Morning Press Blog
Drama Town USA
Today, the keen competition for the Drama Town USA title raging between Red Bank and East Ridge.
Read more...The Truth of the Matter with Tonya Craft
Tonya Craft isn't teaching in a classroom this fall, but she has plenty to say. "The Truth of the Matter with Tonya Craft" starts Tuesday, September 7th on WGOW-FM, Talk Radio 102.3.
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Halloween in July
I understand that our entire U.S. economic system is based on retail Christmas sales. I understand that's all Christmas is about in the 21st Century -- buying and selling as much as you possibly can. But when did Halloween begin encroaching on that territory?
Read more...The Navy's here? But there's no water!
There has been a massive air and ground search for two United States Navy Sailors missing in a dangerous area of eastern Afghanistan. Some reports strongly suggest one may have been killed by the Taliban and one captured after the Sailors left the Afghan capitol of Kabul Friday afternoon. It raised the question from a caller this morning of what the Navy is doing in Afghanistan anyway.
Read more...I Be Strokin'
JR, Wally and Clarence Carter take on North Korea's Kim Chong Il: I stroke it to the east And I stroke it to the west And I stroke it to the woman that I love the best I be strokin'
Read more...Blacks On Boats
Why don't more black people own boats? And why does the fact I'm asking make you feel uncomfortable?
Read more...Ain't No Sunshine...in Red Bank
Wow – faster than three Red Bank city commissioners can get together and violate the Sunshine Law, fired Red Bank police chief Larry Sneed has filed a lawsuit.
Read more...Jeff's fireworks from the Olgiatti
Jeff, JR and I have had a lot of firsts as a morning team. Today we became the first morning team to launch an on-air fireworks display from the Olgiatti Bridge.
Read more...How To Turn Into A Politician
How to create a political ad in East Tennessee. There's a very simple formula, as we outlined today on The Morning Press. First, declare that you're a conservative outsider.......
Read more...The Mayor's Oompa Loompa
Yeah, I had to work today. It's actually possible to work and give pause to remember those who gave their lives in military service. It's not that big a multi-tasking challenge. Certainly, it's not as big a challenge as paying attention to the mayor's proposed budget while hosting a radio show.
Read more...A Response to Tonya's Lawsuit
I did get a response to the $25 million federal lawsuit Tonya Craft has filed against 15 individuals and entities who spent two years prosecuting her on 22 child molestation charges a jury eventually found had no merit. There's no gag order to prevent these folks from using my platform to tell their story as there was when Tonya wanted to tell hers. I want to tell the whole story.
Read more...Boat Rockers - Coperincus and Tonya Craft
At some point I will return to blogging about issues other than the Tonya Craft case. This morning I might have chosen the Catholic Church and Copernicus since they dug him up after 500 years and reburied him as a hero. But I didn't choose Copernicus because the wake from Tonya's legal odyssey is beginning to rock some boats that heretofore had been safely tied at the courthouse dock.
Read more...Buzz Reacts - And Blames "The Media"
Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney Buzz Franklin is blaming a “heavily slanted” media for the jury’s 22 not guilty verdicts in the Tonya Craft child molestation trial. Part of that statement literally scares the hell out of me as an American. Read the statement in its entirety -- and why it scares the hell out of me -- then add your own comment.
Read more...The Kevin West 24-Hour Rule
I have a 24-hour rule. Anything that’s emotionally-charged for me gets a 24-hour “cooling off period” before I say anything publicly about it. The Tonya Craft verdict was so emotional that I waited 48.
Read more...Inside the Courthouse Awaiting Tonya's Verdict
The question that comes to mind every time I sit in the media room at the Catoosa County Courthouse covering the Tonya Craft child molestation trial is: Why are Judge Brian House and prosecutors so intent on secrecy?
Read more...Hey Catoosa Prsecutors: When You Use My Blog, Credit Me!
I decided I’d post a Morning Press Blog on the weekend in advance of Monday’s Morning Press. I won’t be there this week and wanted to give Catoosa County Assistant District Attorney Len Gregor something new to read.
Read more...A Big Streak of Prurient in Catoosa Prosecutors
As the defense seems to wind toward a close in the Tonya Craft child molestation trial in Catoosa County, we’ve moved well beyond allegations of child molestation – yet another reason this case continues to draw such incredible interest.
Read more...There's Nothing Routine About Tonya's Story
Everybody's covering the Tonya Craft trial now in Catoosa County. But it wasn't necessarily going to be that way. Some media outlets believed it was "just another child molestation case." But it isn't.
