Grandpa drug dealer
Cops beware! There's been an escalation in the eminently sensible, entirely winnable war on drugs. See that old guy with the glasses and the receding hairline driving a Winnebago? Yeah, he's the newest vector.Last week, cops pulled over 61-year-old Jakie Spencer and Jennifer Robinson, 27, on I-40 just west of downtown for tailgating. When a police dog's sniffer picked up the pungent scent of bud emanating from somewhere in the RV, a search turned up 336 pounds in bricks inside the luggage compartment.Nashville's finest believe the grass was meant for local bongs and Zig Zags. For their troubles, the Houston, Texas, couple are being held in lieu of an over $1 million bond. I think rapists probably post a cheaper bond, but what could be more corrosive to society than pot? Of course, the 9mm pistol they found might have something to do with it, too. —Brantley Hargrove

Eric Crafton calls it right
Give credit where credit is due. Councilman Eric Crafton is making a whole lot of sense when it comes to Nashville's newest White Elephant, the proposed Music City Center.On Tuesday, Crafton introduced a resolution formally declaring that Metro Council wants the new convention center built with revenue bonds. Why revenue bonds? Because that way, if the convention center can't pay for itself (spoiler alert—can't) taxpayers won't be left footing the bill. In short, Crafton jumped ahead in the 17 Steps Toward Bankrupting Your City playbook. And the response was predictably swift.The Convention & Visitors Bureau firebombed the phones and got the bill deferred. Now it won't be considered until next month, after finance director Rich Riebeling's funding presentation to the council.It probably would have been better if Crafton had let someone else introduce the resolution. The stink of English Only is still fresh. And Crafton has a reputation, deserved or not, for grandstanding. But no matter his previous missteps, Crafton's dead right on the convention center. —Caleb Hannan

Marsha Blackburn: May the farts be with you
Forgive Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn. She's a little confused again. You see, the Environmental Protection Agency wants to regulate greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change.

But Blackburn sees a dastardly plot. She thinks the EPA wants to regulate another kind of emission—cow and pig farts, to be precise. And before anyone could set her straight, dammit if she hadn't already launched yet another of her madcap crusades to stop big government in its tracks.

Her exploits are chronicled on a crazy conservative website with a story headlined "The Cow Tax Causing a Stink." Blackburn is sponsoring a bill to amend the Clean Air Act so that greenhouse gases are not subject to regulation by the EPA. According to the article:

"Since cows produce a certain amount of methane, and methane would be regulated under The Clean Air Act, then cows and pigs would be subject to a tax. Blackburn said projections she has seen suggest that for dairy cows the tax would be about $175 a head, $20 per pig and $88 for beef stock. Plus, a tax on farmers would also mean something to consumers. Blackburn said, 'the cost of milk is going to go up and all of your dairy products.'

"This tax would also mean fewer jobs, because according to Blackburn, 'they are going to be putting more money into compliance and regulation rather than putting that money into jobs creation.' "

Of course, no one in Washington believes any of this will actually happen, but that's never stopped Blackburn before.

It reminds us of the time she went on a fact-finding mission to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She stepped out of the plane, looked around and didn't see any wildlife. That convinced her that we ought to drill for oil there. Silly thing, she didn't know wildlife is sometimes hard to find. Because it's wild. She thought the Arctic was like Brentwood, where the Starbucks and the nail salon were all within easy driving distance in your SUV. —Jeff Woods

Killing the literate
Last week's Scene featured the tale of the Nashville Adult Literacy Center's adult reading program ("English Only: One in Eight Nashvillians Can't Read," Feb. 19). Considering the headline, you can probably understand why the program is important. It's a staggering statistic that should be embarrassing to anybody who calls this city home.

Unfortunately, that number is likely to get worse. The future of the center—the only place in town for adults who read at or below a sixth-grade reading level—is in doubt.

Last week Meg Nugent, the center's director, was laid off.

Nugent has been with the center since the beginning. Maybe Metro plans on cutting the program or maybe Nugent's paycheck was just too big. Finance Director Rich Riebling did not return a call seeking explanation.

In tough economic times, programs get cut. But this program ain't midnight basketball. There are hundreds of volunteers that give freely of their time to make it work, and adult illiteracy is a problem that quickly spawns more serious social ills.

As Nugent told the Scene (back when she still had a job): "Eighty or 90 percent of people in prison read at very low levels. Low-level readers also tend to live in poverty. They have higher health problems because they don't read preventive literature. Some overdose their children accidentally because they can't read medicine bottles." —P.J. Tobia

Sen. Doug Jackson hinders police investigations
The liberal blogosphere is puzzling over Sen. Doug Jackson's bill to thwart basic police work by banning the sale of guns that have been microstamped. We're talking about new technology to link cartridge cases to guns by engraving microscopic codes on the firing pin. It allows the matching of a spent cartridge to a specific gun and provides one additional piece of evidence for investigators to gather in building a criminal case.

Sounds reasonable, right? Which is all the more cause to arouse the suspicions of Second Amendment champions like Jackson.

Last year he was lampooned on The Colbert Report for his bill to let people go strapped into saloons. Now, he's back in Nashville tirelessly defending our God-given rights, this time against anyone who might try to etch something with a laser onto one of our weapons. Why is Jackson against making it easier for police to catch criminals who shoot people? He thinks it could lead to the dreaded national gun registry that every law-abiding gun owner lies awake at night fretting about.

To the NRA's outrage, California has decided to ban the sale of new semi-automatic pistols that aren't microstamped by 2010. Six other states are considering such legislation. Jackson wants Tennessee to draw a line in the sand.

"It's an unproven technology," he says. "It's an expensive technology. Tests have shown it's very unreliable. It creates an opportunity even to frame an innocent citizen by scattering ballistically imprinted ammunition around a crime scene."

What's more, the senator says, "That technology, assuming that it worked, would be most effective if legislation were passed that required all guns be registered."

Now we're getting to the real motivation for microstamping. The government wants to seize your guns!

"I see this as the first step toward a registry of our guns, and I see registration of all of our guns as a preamble to confiscation of our guns," Jackson says, really getting warmed up now. "When Tennessee passes this bill, you're going to see many other states follow suit. In Tennessee, we are going to make a statement."

And there you have it, dear Pith reader: a glimpse into the tortured mind of a gun freak. —Jeff Woods

A lesser Rob Briley
Q: How's Mike Stewart working out so far as Rob Briley's replacement in the state House?

A: Great, if you're satisfied with a representative who won't stand up to the state's Second Amendment freaks.

Last week, as a slew of absurd gun bills went winging out of a so-called legislative study committee, Stewart sat in timid silence. His only contribution? He meekly suggested a 9 p.m. curfew on toting guns into Tennessee saloons. The committee made it 11 o'clock and sent the infamous guns-in-saloons bill on its merry way.

So presumably an hour before midnight in roadhouses all across this great state, the barkeep will fire his gun into the air and demand that all patrons place their arsenal on the bar until closing time. It'll be like Wyatt Earp has arrived to clean up the town. I feel better already about this legislation.

Also on the committee's "recommended" list is a bill allowing handgun permit holders to carry pistols into state and local parks to fend off vicious wildlife and criminals lurking in the bushes. Never mind those children playing on the gym set. Under the bill, even if city and county governments object to this, they couldn't restrict handguns in their parks.

Another bill would close the state's list of permit holders to public view. That way, we can't tell whether the Safety Department is following the law by conducting background checks on these people so violent felons aren't packing heat. The bill would also penalize publication of the names, should an enterprising reporter come into possession of them somehow. That sounds suspiciously like prior restraint to me, but what do I know?

OK, so Briley's gone and that's a good thing. But damn if Pith doesn't miss him. He was crafty and vociferous in his opposition to these nutty gun bills. If he had been on this study committee, he would have spoken out against them and might have figured out a way to muck things up. The panel didn't possess the authority to kill the bills, but it didn't have to put its stamp of approval on any, either.

Stewart mumbled something about his "respect for the work of the committee" and said he didn't necessarily intend to vote for these bills once they come up in the Judiciary Committee. But he said his "inclination is to recommend all these so they can go through the committee process." That's a cop-out. —Jeff Woods

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