
Ray, 33, was spotted on a Tuesday evening walking through an alley near Neill Avenue and Ramsey Street, an area in East Nashville near Douglas Park that police say is known for drugs. So when Officer Brian Theriac stopped to talk to Ray, she consented to a search. Produced were a small baggie of cocaine, records say, and after a cursory search of her record, an outstanding warrant. Theriac placed Ray under arrest and put her in the back of his squad car.
Problem: The rear window was down. Ray slid her arm out of the window, felt for the handle and opened her door from the outside, sprinting for freedom, police affidavits say. Alas, her stint on the lam was short. She was found half a block away, nursing an injured knee after tumbling over a fence. Theriac transported her to General Hospital.
Ray can now add escaping from a penal institution to her rap sheet. Yes, that's right: Escaping from a penal institution. As of July, escaping from a police car is the same thing as escaping from jail. Who knew?
Having fun is risky business in our city parks now.
And so it begins. Thanks to the National Rifle Association and its lapdogs in the legislature, even tossing a frisbee in a city park is a little dicey now in Tennessee.
In Germantown, some dude playing golf disc made the mistake of arguing with a guy who turned out to be one of our state's fine, law-abiding citizen gunmen. The next thing the frisbee-tosser knew, the gunman was taking his weapon out of his car and strapping it on. The police gave the guy a ticket for violating Germantown's ban on guns. The city was one of 70 in Tennessee that decided to opt out of the state's guns-in-parks law.
Things turned out OK this time, but we all should brace ourselves. The legislature spent an entire session encouraging these Second Amendment clowns with a lot of big talk about defending freedom, etc. It's like Andy giving Barney a gallon of Red Bull. Anything's liable to happen.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched a little experiment (which one of our state senators is mocking) to see who's selling firearms like they're cap guns. Answer: Us. And a few other states with gun-show loopholes that allow just about -- well, not just about -- practically anyone to buy a handgun.
Forty undercover investigators roamed the Tennessee Expo Center, the Tennessee State Fairgrounds and five other gun shows in Nevada and Ohio for four months, buying up weapons when the transactions should have been aborted. Investigators walked away with firearms even after they informed the sellers that they probably wouldn't pass background checks. Gun salesmen even turned a blind eye to obvious "straw purchases" -- which is when the buyer brings along a ringer to fill out the paperwork and make the transaction so as to avoid a background check.
Though occasionally a venue for thoughtful dialogue, reader comments often read less like logical debates and more like transcribed bar fights. Case in point are the debates unfurling right now under TheTennessean's coverage of newborn Yair Anthony Carrillo's kidnapping. With immigration emerging as a hot topic, a quick cruise through the comment boards reveals a fusion of thoughtful discourse, drolling egos, race baiting and political blunder. But amid all that is one particularly interesting voice.
It appears that the Lebanon woman first suspected of the crime, but later cleared, is trying to kick up a little online love for her plight. Either that, or someone is impersonating her.
Our newsroom, among others, is continuing to work the Gurrolla story, specifically trying to answer the curious question that even this fresh Associated Press piece fails to satisfy: Why did the state take baby Yair and Maria Gurrolla's other three children from her and her husband and put them in foster care? Immigration lawyers have told The City Paper that the family's citizenship status should have no bearing on custody of the children. Meanwhile, the state Department of Children's Services sheds absolutely no light on the situation. From AP:
Department of Children's Services spokesman Rob Johnson declined to talk specifically about the Gurrolla case but said taking children into custody after a kidnapping is not necessarily standard procedure.
He said the caseworkers saw something in this situation that made them concerned enough that they felt the safest thing to do was find a foster home for the children. He declined to say what caseworkers were concerned about or whether complaints had been filed against the family.
He said most of the time when DCS takes children, they are eventually returned and the agency always explains to the family what they can do to regain custody.
"DCS is acting with an abundance of caution," he said.
Still recovering from the knife attack delivered by the robust white woman suspected of kidnapping her newborn son Yair, Maria Gurrolla surprised many yesterday morning with her willingness to answer questions about the unfolding nightmare.
Only a day after the incident, emotional and physical wounds still fresh, Gurrolla went before the press to plead for her son's return, a decision that highlights both her bravery and grief. As a reporter who covered the conference at Vanderbilt, I've been asked a number of times since why we "media types" felt the need to drag the mother before the camera. Were we live-feeding her trauma for page views and ratings?
To be honest, I heard members of the press yesterday at the scene quietly discuss among themselves whether Gurrolla was ready to face the media. It raises all those queasy questions that surface anytime the spotlight is thrown on fresh tragedy.
