Last July Tennessee raised the state tax on cigarettes to 62 cents per pack - a 42-cent per pack raise. That made Tennessee’s cigarette tax higher than any of the eight states it borders, in some cases, much higher.

And Tennessee’s ruling class seems surprised - but shouldn’t be - that smokers living within an hour’s drive of the border, which is almost all Tennesseans, are cruising to another state the buy their smokes. Maybe smokers (I am not one) drive more than an hour, I dunno. But drive they do, even though their purchase savings are greatly offset, if not eliminated, by the cost of the fuel they use and the wear and tear on their autos.

Unles,, of course, they buy a lot of cigarettes. And therein lies the problem. It is also against the law in Tennessee to bring more than two cartons per person (I think, but it could be per vehicle) of cigarettes into Tennessee.

Under state law, bringing more than two cartons of cigarettes into the state without paying Tennessee taxes is a “Class B” misdemeanor, carrying punishment of up to six months in jail and/or a $500 fine. Bringing 25 or more cartons is a “Class E” felony, with minimum penalty of one year in prison and a maximum of six years plus a fine of up to $3,000. In addition, the specific state statute dealing with untaxed cigarettes provides that vehicles used to transport more than two cartons “are considered contraband and are subject to seizure,” says a Department of Revenue statement.

Farr said that agents have been instructed to seize any vehicle carrying more than 25 cartons of cigarettes without Tennessee tax stamps. In cases where three to 24 cartons are involved, he said vehicle seizure is “at the officer’s discretion.”

As one wag remarked somewhere on the Internet, Tennessee’s increased revenue from the rise in taxes will be used to pay for stopping freelance bootleggers. James Joyner (whence the cite) asks, reasonably enough,

How this can possibly be constitutional is beyond me. First, what gives Tennessee police officers the authority to operate across state lines? Second, surely seizing a vehicle potentially worth upwards of $40,000 for the “crime” of possessing more than two cartons of cigarettes amounts to excessive punishment under the 8th and 14th Amendments?

First, Tennessee revenooers can’t make arrests outside their legal jurisdiction, but they may cross state lines in the otherwise performance of their duties. But the Constitutional questions are compelling, I think. I’d argue against what Tennessee is doing because of the Commerce Clause of the main body of the Contitution:

Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution, known as the Commerce Clause, reads as follows:”The Congress shall have Power …To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”

I think it’s simply beyond arguing that Tennessee is attempting to regulate commerce across state borders, authority for which is reserved by the Constitution to the US Congress, and is thereby usurping a federal power.

Where does personal use end and bootlegging begin? Bootlegging meaning reselling the smokes in Tennessee for profit, not buying a dozen cartons for Aunt Esmerelda, who is too weak to drive because of her emphysema, and who pays back the exact amount of the purchase.

Tennessee does have a legitimate interest in prohibiting bootlegging of cigarettes, and for that the 25-carton limit seems reasonable to me. But conviction for actual bootlegging would require more than possession of some arbitrary number of cartons, would it not? If a legger bought other-state cigs, saving $4.50 per carton (45 cents per pack), then he’d have to charge his illicit customers at least half that to recoup costs and make a profit. So, 25 cartons bought at $4.50 discount = $112.50, call half of it profit at resale, or $66. Do that six days per week and the legger nets almost $400 per week.

But the state has brought all this on itself because it raised the tax and thereby generated the incentive for the majority of Tennessee smokers to buy across state lines. That’s the trouble with vice taxes, they require inordinate resources to enforce and often criminalize what would otherwise be seen as quite reasonable behavior. Tennessee’s standard sales tax is already one of the highest in the nation, why not just tax cigarettes at that rate (9.25 percent where I live) and be done with it?

Oh, I know, I know, don’t bother to try to enlighten me.

Isn’t based on facts or sound reporting, that is. In a story by Kate Howard, Nashville’s newspaper, The Tennessean, reported on Nov. 30 that “State could require drivers to pay gas tax by the mile,” explaining what was aparently a proposal by state Sen. Mark Norris and some other legislators to impose a gas-pump tax that charged a fee-per-mile driven by the conumer instead of the present tax per gallon.