Read more...A Trial That "Defies All Others Before It"
Noted Ringgold attorney and former Georgia state legislator McCracken "We Don't Call Him Ken Anymore" Poston says the Tonya Craft child molestation trial "defies all others before it."
Read more...Tonya Craft. Remember the name. Catoosa County will.
The Tonya Craft trial is finally getting underway in Catoosa County. It's likely the most-watched case Ringgold has ever seen.
Read more...Bill "Bull Connor" Lockhart in Coolidge Park
I was afraid with Bill Lockhart going Bull Connor on us yesterday I'd dream of "Bull" Lockhart with his head poking through the hatch of a white urban assault vehicle rolling into Coolidge Park while Bill/Bull director police officers with batons, fire hoses and dogs. The mayor had a different idea.
Read more...My baby was fightin', not fakin'!
I'm not sure when a fight at school required police involvement and charges, but most all do anymore. So why a mother is so adamant about making sure we all know her daughter was fighting, I don't know.
Read more...Global Climate Change Using SportTalk Logic
First, yeah -- this has been the most unusual winter I can remember since I got to Chattanooga in the fall of 19-87. Now......let's talk about "global warming" or "global climate change."
Read more...Who are you, Who? Or maybe I should ask what have you become?
Sorry, Jeff -- and JR and Bill and Wally. I was extremely underwhelmed and disappointed by The Who during last night's Super Bowl halftime. A friend of mine swears it was really a tribute band called "The What" performing last night.
Read more...Pants On The Ground - The Wally Witkowski Version
It's so good to have Wally back that we had to huddle up in the studio between the Morning Press and Village Idiots programs and do a version of "Pants on the Ground." The Big Man can still hold his own.
Read more...Lane Kiffin U S(uck) C(you know)
Only one year with the Big Orange, but Lane Kiffin's son is named "Knox." I wonder if, to get the USC job, Lane had to promise to change his son's name. Perhaps Cal? Watts? Fresno? Trojan?
Read more...12-29
It's beyond me to think about blowing myself up, but even a step beyond that is blowing myself up with a bomb in my underwear. Look what it did to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's -- and it didn't even go off.
Read more...12-7
Red Bank Mayor Joe Glasscock says he's tired of getting flak for the town's traffic cameras. He says "the only ones complaining are the ones who break the law." Mayor, this will likely be as much a shock to you as the 83 empty storefronts along Dayton Boulevard the vice mayor recently discovered, but I'm not a lawbreaker and I'm complaining.
Read more...11-24
Jeff spent a fair amount of time today on global warming. Or global climate change, as it's now called. It's hard for me to get too worked up about it since the climate of the globe, or the Earth as I call it, has been changing since the day it came into existence and will continue to change long, long, long after humans as a species cease to exist. And at some point in time, we will cease to exist. Don't think we won't, no matter what you do.
Read more...10-27
Maybe the concern over people coming into the country without knowing how to speak English is misplaced. Even our elected leaders don't speak it very well. Case in point: Carlus Mosier from Varnell, Georgia. City Councilman Carlus Mosier, who complains that Mayor Dan Peeples has "a personal vandanna" against him.
Read more...10-14
I'm still shaking my head at Councilwoman Carol Berz's statement that public art at the Brainerd tunnels has helped "bring together a very diverse community." The last I heard from Brainerd was Boosie and Dookie Butt firing shots at the owner of the car they had just stolen from the Conoco a couple of blocks up from the "Rolling Dancing Moons" statue. Are you telling me the Bloods and the Gangsta Disciples have decided to stop firebombing houses to compare the antiquity of Phidias to the contemporary sculpture of Claes Oldenburg?
Read more...10-13
I love dogs. They don't care what kind of a day you've had when you come home, they love you. If you're excited watching your team play football on TV, they're excited watching it with you -- even if you're rooting against the Dawgs. That in mind, I don't feel the need to take them out to Table 2 for dinner.
Read more...10-9
Barack Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize. Don't you actually have to achieve something before you get that award? To say the announcement this morning was "stunning" would be a severe understatement.
Read more...9-29
Jeff always says we live in "the buckle of the Bible Belt." But I hear that when I go to Nashville, too. And Knoxville. I heard it when I was working in San Antonio. Doesn't anyone in the Bible Belt live over near the first belt loop? And if it really is a belt, somebody's got to be in the very back right above the butt crack.
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