By Bo Roberts Nearly 50 years ago this week, in an unexpected move, five veteran Democratic state senators bolted away from their caucus, joining their minority GOP colleagues to re-elect Bill Snodgrass as the Comptroller of the state of Tennessee. In the view of many, their uncommon action was a textbook example of cooler heads prevailing, as their votes were crucial

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right Here I am, stuck in the middle with you   The chorus from the 1972 Stealers Wheel hit, co-written by Joe Egan and the late Gerry Rafferty, keeps echoing in my head as I’ve observed the frightening, politically divisive landscape which has erupted in Washington and Nashville, eroding the long-established

I left the early-voting location with trepidation. Surprisingly, lightening didn’t strike. I thought immediately of my deceased mother, hopeful that she wasn’t watching from above.  My just-completed, totally unprecedented action would really disturb her:  I had just voted in a Republican primary! As a life-long Democrat, I confess to voting on rare occasions for a Republican candidate  in a General

As an astutely brilliant former Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives once told me: “Neither party has a monopoly on ignorance;” his statement framed one of my earliest, most significant political lessons. The current furor over the nation’s health care reform is an excellent demonstration of that Speaker’s insightful adage.  The idiocy of the right, railing about death panels