Since we're talking about who should drop out and calling for "Superdelegates" to decide the Democratic primary RIGHT NOW, maybe Congress should just go ahead and convene the Electoral College and send McCain packing. Here's why:

National Polls (RCP Average):

Clinton v. McCain: Clinton 44.8%, McCain 45.8%
Obama v. McCain: Obama 44.6%, McCain 44.4%

Well within the margin of error. Clearly McCain has not made his case, despite the benefit of his party's incumbency, early coronation, the alleged weakness of his opponents, and the endorsement of sitting president George W. Bush.

Popular vote (Green Papers):

McCain: 7,441,267
Dem: 27,815,851 (Obama: 13,961,775, Clinton: 13,854,076)

Wow. Not too many ways you can spin these numbers. Clearly, McCain is toast and should drop out for the sake of unity, etc. etc.

(Link...)

... I'm not sure yet what the history of how this policy was formed, but it needs to be amended IMMEDIATELY. We must also add specific wording in an ordinance for protection of whistleblowers, protection of private information (SSNs, medical information) that may come in an email to a commissioner, and close the loophole that would allow Commissioners to use private e-mail accounts to send county-related work product that would normally be covered by the Open Records Act.

Right now, the ORA and the Knox County Policy only work to encourage County Officials to use Yahoo, Gmail, or other personal accounts that provide no accountability.

BOWL FOR KIDS’ SAKE 2008 – visit BigBrothersBigSistersETN.org
Coming to an Alley Near You!
Have fun with coworkers, friends or family while also helping children. Bowl For Kids’ Sake benefits Big Brothers Big Sisters of East Tennessee. Every dollar raised goes toward uniting at-risk children with caring adult mentors. It is a FUNtastic way to spend time together and help our community.

More details after the break...

BOWL FOR KIDS’ SAKE 2008 – visit BigBrothersBigSistersETN.org
Coming to an Alley Near You!
Have fun with coworkers, friends or family while also helping children. Bowl For Kids’ Sake benefits Big Brothers Big Sisters of East Tennessee. Every dollar raised goes toward uniting at-risk children with caring adult mentors. It is a FUNtastic way to spend time together and help our community.

When & Where
Teams choose a 1 hour time slot to bowl:
April 3rd ● University of Tennessee ● Down Under ● 4 - 9 pm
April 5th ● Maryville ● Crest Lanes ● 9 am – 12 pm
April 10 & 11 ● Knoxville ● Strike & Spare/Western Avenue ● 4 – 9 pm
April 12th ● Knoxville ● Strike & Spare/Western Avenue ● 10 am – 3 pm

To Participate
• Form a team of 2-4 people
• Pick a team name. Be creative – you could win a prize.
• Make your reservation for the day, hour and location you would like to bowl. Prime times fill up fast so reserve early.
• Start collecting donations that will help unite children with a mentor - their Big Brother or Sister. You can request donations using our online fundraising system or the old fashioned way – with a pledge sheet and a pen.
• Each team member raises at least $25: $50 earns a t-shirt, $250 a tote bag, $500 a Goody’s gift card ($50) and $1,000 a 1-hour massage.
• Teams win prizes for best dressed, best team name & most spirited each hour; a well-timed gutter ball may even get you a prize!
• We provide the lanes, shoes, food and LOTS of FUN!

Back by popular Demand:
• Great prizes based on fundraising levels reached from $25 up to $1,000!
• Internet based registration and donations

Register today or find out more at:
Link... or (865) 523-2179

BOWL FOR KIDS’ SAKE 2008 – visit BigBrothersBigSistersETN.org
Coming to an Alley Near You!
Have fun with coworkers, friends or family while also helping children. Bowl For Kids’ Sake benefits Big Brothers Big Sisters of East Tennessee. Every dollar raised goes toward uniting at-risk children with caring adult mentors. It is a FUNtastic way to spend time together and help our community.

