Subject: Kingston

• Busted Rhymes: The Top 10 Most Preposterous Rap Songs of 2008

  By Ben Westhoff Hip-hop A-listers including Rick Ross, Akon and Plies were caught grossly exaggerating their gangster credentials this year. (Turns out they were painfully law-abiding. The horror!) But even if your favorite rapper wasn't caught in a lie, you can bet he or she put out a hilariously absurd record or two in 2008. Here are the most preposterous rap songs of 2008. RICK ROSS, FEATURING T-PAIN "The Boss" (Def Jam) Though Rick Ross claimed on his debut album, Port of Miami, to know

  December 29, 2008

• TVA Coal-Ash Spill: In the End, Consumers Will Pay the Freight

  A Senate hearing on Tennessee's toxic fly ash spill took place today, and a coupla' Roane County residents got to go to D.C. One of them even brought a Mason jar full of the gray muck coating their property, which they presented to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). There was nothing particularly groundbreaking said at the hearing. But some of the testimony got me thinking about the way costs are passed from TVA to the customers by the decisions they've made. Let's start with the improved scrubbers

  January 8, 2009

• One Is the Loneliest Number: TVA Spills More Crap in Alabama

  TVA Widows Creek Fossil Plant; TVA considers South a happy dumping groundThis is getting kinda ridiculous. The TVA Widows Creek Fossil Plant in Alabama--roughly 30 miles southwest of Chattanooga--spilled an unknown amount of gypsum into nearby Widows Creek at about 6 a.m. this morning. The leak, reports say, has been stoppered. But the tiny creek flows into our watery whipping boy of late, the mighty Tennessee River. Officials are investigating any effect the spill may have on drinking water. Gy

  January 9, 2009

• Scientists To Monitor Impact of TVA Kingston Spill on Fish

  Appalachian State University scientists in the fields of biology and chemistry are teaming up with biologists from the Tennessee Aquarium to analyze just how badly the Tennessee Valley Authority has screwed up the ecosystem of the Emory River that runs through Kingston and Harriman. (The Emory River feeds the Clinch and Tennessee rivers, so it affects a lot of us)The professors will examine sediment, water and tissue samples from fish to determine how concentrated the heavy metals in the river a

  January 21, 2009

• 'Only God Should Move Mountains'

  If anything good comes from the TVA coal ash spill, maybe it'll be a law to ban coal companies from blowing the tops off our mountains. The church-going conservationists fighting to save Tennessee's mountains are trying to capitalize on the TVA disaster. Their bill failed last year. This year, they're scoring political points by pointing out that coal sludge ponds, like those that failed in Kingston, are located at all mountaintop mining sites. They are filled with a witch's brew of waste that's

  February 25, 2009

• TVA Gestapo Arrests Activist for Giving Grandma Ride Home

  Tennessee Valley Authority Police arrested 29-year-old Matt Landon Jones with environmental group United Mountain Defense on suspicion of trespassing after he drove through a check point on Swan Pond Road near the TVA Kingston Fossil Plant. In the video of the arrest above, it's clear that he was giving two elderly women rides home from a public meeting Wednesday. Portions of Swan Pond Road are currently blocked off, and some sort of ID tag must be presented to pass. On a local website calle

  March 6, 2009

• Arrested TVA Spill Activist Out of the Can and Other Coal Ash Atrocities

  The wide-eyed United Mountain Defense volunteer who was arrested last week for driving through a TVA police checkpoint while taking an elderly woman home was released on $3,000 bond this weekend--an amount reflecting his apparent danger to society.As it turns out, the arrest of this Good, if not naive, Samaritan was not the most outrageous act in TVA's long string of atrocities. Here's a little taste (careful not to choke on the coal ash): Matt Landon was driving an elderly woman named Eva Hewit

  March 9, 2009

• Another Fly Ash Release; This Time It's Maryland

  Here we have yet another example illustrating the oxymoron that is "clean coal."Some 4,000 gallons of coal ash sludge sullied the Potomac River Sunday after a pipeline ruptured at a coal-burning power plant in Hagerstown, Md. Sunday, befouling the banks along the West Virginia side.A hole about the size of a dime leaked the toxic mess Sunday evening until early Monday morning. Clearly, this leak is minuscule compared to the billion-gallon deluge loosed from the TVA Kingston Plant in late-Decembe

  March 10, 2009

• In eastern Tennessee, the TVA spill turns the simple life toxic

  January 15, 2009

• A Sticky Wicket

  A Jamaican teaches a young Jew what’s cricket—in every sense—in Wondrous Oblivion

  November 1, 2007

• Ultimate Penalty

  November 7, 1996

• Clean the Cabinet of Cooley

  February 23, 2006

• Farmers in Ash Spill Ground Zero Face Mounting Health Problems; TVA Suit Plaintiffs Double

  Terry and Sandy Gupton at their farm.Environmental activist Erin Brockovich and attorney Robin Greenwald visited Harriman for the second time since a tidal wave of fly ash was loosed from the TVA Kingston Fossil Plant.Now more than 200 residents have joined the lawsuit against TVA, citing developing health problems and property values that took a nose dive as Harriman and Kingston became synonymous with man-made environmental disaster. You may remember an elderly couple whose farm was inundated

  April 16, 2009

• Ultimate Penalty Part 2

  November 14, 1996

• A Face In The Crowd

  April 10, 2003

• Love/Hate Mail

  Mourning Desperately

  July 25, 2002

• The Thinking GOP Rallies

  Many Republicans run as fast as they can from candidate Van Hilleary—right to Jim Henry

  July 18, 2002

• The Man Who Came From Nowhere

  Van Hilleary’s résumé is light, but his ambition is high

  June 6, 2002

• Yabba Dabba Doo!

  March 7, 2002

• Gloves Off

  Jim Henry leaps into the gubernatorial fracas

  February 28, 2002

• News Briefly

  Contempt for MLK

  January 31, 2002

• Oh, Henry

  Van Hilleary may have a significant GOP challenge after all

  June 28, 2001

• Release Mechanism

  August 27, 1998

• Block-Rockin'

  May 28, 1998

• Report on TVA Management: Hello, One Hand. Meet the Other

  A photographic approximation of a TVA couple's therapy session.TVA needs marital counseling. The nation's largest public power company needs to talk (insert effusive counselor gesturing). To really learn how to communicate...with itself.According to a report examining the management of TVA's coal-ash storage operations, one hand didn't seem to know what the other was doing. A study obtained by the News Sentinel said, "Communications between four separate TVA divisions with responsibilities for a

  July 21, 2009

• Morning Roundup: Wamp Goes After Ramsey and Haslam on Taxes

  ​Zach Wamp takes a shot at Ramsey and Haslam. "They'll have to defend their record of increasing taxes," he says. ... Bob Corker and two other senators flee Haiti and Tropical storm Noel. "It was just raining like mad," Sen. Tom Harkin says. ... A state trooper accused of fondling an 18-year-old man has resigned. Brad Schrade is inquiring. ... The state sues over Internet gravestone orders. ... A Metro agency leaks Social Security numbers onto the Internet. ... The EPA chief makes surpris

  August 11, 2009

• NY Times on the Coal Ash Conundrum That Shouldn't Be

  Terry and Sandy Gupton at their ruined pasture, which is now ground zero.​It's been more than a year since the largest man-made environmental disaster in United States history struck a tiny East Tennessee town a devastating blow. And what do we have to show for it so far? Nothing but a poisoned populace, a sullied landscape in the shadow of the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston smokestacks, and a vacuum where a bill that federally regulates coal ash as hazardous waste should be.The Obama a

  January 20, 2010