Rep. Byrd needs ‘miracle’ in COVID-19 treatment
Rep. David Byrd says he “needs a miracle” to keep from being placed on a ventilator during his hospitalization for COVID-19. The lawmaker was airlifted from to Nashville last weekend after being diagnosed with the coronavirus and pneumonia.
“I really need a miracle today!!” the Waynesboro Republican said a Facebook post Thursday. “My doctor said if my oxygen level doesn’t improve then he has no choice but to put me on a ventilator. So please pray that God will breathe His healing spirit into my lungs!!”
UPDATE: Family members and friends posted on Monday that Byrd had been put on a ventilator.
Byrd attended a recent House Republican Caucus meeting while not wearing a face covering. Days earlier, he hosted a dinner for dozens of GOP colleagues attending a caucus retreat at Pickwick Landing State Park.
Byrd has been under fire ever since being accused of — and never explicitly denying — sexual misconduct with high school basketball players when he was their coach in the 1980s.
Byrd was among 55 Republicans who in June voted in favor of a House resolution claiming the “mainstream media has sensationalized the reporting on COVID-19 in the service of political agendas.”
Here are the other Republicans who voted for the measure (names in bold indicate lawmakers who have since retired or, like sponsor Micah Van Huss, were defeated in their primaries; names in italics are those confirmed to have contracted COVID-19):
Charlie Baum, Clark Boyd, David Byrd, Kent Calfee, Mike Carter, Glen Casada, Scott Cepicky, Mark Cochran, John Crawford, Michael Curcio, Clay Doggett, Bill Dunn, Rick Eldridge, Jeremy Faison, Ron Gant, Johnny Garrett, Bruce Griffey, Rusty Grills, Curtis Halford, Mark Hall, Kirk Haston, Esther Helton, Gary Hicks, Matthew Hill, Timothy Hill, Andy Holt, Dan Howell, Bud Hulsey, Chris Hurt, Kelly Keisling, William Lamberth, Tom Leatherwood, Mary Littleton, Susan Lynn, Pat Marsh, Debra Moody, Jerome Moon, Brandon Ogles, Dennis Powers, John Ragan, Tim Rudd, Iris Rudder, Lowell Russell, Jerry Sexton, Paul Sherrell, Mike Sparks, Rick Tillis, Chris Todd, Micah Van Huss, Kevin Vaughan, Terri Lynn Weaver, Mark White, Ryan Williams, Dave Wright, Jason Zachary.
Step 1: Make all the House GOP meetings secret
Before the House Republican Caucus could go about electing its leaders this week, Rep. Chris Todd of Jackson stood to make a motion for all further GOP meetings to be closed to the public and the media.
There was no debate about the need for blanket secrecy. And fittingly, the members took a vote via secret ballot. The motion passed 56-11.
The question of whether to keep caucus meetings open has been discussed within the House GOP for years. When they were in the minority, Republicans complained bitterly that the media ignored their meetings and pronouncements. Once they gained a majority, however, members quickly moved to shut down access. Matters have been complicated by Republicans gaining a supermajority in the chamber, because it means any caucus decision could easily carry over as the action of the House as a whole.
Senate Republican Caucus rules require meetings featuring the equivalent of a quorum to be open to the public.
Hagerty camp touts McConnell endorsement, says he’s under attack by ‘liberal media’
Bill Hagerty attends the Tennessee Republican Party’s Statesmen’s Dinner in Nashville on June 15, 2019. At right is U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Brentwood). (Erik Schelzig, Tennessee Journal)
Newly announced U.S. Senate candidate Bill Hagerty says in a fundraising appeal that he’s been endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and that he’s already under attack by “Washington Democrats and their media allies.”
Hagerty had long been expected to get into the race, especially once President Donald Trump announced his endorsement while he was still U.S. ambassador to Japan. Vanderbilt surgeon Manny Sethi had previously been the only major Republican in the race to succeed retiring Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Maryville).
Hagerty’s formal entry into the race hasn’t stirred too much attention in the national media. For example, the Washington Post and New York Times both used the AP’s account out of the Nashville and haven’t written anything further. Politico wrote its own account.
The Tennessean ran what it deemed an exclusive interview with Hagerty on the day of his announcement, but the campaign had been scooped in declaring its launch by enterprising Nashville Scene reporter Stephen Elliott, who spotted Hagerty’s Federal Election Commission filing earlier in the day. Otherwise, there’s not been a ton of media attention — good or bad — to Hagerty or the Tennessee Senate race.
Nevertheless, the Hagerty email calls it critical for the candidate to post a large fundraising haul to “prove the liberal media talking heads wrong.”
Here’s the email from the Hagerty campaign:
Friend,
Bill Hagerty announced his campaign for U.S. Senate this week, and he’s already been endorsed by President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Join President Trump and Mitch by making a generous donation right now.
Trump and Mitch know that Bill Hagerty is a strong conservative who we can count on to stand up to the Democrats’ radical socialist agenda. And that’s why Washington Democrats and their media allies are already attacking Bill.
We have to send a message that we have his back. It’s CRITICAL that Bill posts the biggest fundraising haul possible to prove the liberal media talking heads wrong.
SEND A MESSAGE TO THE LIBERAL MEDIA
[…]
Thank you for your support.
Team Hagerty
UPDATE: The Sethi campaign is denouncing the McConnell endorsement. Here’s the release:
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Republican Senate candidate and conservative outsider Manny Sethi’s campaign released the following statement on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s endorsement of Ambassador Bill Hagerty for Senate.
