Live from Music Row, Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
CROM CARMICHAEL:
Michael, one of the themes that we talk about so frequently on this show is the unequal application of the law. It’ll be interesting to see what happens today down at the legislature. To be honest, I don’t know what the law is in terms of people being in the gallery. I don’t know whether or not they have a right under the law to be there.
I don’t know whether or not the police who protect our state legislators have a right to search these people for weapons, especially under a circumstance like this. I don’t know whether or not, if they act up, what the laws are, and who would then arrest and indict.
But I do know that what we have is two standards of justice in this country. And so I would hope that the state legislature would if the laws do not exist, be protected by legislative police, similar to the Capitol Hill Police in Washington, D.C.
And then to have a special court at the state level that if people are acting violently or acting out and trying to be disruptive to the process that our legislature goes through in determining its laws. We have elections to pick our legislators and whether we like it or not the laws that they pass, if they are within the U.S. Constitution and our state constitution become the laws of the state of Tennessee.
And I know that from looking at precedents, state law trumps local law. If the council passes a piece of legislation and then if the state comes into session and overrides that, the state law prevails. And the local law is gone. So I would hope that the state legislators do exactly that.
Right now, it’s my understanding that the local prosecutor who determines whether or not people are arrested, indicted, and taken to trial, I don’t have faith that they will protect our legislature. But maybe our local prosecutor will surprise me. But if he doesn’t surprise me, then the state legislature should have their own protection paid for by the state and their own court duly put into law.
And those people who pay for the incitement, because that’s what the rule is on January 6th, even if you weren’t there, if you funded it, then you should be held to account. And for example, if people come in from out of state and if somebody pays for them to come in from out of state and they break our laws, then it would be my hope that the legislature passes laws to protect themselves and to protect our own process here in Tennessee for how we have laws now.
For example, a federal judge recently ruled that the state law that was recently passed regarding people acting in a, I don’t know exactly what the law says, but a sexual way cannot do so in public forums or public places. So I assume that means that somebody could not walk down the street in a parade half naked and offering suggestive sexual movements if there are children present.
Which seems to me to be an entirely fitting law. But a federal judge has said that law doesn’t hold U.S. constitutional muster. And so we’re now going to go through a process to determine whether or not that law is constitutional according to the U.S. constitution. And if it is, then that judge’s opinion will be overturned, and that will become the law of the land.
If it’s not overturned, then the law of the land will be that law that was passed by the legislature and has to either be changed so that it is lawful or people will be able to do what they want to in public. And I think regarding our children, especially young children, I’d like to see some restrictions just as when I was growing up, a 10-15-year-old couldn’t go into a strip joint downtown.
They carded you at the door and you had to be a certain age, and that was in a private establishment. But the private establishment, for adults, was legal in the state of Tennessee, and I think they still are legal.
But in public places and out in public, that’s a whole different matter because you can’t card people who are at the event. So we’re at a delicate stage. But the rule of law and people being held to account is essential if we’re going to live by the law and not by human beings.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this Crommentary:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “U.S. Capitol” by Syed F Hashemi.
