Archive for December, 2007
Father of suspect shot by KPD blames mental health system
The father of David Rudd, the suspect in the fatal Hooters restaurant shooting who was himself shot and killed by Knoxville police last night, spoke to WBIR reporters today. He describes a severely mentally ill young man whose family unsuccessfully struggled for years to get the care their son needed.
Some excerpts:
The father of the 25-year-old [...]
Read More..>>Sen. Kyle’s “PR stunt”
Bill Hobbs says Sen. Kyle’s proposal for tightening campaign finance fraud is nothing more than window dressing:
Democrat state Sen. Jim Kyle wants to lock the barn gate now that the horse has already escaped. He is proposing legislation that would require the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance to levy a fine equal to the [...]
Read More..>>Outsourced baby farms
Sharon Cobb points to a new trend in outsourcing to India: houses full of poor women being paid to serve as surrogate “wombs for rent” for infertile couples in the U.S., Britain and elsewhere.
A team of maids, cooks and doctors looks after the women, whose pregnancies would be unusual anywhere else but are common here. [...]
WBIR stories featured in Brian Williams’ blog
We’re pleased and proud to see two of our favorite WBIR stories from 2007 recently featured in Brian Williams’ blog.
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BOLO: Highly personal info for every single Davidson County voter
Sharon Cobb has some questions about the recent theft of massive quantities of voter data in Davidson County:
Last week, when a laptop computer was stolen from the election commission, it contained the addresses and FULL social security numbers of ALL registered voters in Davidson County. That’s 337 thousand of us.
Make sure and call your credit [...]
More info on victim in Hooters murder
Apparently the Michigan man killed at the Knoxville Hooters restaurant was a father of eight, and he was in town to find new cars for his demolition derby hobby:
Sherman leaves behind a wife, Tony, and eight children - ranging in age from seven to 16 - from a blended family.
Carla Sontag, Sherman’s sister, said her [...]
Local College Democrats happy with 2007 recruiting
Link:
The UT branch of College Democrats signed up 300 new members to its e-mail list this year and got nearly 100 people to register to vote.
The organization reached many of its set goals for this year, including raising $650 in donations, and set even bigger ones for 2008.
“We were very excited with the turnout [...]
UT student less than thrilled with police response
Although this op-ed from the Tennessee Journalist site dates back to mid December, I still found it interesting:
Awful police response to trespass in Fort Sanders
By Katherine Leone
Tuesday night there was a trespasser on my property, or rather, the property I am currently renting. In light of recent events in the Fort (several armed robberies/assaults of [...]
More fallout from the Scott West affair
More West family properties are apparently hitting the auction block:
North Carolina 176 Ridge Road Candler, NC February 12th
Hawaii Upper Maulua Homestead Road, Ninole, HI Date TBD in March
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Dave Foulk…
…joins the list of local newsies who have their own blogs.
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Third-party candidacy buzz
From TennViews by way of Newscoma:
Joe Lance is following the news on a possible independent candidate discussed this morning.
Today’s Washington Post contains an eyebrow-raising story by David Broder (which, as I write this, Bob Schieffer is also mentioning on CBS) about a bipartisan group that will meet at the University of Oklahoma next week, to [...]
Political gossip du jour: a TN congressman for veep?
Volunteer Voters links to a West TN blogger saying:
Remember where you heard/read it first. I have it from a good source, that Congressman John Tanner, District#8-Tennessee, is being considered for Vice-President of the United States. If you have read his speech`s from the floor of the house? You must consider him as a credible consideration. [...]
We online scribes live or die by our ad impressions
And this is increasingly true of traditional print journalists whose work is now appearing online:
Career columnist Penelope Trunk blogs her firing from Yahoo!.
There’s a tremendous outpouring in the comments as well as some catty ones there and on Valleywag..
She says she was fired because her column commanded low advertising rates. So reporters and writers out [...]
Is this a good quality or a bad quality in a guy seeking the presidency?
Via Sharon Cobb, Fred Thompson says he isn’t particularly interested in running for president, but he thinks he’d make a good CiC if elected.
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Gun bloggers meet-up
Apparently, local gun bloggers had a meet-up:
The guests included SayUncle, Sebastian at Snowflakes in Hell, Bitter at The Bitch Girls, Les Jones, and Tam at View From the Porch Blog. I got some great shooting tips from everyone, including Say Uncle who tried to teach me not to flinch (not an easy feat) and from [...]
Priorities out of whack?
So sayeth Rich Hailey:
The flesh market off Magnolia is in full swing.
The open air drug markets are operating at full holiday capacity.
And the waitresses at Hooters are asking for Kevlar T-shirts.
But the citizens of Knoxville can sleep easy because their City Police department is engaged in an all out effort to make sure nobody speeds [...]
Cynthia Finch, Requitta Bone back in the news
Kay Watson takes a closer look at ties between Finch and several organizations receiving tax dollars:
Cynthia Finch is the Mayor’s Director of Community Services. Her office monitors county, state, and federal grant money distributed to dozens of organizations, including one run by her sister, Jacqueline Collins.
Tax documents recently filed by Collins for TennCorp Community Services [...]
What questions do Knox County candidates need to answer?
I am busy finishing up the candidate questionnaires that WBIR will be sending out to all candidates for Knox County offices and I’d like to add some of your questions to the mix.
Tell me in the comments section below this post what specific questions you would like Knox County candidates to answer.
(Witticisms always welcome, [...]
Joe Powell on Jonah Goldberg and Godwin’s Law
Joe Powell listened to the Glen and Helen Show’s Podcast of an interview with conservative author Jonah Goldberg and didn’t like what he heard:
In essence, Goldberg takes his particular worldview-goggles and peers backward, cherry-picking the events and language of the past in order to bolster his views that Democrats and Liberal politics virtually destroyed America [...]
Diverticulitis
And what exactly is it?
Unfortunately, whatever it is, Sugarfused has it, and we are hoping for a speedy recovery.
UPDATE: I’ve done some research on diverticulitis , and now I really am hoping Sugarfused has a speedy recovery.
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