Confederacy of Dunces

Show and tellWhen a 5-year-old student at Tom Joy Elementary pulled two baggies from his pants pocket to show the class, his teacher quickly discovered the kindergartner wasn’t sharing his Little Debbies.

The clear plastic lunch bags in fact contained marijuana and a few rocks of crack cocaine, which the boy innocently explained he had found inside his mother’s dresser.

Meanwhile, 27-year-old Arthea Burroughs already had called the school to say she would be picking her son up early, although she did not give an explanation. But before Burroughs could retrieve her son or the illegal substances he allegedly lifted from her dresser drawer, officers responded to her apartment and charged her with drug possession and child endangerment.

As for the boy, police say, “Detectives believe he was unaware of how dangerous the drugs were and simply brought them to school to show his classmates.”

Bredesen: Layoffs ‘not terribly painful’History has been cruel to Marie Antoinette, something that Gov. Phil Bredesen might consider before he opens his mouth again about the state’s budget problems.

A few days after comparing budget cuts to tossing a little baggage overboard, the notoriously aloof Bredesen broke the news that state employee layoffs are necessary but promised it won’t be “terribly painful for a lot of people.”

Pay raises for state employees who keep their jobs are out of the question, he added, and then sent the political blogosphere into a tizzy with this remark: “I wouldn’t lay somebody off and give somebody else a pay raise.”

As bloggers quickly pointed out, Bredesen gave pay raises of up to 63 percent for top state government officials last year, saying the new salaries made their compensation “a little more reasonable.”

Matt Kisber, the economic and community development commissioner, got an extra $69,336 a year, and finance Commissioner Dave Goetz picked up a tidy $32,412, just to name two of the lucky executives.

And while Bredesen was dismantling the TennCare health insurance program during his first term, that agency’s payroll was increasing by $3.5 million because of big pay raises to top administrators.

Maybe now they’ll all give back their raises.

See no evilHouse Speaker Jimmy Naifeh has found the perfect solution to the legislature’s sleazy ethics. He’s covering his eyes.

On the day former Sen. John Ford entered federal prison for taking bribes in the “Tennessee Waltz” scandal, House Democrats killed a bill to revoke state health insurance benefits for lawmakers convicted of felonies involving their office.

Sen. Charles Curtiss, the bill’s sponsor, said, “In my mind, we ought to be held to a higher standard.” But apparently not in Naifeh’s mind.

Later, the mighty speaker dismissed the possibility that killing the bill hurts Democrats’ public image. He didn’t even know Ford went to prison on the same day. Guess some things are better left unknown. “I quit reading the paper and watching TV,” Naifeh said.

Hypocrites of the weekThe Tennessee Republican Party, whose big tent covers an almost entirely white membership that regularly rails against Mexicans crossing the border, gave its stamp of approval to Cinco de Mayo: “Celebrating ethnic and cultural pride within the context of the American story is as American as baseball, apple pie—and tacos—and Cinco de Mayo has grown in popularity here as more Mexicans have decided to join the American story. We honor the national pride displayed on this day of festivity and the importance of protecting a nation’s heritage and culture in order to ensure its ongoing freedom.”