Tennessee 'Don't Say Gay' bill clears a hurdle in state House

A bill that would ban teaching Tennessee kids about homosexuality before they reach the ninth grade was approved by a state House subcommittee Wednesday, reigniting an emotional debate in the buckle of the Bible Belt.

The bill, which would limit class discussions to "natural human reproduction science" in public schools, passed the House education subcommittee, which keeps it on track for consideration by the full House, according to reports in the Nashville Tennessean and the Nashville Scene.

To supporters, the bill gives parents control over how and when to educate their children about what is still, to some, a sensitive topic.

"The basic right as an American is my right to life, my right to liberty and my right to the pursuit of happiness," Democratic state Rep. John DeBerry said, according to the Tennessean. "Within that includes being able to run my home, raise my children as I see fit and indoctrinate them as I see fit."

Wednesday's hearing attracted a large crowd, including many high school students involved in gay-straight alliance groups at Nashville high schools. Some students stood on a busy street with their mouths covered in purple tape.

Only one subcommittee member opposed the measure. "It looks to me like a solution looking for a problem," Rep. Craig Fitzhugh, a Democrat, told the Tennessean.

The bill, authored by Republican lawmaker Stacey Campfield, passed the state Senate last year. Campfield prefers to call it a "Don't Teach Gay" bill, and has said it is necessary because homosexuality is more dangerous than heterosexuality.

Campfield recently incorrectly asserted on a a satellite radio talk show that the HIV epidemic began when a gay airline employee had sex with a monkey. His statements have earned him national attention and the ire of gay rights supporters both nationally and locally: A restaurant in his hometown of Knoxville recently refused to serve him.

Jeff Woods, a reporter at the Nashville Scene, noted that Wednesday's debate over the bill took a detour into the merits of the popular TV sitcom "Modern Family," which prominently features a gay couple.

A preacher told the committee that if the bill became law, kids might find out about gay people anyway if they tuned in to the show.

The subcommittee chair, Rep. Joey Hensley, said that he didn't think that "Modern Family" was an "appropriate" show for children.

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-- Richard Fausset in Atlanta

Photo: Opponents of a bill seeking to prohibit the teaching of gay issues to elementary and middle school students wear purple to a meeting of the House Education Subcommittee in Nashville on Wednesday. The bill sponsored by Republican Rep. Joey Hensley of Hohenwald advanced on a voice vote. Credit: Erik Schelzig/Associated Press

Can Johnny Cash amp up Nashville? City gets museum to music icon

He was rediscovered by alternative rockers in the last years of his life, became the subject of a blockbuster biopic, and now the late country music icon Johnny Cash will have his own museum in downtown Nashville.

The plans for the 18,000-square-foot, private museum were unveiled Tuesday by members of the Cash family and Bill Miller, a longtime friend, fan and champion of the Man in Black, according to a report in the Nashville Tennessean.

"My father and mother [the late singer June Carter Cash] had a way through honesty and truth of spirit," said son John Carter Cash. "It's not about the glamour or about making it for Nashville. This is about spreading their spirit."

That spirit will certainly be welcome among Nashville's civic leaders, who have been working diligently in recent years to revitalize a once-moribund downtown, in great part by focusing on Nashville's historic role as America's country music capital. The Ryman Auditorium, once used for Grand Ole Opry broadcasts, was renovated in 1994. Seven years later saw the opening of the Frist Center for the Visual Arts and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

Like many a downtown revitalization tale, this one involves a group of more or less marginalized artists who blazed a trail and helped the business community recognize its rich trove of homegrown cultural capital. You can find a version of that argument at the website Savingcountrymusic.com, which credits punk-influenced, non-mainstream country musicians such as Joe Buck -- who typically looked backward to more rough-hewn country styles for inspiration -- for breathing life into the old haunts.

"The turnaround story for downtown Nashville doesn't involve acts of government," one of the blog's writers posted in September 2010. "Lower Broadway was revitalized by music, and specifically, the music that was the precursor to the music we listen to, and talk about on this site. Mainstream fans will sometimes put down this music as 'obscure' or irrelevant. Toby Keith and Tim McGraw didn't revitalize the most historic part of Nashville. It was a bunch of punk kids from all around the country, who moved to lower Broadway to walk the same streets Hank Williams walked."

Of course, if there is one country legend to bridge the gap between the wild-man-country-grungy and the conservative-country-slick, it is Cash, who continues to be revered by, and influential to, both camps.