The system would work something like this: You pull up to a gas station, and a transmitter in your car tells the pump how far you’ve driven since you last filled your tank. The state charges you pennies for each mile you’ve traveled instead of the usual 21.4 cents per gallon you’ve been paying with every fill-up.

Members of the Senate Transportation Committee have been informally discussing the possibility of a “user fee” system, in which a Global Positioning System device would transmit your mileage to a gas pump and charge accordingly.

“Gas tax revenues are static, and they don’t necessarily increase with the transportation needs that have to be met,” said Sen. Mark Norris, R-Collierville, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee. “We need to look at more forward-thinking concepts … like doing away with the gas tax and going to a user-driven system.”

The Tennessean allows comments on its online stories (bravo!) and the first comment was,

So, let me get this right. I purchase a small, fuel efficient vehicle because of the miles I have to drive to get to work - but I pay gas tax based on miles driven, not gallons purchased.

Someone who designs gas guzzlers must have thought this one up.

And so for a couple of days a political kerfuffle ensued here in the state on this dopey idea. On Dec. 1 reporter Howard bylined a piece in which Sen. Norris denied proposing a per-mile tax.

But on Thursday, Norris said he did not support a fee based on miles driven and had no plans to propose that the idea be studied in Tennessee. Instead, he said, he was just mentioning a concept that came up in a federal commission talking about the Southeast in general, not Tennessee.

“The idea of a GPS user fee system is not on the table in Tennessee,” Norris said.

In Oregon, drivers in a pilot user-fee study have GPS transmitters in their cars that tell a sensor at gas pumps to deduct the gas tax and charge them 1.2 cents per mile driven instead. The idea is, it’s a more steady and fair source of state revenue.

“I do not support a user fee,” Norris said. “My point has been, we’re not properly using the revenue we already have. The taxpayers have already paid for transportation.”

Sloppy reporting or a politician backtracking? Both seem attractibe hypotheses, yes? For the answer, let’s turn to Bill Hobbs, who wrote Dec. 2 that the Tennessean’s story was “Rife With Misrepresentations.” The issue for the senator and his tax-reform allies was the misuse of the present collection of 21.4 cents per gallon tax. Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research and a political ally with Sen. Norris on this issue, told Bill that he was interviewed by Howard for the story.

[Kate Howard] asked if there were any benefits from using this “tax by the mile” scheme. I told her that the only problem with the current gas tax is that the highway funds generated by the gas tax are raided to offset general fund appropriations. If the “tax by the mile” scheme stopped that, and all of the gas tax money went to fund road projects, then I’d be relieved in that one regard. From that statement, readers were led to suppose that the Tennessee Center for Policy Research supports this dodgy highway funding proposal.

My quotes have since been removed from the online version of the story.

I want to stress that the Tennessee Center for Policy Research unequivocally opposes the idea of forcing Tennesseans to pay gas tax by the mile. The scheme would increase the tax burden of all Tennesseans and potentially compromise civil liberty.

In fact, as Bill points out, The Tennessean has removed from its web site its original version and replaced it with a much shorter version, the one I linked to above. Nashvillepost.com ran a story on Dec. 1 that tells Sen. Norris’ side of the issue in detail.

Norris, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, tells NashvillePost.com that he and his staff have worked exstensively the past few weeks trying to bring Tennessean reporter Kate Howard up to speed on transportation issues.

Howard, who just recently moved into the state, has been dubbed “Ms. Beep” by the Gannett-owned paper and is slated to be its full time transportation reporter.

Yesterday, Howard and The Tennessean reported that Norris was floating the idea of a new tax that would charge Tennessee motorists by the mile, something that really is being considered in Oregon, and that the monies collected would pay for shortfalls in Tennessee’s highway infrastructure budget. Capitol Hill insiders familiar with Norris’s track record on infrastructure and taxation were shocked by the report.

