CHATTANOOGA (AP) — A man charged in a federal bribery sting approached Hamilton County officials about doing business with a fake company the FBI established as part of a corruption investigation code-named “Tennessee Waltz.” Hamilton County purchasing director Ken Blankenship said Thursday that lobbyist Charles Love talked to him earlier this year about doing business…

NASHVILLE (AP) — Four of the five current or former state lawmakers charged in the “Tennessee Waltz,” federal bribery sting last week can still collect state pensions, even if they are convicted. State Sen. Ward Crutchfield, 76, D-Chattanooga, would still collect a pension of $62,256 per year at his current level of service if he…

NASHVILLE (AP) — U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. has asked President Bush not to overstate U.S. troops’ progress in training the Iraqi military and rebuilding the country. The Tennessee Democrat and U.S. Senate hopeful wrote a letter to the president following a two-day trip to Iraq. Ford said he wanted an idea of how to…

NASHVILLE (AP) — Former Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards said Saturday that he has not decided if he will run for president in 2008. The former U.S. senator from North Carolina said his family is focused on the recovery of his wife, who was diagnosed with breast cancer the day after the 2004 general…

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By Jim Mullen / Columnist The price for the two of us to get into the latest “Star Wars” movie was $12.50. If you live in a big city, you probably paid more. But our town is so small, we only have one “Star Wars” nut, and he only had to show up seven minutes…

By George Plagenz / Columnist While some people want sainthood for the late Pope John Paul II, I have two nominations of my own: the late Mary Kerr, a high school principal, and Amos Alonzo Stagg, the late legendary football coach.Once upon a time (hard as it is to believe) a bad boy was a…

By Amy Satterwhite / Columnist It wasn’t the aide, the speech writer, the adviser, the acting FBI director or the former national security adviser.In the end, it was the No. 2 man in the FBI, Mark Felt, who was the infamous secret news source known as “Deep Throat” in the Watergate scandal of the early…

The Knoxville News Sentinel Pre-K legislation has had bipartisan support during this session, but it was not without opposition. Similar legislation had been approved in previous administrations, but lawmakers provided no funding in the final budget.Bredesen estimates that the money provided by the current legislation would be enough to triple the preschool pilot program of…

The Tennessean (Nashville) If TennCare recipients dropped from the rolls fare better than expected, Tennesseans can thank state legislators for bolstering the planned safety net.Last week the Senate Finance Committee vastly improved on a listless effort by the governor’s safety net task force by beefing up services to the mentally ill as well as county…