His museum is set to open this summer, according to the Tennessean. Whether the punk kids will fork over the $13 admission remains to be seen.

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-- Richard Fausset in Atlanta

Credit: Late country music legend Johnny Cash is at his Hendersonville, Tenn., home in 1999. Credit: Mark Humphrey / Associated Press

In Atlanta, a legal sideshow over training of circus elephants

In Atlanta, the storied Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is coming to town  this week. At the same time, a legal sideshow has sprouted up over the question of how to handle elephants humanely.

At issue is the use of an ancient, and some say cruel, tool used in the training and control of elephants. Known as a bullhook, or ankus, it is typically a long shaft with a metal hook at the end that is used to prod, and sometimes punish the animals. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals alleges that in the Ringling Bros. circus, "elephants are beaten, hit, poked, prodded and jabbed with sharp hooks, sometimes until bloody."

Concern about the use of bullhooks prompted commissioners in Fulton County, Ga., which includes much of Atlanta, to ban the use of the instruments in June, following the lead of municipalities in Florida, New York, and other states, according to Johnny Edwards of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

At the time, an official with Feld Entertainment, the owner of Ringling Bros., said that if bullhooks were banned, it would be impossible to have elephants at the circus.

This week, a county judge issued a temporary restraining order that prevents the county from enforcing animal control laws in the city, according to the paper.

Fulton County Commissioner Rob Pitts, who voted for the ban last year, said that the legal question revolves around the lack of a specific intergovernmental agreement between Atlanta and the county, which provides animal control for the city for a fee.

It is unclear what any of this means for Ringling Bros., which plans to roll into downtown Atlanta's Philips Arena on Wednesday for a six-day engagement. But presumably it means that the show will go on.

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-- Richard Fausset in Atlanta

Photo: Elephants are a draw for circus-goers; their treatment is an issue in several cities, including Atlanta. Here, young children line the sidewalk to watch elephants from the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus parade by in Washington in 2009. Credit: Shawn Thew/EPA

In Alabama, honeymoon murder trial set to begin today

An Alabama man who has already served a brief prison sentence in Australia for the drowning of his bride during their 2003 honeymoon in that country is set to be tried again today in Birmingham on two fresh counts of murder.

Gabe Watson, 34, is accused of drowning his new wife, Tina Thomas Watson, by turning off her air supply during a diving excursion in Australia, according to the Associated Press. He says it was an accident. Prosecutors allege that he killed her in order to get a life insurance payout.

Watson has already served 18 months in an Australian prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter there in 2009, reported Eric Velasco of the Birmingham News. But Australian officials extradited Watson so that he could be tried in Alabama.

The family of the slain woman and Alabama's former attorney general, Troy King, were critical of the way the Australian case was handled, and pressed for Watson to be tried stateside.

Velasco reported that the prosecution will have to show that some aspects of the crime occurred in Alabama.

Watson faces a potential automatic sentence of life without parole. Australian officials only agreed to extradite him if Alabama officials promised not to seek the death penalty.

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Photo: Gabe Watson listens to the proceedings during a January hearing in his case in a Jefferson County, Ala., courtroom. Credit: Bernard Troncale / Birmingham News / Associated Press

Ex-New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin reportedly faces corruption probe

Former New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, who gained national prominence with his anguished on-air cries for assistance during the disastrous floods that plagued his city after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, is the subject of a federal grand jury corruption probe, according to a report in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

The story by reporter David Hammer, which relies on several anonymous sources, states that the investigation is exploring whether vendors with the city gave Nagin perks such as plane tickets, and equipment and materials to a granite-countertop company owned by Nagin's family.

One element of the probe, according to the paper: whether vendors helped the Nagin family firm secure an exclusive deal to install granite countertops on behalf of local Home Depot stores at the same time Home Depot was trying to buy land for a new store in New Orleans' Central City neighborhood.

Another issue reportedly under consideration: whether Nagin broke any laws by accepting airfare and jet rides to Hawaii, Jamaica and other locales that were provided, the Picayune reports, by Mark St. Pierre, a tech-world businessman who is serving a prison sentence for bribing the Nagin administration's technology chief at the time.

Nagin, the paper says, believed that his technology chief, Greg Meffert, was the source of the free rides. Nagin could be in legal trouble if it turns out that he knew that they were actually provided by St. Pierre.