So was much of the public, apparently. The story generated more than 80 comments on the newspaper’s website, and a quasi-poll packaged with the story attracted more than 5,000 votes. The feedback in both cases was overwhelmingly negative toward Norris and his supposed idea.

Norris tells NashvillePost.com that he and his staff met with The Tennessean’s editorial staff and Howard yesterday in an attempt to clear up matter, hoping for clarification of his position in today’s paper. Instead, he says, today’s article makes it appear that he is backtracking on an issue due to pressure from readers of the daily paper.

“This issue was never on the table,” Norris insists. “In a long conversation with Howard, I was giving her examples of other types of user fees after I said I was against raising the gas tax and against establishing tolls on top of a gas tax that the Bredesen administration is not even using. The transportation trust fund needs to be repaid by the administration out of existing revenues.”

I’m going to believe Sen. Norris here, whom I have never met, btw, and who does not represent my district of the state. After all, it’s not like The Tennessean has a stellar reputation for fair reporting.

BTW, Bill Hobbs just celebrated his 5th blog anniversary. Drop by and say congrats!

With one percent of Tennessee precincts reporting, FNC has declared incumbent Gov. Phil Bredesen the winner over Republican challenger and state Senator Jim Bryson. I think FNC said that Bredesen has 59 percent of the counted vote. Bryson never broke closer than something like 40 points in polls throughout the campaign, so this is no surprise. I’d have to point out that Gov. bredesen was a true gentleman toward his challenger from beginning to end, even agreeing to debate Sen. Bryson during the campaign season when there was no political upside to doing so, according to pundits. Despite the dirt slung between Dem. US Senate hopeful Harold Ford, Jr. and Republican candiate Bob Corker, the governor’s race was mudless. The only ad that struck me as even slightly muddy was Sen. Bryson’s first TV ad, which featured a miniaturized Bredesen look-alike, dressed ina tux, staggering drunkenly on Bryson’s palm. Come to think of it, the governor’s campaign was pretty much ad free. Bredesen always led in polls so far that he didn;t really need to spend anything and Bryson’s campaign was far from cash rich. As well, ad time was being bought up in huge lots by Ford and Corker.

More here as the night goes on. Maybe.

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Okay, riddle me this:

Less than one percent reporting. Republican Steele ahead in the very few counted votes by 11 points. And he’s being declared the loser. How? Why? What answer can there be except polling?

When did the purpose of voting become validating the polls? How on earth can a new channel, even vaunted, all-knowing, all-seeing Fox News Channel, declare anyone a winner with only one percent of the vote counted?

As I imagine a lot of public-school systems are doing across the country, the ones around here are holding emergency-procedures drills and taking more steps to ensure school safety.

Williamson County schools were “locked down” after the recent school shootings in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wisconsin and Missouri. Exterior doors were locked, and staff members were asking for photo identification at the entrance to schools.

Williamson County is where my family and I live. Sweet Darling Daughter, 12, seventh grade, at dinner table last night:

SDD: We held drills in our classrooms today to know what to do if an intruder comes in.

Me: What did they tell you to do?

SDD: Try to hide behind the teacher’s desk if we can, or behind a counter in the room.

Me: So you are supposed to hide behind the teacher’s desk and wait your turn to be shot?

SDD: Umm…

Me: How about 30 screaming seventh-graders immediately attacking, throwing textbooks, paperweights and whatever else you can find? That should give the teacher enough time to reach into her purse, pull out her .357 magnum, and drill the guy in the forehead, yes?

SDD: Dad, the teachers don’t have guns!

Me: I know. I’m just saying … Well, what about smashing a window and jumping outside?

SDD: Our classrooms don’t have windows.

Me: This is a problem.

SDD: I could run to hide in the girls’ bathroom.

Me: As Murphy’s Laws of Combat say, if it’s hard for the enemy to get in, it’s hard for you to get out. Don’t hide any place where you have to go by the bad guy to escape.

SDD: Umm . . .

