Category: Tennessee

Tad Cummins Arrested in California, Elizabeth Thomas Recovered Safely

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Police say Elizabeth Thomas (left) ran away with her teacher Tad Cummins (right).

Breaking news today:

A man accused of running away with a former student has been found and arrested.
According to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations, Tad Cummins and Elizabeth Thomas were located in Northern California.
The 50-year-old man and 15-year-old girl were reported missing March 13 from Columbia, Tenn. . . .
Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office PIO Kelly Giordano says the capture of Cummins and rescue of Thomas came thanks to a tip called into the department on Wednesday night.
Giordano says an officer responded to a tip Cummins’ Nissan Rogue was spotted. The responding officer found the vehicle, which had no license plates. The officer ran the VIN number, which came back as Cummins’ vehicle. The SCSO they mobilized their Special Response Team (SRT) this morning to Cecilville, where the vehicle was found. SRT officers found Cummins and Thomas at a residence located near a commune in Cecilville.
Cummins did not resist arrest and was taken into custody just after 9 a.m. Thursday morning. . . . Cummins will be held on charges of sexual conduct with a minor and aggravated kidnapping.

We covered this story last month.

 

Hate Group @SJPUTK Want Jews to Die

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Muslim students and other anti-Israel activists at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville (UTK) have created a “hostile environment” for Jewish students on campus, according to watchdogs, but the university’s administration seems to be blind to the terrorist threat:

Canary Mission, a secretive watchdog group that compiles dossiers on students and academics it accuses of anti-Semitism, claimed in two releases earlier this month that it found dozens of problematic social media posts by current and former members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Muslim Students Association (MSA) at UTK.
Some of those posts incited or personally threatened violence, it has claimed.
In response to the administration’s subsequent denials that the campus is infested with rampant anti-Semitism, Canary Mission and Jewish campus groups doubled down, demanding stronger denunciations of the “cesspool” created by the Muslim student groups.
Canary Mission told The Algemeiner Aug. 4 it found a “disturbing trend” of anti-Semitic behavior reflected in social media posts by SJP and MSA members, naming six in particular.
The administration initially responded that the watchdog group, which declines to identify its membership, had overstated campus hostilities toward Jewish students.
It told WATE Aug. 9 that the administration “does not condone” the alleged anti-Semitic statements – seven posts over five years – but believed that the current and former students “were within their constitutional rights to post their personal viewpoints,” and they were not “made on behalf of any of our student organizations.” . . .
Last October, UTK SJP Vice President Fatima Itmaizah switched her Facebook profile picture to a graphic apparently advocating a violent solution to the existence of Jewish people in the Holy Land. . . .
Mohamed Ali, a member of SJP and MSA, tweeted April 7, 2015: “I feel so incredibly irritable right now. No idea why…Just feel like kicking a Zionist tbh [to be honest].” . . .

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.) We are two years away from the 70th anniversary of the founding of modern Israel, which occurred in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust in Europe. Two generations later, many young people have been indoctrinated with a left-wing “social justice” worldview which gives credence to the slanderous claim that Arabs and Muslims are victims of oppression under Jewish “apartheid” in Israel. This false belief bears no resemblance to the reality of the situation, and is simply anti-Jewish propaganda that inspires terrorism. The history of this conflict, and of the Middle East generally, suggests that if the advocates of Israel’s destruction were to get what they want — i.e., the death of every Jew in “Palestine” — this would plunge the Arab population of the region into a nightmare existence under a radical Islamic terrorist regime.

Destroying Israel will not solve the problems of Palestinians, but the bloodthirsty prejudice of radical Muslims isn’t about solving problems. Their agenda is not about “peace,” it’s about dead Jews.

Why the hell are fanatical Jew-hating advocates of terrorism being tolerated at the University of Tennessee? Expel them all.

 

Tennessee Worker Liberty Offends UAW; NLRB Appeal Ensues

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by Smitty

We’ve been getting our schadenfreude on over the Volunteers not volunteering for UAW’s auto-economic asphyxiation. But, as Ted Kennedy’s career demonstrated, evil doesn’t die easily. The NYT:

The United Automobile Workers asked the National Labor Relations Board on Friday to order a new unionization election at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., asserting that the union’s loss last week was because of improper interference by the state’s lawmakers.