Meffert pleaded guilty to corruption charges in 2010, according to local TV station WDSU. His attorney has said he is cooperating with federal investigators.

Nagin's attorney, Howard Rosenberg, and Jim Letten, the U.S. attorney in New Orleans, both declined to comment to the Times-Picayune.

-- Richard Fausset in Atlanta

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Paradise Garden: New hope for artist Howard Finster's masterpiece

Photo: Former New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin in a 2006 file photo. Credit: Diane Bondareff/Associated Press

Paradise Garden: New hope for artist Howard Finster's masterpiece

The late Rev. Howard Finster, one of the best known American folk artists of the last half-century, always considered his masterwork to be the Paradise Garden behind his house in out-of-the-way Chattooga County, Ga. The nearly four acres of murals, plants, sculptures, biblical visions and curious homemade buildings were the artist's attempt to echo God's work described in the Book of Genesis.

Since Finster's death in 2001, the fantastical site -- at one time a pilgrimage site for artists such as Keith Haring and musicians such as R.E.M. -- has fallen into disrepair. A few years ago, Finster's daughter sold the property to a nonprofit organization headed by a preacher from Alabama; the preacher hoped to raise $350,000 to restore the site but never quite found a way to pull the project off.

Now, however, there is new hope. A new nonprofit called the Paradise Garden Foundation this week announced that Chattooga County had purchased the site for $125,000, assisted by donations from locals and a grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission, a federal economic development entity.

"Our goal is to save this local, national and internationally renowned art site while creating a sustainable heritage tourism destination to promote our local economy," County Commissioner Jason Winters said in a statement.

The new Paradise Garden Foundation, headed by Jordan H. Poole, the former restoration manager at George Washington's historic Mount Vernon home, is developing a site management plan and will direct a new fundraising campaign for restorations. The National Trust for Historic Preservation is pitching in with an effort to attract tourists.

Much of the art in the garden is long gone, in private collections and museums around the world, but the site in northwest Georgia is still uniquely evocative of the self-taught painter who rocketed from obscurity to national prominence in the 1980s with his idiosyncratic, "visionary" paintings, largely due to his association with R.E.M., arguably that era's preeminent taste-making rock 'n' roll group.

Finster's painting for the Talking Heads' 1985 "Little Creatures" LP won Rolling Stone's award for best album cover in 1985, and his works were displayed at the Venice Biennale.

But art fans knew that the best way to experience Finster's vision was to visit with him in his garden. Poole, in a phone interview Friday, said his goal was to make it a place worth visiting again.

"We want to follow Howard's vision -- and that was to promote an artistic culture in this community," he said.

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Photo: Howard Finster's Paradise Gardens in Summerville, Ga., in 2007. Credit: Erik S. Lesser / Los Angeles Times

Nuclear power: Feds may OK first reactors since Three Mile Island

Will today mark the beginning of a new American nuclear age?

Federal regulators in Washington on Thursday may decide whether to approve construction of what would be the first U.S. nuclear power plant since the 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island.

The $14-billion project would bring two new reactors to Georgia's Plant Vogtle, which already has two reactors, constructed more than two decades ago.

If the Nuclear Regulatory Commission votes to approve the request to build the reactors, they could be up and running as early as 2016, according to the Associated Press.

Plant Vogtle, set in the countryside in Burke County, near Augusta, provides Georgia with 10% of its electricity. The new reactors could double its capacity.

The Southern Co., whose subsidiary, Georgia Power, owns the bulk of the Vogtle facility, argues that nuclear power is the "most cost-effective, reliable and environmentally responsible fuel source today." The company also notes that demand for electricity is expected to rise 27% in the Southeast.

The new reactors will be based on a Westinghouse design that has already been approved by the NRC, according to the company.

A number of anti-nuclear groups, meanwhile, say they will file a lawsuit to force the plant owners to divulge more details about how the buildings will be protected against earthquakes such as the one that hit Japan last year, leading to damage to the Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant, and other potential catastrophes, according to Kristi E. Swartz of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Because the plants are being built with a federal subsidy of more than $8 billion in loan guarantees, anti-nuclear forces have derisively described the project as "Solyndra on Steroids," a reference to the now-bankrupt solar-equipment company that was the recipient of a $535-million loan guarantee -- a perk that some Republicans suspect was a political favor to a major Obama administration campaign donor who was also a key Solyndra investor.