News reports say that some local officials around the country are urging that teachers be permitted to pack heat at their schools. After all, as Linda Bell, mother of three school kids, was quoted in the Tennessean: “Just because it happened somewhere else doesn’t mean it can’t happen here.”

So what to do?

I am reluctant to agree that arming teachers is a solution. They didn’t sign up for it when they entered the profession. There is enough on teachers’ plates without expecting them to stay proficient in handgun use. A teacher poorly trained or untrained in effective use of firearms could be just as dangerous to the kids as an intruder. If such a teacher gets downed, then the bad guy has another weapon.

But recent events also show that police response is not very encouraging. It takes a long time for police to be notified and arrive - even 10 minutes is forever to those being threatened or attacked inside the school. Then, when the police arrive, they typically spend a lot more time assessing the situation, waiting for more police, securing the exterior perimeter and such before actually trying to stop the intruder. This may all be necessary, but again, it takes time. And time is truly of the essence in such events.

One Rhode Island school system formed a School Emergency Response Team:

The school has also, since 1998 - even before Columbine - Spellman said, organized a SERT [School Emergency Response Team]. This team, Spellman said, consists of a number of school teachers, custodial staff, administrators and faculty who have volunteered themselves to serve as the first to respond in the event an incident might occur.

“We’ve timed it,” Spellman said. “We’ve got six minutes before the police department can arrive at our school. This group of volunteers has vowed to intervene in any way that is required to make sure that nothing happens to any other child or faculty in the building.”

The members of SERT, Spellman said, do this on nothing more than “wits, courage and drills.”

God bless ‘em, they have volunteered to put their lives on the line. SERT is a good idea but against a man with a firearm they won’t be much more than targets.

Do we need to have friendly guns inside schools as a matter of course? Around here the schools have one or two deputies or police officers there pretty much full time as it is. This practice started under the DARE program. But the cops are real cops. The queston is, what are the approved procedures?

IMO, if the children’s lives are threatened by an intruder, there is only way to respond: attack, attack, attack. Typically, police forces will go into a siege mode, where, having secured possible escape routes from the building, they try to contact the gunman and negotiate his surrender. It’s unusual for police to take positive steps to put down or apprehend the offender unless he has already started shooting people.

I think that law enforcers already on the scene or arriving have to resort immediately to using force to arrest or kill a school gunman. They can’t wait for backup. They have to act right away.

Generally, the best chances of ending a potentially lethal situation are at the front end. Obviously, a lot of judgement calls will still be required - the safety of the kids must always remain paramount and in some situations it may be wiser to wait than attack. After all, no one really wanted to shoot down the 13-year-old boy who fired a single shot into the ceiling inside a Joplin middle school last Monday. It’s not widely reported that the boy didn’t fire again because his rifle jammed. He left the premises and was apprehended then. That incident ended well, but what if he had shot at people instead of ceilings and his rifle functioned as designed?

After 9/11, attention was turned to airline safety and the subject of armed pilots was debated a lot. Many advocates of permitting teachers to be armed draw a direct analogy. Well, maybe. But one of the arguments advanced in favor of armed pilots was that most commerical pilots are former military pilots and so were already trained in using handguns (I don’t know whether this is actually true, but it was claimed). If it makes sense, sadly, to increased armed deterrence or fast-response to school intrusions, might it make sense to recruit veterans as volunteers? They could be certified and credentialed by local law-enforcement agencies. Just a thought.

I’ve covered in nauseating detail the controversy over the attempts of the mayor of my town of Franklin, Tenn., to ban the display of the Confederate battle flag in the city’s Nov. 30 commemoration of the the Civil War’s Battle of Franklin. This post isn’t about that.

It would be fair for me, having excoriated Franklin’s politicos for trying to suppress the people’s Constitutional rights (for which they may well succeed yet), to explain where I stand on the issue - not the issue of free speech, for which I am somewhat of an absolutist, but on the issue of displaying the flags of the Confederacy.

