Sorry, Liz, but I have to write this post

It's painful for me to disagree with or criticize Scene editor Liz Murray Garrigan for anything she says as the best political writer in Tennessee. She stood by me in print when few others would. I'll never be able to repay her for that. She soon is leaving her post for a new publishing position in Nashville. And so many of us wish her well.

But in her taped appearance this morning on This Week with Bob Mueller, she was asked about Democrat Congressman Jim Cooper's lunacy with the RECs and his wrongdoing in using someone else's password to get into a restricted website.

That matter is simple right and wrong that our Mommas taught us when we only reached their knees. If Cooper could not get the information on the RECs he wanted, then he should have done as any journalist and citizen and FOIA-ed it. Now unless the matter is one of National Security because RECs are connected to bin Laden(which they're not but don't ask Cooper), he should have waited like the rest of us for the information. And if using FOIA does not produce the needed results, then he should propose legislation to strengthen the law.

You can be if Dick Cheney used someone else's password to get into a restricted website of a political enemy, most of news media pundits would be crying "foul!"

This Week's use of the word "lobbyist" to describe REC representative Glenn English was technically accurate but very misleading to the public and Cooper's Nashville constituents as to the depth of the hot water he immersed himself in. English is a former Democratic congressman. He is from Oklahoma where I grew up, and he was a very straight shooter in serving the state and his constituents in my years there. As I have written earlier, if Glenn says you're in trouble with the FBI, then Cooper's constituents should believe it. A statement from him is not an empty claim.

So I was disappointed and suprised that Liz did not have that kind of knowledge and background on the topic. Her defense of Cooper as some sort of nice nerd was really no explanation about a politician who has gone off the deep end on a matter that does not even affect his constituents.

As for those constituents, however, he has remained silent on the failure of the Metro public schools and their coming takeover by the state. Who will be watching the state and Gov. Phil Bredesen to make sure they will do a decent job in running the district? Remember, it was Bredesen as mayor who put so many children behind in the first place with his Core Curriculum? He is not a person to trust now just because he is in a higher office.

There have been other Cooper failings just this year. Why was he on the stage with Republican Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn and Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander in touting the anti-immigrant and anti-family 287(g) deportation program? Sure that is Cooper's trademark bipartisanship but joining with the anti-immigrant crowd is far from virtuous. It's bad judgment on critical public policy affecting the most vulnerable of our community.

While a nerd and moderate, Cooper is not a progressive who should be representing the predominant progressive ideals of Nashville and proposing change for suffering African-American and other challenged neighborhoods. Too many good people and small business owners are being shot and killed in Nashville. A congressman or woman can and should make a difference, even it is simply from his or her bully pulpit.

Cooper for sure is no Dick Fulton, who championed progressive measures like affordable housing during his tenure in Congress for Nashville.

Now granted, Cooper may be incapable. So the responsibility is on us to find his replacement, at the latest by 2010.

As for This Week and its contribution to Middle Tennessee political enlightenment, its continued use of Tennessee Democratic Party Chairman Gray Sasser on its panel of experts is an embarrassment and a deep cut into the show's credibility. Whenever I see Sasser on the show as a panelist, I immediately switch over to Meet the Press on WSMV.

And for a show to emanate from Nashville with only white folks as experts is just plain insensitive and unbalanced. I'm not talking about me returning to the show. The cost of gas is too high for me to keep driving to near downtown Nashville. Besides, I'm using all my voluneteer miles for Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church on the campaign to pay off the debt there.

I went to a lot of work to get the Rev. Enoch Fuzz -- a stalwart in the Nashville and in state African-American social and political circles and pastor of Corinthian Missionary Baptist Church -- on the show. He was great and added the right mix of faith into his answers. More than anything, Tennessee is a place of faith before even politics.

But I haven't seen Rev. Fuzz and any other African-American on Mueller's panel the past two weeks since I returned from burying my marvelous mother. That's sad.

And to keep hearing from Sasser -- whose party in Tennessee under his direction is a valueless and idealistic mess except for U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen and a few other legislative notables -- provides only an apologist's perspective. He does not offer analysis to give viewers any sense of his awareness of reality. Steve Gill comes off looking real good compared to Saaser. Perhaps that is Mueller's intent since Gill is the station's political expert. Poor Garrigan is figuratively and literally left in the middle of this circus on the panel.

Liz, forgive me. I hate to disagree with you or criticize you. But Cooper's lunacy over the RECs should be another affront to a progressive city like Nashville. It also should be a signal to voters that it is time to recruit a more effective and more vocal leader on matters affecting their congressional district and the most vulnerable among us -- first.