Save the Next Waltz For Me

I'm not going to blog anymore tonight. I have to be up early. Tomorrow, I'll be away from the keyboard all day. I'll be back to blogging on Sunday.

I still have a lot of fallout to wrap up on the Tennessee Waltz story, and some other items piling up in the Daily Blog bookmark folder. Hopefully, Sunday will be catch-up day.

But I have to warn readers that getting into these kinds of "pile up" situations is what leads to blog hiatus for me. Pressure to perform and all. I'll do my best, but no expectations, OK?

To the reader to whom I promised a follow-up to the "cheap shot" post, I haven't forgotten. It will be taken care of Sunday.

Since when do bond hearings take four hours? That's how long State Senator John Ford's was. Seems really unusual.

I finally got a chance to read today's Commercial Appeal. Very nice and concise round-up, though it suffers from the "day late, dollar short" syndrome. They devoted four pages to the story and covered a lot of ground. They even addressed the "Was Herenton Arrested?" rumor. The day's editorial was about the scandal, which impressed me. Normally editorials run a day or two behind events. Even the Letters column was about Thursday's events, though it obviously came from their email pile.

Only quibbles? The front page had one of those old-style huge banner headlines that yelled "STUNG." Another quarter of the page was a picture of John Ford in his car, driving into the Federal building. Chris Peck, if you're going to re-invent your newspaper perhaps you should examine old traditions like this one. I'd've preferred a normal headline, smaller picture and a quick point-by-point breakdown, to know what's in the paper. But that's just me, Mr. Former Regular Reader.

NOT ONE WORD ABOUT THE BLOGOSPHERE ANYWHERE! It was a State legislator, Representative Stacey Campfield who broke the story on his blog, at 7AM. Once the story surfaced around 9AM, blogs were boiling with reports. Television led the way from 10AM until just past lunch, but from then until newstime and for the rest of the day, the blogosphere was your best, most comprehensive and most up-to-date source. There were several folks live-blogging and doing updates all day. And that includes this blog, dammit. The Commercial Appeal's oversight was either a snub of the blogosphere, mighty damned arrogant, or just plain dumb. The CA had nothing on their website until past lunchtime. Nothing. (Although, to be fair, by evening time, they had a good basic story up, with charts and links to related stories. They also had a forum up and running. Modest but not bad.)

My other quibble? On the front page, in their list of the indictees and their positions, they did not identify Senator Kathryn Bowers as the Chairwoman of the Shelby County Democratic Party. There's no way I'll believe that omission was accidental. It's too important. You don't learn about her chairing until the jump to page six, and even then of the two mentions one is rather coy although the other is clear.

Jeez. Sorry. I got carried away, didn't I? Time to go.

One last note: I'm proud to announce that I will be guest-blogging next week over at Knoxville's Say Uncle blog! I'm deeply flattered by the invite, let me tell you. I'll be posting some goodies from the HB archives, cross-posting some current HB posts and tossing in a few Say Uncle exclusives for the East Tennessee and gun enthusiast audience over there. My co-guest-bloggers are Andrew from Pathetic Earthlings and Gunner from No Quarters. Fine company!

Wish me luck and maybe come on over to give me encouragement.

If you've enjoyed what you're reading please consider hitting the PayPal tipjar up on the left top of the blog. I would sure appreciate it.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend. Thank a veteran. Drive safely. Drink responsibly. Legislate legally. See ya Sunday.