Walking Wounded

Even his chief patron, Sen. Lamar Alexander, no longer sounds all that upbeat about Gus Puryear IV’s chances to land a lifetime appointment as a federal district judge in Nashville. The preppy, young Puryear’s hard-right political connections and golden-boy glow make Republicans go gooey. Too bad Democrats control the Senate. Once considered a virtual shoo-in for Senate confirmation, Puryear has been taking a beating lately in Washington, and his nomination remains tied up in the Judiciary Committee, which must approve him before a full Senate vote. His critics point to his inexperience as a trial lawyer, his membership in the exclusive Belle Meade Country Club and his conduct at the Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America, where he became the top lawyer after stints as a senior aide to both former Sens. Fred Thompson and Bill Frist.

In perhaps the most serious blow to the 39-year-old Puryear’s nomination, Time magazine, quoting a former CCA manager, reported last week that Puryear may have overseen a reporting system in which the for-profit prison company lied to government agencies about violent disturbances and other events at its facilities. CCA denies whitewashing reports to the government.

Alexander deflects Puryear’s problems as a case of politics as usual. “I think he’s running into a little bit of what happens toward the end of a president’s term,” the senator tells the Scene.

“There are not very many appointees of President Bush being confirmed right now,” Alexander notes. “There’s a slowdown by the majority Democrats who hope we’ll have a Democratic president in January and he or she will make all the appointments.”

If Puryear were a Democrat, Alexander seems to say, the Senate wouldn’t care if he belonged to Belle Meade, which in its history has admitted only one black and gives its “lady members” no voting rights.

Three Democrats on the federal bench—most notably 6th U.S. Circuit Court Judge Gil Merritt—belong too, and Alexander says, “Membership in the Belle Meade Country Club or any other club shouldn’t only disqualify Republicans from being federal judges. I don’t’ think there ought to be one rule for Republican judges and another rule for Democratic judges.”

As for the Time article, the senator mistakenly says, “That was a rumor from an unnamed source, I believe, and that’s not a fair way to ask that question.” Told that Time identified the source—former CCA manager Ronald Jones—Alexander backtracked. “If one of the senators has questions based on the Time magazine article, I think they should ask the question, and Gus Puryear should answer it and they should evaluate it.” Not exactly a ringing defense of Puryear.

Gun play

The legislature’s make-believe Rambos went belligerent last week for their annual arsenal of bills giving Tennesseans the right to carry firearms almost anywhere they please. Saloons, state parks and college campuses were this year’s favorite new places to go strapped.

But thankfully, even most lawmakers have better sense. Rep. Rob Briley, no stranger to public degradation since his drunken YouTube rampage last year, kicked off the meeting by introducing a big-screen showing of The Colbert Report’s lampooning of Democratic Sen. Doug Jackson and his bill to allow handgun permit holders to carry their weapons into taverns—a plan, according to the Comedy Central show, “to put the loon back in saloon.”

It takes a lot for the legislature to gain national attention, “such as getting a really embarrassing, humiliating DUI, something along those lines,” the self-referential Briley told the House Judiciary subcommittee. “Fortunately for me, I’ve been outdone.”

That set the stage for the subcommittee’s action. With Speaker Jimmy Naifeh making an unusual appearance under House rules to vote, the panel proceeded to kill the guns-in-saloons bill and another that would have made it legal to carry pistols during leisurely nature strolls in state parks. (You never know when a wolverine might decide to attack.)

The subcommittee also killed a bill to let college professors and administrators go armed on campus. That bill’s sponsor, Rep. Stacey Campfield—ever the logical thinker—contended that it would prevent Virginia Tech-style massacres because violent lunatics would reason they’re outgunned and decide to go crazy elsewhere.

There was even a bill—also killed—to restore gun rights to the mentally ill if they go seven years without being hospitalized.

No one mentioned that there’s no real need for that change in the law since Tennessee doesn’t try to stop the mentally ill from buying guns anyway. As the Scene has reported (“Gun Nuts,” May 17, 2007), the state fails to report the names of even the dangerously mentally ill to the FBI’s national instant background check system for firearm purchases. That means any lunatic, upon his release from a mental institution, can go into any Tennessee gun store and walk right back out with the firearm of his choice.

It’ll probably take a shooting spree in Tennessee to make the state’s politicians take notice of that.