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Photo: Steam rises from the cooling towers of nuclear reactors at Georgia Power's Plant Vogtle, in Waynesboro, Ga., in April 2010. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to vote Thursday on Southern Co.'s application to begin full construction of the nation's first new nuclear units in 30 years at Plant Vogtle. Credit: Mary Ann Chastain/Associated Press

Not only a prig would object to 10 grenades and a pig

It sounds like the title of the worst Dr. Seuss book ever. Or the latest prime-time vehicle for a misbehaving Charlie Sheen. Or the bitter memoir of an aging Black Panther:

Ten grenades and a pig.

In fact, it was none of those things, but a partial list of the weird haul police took out of a Miami home they paid a visit to Tuesday after responding to a fight between neighbors, according to the Miami Herald.

The grenades were the most significant cause for alarm, prompting the officers to evacuate nearby homes, reroute traffic and call in the bomb squad.

A local TV station, WPLG, reported that the call to police actually came after the out-of-state man who owned the home showed up and found, to his surprise, a man and a woman in their mid-30s living inside.

That brought the list to two squatters, 10 grenades and a pig.

The man and woman were arrested after they were found to be in possession of drugs and a weapon.

Altogether now: one handgun, marijuana, cocaine, 10 grenades, two squatters and a pig.

The grenades were taken to a lab to be analyzed.

No word on what happened to the pig.

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Did GOP group skip out on $228K South Carolina hotel bill?

Newt Gingrich walked away from South Carolina with a big victory. Now a southern Republican group stands accused of walking away from a tony Charleston hotel after last month's primaries -- and leaving a big unpaid tab.

The suit, filed Jan. 30 by the Charleston Place Hotel, alleges that the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, which reserved "virtually the entirety" of the hotel from Jan. 19 to Jan. 22, has failed to pay an outstanding bill of $227,872.

According to its website, the SRLC is a biennial meeting of Republican party leaders from 14 Southern states. The Charleston gathering, the group says, is considered to be "a must attend Republican event" -- one "expected to be one of the largest multistate events" for the GOP, with more than 2,000 attendees.

The hotel maintains that the meeting was a bust. "Due to their incompetence, the defendants failed to properly plan or manage the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, and it was poorly attended," the hotel's complaint states. "The conference was so poorly attended as to cause one Republican candidate, Newt Gingrich, to cancel his appearance."

Glenn Smith, a reporter at the Charleston Post & Courier, writes that conference officials have denied skipping out on the tab, and are instead engaged in a legitimate disagreement over the final bill.

The suit outlines what the hotel describes as "fraudulent and unsubstantiated claims" by the group, including "various difficulties with refunds or adjustments" and "the overall treatment" of the SRLC staff.

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Photo: Republican presidential candidates place their hands over their hearts during the playing of the national anthem before a debate at the North Charleston Coliseum on Jan. 19 in Charleston, S.C. The debate, hosted by CNN and the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, was the final debate before South Carolina voters headed to the polls for their primary. Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Super Bowl: Madonna shines, M.I.A. shocks, Birmingham blocks

In many ways, Madonna's Super Bowl halftime show delivered the Full Madonna. Who else could have gotten away with that superabundant spectacle of choreography and showmanship, booming beats and cheeky camp, replete with a phalanx of blinged and buffed faux gladiators?

But what about delivering a shock to Middle America? On this score, Madonna of 2012 -- now a mom, a children's book author, and a platinum eminence in her 50s -- appeared to play it safe Sunday night.

Instead, younger guest star rapper M.I.A. stepped in, quickly flipping the bird during a performance of the song "Give Me All Your Luvin'," and "uttering a barely disguised expletive," according to a report by the Associated Press.

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Viewers in the Birmingham, Ala., market, however, had to read all about it Monday morning, because their NBC affiliate blocked the offending moment with a few seconds of a  "local screen shot," according to Joseph A. Bryant of the Birmingham News.

An employee for the station would not comment on the decision to black out the M.I.A. move, according to the reporter.

But not every market was as fast as Birmingham to block the fleeting scenes, and the finger is already posted online.

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-- Richard Fausset in Atlanta

Photo: Nicki Minaj, left, Madonna, center, and MIA, right, perform during the Bridgestone Super Bowl XLVI Halftime Show. Credit: Christopher Polk / Getty Images