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The United Auto Workers announced Monday it is withdrawing an appeal of the outcome of a union vote at Volkswagen’s assembly plant in Tennessee. In a statement released one hour before the scheduled start of a National Labor Relations Board hearing in Chattanooga, Tenn., UAW President Bob King said the union decided to put the “tainted election in the rearview mirror” because the challenge could have taken months or even years to come to a conclusion. …

Sevierville — U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander said Thursday that even if Republicans retake the Senate this year, it “is going to be very divided. It’ll take a bipartisan coalition to pass anything.” Last year, Tennessee tea party and conservative groups criticized Alexander in an open letter, telling him that the country “can no longer afford bipartisanship and compromise.” “I learned to count in the Maryville city schools,” the Tennessee Republican said. “We have 45 Republicans, and it takes 60 senators to pass anything that’s important. So you have to work with people on the other side to get a result....

p>The Talk Shows April 20th, 2014 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Sergey Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.; Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington. MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Ukraine’s prime minister; Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn.; Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla.FACE THE NATION (CBS): Gov. Devil Patrick, D-Mass.; Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York.THIS WEEK (ABC): Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas; retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.STATE OF THE UNION (CNN): Sen. John Walsh, D-Mont.; Lukman Faily, Iraq’s ambassador to the United States; Kim Beazley, Australia’s...

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - A woman from west Knoxville found a body under her deck while hunting for Easter eggs with her son Wednesday. The Knoxville News Sentinel reports Tara Hanouskova smelled an odor that progressively got worse over the past week, but could never pinpoint the source. On Wednesday, however, while hunting for Easter eggs with her three-year-old, she noticed something with a pair of feet clad in tennis shoes in the crawl space under her deck. She explained that the odor wasn't consistent nor strong; she only smelled it off and on until it got so bad she decided...

Knoxville, Tenn. (CBS DC) – Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told a crowd of law school students that if taxes in the U.S. become too high then people “should revolt.” Speaking at the University of Tennessee College of Law on Tuesday, the longest-serving justice currently on the bench was asked by a student about the constitutionality of the income tax, the Knoxville News Sentinel reports. Scalia responded that the government has the right to implement the tax, “but if it reaches a certain point, perhaps you should revolt.”(continued)

As the labor movement tells the story, two months ago, the silly, ungrateful Volkswagen factory workers in Tennessee foolishly rejected the generous invitation of the company and the United Auto Workers to welcome the Detroit-killing union with open arms. In an election supervised by the federal National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the workers in VW's Chattanooga plant rejected UAW representation by a vote of 712 to 626. Amazingly, the UAW and the automaker both refuse to take the workers' "no" for an answer. The two sides are acting in unison to overturn the democratically expressed will of the workers. Nullifying...

Democrats in the U.S. House on Wednesday opened an "inquiry" into whether Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam's administration might have violated federal labor law by attempting to tie state incentives for expansion of the Chattanooga Volkswagen plant to the outcome of an election over representation by the United Auto Workers union. The probe is yet another chapter in the ongoing debate over whether Republican officials, including Haslam and U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, may have interfered in the February election in which workers voted 712-626 to reject the UAW, which was attem

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Gov. Bill Haslam's signature proposal to create a program that would cover tuition at two-year colleges for any high school graduate is headed to his desk after passing the House on Tuesday. The 87-8 approval comes a day after the Senate approved the legislation 30-1. Called "Tennessee Promise," the legislation is a cornerstone of the Republican governor's "Drive to 55" campaign to improve the state's graduation rates from the current 32 percent to 55 percent by 2025 to help improve overall job qualifications and attract employers to the state. "The governor is grateful for the General...

Today, the Tennessee Senate passed SB2424, a Vermont* style, permit-less open-carry bill. This bill would further restore the basic human right to self-defense in Tennessee. The question is, will the House follow suit? The companion bill, HB2409, if passed, would give Governor Haslam the opportunity to make good on the promise he made in a Tennessee Firearms Association (TFA) meeting on October 18, 2010, on Vermont Style Carry.Here is a transcription of part of that meeting:TFA member, If the legislature were to pass a Vermont style carry, and bring it to you, would you sign it? Candidate (Knoxville Mayor) Haslam,...

WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — Sen. Ted Cruz believes Senate Democrats are the ones who forced Kathleen Sebelius to step down as health and human services secretary.Cruz told NBC News that Democrats are worried that Republicans will take back the Senate because of Obamacare.“Kathleen Sebelius’ resignation is the latest indication of just what a disaster Obamacare is. Obamacare is the most disastrous, the most damaging piece of legislation in modern times,” Cruz told NBC News. “And I believe she resigned because Senate Democrats are scared.”Cruz told Fox News that Senate Democrats “demanded Kathleen Sebelius’ head.”“They are running scared because every one of...

Madoc In AmericaNative American Histories in the USA Is truth stranger than fiction? Of course it is; it always has been One subject that has been debated for the last four hundred years was whether or not a Khumric-Welsh Prince called Madoc discovered America. Queen Elizabeth I was persuaded by her advisors that this was so and the Khumric-Welsh discovery was put forward as somehow giving England a prior claim in the political wrangles over first rights in the New World of the Americas. No one ever thought to investigate the British records. Caradoc of Llancarfan wrote about it circa...

Did the Welsh discover America? 26/8/2002 A team of historians and researchers announced today that Radio Carbon dating evidence, and the discovery of ancient British style artefacts and inscriptions in the American Midwest, provide the strongest indications yet" that British explorers, under the Prince Madoc ap Meurig, arrived in the country during the 6th Century and set up colonies there. Research team members have known the location of burial sites of Madoc's close relatives in Wales for some time, it emerged today; but they have decided to break their self-imposed silence in order that their research be fully known and...

Controversial housing finance reform legislation making its way through the Senate Banking Committee was co-written by a former mortgage trader for Countrywide Financial and Wachovia, two of the subprime mortgage behemoths at the center of the housing market crash in 2007.Michael Bright, the senior financial adviser to Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.), worked as a trader and member of the loan-pricing desk at Countrywide Financial from 2002 to 2006, and as a senior trader for Wachovia from 2006 to 2008.Bright joined Corker’s office in 2010, and has been a key figure in crafting the Corker-Warner housing reform bill and the...

A top building trades union is launching a midterm-election assault on House Democrats who oppose construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. A letter distributed Friday by the Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA) to the districts of 27 House Democrats calls for union members to make sure their representative "feels the power and the fury of LIUNA this November." Their crime: signing a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry last month urging him to reject Keystone, which would carry oil sands from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries.

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- Tennessee Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn will consider running for president in 2016 -- if she sees an opportunity to do so, an aide to the 7th District Republican told RealClearPolitics. Blackburn is scheduled to be one of the speakers at a New Hampshire Republican rally this weekend but was not previously known to be mulling a White House bid. "If there's a door to kick down, she's willing to kick it down," the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said. "These are the kinds of events you go to -- test the waters, and see what...

Last month a baby in Tennessee made history: Emilia Maria Jesty was the first child born in the state to have a woman listed on the birth certificate as her "father." The marital status of the baby's parents was the subject of a flurry of court filings up to a few days before her birth. Valeria Tanco and Sophy Jesty were wed in New York, a state that recognizes gay marriage, and moved to Tennessee, which does not. They are among scores of same-sex couples who, working with advocacy groups, have filed lawsuits to expand gay-marriage rights following a major...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The state Senate has passed a bill to allow Tennesseans to openly carry guns without a state-issued permit.

The Chattanooga plant’s February secret-ballot vote to remain non-union was seen as a major triumph for the right-to-work community. But Volkswagen has since been under intense pressure from the company’s highly influential German union IG-METAL to figure out how to void the election result.

After NBC's "Meet The Press" host David Gregory ran an anti-ObamaCare ad targeting Sen. Mark Pryor from Arkansas featuring a couple with a southern accents questioning the confusing nature of the Affordable Care Act, Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker objected to Americans for Prosperity using people with southern accents in political ads running in Arkansas: "I think you could find someone who doesn't have a southern accent who is confused by this act," Parker said. "We always seem to find the character who seems a little countrified, who can't just fathom this. You know there there are plenty of smart...

Local physician and owner of Flinn Broadcasting, George Flinn, has pulled a petition to challenge U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander in the coming Republican primary. Flinn joins 11 other candidates who have pulled petitions for the Republican primary, the most known among them is state Rep. Joe Carr. In February, a poll conducted on behalf of Alexander showed the Tennessee senator with a commanding lead over Carr. Flinn, who has served on the Shelby County Commission, lost a previous bid for the 8th District U.S. House seat in 2010. Flinn tried again in 2012, running against incumbent Rep. Steve Cohen, who...