When & Where
Teams choose a 1 hour time slot to bowl:
April 3rd ● University of Tennessee ● Down Under ● 4 - 9 pm
April 5th ● Maryville ● Crest Lanes ● 9 am – 12 pm
April 10 & 11 ● Knoxville ● Strike & Spare/Western Avenue ● 4 – 9 pm
April 12th ● Knoxville ● Strike & Spare/Western Avenue ● 10 am – 3 pm

To Participate
• Form a team of 2-4 people
• Pick a team name. Be creative – you could win a prize.
• Make your reservation for the day, hour and location you would like to bowl. Prime times fill up fast so reserve early.
• Start collecting donations that will help unite children with a mentor - their Big Brother or Sister. You can request donations using our online fundraising system or the old fashioned way – with a pledge sheet and a pen.
• Each team member raises at least $25: $50 earns a t-shirt, $250 a tote bag, $500 a Goody’s gift card ($50) and $1,000 a 1-hour massage.
• Teams win prizes for best dressed, best team name & most spirited each hour; a well-timed gutter ball may even get you a prize!
• We provide the lanes, shoes, food and LOTS of FUN!

Back by popular Demand:
• Great prizes based on fundraising levels reached from $25 up to $1,000!
• Internet based registration and donations

Register today or find out more at:
Link... or (865) 523-2179

Please help us improve this site by taking the short 2008 Reader Survey. Thanks!

UPDATE: The survey is closed. Thanks for participating!

Newly appointed Commissioner Victoria DeFreese remarked in last week's Commission meeting that she had received "countless" e-mails, faxes, letters, and phone calls regarding the recent p-card audit.

Now, the Mayor's office has made a formal request to Commissioner DeFreese under the Tennessee Open Records Act requesting access to copies of all correspondence including letters, faxes, and emails she has received regarding the p-card audit, and also phone records and any logs or notes related to phone calls she has received about the audit.

Not sure why they would want to keep poking this hornet's nest with a stick. At any rate, I guess somebody will have to count them now. Wonder how many were from Paul Pinkston?

UPDATE: DeFreese responds, will hold a press conference at 3PM to discuss the request. According to the report, her position is that the correspondence is not public record. There's also something about "communication 'forged' by citizens." Probably not what she meant to say.

UPDATE: WBIR contacts an expert who says if the correspondence was received in transaction of public business then it is public record, adding "Ethically speaking, I don't know why (Commissioner DeFreese) would want to withhold it." Good question. Boxes and boxes of correspondence would certainly be embarrassing for the mayor. Why not just produce them?

UPDATE: From the KNS: "At any rate, DeFreese said she doesn't have any of the e-mails or other communications because she gets so many she doesn't keep them." Seriously? Game, set, match.

Will we ever know the absolute truth?

According to an article in The Independent (UK):

Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded. He says people should avoid using them wherever possible and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take "immediate steps" to reduce exposure to their radiation.

...

It draws on growing evidence – exclusively reported in the IoS in October – that using handsets for 10 years or more can double the risk of brain cancer. Cancers take at least a decade to develop, invalidating official safety assurances based on earlier studies which included few, if any, people who had used the phones for that long.

What is the truth anyway? We have selective truth. We have scientific truth. Some have religious truth.

We have never used our cellphones very much. We probably average 75 minutes or less a month for the two of us. I wonder what France, Germany, and the European Environment Agency consider reduced use.

Link...

I have been reading the Halls Shopper news for 37 years now. Before the internet,the Shopper was and is a good reliable source of local news. One of the good things about living in Knoxville is having the Halls Shopper each week.

It appears as if Sandra stepped on a few toes with last week opinion piece. It appears three individuals took issue with it being on the front page.

Would you like to expand your classical music library or learn more about a favorite composer? Would you just like to listen to a classical music stream as you work at your desktop?

Try Classical Music Archives.

Earth Day (Oak Ridge) Saturday, April 12 @ Bissell Park in Oak Ridge 12-5 PM.

Hector Qirko Band, R.B. Morris, Todd Steed and The Suns of Phere, Carl Snow's Summer of Love, Lonetones, BFT. For the younglings: Hominy Mammas, Sean McCullough and Phil Pollard, Nancy Brennan Strange and Joni Lovegrove.

Organic Foods, Educational Booths, Environmental Speakers and lots of activities for the younglings and their elders (animals, bugs, outdoor games, prizes).

Zero waste event. Check website for updates. Rain or shine

Link...

Dith Pran, the Cambodian-born journalist whose harrowing tale of enslavement and eventual escape from that country's murderous Khmer Rouge revolutionaries in 1979 became the subject of the award-winning film "The Killing Fields," died Sunday. He was 65.

...

"If you didn't think about the danger, it looked like a performance," he said. "It was beautiful, like fireworks. War is beautiful if you don't get killed. But because you know it's going to kill, it's no longer beautiful."

The Iraq War is an abomination, as was the Vietnam War. Why must it continue?

