By AMY SATTERWHITE / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard Children and young adults in Warren County often complain there isn’t much to do outside of events like school and sports.While it may be a convenient expression and may not always be true, area youth might have a harder time saying it now that a…

By KARIN MILLER / Associated Press Writer NASHVILLE — The House overwhelmingly approved on Thursday legislation that would limit prescription drug options for TennCare patients — and perhaps eventually for government employees, inmates and children in state custody.Doctors in Tennessee currently must deal with up to 10 different health plans, each with different lists of…

By TOM SHARP / Associated Press Writer NASHVILLE — The House and Senate overwhelmingly approved Thursday slightly different versions of a $21.5 billion state budget, cutting spending for most departments and agencies by 9 percent but adding money to K-12 education and health care.The appropriations bill, approved by the House 88-5 and the Senate 29-1,…

By AMY SATTERWHITE / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard If you were planning to jump in the new city pool tomorrow, don’t get your swim trunks out just yet.That was the message from McMinnville city officials who said yesterday despite their best hopes for the pool to open on time, it just isn’t ready…

By WILL STEWART / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard (McMinnville, Tenn.) Cavers, from left, Shane Stacey and Mark Murrell assist with the removal of an old washing machine dumped in Rocky River Cave. The cave cleanup was sponsored by the SERA Karst Task Force. (Will Stewart photo) Cavers from across the Southeast descended on…

By JAMES CLARK / Editor for the Southern Standard (McMinnville, Tenn.) COOPER The good news for Tennessee students is it doesn’t appear they will have to meet very stringent academic requirements to receive a college scholarship.The bad news is such a plan could land another financial albatross around the state’s neck, according to one legislator.After…

Lucretia Gay Dolzonek, 42McMinnville resident and Wayne County, Mich., native Lucretia Gay Dolzonek, 42, died May 17 at River Park Hospital from injuries sustained in an automobile accident.A homemaker, she was preceded in death by brother, Alan Potts.She is survived by her husband, George Dolzonek; sons, Zachary Kyle Dolzonek and Nathan Nunley, both of McMinnville;…

By William Rusher / Columnist Have you noticed that the people who started squalling when American forces failed to find weapons of mass destruction after three weeks in Iraq are largely the same people who wanted to give Hans Blix and his blind mice four more months, on top of the four they’d already squandered?Developments…

By Hope Hines / Columnist If the little old ladies of the First Methodist Church in Quitman, Ga., where I grew up as a boy were alive today, and saw what folks are wearing to church, they would faint. I mean they would flat fall out, and it wouldn’t be the presence of the Holy…

By Duane Sherrill / Columnist So I’m calling for some information on a story and I get transferred into this never-ending web of voice-automated machinery.“For personnel press one, for human resources press two …” the irritating recorded voice on the phone told me as she droned on, making me think I’d accidentally called one of…