I just noticed a story moving on the wires that no one subpoenaed to testify in Alaska's 'Troopergate' hearings, all government employees, excluding the 'First Dude', will respond to the subpoenas. They claim that only a full vote demanding testimony from the entire Alaska legislature would compel them to appear and speak. So the state's AG is asking for the subpoenas all be withdrawn.

Hey, if the Governor won't testify, why should they?

There's a few factors not to be read in media reports regarding the Anderson County federal lawsuit filed by a student against the school system, claiming his First Amendment rights were violated because school officials sent the student home for repeatedly wearing clothing the system deemed in violation of the school's dress policy - clothing depicting a Confederate flag.

The now-former student, Tim Defoe, hired as attorneys representatives of a group called the North Carolina-based Southern Legal Research Center: Knoxville-based attorney Van R. Irion and SLRC founder Kirk D, Lyons. The SLRC has constantly taken up similar cases with the constant arguments of the "freedom of speech" variety.

The SLRC site list multiple legal battles on such cases, though with typically unfavorable and confusing results (as noted by the the Southern Poverty Law Center).

Lyons himself is a most controversial figure, with reports from the Southern Poverty Law Center that Lyons was married some years back in the Idaho-based Aryan Nations Compound, and has often attempted to join legal battles involving members of the neo-Nazi skinhead groups like The Order, and aiming to link himself, as mentioned above, to a variety of high-profile cases.

The Sons Of Confederate Veterans also has been split by Lyons' involvement, as Lyons' goals often go far beyond preserving 'heritage or history', as Lyons makes claims that :

"He defines himself as "an unreconstructed Southerner from Texas and a Christian." That means, he said, "that my family didn't surrender in 1865 and I haven't surrendered."

As promised, 1st District Congressional candidate Rob Russell, a Democrat, agreed to answer a few questions on issues and campaigning in East Tennessee. My first question was on the fact that the East Tennessee media really has done little other than to provide coverage to the incumbent Republican David Davis and his GOP challenger Phil Roe. And after reading his responses to all the questions I submitted, I think I see why he gets such little coverage -- his message could easily win many voters and end 130 years of Republican rule in East Tennessee.

My thanks to Mr. Russell for his time and for his work to respond and if you wish to visit his website, go here.

1. Have any of the East TN media even contacted you for any stories or coverage of your campaign? Has this hampered your campaign efforts?

In comparison to the amount of coverage the Roe and Davis campaigns have received – almost daily coverage in the major local newspapers, such as the Kingsport Times-News (which is the local paper I subscribe to) -- the coverage has been slight. The absence of coverage from the Times-News has been particularly stinging, since when the paper covers political events, such as the NETAR Candidates' Breakfast on June 13, it fails to mention that I was even there (and I spoke directly after Dr. Roe).

My thanks go out to the Greeneville Sun, who has managed to cover me both times I've spoken in Greeneville. I've had singular mentions in Morristown's Citizen-Tribune, The Johnson City Press, and the Bristol Herald-Courier, so I'd like to thank them, as well. I was asked to appear on WBIR-TV's "Inside Tennessee" (based in Knoxville, WBIR reaches about 1/3, the western end, of the First District), and did so, but neither Roe nor Davis showed. No TV stations that are actually in the First District have contacted me at all.

Ideas and policies from the days of Jimmy Carter on energy independence and a massive push for development of alternate energy sources are all the rage again. It's worth noting that Carter's Energy Security Act of 1980 was dismantled within a few months by President Reagan. As fuel and oil prices fell, zero plans for the future were made, even with the creation of the Department of Energy in the late 1970s. The real cost of ignoring energy needs for the future is being calculated today and it will burn into every layer of our economy and into every lifestyle.

Carter's speech from the summer of 1979 echoes all the rhetoric today: reducing imports, a brand new research and development of alternate fuels, a new commitment, windfall profits taxation, and on and on.

Current programs enacted by President Bush now have energy needs and food needs competing. As R. Neal posted yesterday, it seems more a backward movement than forward. Today's Washington Post reports on the corn as fuel and corn as food battle.

As much as the leadership in Washington is to blame for abandoning real solutions over the last 30 years, we have to blame ourselves too - for letting them slide and for indulging ourselves even more and for increasing our reliance on the commercial structures which have expanded our needs for energy.

I keep hearing the Narrator's lines in the opening of the post-apocalyptic movie "The Road Warrior":

"To understand who he was, you have to go back to another time. When the world was powered by the black fuel. And the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now, swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel, they were nothing. They built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche ... On the roads it was a white line nightmare ... In the roar of an engine, he lost everything. And became a shell of a man, a burnt out, desolate man, a man haunted by the demons of his past, a man who wandered out into the wasteland."

The Real ID Act is a bad policy and a dubious program, with 17 states, including Tennessee, already adopting legislation opposing the introduction what can only be called a National Identity Card. Once set to begin in 2008, now the Dept. of Homeland Security is aiming for 2011 - unless your birthday is before December 1, 1964, in which case you have until 2018 to get this federal identity card.

Still, only partial details of the re-written rules were offered yesterday, as it seems the current law keeps getting punted to the future. It's as if officials know the plan is doomed and will never see the light of day but are afraid of simply repealing the law.

This new ID is meant to be mandatory for every American - without one, you could not open a bank account, buy an airline ticket, collect Social Security benefits (never mind that you have a SS ID card and number), you could not enter any federal facility, and you would not be able to operate a vehicle (never mind that current Drivers License you own.) In addition, security experts have stated the lack of wisdom in creating a single database which would contain so much information which identity thieves require to steal info about you. It would be a one-stop shopping center for identity thieves.

While DHS now says it will reduce the cost of implementation, a cheaper bad idea is still a bad idea.