It was a foregone conclusion. Tennessee is set to receive at least 415 Afghan refugees in the coming weeks, yet Gov. Bill Lee is calling on the White House to provide detailed information - "full transparency" - on who will be arriving.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution headline thundered: "Georgia Gov. Kemp stops short of measures to address COVID-19's spread."

You may have missed this bit of important news earlier this month - given all the necessary concern over COVID-19, Afghanistan, a local election and other breaking news.

Fate is fickle. And justice is unsure. And often slow.

Some big Chattanooga businesses ducked their heads last week when called on by Times Free Press reporters to comment on President Joe Biden's vaccine mandates for employers with 100 or more workers.

Flushes are not free.

It seems fitting that 20 years after we launched war in Afghanistan because the country was said to harbor al Qaeda, the terrorist group founded by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, the 9/11 mastermind, that we are readying now - in Chattanooga and across the nation - to take in Afghan refugees who assisted the U.S. military during our no-win, ill-conceived, 20-year war.

The Volunteer State's "fetal heartbeat" measure, signed into law in July 2020 by Gov. Bill Lee, might have beaten Texas to the punch on severely restricting abortion were it not still on hold in the hands of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Tennesseans are always looking to be No. 1 at something: winning football, best tourist destination, most patriotic, most religious — pick one.

The snail darter - a little three-inch fish that nearly swallowed TVA's Tellico Dam and became the poster child for the Endangered Species Act - has officially been saved from extinction and removed from the nation's list of imperiled wildlife.

Saturday night in Shelbyville, Tennessee, 96 miles northwest of Chattanooga, some sore horse will likely be named the 83rd Tennessee Walking Horse world grand champion.

Finally, things are looking up in our Hamilton County public schools - even over a long year of pandemic distractions.

It's too soon to give Tennessee and Georgia governors the benefit of a doubt for coming around to seeing their mistakes on school masking and remote learning.

Lanny Thomas, a former mayor of Trion, Georgia, received the phone call every parent fears: The one from his child in trouble.

It's walking horse time in Tennessee. Better put, it's save the horses time in Tennessee.

Something has to give. COVID-19 numbers continue to climb yet Tennesseans and Georgians — and especially our Republican governors and lawmakers — continue to act as though the real enemy is mask and vaccine requirements.

The rains that washed away lives and homes in Waverly, Tennessee, were not your grandfather's rains. Noah's maybe, but not your grandfather's.

Chattanooga lost a living legend this week when the Rev. Paul McDaniel died Sunday morning at the age of 91.

A Middle Tennessee sheriff's deputy (and former Georgia sheriff's deputy) became the 606th person charged in the Jan. 6 riot and insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Things are about to heat up - even more - in Tennessee and other states where Republican governors and legislatures are standing in the way of local school and county officials who are making safety from COVID-19 harder and harder.

We saw our first new Bill Lee reelection sticker this week, and it's a sure bet Tennessee's governor won't like it. It reads "Vote Gov. Lee out!"

On Monday, we learned that major changes are on the way in the form of political gerrymandering.

Taxes are always going up. Even when we're told otherwise by folks pretending they are not and calling the increases "revenue growth." It's a bit of a political shell game.