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I was so pleased to see a Conservative, Black Lady running for Congress in Tennessee's 9th District. I hope some of you TN FReepers will check out her website and lend your support. http://www.bergmannforcongress.com/

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CeCe Heil for Tennessee’s 5th District I’m pleased to lend my support to CeCe Heil’s campaign for Congress from Tennessee’s 5th District. CeCe is another tough “mama grizzly” with the experience, passion, and integrity to restore some common sense to Washington. As a small business owner, attorney, constitutional scholar, and proud mother of two, she will fight tirelessly to protect our freedoms and rein in the excesses of an out-of-control federal government that seems set on spending away our children’s future. CeCe brings the business sense and the constitutional understanding that is so needed in DC right now. (And those...

HENDERSONVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Republican gubernatorial candidate Zach Wamp says he sees no problem keeping a $2,500 contribution from the political action committee of Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak, even though the two congressmen and former housemates ended up on opposite sides of the vote on the health care overhaul. Wamp, of Chattanooga, said after a recent campaign appearance in Hendersonville that the contribution was due to a "long-standing friendship" with the Michigan congressman who played a crucial role in securing House approval of the bill. Wamp said his friendship with Stupak "transcends politics." Stupak announced Thursday he won't seek re-election...

Jeff Hartline, a former medical practice management consultant from Mt. Juliet, has announced as a Republican candidate for the 5th Congressional District, currently held by Rep. Jim Cooper. Hartline said he is a constitutional conservative who has found voters responding positively to his common sense message of federal spending control, entrepreneurial job creation and enhanced national security. “People we meet all across the 5th District have awakened to the reality that our current congressman has been woefully ineffective at stopping the runaway train of big government,” said Hartline. “Since Jim Cooper first went to Congress, our national debt has grown...

Congressman Steve Cohen of Memphis teed off on the Tea Party movement in a Thursday night radio interview attracting national attention. The two-term Democratic congressman said the Tea Party — "without hoods and robes" — has shown an angry, hardcore side of America that's against any type of diversity. “We saw opposition to African-Americans, hostility toward gays, hostility to anybody who wasn’t just, you know, a clone of George Wallace’s fan club,” he said on The Young Turks, an Internet and satellite radio talk show.

Of all the incendiary smears of tea partiers over the last few weeks, this one’s my very favorite. Not only is it relentlessly nasty, especially for a congressman — note the cute little joke he makes near the end referencing McCain’s torture in Hanoi — but it’s part of a critique of, ahem, right-wing vitriol. Come for the finger-wagging about civility, stay for the George Wallace and Kristallnacht analogies. Then again, that’s par for the course. As Ed Driscoll reminds me, what makes this clip extra special is the fact that Steve Cohen himself was compared to a Klansman and...

Six Middle Tennessee companies officially reported mass layoffs in the past week, the Department of Labor and Workforce Development reported Monday. Companies are required to report to the state when they plan to layoff 50 or more workers, and they are encouraged to report smaller layoffs to alert the state to people in need of job assistance. Between March 1 and March 8, the six Middle Tennessee companies announced that they have eliminated or plan to eliminate a total of 279 jobs. That represented 78 percent of the 356 job losses that were reported statewide. Some of those job losses...

The convention is being held at a fancy resort, features $550 ticket prices, a steak and lobster dinner and a guest speaker with a $100,000 speaking fee. It’s sponsored by a for-profit company with a mysterious wealthy benefactor, and its organizers, who have been accused of secrecy and corruption, have threatened lawsuits against dissenters and clamped down on news coverage. Sounds like just the kind of thing that tea party activists, whose populist outrage is directed at the Washington and Wall Street establishments, would be up in arms over. Except it’s a tea party convention. Billed as a pivot...

...I am afraid Sarah Palin is going to harm herself unintentionally over this tea party convention in Nashville... Let me be blunt: charging people $500.00 plus the costs of travel and lodging to go to a “National Tea Party Convention” run by a for profit group no one has ever heard of sounds as credible as an email from Nigeria promising me a million bucks if I fork over my bank account number...

Network computer consultant Donn Janes, who filed for Tennessee's 8th district race as a Republican in August, has decided to instead run as an Independent Tea Party candidate this cycle. Janes, who has bashed the National Republican Congressional Committee for backing gospel singer Stephen Fincher (R) in Tennessee's open 8th district, said he decided to seek a third party nomination because "the National Republican Party continues to aggressively support candidates who lack depth on issues and conservative values, but instead focus on candidates who are able to self fund or raise large sums of money." Democratic strategists said Monday the...