Let it be understood that Nov. 30 is the anniversary of the battle. The commemoration will feature re-enactors clothed in Civil War uniforms, although as far as I know no battle re-enactment is planned. The “Union” formation will approach the town square from one direction (I presume the north) and the “Confederate” formation from the opposite direction. Bands will play Civil War music in both formations. Presumably the Union re-enactors will carry the 34-star Union flag or regimental colors; there was no widely-used Union “battle flag,” as far as I can tell. There was a square version of the US flag sometimes used as a battle flag, but whether it was used at Franklin I do not know, and I doubt whether anyone else does.

The square CSA battle flag, however, was very widely used. This flag is thought by many to be the “Stars and Bars” flag, but it wasn’t. The Stars and Bars was one of the national-government flags of the CSA and was conventional in design. In fact, if you didn’t know what it was when you saw it, you wouldn’t have any reason to connect it to the Confederacy. The Battle Flag was almost without doubt used at Franklin. It was so popular with Southern units that the Confederate Congress enacted in May 1863 that that Battle Flag’s design be used as the union field of the second Confederate national flag.

So for historical accuracy alone the Battle Flag should be carried by re-enactors of the Confederate formation, just as the Union “troops” will doubtless hoist the 32-star flag, not today’s version.

Reading about “the War,” as the Civil War used to be called in the South until well after World War II, it becomes clear that soldiers on both sides revered their flags with an intensity that we moderns almost cannot understand. The soldier with the shortest life expectancy in battle was the color bearer, yet there was never a shortage of volunteers to bear the flag or to form the color guard, who usually lived not much longer. When color bearers fell in battle, another soldier would snatch the flag up, often before it hit the ground. Thus all applied not only to the national colors but the regimental colors or state flags that flapped abundantly among the armies.

Surprisingly, though, at the end of the war Confederate soldiers and officers who retained their colors encased them forever. It was extremely rare in the Old South for any kind of CSA flag to be publicly displayed for almost 100 years after the war ended. The reason? There was near-universal sentiment among surviving Confederate veterans, passed on for two or three generations, that the Confederacy’s colors could rightfully be flown only over an independent Southern nation. But that independence (such as it briefly was) ended in 1865 and therefore the CSA’s flag was retired by those who had fought and bled for it. Hence, for decades after 1865, the only time the CSA flag was flown was in solemn anniversary commemorations or perhaps at funerals, and maybe not even then. (At funerals of CSA veterans, the flag was almost always draped over the casket.)

My ancestral families fought on both sides of the war. My great-great grandfather and his two brothers fought as members of the 11th Tennessee Regiment; one brother was killed at the Battle of Murfreesboro. Another g2-grandfather was a Union officer in the 16th Pennsylvania who had a leg shot off at Chancellorsville, where Union General “Fighting Joe” Hooker didn’t live up to his nickname.

Yet another g2-grandfather was a CSA soldier who was captured by the Union and imprisoned in Nashville. He may be the only American POW whose wife busted him out of prison. She, in turn, was sexually assaulted in her own kitchen by a Yankee soldier. A proper Southern lady, she defended her virtue with great vigor by taking a large, oaken rolling pin and slamming him on the head. He dropped like a rock. As he fell, she shoved him out her back door onto the porch. Later, two of his buddies took him away, whether dead or alive Grandma never learned.

My mother still has the rolling pin. Grandma smashed that Yankee so hard the rolling pin cracked from one end to the other. It is a treasured heirloom.

My wife’s maiden name was Stephens. Her great-great-great uncle was Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy.

My Southern roots go deep, the first Sensing having immigrated to North Carolina from Germany before 1740. So what about the Confederacy?

We tend to have a romanticized view of what the Old South was like until 1865. “Gone With the Wind,” is a sort of cultural model, but it’s wildly inaccurate. In fact, for Africans or their descendants and poor whites alike (and there were many of them), life was “nasty, brutish and short.” Alexis de Tocqueville, touring America in the 1830s, wrote that the only places in America where the American dream was broken was in the slave-holding states. He compared “industrious Ohio” with “idle Kentucky,” and blamed slavery for causing white Kentuckians to be “a people without energy, ardor [or] enterprise.”

