...that anyone could actually accuse the Tennessean of doing any heavy lifting.

In the full article at the Tennessean (which is also on the front page of today's Sentinel), Haslam remarks on why he didn't recuse himself on the Northshore Town Center zoning vote:

"Haslam said he might have influenced the process more by recusing himself from votes concerning Cullom because doing so would have sent a clear message to the City Council members that he had a stake in the development."

A reader notes that Haslam recused himself on zoning votes involving Pilot and his own residential neighborhood, where he had obvious conflicts of interest, but decides it's best to keep mum during a make or break zoning vote on a project in which he has a financial interest, namely a $5 million loan that he would presumably like to have paid back.

Further, he admits the loan payments were "laundered" through Holrob:

"According to the governor, the loan arrangement with Knoxville developer Budd Cullom was listed on his 2010 disclosure form as income from Holrob Inc., which is the name of a real estate company that acted as a co-guarantor."

But it's all on the up and up and level and square in Republican Bizarro World.

Nobody wants to talk about stuff like this, because around here the first rule of the Haslam Worship Club is you don't talk about Haslam unless you have something nice to say.