Pran was certainly a courageous man. May he rest in peace.

Free market!!!

It's just a little surprising these 2 guys don't feel a little guilty about accepting this $19 million in stock when so many of their customers won't be able to keep their homes.

"It's perverse for Bank of America to reward the principal architects of the bad business practices that caused this housing crisis," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y, said in a statement.

It's even a little more ridiculous that BOA is willing to pay one of these guys $28 million to "stay with the company".

Why would they want him to stay? That's like asking George Bush to stay for a second term. Oh, wait. The majority of Americans apparently did ask him to stay. Are we a "Confederacy of Dunces"?

The Museum of Appalachia will end it "Thank You Tennessee Month" Monday afternoon at 4:00 PM. You can see pictures from the Museum of Appalachia on their page on Art Museum Touring.com (Link...).

It’s a way to thank state residents for supporting the Museum through the years; to introduce the Museum to those who haven’t been here before; and to fulfill the Museum’s mission of passing the Appalachian heritage to the next generation.

“Many folks tell us they visited the Museum years ago,” said Elaine Meyer, executive director. “Now we’d like them to come back—and bring their children and grandchildren to share the experience and learn more about their Appalachian heritage.”

For a great family time, music, and chicken and dumplings, this is the place to go!

Support your galleries and museums! They are economic engines for your community.

Sherrie

In the United States we take for granted freedoms and privileges which people around the world are struggling to attain for themselves. Among these freedoms is the right of assembly, the right to the exercise of free speech, the freedom of travel and the right to self-determination. These freedoms were hard won through the struggle for equal rights, which is continuing to this day

Today is the birthday of Eugene McCarthy.

Obviously the video is somewhat dated.

From today's The Writer's Almanac:

"Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important." - Eugene McCarthy

The Knoxville Museum of Art offers a big exhibition of small works with its Size Matters: XS – Recent Small-Scale Paintings from March 28 – August 24, 2008.

The exhibition includes 42 works by some of America’s most important painters including Thordis Adalsteinsdottir, Justin Allen, and Francis Alÿs.

Ridley Howard, Untitled, 2007, Oil on canvas, 5 x 7.5 inches

The KMA is having a curator's discussion of this exhibition on April 2. You visit the Events page, or the KMA page on Art Museum Touring.com (Link...)for more details and to see other work currently on exhibit.

Lana Wilson, 4 Legged Teapot, 1993

Selections from Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts on Exhibit in KMA Community Gallery closes Sunday. The works exhibited were chosen from Arrowmont’s permanent collection which includes examples by some of the nation’s finest craft artists working in wood, metal, ceramic, glass, and other media.

Support your local galleries and museums! They are economic engines for your community.

Sherrie

Bill Dunn's bill to use chat rooms to offer "sunshined" discussion between officials covered by the Open Meetings Act is moving forward.

However, it's always good to think out the details. What specifics should this bill include?

1. Archive of all conversations for elected term + 1 year (e.g., 9 years for Knox County Commissioners)
2. All posts must be keyword searchable, with complex queries allowed (e.g., show all posts by Commissioner X, with keyword "TIF" and keyword "Halls" in the same post)

If we choose to allow public comments, I would recommend a blog engine like Scoop, that allows registered users to build rating points based on comments other users find useful or, on the other side, lose points by 'trolling.' Other users can then filter comments from users below a certain rating value (it's not censorship, since it's the choice of each individual user to set the viewing threshold).

I would also suggest how KNS uses "suggest removal" to allow a county administrator to remove potentially libelous posts.

Other thoughts?

(Click for bigger)

Pileated Woodpecker, a male, I believe. Taken at Lake Ashby Park in Volusia Co. FL, which is an excellent county run park that we discovered by accident. This was the first time I've been able to get photos of one of these fellows. He came right up near us on the trail, making a lot of noise like maybe he was being all territorial and stuff.

(Click for bigger)

A reader sends this page from the latest Tennessee Blue Book, noting that it's a "slice of East Tennessee people, and elected officials." Note the political party affiliation: "Independent NASCAR Fan". (Here's a better photo of Sen. Williams' NASCAR getup.) Coincidentally, there's some news from the TN 4th Senate District today.

Protein Discovery, Inc. Completes $10 Million Private Equity Financing:

Protein Discovery, Inc., a developer and marketer of products that simplify biological sample preparation for mass spectrometry applications, today announced that the company has closed a $10 million Series C round of equity financing.