Last night I went to see friend of the SceneRoger Abramson moderate a panel made up of the CATO institute's David Boaz,
DEA, as a Federal Agency, You Can't Copyright Things (Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105), So Your Watermark Fails to Intimidate
NORML's Paul Kuhn and Vanderbilt Law School's Robert Mikos talking about legal issues surrounding marijuana and the potential for pot legalization. (In the process, I got to meet Roger's dad, who is cuter than most babies.)
Unfortunately, there were no Twinkie breaks, but the panel members talked thoughtfully and eloquently about eventual marijuana legalization and what the market and regulatory mechanisms for pot might look like.
Men and women in blue don't put just their lives at risk every day. Sometimes their reproductive organs are on the line, too.
Such was the case at around noon Saturday at the Hickory Hollow Kroger. Darryl Dewayne Murphy, 46, was hammered at the store, his speech reportedly slurred and his eyes bloodshot and watery. He was raving at folks who were just trying to scan their Axe Body Spray, and hearts of romaine, at the self checkout without having to interact with the drunk guy saying strange, inscrutable things.
A story on CNN.com has highlighted a "john school" in Nashville: a one-day program for first-time offenders busted for hiring prostitutes. There are about 50 similar programs around the country, and our local chapter is likely as average as the next. Single men, married men, older men, younger men, black men, and white men were all described as being in attendance.
Only open to men buying sex from an adult, the program is staffed by city officials and volunteers, healthcare workers and former prostitutes involved with the Magdalene House program. It's held in a church, and the way the article describes it, it seems that shame is the only consequence the johns understand. Some men were not able to look directly at a former prostitute as she told her story of childhood rape, and recidivism rates drop sharply when their names are added to a registry. (Nashville's program publically displays their mug shots, though there are no statistics available regarding the re-offense rate of program participants specifically.)
Conversations about prostitution are more than conversations about sex. We're talking about victimization, autonomy, abuse, and loneliness. Prostitution is not a victimless crime, because for every man or woman that enters the profession willingly, there are far more people suffering from abuse and addiction with no clear way out. The johns mentioned in the story are equal parts pitiful and frustrating. Even the man who seems to get it, who feels remorse for his crime, is quoted as saying, "These girls are somebody's daughters. I have a daughter."
They are somebody's daughters. But they are also grown women who have always been seen as belonging to someone other than themselves.
The History Channel series Gangland featured an episode on street gangs in Nashville, titled "Hunt and Kill," which aired several times throughout the month of August. The show's hyperbolic tone at times made it sound like the streets of Nashville were a war zone comparable to South Central. Regardless of the exaggeration, there were enough specific details about gang activities here to remind us that Nashville isn't the quaint and cozy town pictured on postcards hawked in the tourist traps on Second Avenue.
In addition to an examination of the Brown Pride, Sureños and MS-13 street gangs (including an in-depth look at the 2006 murder of two Brown Pride members by MS-13 members on Nolensville Road), the show featured the following segment, which caught my ear in light of recent gun legislation:
NARRATOR: BP members love to pack heat, from handguns to semiautomatics.
JAMES CAVANAUGH, SPECIAL AGENT-IN-CHARGE, ATF: To be a gang, to be the bully of the block, to be the strong man, to control the neighborhood, there's no way that a gang's gonna do that without a boatload of guns.
NARRATOR: Tennessee has some of the loosest gun laws of any state. No permits or licenses are required to purchase a shotgun, a rifle or a handgun.
BROWN PRIDE MEMBER SPOOK: You just wanna buy a gun, just have a gun with you, you can get it anywhere.
BROWN PRIDE MEMBER GORDO: You can get 'em from a gun show. You don't even gotta show 'em no permit or nothing. Say I can just come up to you and be like, "hey, you wanna buy this? Here. You give me the money, that's it."
Yet another shining endorsement of Tennessee's gun laws! Way to go state legislature!
"Mike probably just didn't read his handbook on what not to do as a black star," says actor Jamie Foxx. I could not disagree more when it comes to the recently released dog killer Michael Vick. Vick didn't need to read any kind of handbook. What he should have known is that killing dogs is simply something you don't do as a -- human being. He chose to engage in murder and barbarism. Now, the word on the street is that enough time has past. We need to forgive him.
No, we don't need to forgive.
Dwight Lewis, Editorial Page Editor for The Tennessean, writes on the matter of forgiving Michael Vick on August 16th in an editorial titled, "Need to forgive should motivate all of us." Lewis quotes the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as having said "Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude." We are blessed that MLK lived on this Earth, but I think putting MLK anywhere near Michael Vick is a stretch. Jesse Jackson has actually compared Michael Vick to Jackie Robinson.
