Boy, I would certainly understand your impulse to get out of politics. Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.

But I guess that means you would vouch for the authenticity of these communications?

____________________________

Forget patriotism. Instapundit.com is the last refuge of scoundrels.

CBT, I hadn't been aware of who you were on this blog up to this point. (I remember you from k2k too?)

I haven't been tracking this other issue that closely until now, except to wonder how Knox County government is connected... how and why Tyler H. was hired... and what he might have been doing at the taxpayer's expense.

It seems at a glance that you are quite reasonable under the circumstances in the emails and in your response to this entire affair.

The bad actors here sound like a small cadre of powermongers... acting with some bizarre and deceptive behavior. With the scorched earth tactics employed, I can't imagine how they are managing to attract volunteers or allies after all this is revealed. And the motivations... were they primarily just self serving... or were they operating for the benefit of some powerful elected official(s). It reflects quite poorly on the Ragsdale administration... and the R party committee for not doing anything about it in response by now.

Question: Were these emails also something that could be stolen from a web based email account that could have been accessed by password? (that would seem a much lesser "crime")
Second. If it was your home computer for sure, is the fact that employees of Knox Co. having these emails copied and printed not evidence enough to link them to your home computer being compromised? (an aside for me, is all this on County time??)

And "the list." Is it considered "stolen"? Is the list not rightfully the property of the R party committee after the change of chairman? And if not, how so?

Another thing I don't get. Even if I'm a loyalist R that doesn't want the further embarrassment of changing the chairman again right away... hasn't leaving him in there made things much worse at this point? Is this guy really so tight with Rags or Tim to merit such latitude WRT his actions? Is the wider R committee membership beholden to the wishes or directives of the elected officeholders over their own autonomy? Wouldn't there be whispers privately, expressing the need to clean house at this point? Or are they protecting him like Foley until after the upcoming election?

BH's signature tag "You can lead a bitter life, or... " makes a lot more sense to me now. He must be the object of considerable scorn (or at least disgust) in many quarters.

And finally, I'm sure you and others who are part of these emails released (wasn't print, right?) by the KNS could feel outrage (separate issue, i'm sure,) but I would stand tall if I were one of the straight shooters in this mess. I don't read anything in them that tarnishes the "good guys."

Doncha love the way everything on his blog is centered?  Somebody needs to show him the left-justify button.

Hmm, Brian seems to have calmed down today.  Wonder who talked some sense into him?

And why must he refer to himself in the third person?  It's even more irritating than the royal "we."

http://brianhornback.blogspot.com/

Mr. Hornback was on the Knox County School Board, 5th District I think, I might be wrong on which district, tho.  He still keeps up with the goings on there and his blog can be very, very informative, altho you have to put up with an always present, and at times overbearing, if not purely insufferable (but always unstated) feeling that he wants you to think he could do it better.

As for his use of center justification - guys, it's his blog!  He can do whatever he wants with it.  So what if he's "unique" in that regard?  There's still plenty of material to bap him over the head with besides that.

The incorrect and overuse of the comma are probably the most comman errors in English (American) grammer.  That said, he should borrow one of Brian's Bloggers Kids school books and review.  He will, like I was when I did it, be amazed at how much more sense it all makes now - rather than back when we were in school.  I hated English in school, just absolutely despised it - now it's cool.

Take Care, Be Good and don't play in the street!

SteveMule

what do the local partys executive commettees do other than fight about foolish things?...what was the big deal about givin the shurif a republican list?..years ago the democrats voted not to give Danny Mayfield our list...i told danny it wasn't worth much but he still wanted it...back then the democrats split between the Bill Powell real Democrats...& those that were for the non partisan mayfield..bill young

Please don't recommend that dangerously bad book without at least pointing your victim to Louis Menand's scathing review in The New Yorker. 

The first punctuation mistake in “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation(Gotham; $17.50), by Lynne Truss, a British writer, appears in the dedication, where a nonrestrictive clause is not preceded by a comma. It is a wild ride downhill from there.“Eats, Shoots & Leaves presents itself as a call to arms, in a world spinning rapidly into subliteracy, by a hip yet unapologetic curmudgeon, a stickler for the rules of writing. But it’s hard to fend off the suspicion that the whole thing might be a hoax.

You know it...
I know it...
The American people know it...

Brian's Blog surfs naked HTML!!
(... and cant use speel chek either.)

"Heyduke - You see 'dangerously bad' where I see humorous and informative. I'm not familiar with Menand's reviews; does he always write like he’s got a branch up his butt?"

Not that you asked me, but fwiw: Louis Menand is probably the most respected American cultural historian alive. He comes from a long line of intellectuals and writers about the American experience (his mother is a biographer of John Adams, I think.) Menand won the Pulitzer Prize for his book The Metaphyscial Club, which is essentially an American history book covering people like Oliver Wendell Holmes and William James. He also writes regularly for the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. He's revered as one of the top literary critics in any language, and is passionate about the cultivation of the English language. Oh, and he teaches literature at Harvard.

Not sure if he has a branch up his butt, but he would probably appreciate the alliterative quality of your quip.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled county e-mail saga that will go...nowhere and then...fizzle out and then...people will say, dang that Ragsdale.

I have complaints about the KNS posting all these emails. I don't see how the contents are relevant and I told them so last Friday. Plus, there are names, addresses, phone numbers. And, the emails are from local journalists, me and four or five others. It was never public record. I guess if I drove over to Bruce Hartman's house, stole mail out of his mailbox and then got someone to post it on the internet, it would be ok. Yes? We're still talking about this issue.

Hell is freezing over, but I agree with you. They really shouldn't have done that, and you might have a case were you to try to bring suit against them for invasion of privacy. There's no clear public good being served here, just a bunch of dirty laundry that exists in every political operation.