ATTENTION FREEPERS AND VOTERS IN TENNESSEE'S 8th CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT!! Stephen Fincher, Gospel-singing farmer from Frog Jump, TN. has received over 90% of his initial $300,000 "campaign funding from farming families that have been recipients to almost $80,000,000 in federal farm subsidies." The press release from the Mid-South Tea Party goes on to say, "Following the money makes suspect Mr. Fincher’s claim that he would be able to represent the 8th District in a fiscally conservative manner once elected." Fincher, who has become one of the NRCC's sweetheart recruits is also receiving favorable write-ups in publications like the liberal "Washington Post",...

COOKEVILLE -- Henry Fincher made it official Wednesday. After weeks of mulling a run for Congress, Fincher says he has decided against it. The Democrat from Cookeville, who represents the 42nd District in the Tennessee General Assembly, says there are too many things to consider in a bid for Congress. "My family and my clients and my law practice are depending on me. It's too important," Fincher told the Herald-Citizen. "If I just basically took off to go run for Congress, it wouldn't be right for the district or for the Upper Cumberland." Candidates for the 6th Congressional District have...

I thought we already knew this, but CSM’s story about it yesterday got a lot of play, so maybe we only thought we knew it. Or maybe we knew she was speaking but not necessarily keynoting. Now it can be told: She is. On its face, the gig would seem a step down for Ms. Palin, one of conservative America’s most popular and polarizing figures (not to mention major thorn in the side of the Obama White House). But with an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll ranking a generic “Tea Party” as more popular than either Democrats or Republicans, and Palin...

Amid this week's speculation about potential Tea Party leaders comes word that Sarah Palin has agreed to deliver the keynote speech at the movement's first national convention next month. It will be Palin's first political speech in months, and The Washington Independent's David Weigel thinks it's significant that she chose the Tea Party event after twice passing on chances to address the well-established Conservative Political Action Committee. The Feb. 6 appearance in Nashville gives Palin the opportunity to "take up the mantle that has been waiting for her as the movement's most visible and popular hero," said The Atlantic's Chris...

Tea Partiers Mobilize To Take It 'To The Next Level' Christina Bellantoni | January 7, 2010, 8:47AM Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin Look out Opryland, the tea partiers are coming to town. The Tea Party Nation is gearing up for its first ever convention, to be held at the famed Opryland Hotel in Nashville next month. It's a confab designed to help the tea parties from across the country organize, with an agenda that sounds a lot like an attempt to form an official third party. Organizers ask for local groups to "select their best to meet with their peers...

Almost 1-1/2 years since she shook up American politics with her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is set to headline another landmark political event: the first-ever Tea Party Convention next month in Nashville, Tenn. But with an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll ranking a generic “Tea Party” as more popular than either Democrats or Republicans, many experts see the Tea Party event as a potential milestone for a mounting, even transformational, force in US politics. Against that backdrop, writes Mr. Kurtz, “The tea types can either blossom into a Perotista-style third-party movement or...

Almost 1-1/2 years since she shook up American politics with her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is set to headline another landmark political event: the first-ever Tea Party Convention next month in Nashville, Tenn. On its face, the gig would seem a step down for Ms. Palin, one of conservative America’s most popular and polarizing figures (not to mention major thorn in the side of the Obama White House). But with an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll ranking a generic “Tea Party” as more popular than either Democrats or Republicans, and Palin herself...

Democratic retirements are beginning to mount, after the announcement Monday that Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) will not seek reelection next year. Gordon said in a statement that, after a quarter-century in Congress, it’s time to retire. “Every decision I have made in Congress has been with their best interests in mind,” he said. “I hope the people here at home feel that I have served them as well as their good advice and views have served me. “When I was elected, I was the youngest member of the Tennessee congressional delegation; now, I’m one of the oldest. In fact, I...

Now the fourth Democrat to announce his retirement in four weeks, Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) said this morning in a released statement that he will not run for re-election next year. Gordon, a moderate Democrat from a Republican-leaning district, follows three other Democratic congressmen in similar political situations -- Brian Baird (WA-3), John Tanner (TN-8), and Dennis Moore (KS-3). President Obama won Moore and Baird's districts in 2008, but both were also won by President Bush in 2004. "Turning 60 has led me to re-evaluate what's next," Gordon said in a statement. "I have an 8-year-old daughter and a wonderful...