“Today, Mitch McConnell–the same guy who brought us runaway spending, failed to repeal ObamaCare and not building the Wall–joined Mitt Romney today, endorsing moderate Ambassador Bill Hagerty,” said Chris Devaney, Campaign Chairman and Senior Advisor.
“Tennesseans want a conservative outsider like Manny Sethi—and we don’t want Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, or any other member of the DC Establishment ‘Death Star’ telling us who to vote for.”
Feds charge intelligence analyst with leaking classified material
A Nashville man has been arrested on charges of illegally obtaining classified information and passing it along to a reporter.
Daniel Everette Hale was arrested Thursday morning and was scheduled to appear in federal court in Nashville later in the day. Hale was enlisted in the Air Force between 2009 and 2013, assigned to the National Security Agency and deployed to Afghanistan. After leaving active duty, he was employed by a defense contractor. Prosecutors allege Hale passed along confidential material to a reporter whose outlet published at least 11 documents market secret or top secret.
Here’s the full release from the Justice Department:
WASHINGTON – An indictment was unsealed today charging a former intelligence analyst with illegally obtaining classified national defense information and disclosing it to a reporter. Daniel Everette Hale, 31, of Nashville, Tennessee, was arrested this morning and will make his initial appearance today at the federal courthouse in Nashville. Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers, U.S. Attorney G. Zachary Terwilliger for the Eastern District of Virginia and Acting Special Agent in Charge Jennifer L. Moore of the FBI’s Baltimore Field Office made the announcement after the charges were unsealed.
According to the indictment, Hale was enlisted in the U.S. Air Force from July 2009 to July 2013, during which time he received language and intelligence training. While serving on active duty, Hale was assigned to work at the National Security Agency (NSA) and deployed to Afghanistan as an intelligence analyst. After leaving the U.S. Air Force, Hale was employed by a defense contractor and assigned to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), where he worked as a political geography analyst between December 2013 and August 2014. In connection with his active duty service and work for the NSA, and during his time at NGA, Hale held a Top Secret//Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS//SCI) security clearance and was entrusted with access to classified national defense information.
Reporters threatened with arrest at state Capitol
Reporters covering a protest outside Gov. Bill Lee’s office in the state Capitol on Tuesday afternoon were threatened with arrest if they didn’t leave the building.
Here's video of a @wpln and a @tennessean reporter being thrown out of the state Capitol as they tried to document a protest outside @GovBillLee's office. https://t.co/9mh0ZKqNRH
— Chas Sisk (@chassisk) April 16, 2019
“It is our understanding that Highway Patrol officers followed their standard protocol for when the Capitol building closes to the public,” Lee spokesman Chris Walker said in a statement to The Tennessean. “However, we do not condone threatening of arrest to reporters while they are doing their jobs in trying to cover news.”
It’s unclear when it became Safety Department protocol to remove journalists from the building at 4:30 p.m. The first floor of the Capitol houses the govenror’s office, Cabinet members, and the state’s constitutional officers (who are part of the legislative branch). The House and Senate chambers are located on the second floor, where meetings are often held late into the evening.
The protesters were demanding Lee call on state Rep. David Byrd (R-Waynesboro) to resign. Byrd is accused of sexual misconduct with teenage basketball players when he was a girls high school basketball coach in the 1980s.
On the passing of political reporter Rebecca Ferrar (aka ‘Lucifer’ and ‘Becky Bear’)
Rebecca Lynn Ferrar, who died of a heart attack this week at age 72, was given the joshing nickname ‘Lucifer’ during 11 years in Nashville as a reporter on state government and politics for the Knoxville News Sentinel.
She was my professional colleague for those years and a friend both before the newspaper’s management sent her to the state capitol to beef up reporting on state-level government and after they sent her back to Knoxville to shrink such coverage in accord with nationwide media downsizing trends (and, it’s fair to add, to enhance coverage of East Tennessee government and politics).
Website questions Tennessean story on Boyd
The conservative website Tennessee Star appears torn between its opposition to Republican gubernatorial candidate Randy Boyd and its hostility toward The Tennessean newspaper.
The newspaper has broken several important stories recently in the governor’s race, including that Bill Lee’s company has received at least $13.8 million in government contracts since 2012; that Diane Black voted in the Democratic primary in 1996 (when the Clinton-Gore ticket was on the ballot, though her campaign denies she voted for the incumbents); and that Boyd’s company opened offices in Ireland that allowed the business to avoid U.S. taxes.
While the Star has been happy to label Boyd as “La Raza Randy” and claim that the Gov. Bill Haslam is somehow rigging the primary in Boyd’s favor, the report about the “Double Irish” tax arrangement seems to have gotten stuck in the website’s craw.
Former mayoral candidate and business partner buy Nashville Scene and Nashville Post
The company owned by Nashville entrepreneur and former mayoral candidate Bill Freeman and his longtime business partner Jimmy Webb has acquired the Nashville Scene, the Nashville Post and Nfocus from holding company SouthComm, according to an article in the Scene.
Fitzhugh names Trace Sharp as campaign press secretary
Press release from Craig Fitzhugh campaign
Another national media opinion: ‘Hot-button’ Blackburn beats ‘pragmatist’ Bredesen?
Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the national political newsletter Inside Elections, expresses doubt in a Roll Call article about Democrat Phil Bredesen’s prospects for defeating Republican Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee’s U.S. Senate race despite polls showing the former governor with an edge in the race so far. An excerpt:
