Here's the thing that has to be weighing on Rutherford County Mayor Ernest Burgess' mind — now that The Daily News Journal is reporting on the sexual harassment allegations against property assessor Bill Boner (not to be confused with former Nashville Mayor Bill "Seven-Hour" Boner):

“I’ve got 25 employees. You’re welcome to talk to any of them,” Boner told The DNJ, noting the women still working for him are “a lot younger and better looking” than Zumbro and Dumm.

Yep, when faced with accusations that he fired three women after they complained about him sexually harassing them — Janie Zumbro and Kathy Dumm, who the Labor Board just decided were fired in retaliation for complaining, and Robbie Allen, whose allegations against Boner go even deeper than sexual harassment — Boner's defense is that his other female employees are "a lot younger and better looking." People, his defense is that he wouldn't waste his time harassing the old, ugly chicks.

Mayor Burgess should just go on down to the property assessor's office, count up the people working there, and then estimate for tax payers how much it's going to cost to settle with employees who feel like their boss makes sexually inappropriate comments about the women in his office — and values his female employees based on their youth and looks, instead of on their experience and work performance.

Because this isn't just about allegations of workplace misbehavior. This is Boner demonstrating for the local paper how to create a hostile workplace — by remarking on the attractiveness of one's employees. You don't often see people defending themselves against allegations by doing the thing they're alleged to have done, but folks, we're witnessing it.

I know this isn't funny for the women who have to go through it, but I have to admit I laughed.

OK, I admit it. It's a breeding ground for terrorists — people who want to undermine everything worthwhile about the American way of life.

That's right. I'm talking about Saturday Night Live, and their training camp for comedy jihadists. "Oh, he's just being an alarmist," you say. For those of you who are laughing, let me point out some frightening evidence:

Jim Belushi. Gary Kroeger. Brad Hall.

Still not convinced? Rob Schneider. Gilbert Gottfried.

And then there's the most committed of them all. She's been waging a one-woman war on humor for over a quarter-century.

Yes, we're talking about Victoria Jackson.

The anti-comedian turned conservative commentator (I know, it's redundant) is in town working on a story about the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro and its new mosque, to be posted on The Patriot Update, which features the tagline, "A Free Press for the Conservative Devolution." Oops. I mean "Evolution."

On a NewsChannel 5 report last night, Jackson had this to say:

I'm trying to use my fading SNL fame to shine a light on a topic that nobody in the media will talk about. ... I think this big Islamic center will be a breeding ground for terrorists. I mean, duh! I mean, this is the Bible Belt, and Murfreesboro is the buckle on the Bible Belt, and it's a college town, so my feeling is they came here to convert people to Islam.

The above WSMV report chronicles the nine-hour crime spree of one William Todd, who after arriving in Nashville on a Greyhound bus allegedly proceeded to commit 11 felonies in slightly less time than it takes to watch The Lord of the Rings trilogy. (The report erroneously says the crime spree took place April 25. The actual date was March 25.)

• Take a bow, William.

Tennessee Firearms Association executive director and guns-in-lots NRA lobbyist John Harris needs to fine-tune his Facebook account's privacy settings.

Yesterday, Harris posted the above image.

Pith contacted the Second Amendment champion to discern why he would choose to utilize his First Amendment rights in such a spectacularly idiotic fashion, but we have yet to receive comment. It's somewhat clear, however, how he feels about the shooting of unarmed teenager Travyon Martin, whom President Obama said his son would resemble if he had one. Maybe Harris thinks that Obama's hypothetical son would be a strong supporter of the right to bear arms (albeit in the name of Allah). Or perhaps this is Harris' way of showing his support for the NRA-backed Stand Your Ground law that ostensibly served (in part) to prevent Martin's shooter, George Zimmerman, from being charged with a crime. Either way, this guy is classy as shit.

While we wait for Harris' acknowledgment, click through the jump to see Al Sharpton rendered as a man-baby, and a Supreme Court Justice felled by Godwin's Law!

In this video, is a member of a wedding party urinating on War Memorial Plaza? That's what Occupy Nashville claims:

While awaiting Tennessee highway patrol to come enforce the new anti-camping law against us, a wedding took place on the plaza. We watched as the drunken groomsmen waded in the fountain with drinks in hand and one went off in the bushes to pee.

While we get blamed for "bad" behavior, this demonstrates that those with big bucks can do as they please on the plaza with impunity. Message to Representative Eric Watson: Will you place a law against weddings on the plaza because of this "shameful" behavior? Yeah, that's what I thought.

The footage (taken Saturday evening) is definitely too dark and too grainy to sufficiently determine whether or not an act of unlawful public urination occurred on this most hallowed of public grounds. All we can discern is that a man emerges from the trees on the plaza and rejoins the wedding party.

What say you, Pith readers? Pee, or no pee?

Gov. Bill Haslam proposed a cut to the food tax yesterday, slicing it from 5.5 to 5.3 percent in a move that promises to be a boon for working families everywhere. Or not.

Now, I love tax cuts as much as the next person. But even by my math — admittedly, the part of school I was least interested in — that's 20 cents on $100 worth of groceries.

I'll repeat that — TWENTY CENTS.

I'm not sure what level of objectivity I'm sacrificing by calling that the worst tax cut in the history of ever, but surely the $18 million the state is foregoing to bring us this tax cut could go to something better than the pennies it's going to save us. Have you seen some of the roads around here?

Nevertheless, I tried to see how I could use this largess. The first article of faith among tax cutters is always, "You spend your money better than the government can spend it." So here's how the wife and I attempted to spend 20 cents at Publix on a Tuesday night:

• It ain't armed robbery if the gun ain't loaded

Ah, liberty: That inalienable sense of entitlement to do anything, anywhere, which, if left unchecked, lets crazy people buy guns on Craigslist. (Among other things.)

According to a press release sent out this morning by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Tennessee is one of a handful of states whose gun dealers routinely failed to conduct background checks when selling firearms to would-be customers.

Of the 13 Tennessee sellers contacted by investigators, nine of them failed the integrity test by agreeing to sell to a purchaser who said he could probably not pass a background check. These nine sellers were offering both handguns and assault weapons, with asking prices that ranged from $250 to $950 per gun. According to their Internet posts, the sellers were located in and around Clarksville, Donelson, East Brainerd, Lakeland, Lawrenceburg, Maryville and Morristown.

The "Point, Click, Fire" report was commissioned by New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, and found that across 14 states and as many as 125 gun dealers, 62 percent of private gun sellers agreed to sell their wares to individuals who said they probably couldn't pass a background check, proving the customer is almost always right, even if he's robbed a few banks here and there.

As for the Volunteer State, which loves liberty so much it doesn't even require purchase permits or background checks by unlicensed gun merchants, the reported failure rate was 69 percent.

Among its other findings:

The 125 sellers the investigators examined were located in 14 states. While investigators would need a larger sample to draw meaningful statistical conclusions, investigators did note slight regional differences in the failure rate. Sellers in five Southern states — Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, South Carolina and Virginia — had a slightly higher failure rate than sellers in five Western states — Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Texas and Colorado. Sellers in four Midwestern states — Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and Kansas — had the lowest failure rate.

The investigators calculated overall failure rates for sellers on the five websites where the vast majority of the sellers investigated by the city listed their gun ads: Armslist, Craigslist, Gunlistings.org, KSL.com and GlockTalk. The failure rate among sellers on these sites ranged from 54 percent to 82 percent.

And you thought our only online concern was Amazon ...