Metro Pulse/Ear to the Ground

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Holy Moly

John Griess and Diane Jordan pulled a fast one on Ivan Harmon's plan to revive the "God resolution" at County Commission Monday, and were successful in getting it tabled for a year. They left the frustrated Harmon in the dust, muttering something about bringing it up again, only changing "God" to "Jesus." He'll have to get up pretty early not to be foiled again, however.

What happened Monday was that Griess, a steadfast opponent of Harmon's efforts to get Knox County to fingering God as the Founder of the Republic, made a surprise motion to bring up Harmon's resolution (which had failed in November). Suspicious, Harmon voted against putting his own resolution on the agenda, but lost. Then Jordan moved to postpone hearing the Harmon/God rez. Harmon lost, Jordan/Griess won, and Harmon/God is on hold.

Jordan, whose husband, the Rev. John Jordan, is the pastor of Peace and Goodwill Baptist Church, is getting aggravated with the whole thing:

"They need to stop calling it the God resolution. What they're saying is God gave us these rights, and the government didn't. That means you'd have to believe the way they do. But government needs to stay out of religion. When government goes to messing in it, it gets all screwed up. I was voted in by all kinds of people, and they have rights, too. God doesn't need a resolution."

Early and Often

Knox County Election Commission officers are hoping nobody wins—or loses—a school board race by less than six votes after a voting machine operator in South Knoxville mistakenly let all early voters vote in all four contested school board races. The bad news is school board races are district-only. The good news, if you can call it that, is hardly anyone is bothering themselves to vote (yeah, we know we're reaching, here).

Elections Administrator Greg Mackay says he got a call Friday informing him that "They're letting everybody vote in every school board race." He headed out to the polling place at the Chapman Highway BiLo, and found that it was true. At the end of the day, he locked and sealed the voting machines. On Saturday, he took a stack of paper ballots to the BiLo, and on Sunday, new voting machines were delivered. Turns out that 164 people voted there in the first three days, and the election commission is left in a bit of a quandary as to how to sort the mess out. By law, vote totals can't be read until election day, but it's comforting to know that only five people voted in the 2nd District School Board race; four in the 3rd.; none in the 5th and one in the 8th.

Mackay has checked with the state and beefed up the staff, and on Wednesday, the commission was to meet for the purpose of deciding how to proceed. Given that there is at least one candidate who can't quite seem to remember where he lives, the election commission folks seem a bit persnickety about where voters hang their hats.

Rock-A-What-Now?

The vacant Market Square space most recently occupied by the coffee house, Brazo, has been leased to Eddie Bernard, who says he's setting up a bar & grill there. The Hard Knox at 6 Market Square will host local amateur comedians there one night a week and will feature a house band to back up rock-a-oke performances, says Bernard. Think karaoke with a live band behind the vocalists instead of a DJ. Bernard, who has most recently been a construction coordinator for the Discovery Channel and it's show, Trading Spaces, says he wants to be open in mid-May with a beer license and some grill offerings and expects to add a larger menu and liquor later.

Squaring Up

Speaking of vacancies on the square, we hear that space on the third floor at 4 Market Square that was home to the late, lamented Cyberflix is being taken up by an information technology and systems specialty company, Delta-21 Resources, Inc. Much of its business has been with federal government agencies, but it also serves private companies and has an engineering management arm. With 15-20 employees, the firm, which already maintains a data server at Digital Crossing a couple blocks away on Walnut Street, is moving to the square from Oak Ridge, where it's been in business almost 20 years.

Comparative Journalism 101

The sudden resignation of UT Trustee Michael Combs last week makes for an interesting comparison study in news coverage. The News-Sentinel reported his resignation on Thursday, mentioning that Combs, a 35-year UT music professor, author, and timpanist for the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, was the subject of a sheriff's investigation concerning "an incident that allegedly occurred at his home" on Saturday, Jan. 17. The page B1 report offered no further explanation. Local TV news stations seemed to take a similar tack.

However, the UT Daily Beacon, which came out the same day, reported that Combs had been accused of "aggravated rape" of a 20-year-old man at gunpoint. That accusation appeared in the Associated Press' state wire account of the "incident," and the weekly Knoxville Journal, which also came out that Thursday, splashed the story across the top of the front page: "UT board member accused of raping man." Theirs was the longest story about the situation; it included more lurid details of the allegation, involving blood and condom use, and the assertion that Combs allegedly demanded that the victim clean himself thoroughly before he left. The Journal account added some doubt about the alleged victim's credibility, mainly via comments from the man's wife, who mentioned that, as he was being examined at Baptist Hospital, officers were threatening to charge him with filing a false report—and the fact that he had been having trouble with his employer, a contractor who had done some floor-refinishing in Combs' house.

Fortunately for Metro Pulse, the story broke just after we went to press, sparing us the dilemma of deciding which style of coverage best suits our purposes. It's all in the public purview now, but the Sentinel didn't mention the nature of the accusation in a follow-up story subsequent to its disclosure and publication elsewhere.