The company's product is used to "prepare biological samples for mass spectrometry analysis in common life science R&D applications such as protein biomarker discovery and small molecule quantification," whatever that means, and is said to reduce the time required for the process from days to hours.

Apparently it has nothing to do, however, with sports, trucking, or strip mall development.

The DOE has selected Knoxville as one of twelve cities to receive solar energy grants:

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Samuel W. Bodman today announced that DOE will make available up to $2.4 million to 12 cities across the country selected as Solar America Cities, chosen for their commitment and comprehensive approach to the deployment of solar technologies and the development of sustainable solar infrastructures.

[..]

Cities designated as Solar America Cities, which will each receive $200,000 from DOE to integrate a variety of solar energy technologies throughout the city, include: Denver, CO; Houston, TX; Knoxville, TN; Milwaukee, WI; Minneapolis & St. Paul, MN; Orlando, FL; Philadelphia, PA; Sacramento, CA; San Antonio, TX; San Jose, CA; Santa Rosa, CA; and Seattle, WA.

According to the DOE press release, the selected cities will also receive hands-on technical assistance with integrating solar technology into energy planning, zoning, local regulations, best practices, solar financing options, and incentive programs. The grants are part of the DOE Solar American Cities program.

$200K ($2.4 million overall) is a rounding error in terms of federal funding for alternative energy technology research and programs, but we should be happy they are doing anything at all and take what we can get.

(Here's a previous report on Florida's solar incentive program and some others around the South along with a discussion of some of the issues involved. Some interesting comments, too.)

UPDATE: Here's the City of Knoxville's Solar Cities grant application, courtesy of Bill Lyons. There are some interesting ideas, such as integrating solar technology into the new transit center, solar powered affordable housing development projects (as mentioned yesterday), education/outreach programs at the Ijams nature center, and lots more.

Had lunch with a friend who feels pretty strongly that a good location for a new, consolidated downtown hospital would be the site of the current safety building and coliseum. Both buildings being decrepit (and city owned), doing this would:

1. reduce the problem of the current landlocked state of Baptist
2. keep the hospital closer to south Knoxville than "somewhere else"
3. utilize Hall of Fame Drive to remain connected to north Knoxville
4. use TIFs to get a new coliseum out of the deal

other pros, cons?

1. also closer to Interstate than both current hospitals

WBIR reports (by way of KT) that the new citizen's grant review panel declined grant funding for Dr. Kim's Free Clinic. According to the report, the clinic has received funding for the past three years, and was hoping to get funding for a new nurse position this year.

Personally, this seems like a bad start for the citizen's grant review panel. But I suppose there are a lot of tough decisions that have to be made. Maybe some of them are better left to pros. (I also wonder if this has anything to do with the St. Mary's/Baptist merger? Does that affect future plans for the clinic?)

Anyway, if you'd like to help Dr. Kim's Free Clinic fund a new nurse position, you can make a donation:

Make checks payable to Free Medical Clinic and mail to:

Baptist Health System Foundation
Free Medical Clinic Fund
101 Blount Avenue, Suite 530
Knoxville, TN 37920

Watching CC last night on tube I saw the South-Doyle homeowners doing another good job. Bob Dykes has been impressive the couple times I have seen him in action. That is the sort of person we would all benefit from as mayor, County Commissioner, MPC, IDB, etc. If you know more folks like Mr. Dykes seems to be lets encourage them to take positions of leadership.

The Tennessee Senate Environment and Conservation Committee had a somewhat confrontational hearing Wednesday on the bill to ban mountaintop removal. Chair Tommy Kilby blocked a vote on the measure.

There was some good news, though. See the LEAF update after the jump. Also see this report at Facing South.

Illumination: Works of Vibrant Imagination, a new exhibition featuring the works of Katie Gamble, Jessica Gregory, and Zophia Kneiss. It closes today at the Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay Street, downtown Knoxville. Gallery hours are Monday-Friday 9-5. You can see other work from the exhibition on the Emporium page on Art Museum Touring.com (Link...)

"Emma Rides a Flying Pig" by Jessica Gregory

Gamble's impressionistic oils and Gregory's colorful acrylics, coupled with Kneiss' metal art, create an elaborate garden on the first floor of the Emporium through which visitors can wander. The artists hope to inspire imagination and personal interpretation of works in everyone who views the exhibit.

Support your local galleries and museums! They are economic engines for your community.

Sherrie