I can appreciate what Lewis is saying about forgiveness. It just doesn't apply to someone like Michael Vick. Lewis writes, "And wouldn't you want a second chance if you made a mistake in life?" We are a forgiving nation. Second chances rule the day. Perhaps it really doesn't make sense to try and condemn a person for life who has served out the prison term they were lawfully handed down. Perhaps I should heed the advice of a friend of mine who implored me to "get over it..."
The same people who went nuts over Terri Shiavo are doing their best to make sure more cases like hers arise
It seemed a rather smart and worthy service to provide seniors. Under new health reform rules, the government would pay for the elderly to have a session with their doctors. They could ask questions and decide what medical treatment they wanted should they become too incapacitated to make those calls down the road.
It's called a living will, and it's designed to prevent things like the Terri Shiavo case. Instead of forcing relatives to guess or sue each other over whether a loved one should, say, remain on life support, it would allow people to provide instructions beforehand, so everyone is sure of their wishes.
But in these days of Our First Negro President, when the conservative fringe is prepared to believe anything sinister involving the government, it somehow became a plot to kill old people. Sarah Palin warned of death panels. Senators like Tennessee's Bob Corker refused to tell the wingnuts they were wrong, believing their misguided heat would help Republicans. And Goobers swarmed town hall meetings, denouncing socialized medicine though many of them receive Medicare.
Yet these rumors weren't started by some guy with a bomb shelter in hill country. As the New York Times discovered, they were started by the same people who sabotaged the last round of reform -- entities like the Moonie-owned Washington Times and American Spectator magazine. In other words, those buying into the propaganda are getting it from the traditional shills of the health care industry.
Be the first to apply to one of Sarah Palin's new death panels.
The United States government expects to have hundreds of new openings for death panel members beginning this fall. Job entails deciding which elderly/handicapped should live or die under new health care initiative. May also include forcing abortions on unsuspecting mothers and being mean to Sarah Palin's youngest child.
Employment includes no specific education or experience requirements, but previous work in insurance, banking or serial murder a plus. Successful candidate should be callous, capable of chuckling ominously, and has never enjoyed an episode of Golden Girls. Must love socialism and eradicating white people who are strict constitutionalists. Must also possess reliable transportation and euthanasia equipment -- i.e. syringes, guillotine, hydrochloric acid, etc. Ideal vocation for people who honk at old guys for driving too slow.
Send resume, blood oath, and a letter of reference from either Satan or Nancy Pelosi to:
Barack Hussein Obama c/o White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 50200
You may recall our story from last September, when reporter Brantley Hargrove took a look at Nashville's Tent City, an encampment for the homeless above the Hermitage Avenue bridge. At the time, officials were about to vacate the area, citing violence and health concerns. That plan was later reversed, since removal would merely push the homeless back on the streets.
Tent City still stands today. And according to The Wall Street Journal, that makes Nashville something of a leader among cities that accommodate such encampments, rather than dispersing residents with no where else to go. The paper also has an arresting photo gallery here.
One could argue that the teabagger protests at town hall meetings are a very good thing. An active citizenry is engaged in vigorous protest, getting in the face of their congressmen, and generally unleashing some red-blooded fury on people who have sold their ass to the highest bidder for years.
But some congressmen are fighting back by getting unions to provide security. At a Missouri meeting, one protester was punched out by a service workers member. Could this too be a very good thing? It's one thing to exercise your 1st Amendment rights. But it's another to stop everyone else from exercising theirs. And when you're largely yapping gibberish -- euthanasia? socialism? -- does this not violate moral law? You know, the one against acting like an asshole in public?
Take a gander at the video above from a meeting held by Congresswoman Kathy Castor of Florida. Can you imagine a little old lady trying to get through this crowd? And since it's a sin to scare little old ladies, does one not have a moral obligation to remove whomever's doing the scaring by any means necessary?
The Scene:The year2011 at the Tennessee state line. Foreign-born President Barack Obama has completed his socialist takeover of America. By executive decree, he's eliminated the Second Amendment and ordered the confiscation of all guns.
Two years earlier, Governor Zach Wamp declared, "People have asked me what we'd do if President Barack Obama issued an
executive order to take firearms away from the people. I'll tell you
what we'd do. We will meet him at the state line!" Now he's making good on his word, waiting for Obama at the Virginia border.
Gubernatorial aide Skippy: "Jeepers, governor, are you sure we have to do this? It seems kind of weird just standing along the road waiting for Obama to show up."
Wamp: "Zach Wamp has vowed to defend the sovereignty of the great state of Tennessee. And by God, that's exactly what Zach Wamp intends to do."