Slavery was without excuse or redeeming quality. There is no positive thing that can be said about it. Despite the idyllic life GWTW portrayed Tara’s slaves as having, Africans and their descendants suffered cruelly. Discipline was enforced corporally and almost always harshly. However, discipline in both armies was cruelly enforced as well. The Union Army used punishments today universally called torture: branding, being tied up by the thumbs, riding the “wooden mule” (a narrow rail set too high for his feet to touch the ground), or being tied for hours spread-eagled on carriage wheel. So the whippings and brutality used against slaves was also used by the same Army that liberated the slaves. “Cruelty” apparently had a different connotation back then regardless of who was its victims.

Even so, Abraham Lincoln was perfectly correct when he said, “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” The Lost Cause was rightfully lost and wrongfully defended. Yes, it’s true, as historians have pointed out, that only a minority of Southerners owned slaves and that most Southern soldiers were fighting more to defend their homes against Northern invasion than to preserve slavery. And it is true that tens of thousands of Southerners fled north and joined the Union Army - more Tennesseans fought for the Union than the Confederacy.

None of this matters. As James McPherson elegantly showed in his award-winning book, Battle Cry of Freedom, slavery was not the only cause of the war, but it was the only factor without which the war would not have been fought. To claim, as many Southern apologists do, that the South wasn’t really fighting to preserve slavery is to be either woefully uninformed about history or to be willfully in denial. The Southern economy was slave-centered. Southern politics were slave-centered.

Nor does it serve to point out, correctly though irrelevantly, that the North’s purpose (that is, Lincoln’s) was not to free the slaves but to preserve the antebellum political Union. Full-Union patriotism was very strong in the North, but would not have sustained the war effort as the war dragged on. In issuing the Emancipation procalamation, Lincoln took advantage of the very strong Northern, anti-slavery sentiment that was already there, and which he realized he must tap to achieve his original war aims. Long before war’s end, the Union was engaged in full-blown American Holy War and the original goal of Unon preservation had taken a back seat to emancipation in the public mind. That may all be true but it does not redeem the irredeemable fact that prewar Southern life was arranged around chattel slavery. The indefensible cannot be defended.

Most people don’t know that the modern resurgence of displaying the Confederate flag only dates from the 1950s, and was started by Southern Democrats in protest of integration and civil rights rulings by US federal courts. You may recall the tempest in a teapot in the 2000 campaign about South Carolina flying the Confederate flag over its capitol building, below the US flag. That practice was only begun in 1962 (plus or minus a couple of years) and was initiated by the then-governor of the state, Democrat Fritz Hollings, later the US Senator representing Disney, AOL-Time Warner and other megacorporate concerns.

In my view it is appropriate to fly Confederate flags as historical reminders or to recognize that the Confederacy’s soldiers, however evil the cause they fought for, were American men whose legacy we still bear and struggle with. But to use the CSA’s battle flag as an emblem of “Southern pride,” or Southern culture or white supremacy is repugnant. As a son of the South I love so much about this region of the country and the people who live here. I wish there was a different insignia that Southerners could display to show their pride and love of the South. But the battle flag is, very unfortunately, the only insignia that is universally recognized here and elsewhere as distinctively Southern. A woman I know well told me awhile back that the anti-Southern bigotry in America has never gone away (yes, it’s very real and very powerful). “They are trying to take away our history,” she said. “It’s ethnic cleansing by another name.” She does have a point. I think that is one reason the battle flag resurged again over the last 20 years or so. It’s a symbol of pushing back. It won’t be surrendered soon.

I do not own any Confederate flag. The American flag flies daily outside my door. Long may it wave.

