On edge as we all are, it is increasingly disconcerting to watch the clips of the Derek Chauvin trial in Minnesota while even more police-involved deaths and assaults continue to play out across our nation — even one at a school on Monday in Knoxville.

If one shocker of our COVID-19 pandemic era has been the enthusiastic embrace of fixing up our homes, a second and related shocker has been the skyrocketing cost of lumber.

Coming off of a year and a half of pandemic virus and recession, coupled with a tornado, protests and floods, we believe Chattanooga - with its ever-growing economic divide - faces a future more uncertain than any we've seen since the 1960s, making this year's mayoral election among the most critical in decades.

Each of Chattanooga's nine council members represent thousands of residents in hundreds of neighborhoods sprawled across our city's 144.6 square miles.

If you're among the waning number of Americans watching Fox News these days, you're aware of the faux fainting spells among its show hosts about Joe Biden's so-called exorbitant use of government "fiat," otherwise known as executive orders.

With the passing of 99-year-old Medal of Honor recipient Charles H. Coolidge Sr. this week, we and our nation have lost a real hero and far more than just the man for whom Coolidge Park, the Charles H. Coolidge National Medal of Honor Heritage Center and a portion of U.S. Highway 27 are named.

How many times have we in the Southeast heard that we are blessed with fresh water?

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp - ruffled by the backlash against the Peach State's new voting law - might as well have climbed up into the bed of an old pickup truck this weekend and popped worn red suspenders to make his race-bait messages more Eugene Talmadge-like.

Joyce Kilmer immortalized trees for most of us.

Easter weekend is kicking off spring break in Tennessee and Georgia.

The time has been nigh for President Joe Biden to make good on his "Build Back Better" campaign slogan, and this week he laid out a $2 trillion infrastructure blueprint that does, in fact, think big.

Scientists tell us that the longer COVID-19 continues to spread easily in the population, the more opportunities the virus has to mutate into more contagious and more deadly strains.

In Biden's first solo news conference last week, the specter of former president Donald Trump loomed - part foil, part scapegoat and, once, as a punchline.

Jim Crow is alive and well in Georgia after Gov. Brian Kemp rushed Thursday evening to sign into law a sweeping Republican-sponsored overhaul of state election laws that includes new restrictions on voting and gives the legislature - not the elected secretary of state - control over how elections are run.

One would think that rather than raise a ruckus over homeless people being housed on Chattanooga's tax dime and the pandemic's "American Rescue Plan" in an East Ridge hotel, that East Ridge representatives like County Commissioner Tim Boyd would be all about lining up some charity — specifically some health assistance to give the homeless hotel tenants COVID-19 vaccinations.

It's been said and re-said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

In government, at least, things move slowly in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Georgia's new Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in his first Senate floor speech last week wasted little time with hellos or introductions.

Here's a hypothetical question: Suppose Congress, in it's new $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus law known as the American Rescue Plan, included a $350 billion pot of money to help cash-strapped cities, counties and states pay for pandemic costs. And suppose congressional lawmakers added a provision restricting states from using these funds in other ways — like tapping them to finance local tax cuts.

Georgia's Cherokee County Sheriff's Department Capt. Jay Baker had a bad day Thursday.

Where is responsibility from Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee?

Since when do we need a law allowing teachers remove disruptive students from a classroom?

In government, leadership - and its support - matters.