Skippy: "But what if he actually shows up? You're not really going to shoot the president, are you?"
Wamp: "Zach Wamp hopes that it doesn't come to that, Skippy. But if it does, Zach Wamp is prepared to die a brave and glorious death to defend our Second Amendment rights."
Skippy: "You do know that's only a BB gun, don't you? Your aides decided you'd be less likely to hurt yourself."
Wamp: "Hmmm, Zach Wamp thought those bullets looked a little small. But never mind. The heathen Obama is no match for Zach Wamp, even if he's backed by an entire Panzer division..."
Ramsey attempt to court the Paul Stanley wing of the party
Tennessee gubernatorial aspirant Ron Ramsey doesn't seem to have learned from the backlash against the legislature's guns-in-parks-and-bars bills. So he's decided to insert himself into the confirmation vote on Judge Sonia Sotomayor, hoping to push his unique brand of gooberism on the federal level.
In an announcement this afternoon, Ramsey called on Tennesseans to urge their senators to vote against the nominee. He doesn't actually mean this, since he knows that Lamar Alexander already plans to vote yea, while Bob Corker will vote nay. But it does offer him the chance to snuggle up to gun nuts in the Republican primary:
As sponsor of Tennessee's right-to-carry law, I am deeply concerned that she will continue to ignore the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment. Just last year, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment guarantees both an individual's right to own firearms and a right to self-defense. However, Judge Sotomayor ignored this ruling and held in 2009 that the Second Amendment applies only to federal gun control measures, NOT state gun control.
She is clearly willing to allow state governments to enact gun control measures which fly in the face of the constitutional right to defend our loved ones as well as ourselves. This could undo Tennessee's right-to-carry permit law in addition to other Second Amendment protections passed by the state legislature, one of which was passed over a gubernatorial veto just this year.
Judge Sotomayor should not be elevated to the U.S. Supreme Court. She is a liberal judicial activist who has shown a willingness to disregard the fundamental rights found within the Second Amendment. All Tennesseans who value their right to own firearms and defend themselves should be deeply troubled by the possibility of Judge Sotomayor's confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court.
A four-hour arrest for acting like a dick? That seems fair to me.
In the Tennessean the other day, Gannett syndicated columnist DeWayne Wickham denounced the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. by the Cambridge police. Gist of his story: A white cop "arrested Gates, I'm convinced, to put an uppity black man in his place." If only Wickham removed the word "black," he'd probably be right.
His take has been a common refrain among learned and liberal commentators over the past week. And it's a natural one. It's no secret that cops target blacks more than whites. And pretty much everyone knows somebody who's been pinched for the crime of Driving While Black. With this history in mind, instinct calls for the insti-formula of Racist White Cop Arrests Innocent Black Guy.
Except for one thing: This case had nothing to do with race. But it had everything to do with an entitled professor utterly divorced from the realities of America. Henry Gates was arrested for being a dick. Nothing more.
Before you begin to light me up in the comments section, let's look at this from the cop's perspective, shall we?
PETA filed a complaint this morning against Vanderbilt with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Institutes of Health's Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare. According to the non-profit, a whistleblower reported the following abuses:
A technician picked up dogs who weighed between 25 and 35 pounds--and who had recently undergone abdominal surgery--by grasping the skin on the scruff of their necks without providing any other support.
A mouse was allowed to suffer for several days with a proptosed eye (when the eyeball pops out of the socket but is still attached).
Another mouse who was scheduled to be killed on Monday was found to have no water on the preceding Friday. The supervisor stated that it didn't matter because the mouse was going to be killed on Monday anyway.
A group of kittens in Vanderbilt's laboratories is being raised without the care of their mother in complete darkness.
Obama shouldn't have automatically sided with Gates instead of the cop
From ace correspondent Mark Breton:
I think it's a sad day in America, because our President profiles white cops. He has assumed that the responding officer did something wrong, something racist, because he is white, regardless of the lack of facts in evidence and in the face of years of professional conduct and character witnesses testifying to his professionalism.
The President takes the opportunity to shoot his mouth off about one poor guy just trying to do his job, a police officer who puts his life on the line every day, because it could have been anyone in that house, and that's a fact. This officer was trying to protect that homeowner's property and he gets harassed to no end because he insisted on establishing that the man was the homeowner. What was he supposed to do, run away so he wouldn't look like he was hatin', because it was a black man who happened to be in the house?
Our tolerant and enlightened President steps right in the middle of something that he should have left alone; in his ignorance he thought this situation provided him one more political opportunity to drive the wedge of racism and intolerance between all of us again and he couldn't pass it up. Way to go, O. --Mark Breton
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roductive organs are on the line, too.