‘’The past is dead; let it bury its dead, its hopes and aspirations. . . . Lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feeling, . . . take your places in the ranks of those who will bring about a consummation devoutly to be wished - a reunited country.'’ Jefferson Davis

One of the most-watched Senate races in the country is here in Tennessee. US Congressman Harold Ford, Democrat, and former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker, Republican, are contesting the seat of retiring Sen. Bill Frist. Political analysts on both sides consider the race to be a “swing” race - if Ford wins it could mean the return of the Senate to Democrat control.

Ford faced no opposition during the primary season, but Corker had to run against two former Republican Congressmen, Van Hilleary and Ed Bryant. The Republican primary race was no genteel affair and the mud was flying fast by polling day.

Ford used the primary season to launch his campaign for the Senate while his three potential electoral adversaries were chewing each other up. Ford’s tactic was to claim ownership of the issues the Republican candidate might expect would be his party’s strongest ones: defense and immigration reform. Long before the primary electon, Ford was running strong, impressive ads to put his fingerprints all over both issues, and do so using quite conservative-oriented language. He didn’t quite say, “seal the Mexican border,” for example, but he came darn close to it.

Now Ford is trying to lay claim to a base that in Tennessee has for 30 years at least supported the Republicans: white religious voters. Needless to say, Ford, a black man, could always count on the support of black voters, religious or not.

Ford’s latest ad was filmed in Ford’s boyhood church Mount Moriah-East Baptist Church in southeast Memphis:

With a stained-glass window behind him, candidate Harold Ford Jr. strolls through the Memphis church where he was baptized to tell voters this is the place where he learned right from wrong.

Using a church sanctuary as the backdrop in his newest campaign commercial, the Democrat running for the U.S. Senate has picked an unusual setting. One expert on religion and politics said it was the first political ad he’d heard of actually filmed inside a sanctuary. …

“Most Americans are religious people, and finding out about a candidate’s faith and finding where his values came from would be appreciated,” said John Green, a senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. He couldn’t recall another campaign ad filmed in a church.

Now the first thing that might come to many minds is that the church violated the regulations governing its tax-exempt status. The IRS grants churches tax exemption in exchange for the church’s agreement not to engage, as the church, in partisan politics. The General Commission on Finance and Administration of the UMC, for example, published guidance for churches:

IRS rules forbid tax-exempt churches from participating or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office. This includes the publishing or distribution of campaign literature, even if their pastor or a church member is running for office.

Churches may not: 1) allow any declared political candidate to use their building for any purpose other than a non-partisan candidates’ forum to which all candidates are invited.

There’s more to the list, about which more shortly. So far, this seems clear enough: in allowing Ford to film a campaign ad in the church, the church violated the regulations governing its tax exemption. So let us turn to the reaction of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which has launched fierce broadsides at George W. Bush over faith-based initiatives and which staunchly cleaves to the far-left side of any religious issue that brushes against politics. Another example: a podcast on AUSCS’s site in which Michelle Goldberg “explains why America is in the grips of religious radicalism.”

The Tennessean reports AUSCS’s reaction to the Ford ad:

One religious liberty group is troubled more by the church’s role in the campaign commercial. “It sounds problematic for a house of worship to open its doors to what appears to be blatant campaigning,” said Jeremy Leaming, a spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “I also think politicians should respect houses of worship and not try to drag them into politicking.”

It was unclear to Leaming whether the church had violated Internal Revenue Service laws that prohibit tax-exempt groups, such as churches, from involving themselves in campaigns.

“Problematic,” he says. Guess he’ll have to think about that real hard, say, to mid-November. Anyone want to posit what his reaction would have been had Republican Corker filmed such an ad, if if Corker does so? I mean, really, just take a wild guess.

But, to show you how scambled people’s minds can get on this issue, a distinctly conservative Nashville-area pastor is quite happy with the ad:

“I love it,” Maury Davis, pastor of Cornerstone Church [link] in Madison, said of Ford’s use of a church as a backdrop. “I like that he brought church back into the political arena.”

Rev. Davis, though, admits he is unhappy with much of the Democratic platform.

