Day: March 9, 2017

Homeless Man Arrested In Stabbing Death Of Young Nurse In Nashville

Wendy Wilson
Tennessee Star

Police charged a man they consider homeless Wednesday night with the murder of a young nurse at her Wedgewood Park apartment in Nashville in a case that has prompted concerns about transients in the area. Christopher Drew McLawhorn, 24, was charged with criminal homicide and especially aggravated burglary for the Feb. 28 murder of Tiffany Ferguson, 23, an ICU nurse at St. Thomas West, according to a news release issued by the Metro Nashville Police Department. A person of interest in the case, McLawhorn was found by police at 3rd Avenue North and Broadway early Sunday morning. He had two bottles of alcohol and was carrying a small amount of marijuana and was arrested for misdemeanor drug possession. He denied any knowledge of Ferguson’s death. He remained in jail and police later collected evidence and witness statements that allegedly connect him to Ferguson’s murder. Police say McLawhorn stabbed Ferguson multiple times while burglarizing her apartment. He had prior arrests in Nashville for public intoxication, misdemeanor theft and failure to be booked on the misdemeanor theft charge. Police consider him homeless but say he stayed with a friend from time to time on 14th Avenue North. On Tuesday, Wedgewood area residents…

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Angered By Electoral Losses, Nashville Progressives Are Getting Organized Online

Wendy Wilson

Progressive opponents of President Trump are organizing online and using social media to stage protests and get their message out. While they tout their efforts as peaceful and civil, some have contributed to noisy and volatile confrontations at town halls and government meeting places. What’s happening across the country is also happening here in Tennessee, with people joining Meetup groups with the hashtag #Resist and groups promoted by Indivisible and others. Protesters at U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s town hall in Fairview on Feb. 21 included members of the Nashville Meetup #Resist group. Before the event, the Meetup group announced the town hall by writing, “Rep. Blackburn needs to get the kind of reception Jason Chaffetz got last week.” U.S. Rep. Chaffetz (R-Utah) faced jeers and shouts at a large town hall in suburban Salt Lake City, according to CNN, a new reality facing conservative politicians across the country. Many protesters are believed to be outside agitators. Blackburn (R-TN), who was booed at the Fairview town hall, told CNN that many of the people who came were not from her district. “Our office recently saw firsthand just how organized the liberals are when it comes to protesting,” Darcy Anderson, district director for Blackburn, told…

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Clarksville Municipal Broadband Provider CDE Lightband, With Taxpayer Losses Topping $75 Million, Suffers More Outages

Tina LaFleur
Tennessee Star

By Chris Butler CDE Lightband of Clarksville, the municipal broadband outlet that cost taxpayers $75 million, has had an outage, yet again, as of Wednesday. The municipal broadband service has had several outages over the past three years, inspiring a public uproar and raising questions about the grandiose claims made by city officials when they approved the network more than a decade ago. CDE officials said on their Facebook page Wednesday that an outage had occurred and that “engineers are working to resolve as quickly as possible.” Angry CDE customers, however, responded to that post with the following comments: CDE Lightband was supposed to provide local businesses with faster and more reliable web connections than private-sector providers AT&T and Charter, which serve the city of 142,000 that straddles the Tennessee-Kentucky state line. Voters gave CDE Lightband the go-ahead in a referendum 11 years ago. One major outage occurred on April Fool’s Day one year. CDE Lightband has 15,000 customers, with packages ranging from $44.95 to $249.95 per month, according to CDE’s website. – – – Reprinted with permission TennesseeWatchdog.org      

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Gubernatorial Candidate Randy Boyd Supports La Raza Chairman’s Nashville Organization

Chris Alto
TEnnessee Star

In September 2016, gubernatorial candidate Randy Boyd and his wife Jenny donated a quarter of a million dollars to Conexion Americas, a non-profit Latino advocacy organization headquartered in Nashville founded by Renata Soto. A letter signed by Soto described the “historic investment” as “the single largest individual gift” to her organization in its 14-year history. Boyd made the donation while he was serving as the Haslam-appointed Tennessee Commissioner of Economic and Community Development.  He resigned from his post as commissioner in January, and announced several days ago that he will run for governor in 2018. The Tennessee Star asked the Boyd campaign to confirm the $250,000 donation, but received no response prior to publication deadline. Soto and Boyd met when they were both enrolled in the 2013 inaugural class of Leadership Tennessee, a 10-month leadership education program hosted by Lipscomb University. The program was founded and is funded in part by The Haslam Foundation, Haslam family’s Flying Pilot J, the Hyde Family Foundation and the Cornerstone Foundation of Knoxville, whose board at one time included Haslam. Cathy Cate is the executive director of Leadership Tennessee.  Her husband Mark served as the governor’s chief of staff during Haslam’s first term. The Boyds’ donation was celebrated on…

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Commentary: Paul Ryan Betrays President Trump On Obamacare Repeal And Replace

Tennessee Star Staff

by ConservativeHQ Staff It was inevitable that this would happen, but we figured it would take a little longer. Speaker Paul Ryan’s so-called Obamacare “repeal and replace” bill is a complete sellout of President Trump’s campaign promise to rid the country and the economy of the disaster of Obamacare, but the President is Paul Ryanalready being suckered into endorsing it. Indeed, President Trump’s White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, falsely stated yesterday that the healthcare bill from House Speaker Paul Ryan represents what will eventually be a full repeal of Obamacare. As our friend Matthew Boyle writing for Breitbart pointed-out, the bill is more like Obamacare 2.0 because the bill keeps in place the Obamacare requirements that insurers allow for coverage of pre-existing conditions and allows children to stay on their parents’ health care until they’re 26-years-old. It shifts the individual mandate from being a tax paid to the government to a penalty paid to insurance companies, does not even address the Medicaid issue in states effectively, helps illegal aliens access healthcare in the system, and it does not allow for purchasing of insurance across state lines as Republicans have promised for years—among many, many other problems. And among those among many, many problems…

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Faith: Verse of the Day for Thursday, March 9

Dana Hunsinger Gill
Tennessee Star - Verse of the Day

VERSE OF THE DAY March 9 Ephesians 3:16-21 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

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