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.

The students in Hamilton County's public schools did something most students across Tennessee couldn't do during the pandemic year of off-and-on remote schooling: They kept learning. Or at least they didn't lose much learning.

How, exactly, are mask mandates "overreach" or "government control," but mandating that there can't be mask mandates isn't overreach or government control?

Just make note of it: Tennessee Sens. Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn voted against the bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill to rebuild the nation's deteriorating roads, bridges and water pipes, as well as fund new climate resilience and broadband initiatives. Likewise, Alabama Sens. Tommy Tuberville and Richard Shelby said no.

Sometimes the answers to our quandaries seem so obvious we wonder why anyone sees a quandary in the first place.

How many towns do we need to see burned into oblivion? How many Greenvilles and Paradises in California? How many Detroits, Blue Rivers, Vidas, Phoenixes, and Talents in Oregon? How many Maldens in Washington state? How many Gatlinburgs and Pigeon Forges in Tennessee?

Follow the money - if you can.

While hypocritical Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee gives a thumb's down to incentivizing vaccines in Tennessee but is happy to reward cattle farmers for incentivizing bovine vaccines, real leaders are stepping up to help our city, state and country move past vaccine hesitancy and make us all safe again from increasingly dangerous variants of COVID-19.