The complaint filed with the labor board asserts that statements made by Senator Bob Corker and some state lawmakers amounted to “threats” that swayed the VW workers to vote against the U.A.W. In a stinging defeat for the union, workers at the Chattanooga plant voted 712 to 626 against joining the U.A.W., even though the company did not oppose the unionization effort.

You see, disagreement with your organized crime overlords is always “improper interference”. Whatever the Union does to enforce control must be the proper sort of interference, one supposes.

The bad news here is that the NLRB is pretty much a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party. Just how far they’re willing to go to push a Senator remains to be seen, and should be interesting.

via Hot Air

Tennessee Democrat Party Denounces Democrat Senate Candidate

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Rachel Maddow spent five minutes on MSNBC tonight having a conniption over what is, for Democrats, a disheartening development:

Mark Clayton believes the federal government is building a massive, four-football-field wide superhighway from Mexico City to Toronto as part of a secret plot to establish a new North American Union that will bring an end to America as we know it. On Thursday, he became the Tennessee Democrats’ nominee for US Senate.
Clayton, an anti-gay-marriage activist and flooring installer with a penchant for fringe conspiracy theories, finished on top of a crowded primary field in the race to take on GOP Sen. Bob Corker this fall. He earned 26 percent of the vote despite raising no money and listing the wrong opponent on his campaign website. . . .
Clayton’s primary victory is only the latest blow for the Tennessee Democrats in a state that’s becoming redder every year. Democrats lost three congressional seats during the 2010 midterms, plus control of the governor’s mansion. Corker, a rising GOP star who edged Democratic Rep. Harold Ford Jr. by just 2.7 points in 2006, is now virtually assured of another six years in Washington.

The Tennessee State Democrat Party denounced Clayton, prompting many Tennesseans to remark, “What? There’s still an actual Democrat Party in this state? I’ll be danged!”

Maddow was bemoaning how the Democrat Party has basically “withered and died” in states like Tennessee, a development I call “a good start.”

BREAKING: Missing Girls Found Alive; Kidnapper Adam Mayes Commits Suicide

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Alexandria Bain, 12, Kyliyah Bain, 8, are reported safe

This guy was on the FBI Most Wanted List:

It’s the end of the line for fugitive Adam Mayes. The two Hardeman County [Tennessee] girls that he abducted were found alive Thursday evening. 8-year-old Kyliyah and 12-year-old Alexandria Bain are alive and safe.
Mayes was found near County Road 183 in Alpine. He is reported to be dead. Sources close to Fox 13 are reporting that Mayes died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

This story was just headlined on CNN.

UPDATE: MSNBC reports more:

Adam Mayes, suspected of kidnapping Jo Ann Bain and her three daughters, has been captured and is near death, according to reports from WMCTV.com in Memphis, Tenn.
The two younger daughters, Alexandria, 12, and Kyliyah Bain, 8, were both found safe and are now with authorities, WMCTV reported.
The Union County Sheriff’s Department found Mayes with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the Memphis station reported. Initial media reports say that he was found at a church near Alpine, Miss., about 45 minutes from the Tennessee border.
Mayes was charged with the first-degree murders of Jo Ann Bain, 31, and her eldest daughter, Adrienne Bain, 14, whose bodies were found buried outside Mayes’ mother’s home last week.

UPDATE II: While the initial reports said Mayes was already dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, there now seems to be some confusion. At any rate, this was a very strange crime:

Bain’s mother-in-law earlier said she believed Mayes killed the girls’ mother and her eldest daughter, and then ran away with the the two girls because he believed the girls were his own children.
Josie Tate, the mother of Mayes’ wife Teresa, told ABC News affiliate WTVC that her daughter and Mayes fought often over whether Mayes was actually the father of JoAnn Bain’s two youngest children.
Bain and her eldest daughter, Adrienne, were killed in their Tennessee home on April 27, and then taken with the two youngest daughters to Mayes’ home in Mississippi, according to police affidavits. Teresa and Mayes have both been charged with murder, but Mayes remains at large and on the run. The FBI has placed Mayes on its Top Ten Most Wanted fugitives list.

