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Confederacy of Dunces A weekly roundup of embarrassing behavior.

Editor's Note by Liz Garrigan There’s a sketch of me on our blog that’s pretty unflattering, though unfortunately it’s a dead-on likeness. Still, the problem has to be solved one way or another, and while this may seem drastic, here’s the fix: I’m retiring from the Scene.

Fight the Powerless by Sarah Kelley In the fall of 2004, a well-to-do lawyer living in a luxury downtown condominium called 911 and reported that a homeless man had assaulted him in the park.

Love-Hate Mail Letters from our readers.

Desperately Seeking the News: ‘We Will Prevail’ by Matt Pulle While Andrea Conte kept a smiling, tolerant public face as critics lambasted her for digging a gigantic hole in the front yard of the governor’s mansion, from behind her computer our demure first lady was quietly denouncing “partisan political hacks” acting out of “meanness of spirit and selfishness.”

Love-Hate Mail
Letters from our readers.

Not Who He Says He Is
by P.J. Tobia
While Anthony Lucas is portrayed as a prominent businessman in the Spanish-language market, he does not speak Spanish or possess any significant Hispanic heritage.

Self-Restraint
by Elizabeth Ulrich
Disability advocates who have spent more than a year trying to convince Tennessee legislators about the troubling fact that special education students are being physically restrained, strapped to chairs and locked in janitor closets hit a small landmark last week as the state Senate passed a bill to address a growing problem in classrooms across the state.

Confederacy of Dunces
The young woman explained that several classmates told her it was possible to manipulate the credit card machine at this particular station after hours to get free gas.

Rocky Topless
by Jeff Woods
With a coal company essentially promising to mine by blowing off the tops of Tennessee mountains, lawmakers inexplicably refused to act and all but guaranteed great swaths of ecologically important woodlands will be laid to waste.