Ford’s ad puts Corker in a box. Corker can hardly attack the ad itself, or even overtly question using Mt. Moriah Baptist Church as the filimg site. That would alienate not only black voters (who will, let’s be honest, vote 90-plus percent for the black Democrat candidate anyway), it would also make a lot of white religious voters unhappy because many agree with Rev. Davis. They want overt involvement of churches in politics and in their hearts think it’s great Ford made such an ad, even if they aren’t inclined to vote for a Democrat. But the religious swing voters can be swayed by this ad to consider Ford more favorably. And if Corker handles it ineptly, it may push them away from him.

So what, IMO, would be Corker’s smart move?

Corker should immediately send a letter to the Rev. Melvin Charles Smith, pastor of Ford’s church, simultaneously releasing the letter to the media. Corker should congratulate Smith for understanding and acting upon the importance of the Senate race. He should say that he is pleased that Ford is a man of strong religious conviction, a churchgoer, and in willing to let it be known that his religious beliefs influence his political decisions.

Then Corker should ask permission to film a campaign ad of his own in Mt. Moriah Church. It won’t be granted, of course. Then Corker should let the issue drop. But after (not before) election day the Republican party of Tennessee should definitely file a complaint with the IRS.

Endnote: According to the UMC’s GCFA, “churches may not allow a candidate to use a church function to greet parishioners.” In my experience, this prohibition is routinely violated. In fact, all three Republican Senate candidates went to a fish fry at a nearby UM Church in July to press the flesh. I met each of them (not very impressed with Corker, I might add). At my own church, candidates for local office show up at such functions all the time.

I do draw the line at distributing campaign literature at my church and have intervened to stop it. One candidate even put up a sign on our property! We took it down, of course. But there is no way at a public-invitation fundraiser like a fish fry or barbecue lunch I can stop candidates from coming, buying a meal and walking around talking to people. I neither try to do so nor want to do so.

Update: I posted a long exploration of where the IRS stands on political speech or activities by churches in August 2004.

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In Maury county, Tenn., the next county south from where I live, a racial controversy is brewing over the credentials of a history teacher selected to teach a black history course at Spring Hill High School.

The only black member of the Maury County School Board was the only one to vote against approving an African-American history book for a class at Spring Hill High School.

The credential school board member Talvin Barner objected to? You’ve probably already guessed:

The instructor for Spring Hill High School’s new African-American history class, which began Jan. 3, is David Huebner, a white teacher.

Well, we just can’t have a white history teacher leading a class in black history, right?

What’s really at play here, ISTM, is that there is such a thing as “black history.” There’s not. There is history, period, and during January and February many schools decide to focus on a particular aspect of American history, namely the threads of the historical narrative related directly to Africans and their descendant in America. Nothing wrong with that at all.

But there is no such thing as “black history.” There is, accurately, a history of black people. Bigots and racists have tried to separate common human experiences or endeavors into certain privileged or marginalized ethnic/racial categories. The National Socialist party insisted that “Jewish science” needed to be purged from universities, as if Jews practiced a particular type of science all their own. This same accusation is still made in certain Middle Eastern quarters.

Should we also conclude that no black teacher have any part in teaching the history of the lily-white European Enlightenment, or that only Hispanic or Mayan-descended teachers lead a class in the Spanish conquest of Central America?

That a history teacher whould be deemed disqualified simply on the basis of the color of his skin is pure bigotry and racism in its starkest form. There is a history of black Americans. The idea that only a black American can teach it is outrageous.

Update: A reader emails,

I was privileged to meet David Huebner several years ago when he was working on a graduate degree at Belmont University. It was a delight to know and work with him; I believe any high school student who has the privilege of having Mr. Huebner as a teacher will at some point in their life remember him as one of the outstanding teachers of all their years in school I know nothing about his actual teaching, but his enthusiasm for working with students, his knowledge and passion for history, his creativity, and his varied life experiences are all beyond reproach. As a parent, I would have been excited to have had our children in his classroom. I’m sure that some of his current students, in time, will remember him as one of the best teachers they ever had during high school.