According to the Knoxville News Sentinel Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale asked the Knox County law director’s office to file a motion in Weaver’s court asking for 180 days to amend the charter to address Weaver’s concerns.

Three months from now is September 19th. Almost six weeks after the August 3rd General Election in Knox County. Is this most hypocritical act of mendacity yet to be foiled upon the people of Knox County?

Is this enough to show the utter lack of leadership? The great issue at hand is not that we don’t have a Charter to govern Knox County but we do not have leaders to govern Knox County.

Yet ironically there is one lone voice on County Commission. Is he perhaps a prodigal son? One has to wonder about the atonement of John Schmid. One of the first to sue in court over term limits Schmid is now trying to fast track an appeal of Chancellor John Weaver’s ruling that invalidated the Knox County Charter. He is among the few that has standing to make such an appeal and he goes against the wishes of 18 other Knox County Commissioners. Schmid told the Knoxville News Sentinel, “The appeal’s been filed. We’re trying to get a quicker decision than the Charter Review Committee.”

According to the News Sentinel Schmid decided to move forward with the appeal after talking with Chief Deputy Law Director of Knox County John Owings. Schmid asked Owings if the committee would acknowledge that term limits apply to commissioners. Owings stated, “Everything is on the table, as far as term limits.”

The greatest mystery is why County Mayor Mike Ragsdale would take the chance of playing a game of who can take the moral high ground while holding back term limits for another four years. Ragsdale said term limits must stay in a revised charter yet it is clear there will be no term limits in this Knox County General Election. Is this a way of saying, “Let them eat cake”?

If ever Knox County needed a Jefferson Smith to come forward this is the time. Friday at 5:00 PM is the final time for write-in candidates to apply at the Knox County Election Commission for the August 3rd General Election. Of course Jefferson Smith was just a character in a movie. In real life heroes are much harder to find.

Pete Guthier, aka Drug War Rant, has put up a wiki voting guide so we can keep track of where candidates stand on the drug war. There’s no content on it yet, but with Pete’s involvement, you know it will soon be a valuable resource.

Seems the NYT is up in arms over limiting access to gun data. And they tell an outright lie:

These two bills would give crooked dealers more — not less — leeway in interstate trafficking. The Justice Department has warned that the worst provisions would have a “chilling effect” on gun control and law enforcement. If they had been in effect during the deadly spree of the Washington, D.C., snipers, the dealer who peddled the murder rifle and scores of other crime guns could never have been shut down under federal law.

No. Bullseye (the dealer) failed to keep records up to date and failed to report the gun missing. It was stolen. This law only affects gun data not related to criminal investigations.

The gun lobby will do almost anything to deny basic information about the gun mayhem that Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York and 60 other mayors are properly pursuing through the courts.

And Bloomberg broke the law while conducting his investigation to pursue the lawsuit. And the lawsuit likely won’t advance due to the protection of lawful commerce in arms act.

The carnival of cordite is up for your gunblogging pleasure.

Gene Patterson, a local news anchor at WATE who blogs, wants to know. Well, I’ll tell you. By the time it’s on TV, it’s old news. I’ve known for a while already. That and scary commercials like Something in your house can kill you!!! We’ll tell you about it in three hours at 11:00.

I also don’t like hard hitting investigative pieces on subjects like bootie juice.

Or investigations that conclude that (gasp!) nothing out of the ordinary happened.

Or selling sexual innuendo.

Or using lame inaccurate buzzwords on a subject the reporter clearly knows nothing about.

Or when you guys are flatly inaccurate (or intentionally misleading) in a report. Then you’re called on it and you say your mistake was addressing my complaint and stick by your bogus story even though I’ve quoted the law chapter and verse to you to show you how you’re wrong/misleading. Despite my attempts to show you the law, you stick to the talking points that you Googled up from an anti-gun propaganda outfit.

All those items are, of course, my criticism of WATE’s news coverage. Is that a good start?

I’ve mentioned this push before but the NRA is now circling the wagons for the coming UN driven arms control hooey:

An American delegation will participate in a controversial United Nations small-arms conference criticized by Second Amendment advocates as a threat to U.S. gun ownership.

The U.N. Small Arms Review Conference will meet in New York City June 26 to July 7 to discuss illegal trafficking in arms, “ineffective national controls” and related issues.

The U.N.’s disarmament effort features a program in which it buys back weapons in nations torn by civil strife. But National Rifle Association Vice President Wayne LaPierre insists the U.N. is concerned about more than illicit arms in African hot spots. He says the global body wants the firearms of American citizens – and much more.

It’s coming.

Via top, comes this:

My fellow liberals, arguing for gun control, say that the amendment only relates to citizens in an organized militia. The wording is unclear, but I can’t get past this: the bill of rights generally is about the rights that belong to individual citizens. I don’t know exactly what the founders where thinking, but it seems odd to think that they meant this particular amendment to only apply to organized groups. So I have to conclude, even if it challenges some of my poltical opinions, that it means that yes, American citizens have a constitution right to their guns.

But on the other side, I see anti-gun-control folks insisting that this means that any law that controls the ownership of guns is unconstitutional, and I think that’s patently ridiculous. The right to free speech is probably the most fundamental of all of our Constitutional rights, but that doesn’t mean speech can never be controlled in some ways. Your freedom of speech doesn’t include freedom to incite violence or panic with falsehoods, or freedom to libel someone. Your right of assembly doesn’t mean that the city can’t require a permit for some public gatherings. (It does mean that the way such permits are given out had better be fair, though.)

Given that, I don’t buy the argument that regulation of gun sales or registration of weapons is unconstitutional.

There’s more. Read it all.

Seems a lot of liberal types are abandoning the gun control bandwagon. Good.

Odd:

A man who had drugs and weapons inside his home is going to jail. Alvin Maxwell has been sentenced to 17 months in prison. He pleaded guilty to importing and manufacturing weapons at his home . In exchange, the drug charges were dropped.

Police would rather get a gun conviction?

Tam has a nice desktop background for the hoplophobe near you.