Why that district cast aside "Brother Bob" Rochelle, I'll never know...

This makes sense if a lawmaker is being told by some outside party what legislation to introduce and then just does as she is told.

It is worth noting that Beavers has never produced a long form birth certificate for herself. Who's to say that she is not simply a fair skinned Mexican who has anglicized her name? She may just be trying to keep the focus on Obama so as to keep folks from looking too closely at her own history.

Is she trying to hide her background? She is certainly playing her own birth certificate cards close to the vest.

Why

How is this person Chairperson of the Judiciary Committee?http://rcradioshow.blogspot.com/2011/02/senator-mae-beavers-from-tennessee-is.html

So according to your bill, it doesn't sound like someone born in Hawaii since – eventually someone born in a state that only gives the short form would be eligible for presidency. Are you aware of the part of the – there's a section of theconstitution called the full faith and credit clause? It's inArticle 4 Section 1.
MS. BEAVERS: Yes.
RC: Well, do you know what it says about state documents?
MS. BEAVERS: You tell me.
RC: Well, I think it says that any state is required toaccept the documents from another state. So that basicallymeans that Tennessee has to accept a valid birth certificatefrom Hawaii or Montana or any other state. It means that statescan't go adding requirements to these sort of documents.

Trasncript RCR 02242011 Mae Beavers

Ronald Reagan didn't have a birth certificate until he was over 30years old

What an embarrassment. Yet another. I think we were on Daily Show and/or Colbert again at least once, maybe twice this week.

Maybe we need a bill that says any new bill must have originated in the State of Tennessee by and for the people of the state and must have attached to it a sponsor's narrative in the sponsor's own words explaining the purpose of the bill and summarizing the details and state and federal constitutionality of the bill and be fully reviewed and vetted by the Joint Legislative Staff Office of Legal Services before filing, the public welfare requiring it.

And maybe in addition to a fiscal note, the bill should have a sanity note that rates it on a scale of one (rational) to ten (batshit crazy).

I also wish that when a bill amends existing state law they would be required to include the exact wording of the existing law and the law as it would exist after the amendment. Too often you have to go look it up and then piece together a bunch of complicated edits, making it difficult to see what it is they are really saying.

On page 2 of that 22 page transcript, Beavers says they "decided to expand (the bill's applicability) to all the federal offices," so I sat here and read the remaining 20 pages.

You know, to see whether the MC was going to tell her that no birth certificate could possibly be required of candidates for these other federal offices because THE U. S. CONSTITUTION DOES NOT REQUIRE ANY OFFICEHOLDER OTHER THAN THE PRESIDENT TO BE A NATURAL-BORN CITIZEN???

No, the MC never did tell her. And he refrained from characterizing the bill as "ridiculous" until page 16.

What a gent.

(Looks like we're stuck with her for a while. Bob Rochelle, for TN Senate in 2014!!!)

I also wish that when a bill amends existing state law they would be required to include the exact wording of the existing law and the law as it would exist after the amendment. Too often you have to go look it up and then piece together a bunch of complicated edits, making it difficult to see what it is they are really saying.

Absolutely--that's the reason 70% of Knox County voters inadvertently passed a charter amendment agreeing to lift term limits from the Law Director's office in 2004--just ten years after 70% of voters had agreed to impose them.

How handy for the author of the amendment, namely the affected law director.

On that same 2004 ballot, voters probably would have approved two other proposed charter amendments lifting the one-year length of Knox County residency requirement applicable to Commission and School Board candidates, too, I'll bet, if I hadn't called Michael Silence over and over, screaming at him that KNS had to DO something about it (sorry, Michael :-)

Those two amendments were actually accidental, as the Charter Review Committee had intended to propose lifting just the one-year length of district residency, not Knox County residency, but the law director misplaced a comma at the exact same spot on each amendment's ballot text and nobody noticed their changed effect.

(The amendments relating to Commission and School Board candidates DID fail 60/40 following the KNS story, but KNS had actually endorsed all three screwball amendments. Go figure.)