Tennessee

Earlier I was criticizing Beltway Democrats for hypocrisy. Maybe I just should have said Beltway politicians. It was hard to watch Tennessee Republican Stephen Fincher, a Methodist gospel singer aside from the congressman for the 8th district (Jackson, Germantown, Dyersburg and the whole western part of the state minus Memphis), voting to cut $40 billion from the food stamp program for the neediest American families.

Anti-immigrant Know Nothing Joe Carr (R)Tennessee's congressional districts are so gerrymandered that Democrats can only win in the state's two districts that are primarily in big cities, Nashville and Memphis. And in Nashville, the Democratic incumbent, Jim Cooper, is a conservative corporate-friendly Blue Dog who votes with the GOP very frequently. Statewide, it's not as clear cut, although the state has trended red in recent years.

This video featuring 11-year-old Marcel Neergaard and his parents helped set in motion the revocation of StudentsFirst's "Educator of the Year" award to Tennessee's energetically homophobic State Rep. John Ragan.by KenThere's a certain entertainment value in the spectacle of right-wing stooges pretending not to be right-wing stooges. Some of them are better at it than others, naturally. Like term-limited outgoing VA Gov.

Stephen Lee Fincher (R-TN), one of the most dishonest crooks in CongressThursday, Dick Durbin's amendment to the Farm Bill passed, rather miraculously, 59-33.