UPDATE III: Now Fox News reports Mayes dead:

The Mississippi man suspected of kidnapping four women in a Tennessee family and killing a mother and daughter died after shooting himself Thursday evening, a law enforcement source tells Fox News. . . .
Mayes and his wife, Teresa, are charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Jo Ann Bain, 31, and her daughter, Adrienne, 14. Their bodies were found buried outside the Mayes’ home a week after they were reported missing by Jo Ann Bain’s husband, Gary.
Mayes’ mother-in-law Josie Tate told The Associated Press that Mayes thought the missing sisters might actually be his daughters and it caused problems in his marriage to her daughter, Teresa, who is jailed in the case.
In an earlier interview, Tate’s daughter, Bobbi Booth, said Teresa Mayes suspected her husband was having an affair with Jo Ann Bain.

OK, to sort out what is a bizarre and confusing story: Mayes was married to Teresa, who suspected him of having an affair with Ann Bain. But Mayes then kidnappeed Ann Bain and three of her daughters, the youngest two of which he believed to be his own children. He killed Bain and the oldest daughter. Mayes’s wife and mother have both been charged in connection with those murders.

UPDATE IV: America’s Most Wanted provides background on the crime:

Search warrants were executed at the Mayes residence in Mississippi, and during the search, two bodies were found in shallow graves behind the home. The bodies were positively identified as Jo Ann and her eldest daughter, Adrienne.
Mayes’ mother, Mary, has also been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit kidnapping. Invesigators say Mayes had a plan to kidnap the two youngest girls. Cops say Jo Ann Bain and her daughter, Adrienne were killed in their home in Tennessee and then transported to Mayes’ house in Guntown, Miss.
Teresa and Mary both allegedly confessed during a police interview and said they witnessed Mayes digging holes in Mary’s backyard — where the bodies of Jo Ann and Adrienne were found. Cops say Teresa also told authorities that she was there when Adam killed Jo Ann and Adrienne in the garage of the Bain home.

Palin Helps Romney Win Alaska

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WASHINGTON, Pennsylvania
Mitt Romney has a powerful ally in his effort to win the Republican nomination: Sarah Palin, who told a Fox News reporter last night that she voted for Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich got 1,834 votes in the Alaska caucuses, giving the former House Speaker 14.2% of the vote, good for a fourth-place finish behind third-place finisher Ron Paul (3,105 votes, 24%), runner-up Rick Santorum (3,762 votes, 29%) and winner Romney (4,225, 32.6%).

Gingrich also placed fourth Tuesday in caucuses in North Dakota (962 votes, 8.5%) and Idaho (940 votes, 2.1%), and the primaries in Vermont (4,608 votes, 8.1%) and Massachusetts (16,756 votes, 4.6%). Gingrich placed third in Ohio (14.6%), Tennessee (24%), and Oklahoma (27.5%).

Gingrich’s vote total in Alaska was more than four times as large as Romney’s 463-vote margin over Santorum. In Ohio, Gingrich’s third-place total (175,375) was 16.7 times larger than Romney’s 10,508-vote margin over Santorum.

In related news, Texas Gov. Rick Perry — who quit the presidential race Jan. 19 and endorsed Gingrich — was still on the ballot in Ohio, as was former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who dropped out Jan. 16 and endorsed Romney. Between them, Perry and Huntsman got 13,843 votes in Tuesday’s Ohio primary.

UPDATE: This post seems to have stirred some anger from people who think that my summary of Neutral Objective Facts was intended as a personal disparagement of Sarah Palin.

Of course, I would have enthusiastically supported Governor Palin, had she seen fit to run for president — see my coverage of her Labor Day speech in New Hampshire — but she decided against it. Another source of anger about this post was expressed by my young friend Jamie:

How come you hate Newt so much?

I replied in the comments, but given the rage reaction this post seems to have provoked, I’ll quote my reply here:

I don’t “hate” him, Jamie. But as a presidential candidate, Newt is utterly implausible. There is simply no way in hell a twice-divorced Republican, married to his former mistress — with whom he had an extramarital affair in the midst of the Clinton impeachment scandal — is going to be elected president of the United States.
Not going to happen. Period.
Gingrich’s rhetorical skills are admirable, but his biography makes him unelectable. This is just the reality of politics, and people who would like to ignore Newt’s biography are simply deluded.
It’s not a matter of policy or ideology. I don’t accuse Newt or his supporters of being insufficiently conservative. They are, however, insufficiently realistic about what it takes to succeed in presidential politics, and their admiration for Newt the Great Debater is blinding them to the unavoidable obstacle to Gingrich’s candidacy. Newt is wasting time and money (and his supporters are wasting their votes) on a campaign that was doomed from the outset.
These are, I assert, Neutral Objective Facts. You may dispute the facts, but I guarantee you that Newt Gingrich will not win the GOP nomination.
Not this year. Not ever.

