Bavarian Bierhaus In Nashville Prepares For Grand Opening Celebrations

  Bavarian Bierhaus at Opry Mills opened in April, but this week the restaurant marks its official opening with four days of festivities that kick off Thursday. The cavernous restaurant was built to resemble a Munich beer hall, with room for more than 500 people inside and seating for 120 outside. The restaurant includes a large bar area and also a small market with food products, beer steins and clothing items. Thursday’s festivities include a ribbon cutting at 3:30 p.m. and a keg tapping at 6 p.m. with an appearance by former Miss America 2016 Betty Cantrell, who competed as Miss Georgia. There also will be a free pig roast buffet. At 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, there will be a beer stein lifting competition and traditional dancing by the Orlando Trachtenverein Schuhplatters. On Sunday for Father’s Day, there will be free beer for dads and live music. Business manager Brian Kehl said he’s been getting good feedback and already has repeat customers, some coming three times a week. One adjustment he’s had to make is fixing the sound system, as there were problems with having conversations when a band was playing. “We’ve redone the stage area,” Kehl said. “We’ll…

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Franklin Pastor Pressures Southern Baptists To Affirm LGBT Movement

  Nashville area pastor Stan Mitchell is among those at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Phoenix this week to try to persuade Southern Baptists to embrace LGBT activism. Mitchell is the founding pastor of GracePointe, a nondenominational evangelical church in Franklin that made national news in 2015  when it began to offer gays all the privileges of membership, including marriage. The church touts itself as “a progressive Christian community.” Mitchell is involved with Faith in America, an advocacy group that believes that “LGBT people should be removed from the sin list,” according to a May 31 news release. The group claims that conservative Christians are harming LGBT youth by making them feel bad about their sexual orientation, which the group says has led some young people to kill themselves. “Southern Baptists Must Change (and they are not the only ones),” Mitchell posted on his Facebook page June 9. Group organizers asked Southern Baptist leaders to meet with them before or during the convention, but that could not be arranged because of a busy schedule, Southern Baptist Convention spokesman Roger Oldham told The Tennessee Star. The group is welcome to meet with Southern Baptist leaders at their Nashville headquarters another time,…

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Street Theater Opposing Redefinition of ‘Milk’ Greets Agriculture Bureaucrats Meeting in Nashville

When the Southern Association of State Departments of Agriculture (SASDA) held their annual meeting at the Renaissance Hotel in Nashville last week, one topic of discussion was the “Dairy Pride Act” (S. 130), introduced in Congress earlier this year by Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). Faced with declining sales, the dairy industry and their lobbyists are attempting to have the Food and Drug Administration define the word “milk” as it is used in advertising and marketing of food products. Among the regulations contained in the Act are limitations on the use the word “milk” in describing and marketing a product. Under the Act, terms for increasingly popular products such as “almond milk,” “soy milk” or “coconut milk” would be banned. Only “milk” that comes from “the lacteal secretions of a bovine” (in other words, from a cow) could be used in labeling and advertisements. Opponents of the proposed legislative definitions call this “a protectionist scheme,” point out that the dairy industry has been steadily losing market share to relatively new and increasingly popular plant-based “milk” products and argue this is nothing more than an attempt to stifle competition through bureaucratic and legislative maneuvering. Fortune Magazine noted in February that traditional dairy products…

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Williamson County Teacher Sues School District, Says She Was Bullied Into Resigning

Tennessee Star

  A well-liked Williamson County elementary school teacher is suing the school district, alleging she was bullied and harassed into resigning. Melanie Lemon, who taught second grade at Walnut Grove Elementary, filed a lawsuit Friday in Williamson County Circuit Court. The defendants are Williamson County Schools, superintendent Mike Looney, assistant superintendent Denise Goodwin and Walnut Grove principal Kate Donnelly. The suit seeks compensatory damages and asks that the school district extend its anti-bullying policy to adults. Lemon’s resignation on May 12 prompted an outcry in the community. Supportive parents and former students started a petition of protest and quickly collected more than 1,800 signatures. Some showed up at a school board meeting dressed in black to object to how they felt the school district mistreated her. The lawsuit says that Lemon went from getting stellar observations to suddenly receiving a poor one, and that school officials falsely accused her of child abuse. A teacher for 14 years, seven of them at Walnut Grove, Lemon had tenure. The lawsuit states that Tennessee’s Teacher Tenure Act is supposed “to protect teachers from arbitrary demotions and dismissals.” At the start of the 2016-2017 school year, Lemon “became the target of a systematic plan…

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Property Owners in Tennessee Can Bypass Airbnb Restrictions and Place Refugees in Their Communities

Tennessee Star

  Airbnb, the online service that helps people “monetize their extra space” with short-term rental agreements, has launched a new platform called “Open Homes” that lets homeowners donate that “extra space” and host refugees, saving the federal contractors time and money in meeting the terms of their agreements with the U.S. State Department. By “donating” space in privately owned homes and apartments, any restrictions on use of private property imposed by local governments, can be by-passed. One hundred offers for hosting have already been offered in New York. Airbnb has set a goal “of providing short-term housing over the next five years for 100,000 people in need.” Regulations put in place by the Nashville Metro Council have attempted to curtail the use of privately owned property for short-term rental use, whereas the Memphis City Council opted to take the cash and charge “extra space” hosts the same taxes and fees paid by hotels. Chattanooga’s city government requires specific zoning for short-term rentals except in the unincorporated parts of Hamilton County where only a special permit is required. Knoxville property owners must also secure special permits to profit from short-term hosting. None of the local government ordinances appear to address the scenario…

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Gingrich: Mueller Investigation Will be a Trump ‘Witch Hunt’

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said it is “impossible” that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into President Donald Trump and his officials will be a “fair investigation,” during an interview Monday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.” Gingrich noted that Mueller and former FBI Director James Comey are long-time friends and expressed his concern that Mueller’s…

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A Nashville Weekend That Will Live in Legend

Tennessee Star

  This weekend in Nashville, something happened that has never happened before. CMAFest, Bonnaroo and the Stanley Cup Final all occurred at the same time.  The first two were planned, but the final came as a little bit of a surprise. CMAFest started in 1972 at Nashville’s Municipal Auditorium and with 5000 fans attending 20 hours of country music.  Today, the CMA Music Festival encompasses four days of country music on 11 stages with over 150 acts performing with 100,000+ fans attending. Beginning musicians just starting out to the most famous who are selected to sing at Nissan Stadium are proud to be a part of this historic festival each year. Country favorites such as Miranda Lambert, Luke Bryan, Blake Shelton, Thomas Rhett, Florida-Georgia Line, Keith Urban and Brad Paisley were just few of the superstars to thrill fans nightly at the Nissan Stadium main event. Sixty-three miles southeast off I-24, the legendary rock event, Bonnaroo, was occurring at the exact same time as CMAFest.  Bonnaroo is also a four-day musical and arts event on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee. Bonnaroo started in 2002 to immolate the feel of the 1960s and 1970s rock concerts like the original Woodstock.…

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EU Standoff with Eastern Europeans Over Immigration Escalates

Refugees

Poland doubled down hard on its anti-open borders stance last week, as the E.U. levelled threats at the Czech Republic, yet another Eastern European country refusing to embrace mass Muslim migration. On Thursday, Polish president Andrzej Duda promised his people a referendum on EU migration policies. “The public’s voice will be heard,” Duda pledged. “If Brussels…

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Refugee Volunteers in Murfreesboro Say Government Contractor Didn’t Provide Resettlement Services

Tennessee Star

  During the March “Murfreesboro Muslim Youth” (MMY) meeting soliciting help for refugees brought to Rutherford County by federal resettlement contractor World Relief, it was disclosed that goods and services that the government paid for were not provided to the new refugees. According to Abdou Kattih, founder and president of MMY, were it not for his organization, special emergency needs such as getting medical care for the refugee who arrived with a broken jaw or simply providing household essentials and even clothing, would not have been addressed, explaining they had taken care of “someone that does not have literally anything but the clothes they had off of last month.” (See 1:47 mark of YouTube video clip below.)   Melissa Sohrabi, who merged her group “Roots for Refugees” with MMY, was more direct in detailing the deficiencies of the government contractor in this talk she delivered in March: There is an expectation of what should happen and there’s reality of what really does happen.  . . Why didn’t World Relief give them a table and chairs? Why didn’t they bring them a couch? What’s going on? . . . Not only did it not happen but if it did happen, those…

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