This is my summary of what is, rather than my personal opinion of what ought to be, and I understand that many people wish that Gingrich’s debate skills were sufficient to offset the liabilities of his biography, but they’re not.

It seems that the online world has become a place where we are so accustomed to people expressing opinions that we have become prone to regard simple statements of fact —e.g., “Newt Gingrich will never be elected president, nor nominated by the Republican Party for that office” — as if they were merely opinions, which might be argued out of existence.

Having supported a lot of long-shot underdogs over the years, I recognize why people might vote for a completely hopeless candidate like Newt. But when the hopelessness was so obvious before his campaign ever began, it ill behooves Newt’s supporters to disparage the motives of those who are guilty of no sin more grievous than stating Neutral Objective Facts.

HUGE: Gingrich Tennessee Co-Chair Resigns and Endorses Rick Santorum

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Knoxville News-Sentinel:

State Sen. Stacey Campfield, co-chairman of Newt Gingrich’s campaign in Tennessee, announced today he is quitting that position to support Rick Santorum in the Republican presidential race.
The Knoxville Republican made his announcement in a post on his blog. In an interview, Campfield said he believes that conservatives need to unite behind a single candidate and that Santorum is best positioned to defeat “establishment Republican” candidate Mitt Romney.

Campfield’s blog post offers an extremely nuanced argument: He admires Newt, he prefers Newt, but he has come to grips with the simple fact that Newt can’t win. If conservatives are serious about stopping Romney, they have to get behind Santorum:

[T]he conservative with the momentum and ability to still make it happen is Rick Santorum. . . .
I am stepping down as the statewide co chairman for Newt Gingrich and throwing all of my support behind Rick Santorum. Going with me are the top 3 second congressional district delegates for Newt (Dr. Lenard Brown, Dr. Aaron Margulise and Scott Smith). We all now throw our support behind Rick Santorum and hope for his success. We encourage other people who are supporting other candidates (not just in Tennessee but across the nation) to follow suit and throw your support behind Rick Santorum so we can coalesce and have a conservative to lead our party, and our country back to victory and prosperity.

Campfield and his colleagues deserve praise for this tough, pragmatic decision. Santorum has dipped in the most recent national polls, and I made no secret of my bitter disappointment with the outcome in Michigan, which I saw as the result of the Santorum campaign’s self-inflicted wounds.

Nevertheless, Santorum still leads in Ohio and he also leads in Tennessee, where Newt is running a distant third. Whatever errors Santorum has made in recent weeks, it is still not too late for him to learn from his mistakes and recapture his lost momentum. If Santorum can win Ohio, Tennessee and Oklahoma on Tuesday, the contest for the GOP nomination will then clearly be a two-man race. And if conservatives are serious about stopping Romney — as serious as Sen. Campfield is — then there will still be a fighting chance, with a candidate who has shown a willingness to fight the tough fights.

“Where’s the Spirit? Where’s the Guts, Huh?”


Is Ian Masters Looking For A Job In, I Don’t Know, Say, Tennessee?

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by Smitty

Valley of the Shadow points out Ian Masters, an LA radio personality of some note, who really seems to dig him some anti-Semitism. Read all of Joe Fein’s debunking of a sad situation in LA.  It brings to mind Charlotte Bergmann, whom I saw cruise through the blogger lounge at CPAC, but had no time to hail. These Lefty radio personalities seem to have problems with raaaaacism. Do they get that in their broadcasting school?

It used to seem strange and paradoxical that the Left, purporting to be all about fairness and decency, stand revealed as the least fair and decent upon serious analysis. But that seems to be their point: there is no ‘serious analysis’ on a societal scale. It’s really all about power, isn’t it? Especially if you have no moral center to explain why this is a violation of Matt 4:8-10.

And, speaking of those who apparently lack a moral center, Sean Penn continues to pal around with anti-Semites and those who hate America. Gotta love Sean’s approach to free speech: his is consistant in his mis-application thereof.