Former president Barack Obama chose the ground where our nation was born and our constitution written — the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia — to warn 2020 voters that Donald Trump is a threat to our very democracy.

All political conventions henceforth should be virtual - even without pandemics.

Trailing in the polls by double digits, Donald Trump and his administration are trying to strangle the U.S. Postal Service so that voters afraid of the COVID-19 pandemic have diminished odds of getting an absentee or mail-in ballot delivered to them and returned by mail in time for their vote to be counted in the November general election.

Did you folks see Tinker Carlson on his prime-time Fox News show Tuesday when he deliberately dismissed the importance of correctly pronouncing the name of a Democratic Vice President nominee Kamala Harris?

Go figure. Last week a federal judge in New York invalidated rule changes by the Trump administration that allowed individuals and corporations to kill scores of birds as long as they could prove they did not intentionally set out to do so.

Are you concerned that our governors in Tennessee and Georgia haven't mandated masks — even as we send our children and educators back to school?

Joe Biden's choice of Kamala Harris as his running mate is not just historic, it also is energizing, party-building, visionary.

"A Record 75% of Americans Can Vote by Mail in 2020." That was the headline of a New York Times story on Tuesday. And here's the breakdown:

How many more sick people and deaths must we see before we get it?

It took some time - maybe too much time - but Joe Biden finally put forward an energy and climate plan that has some bite, both for the earth and for rebuilding the U.S. economy.

It does seem - judging from Tennessee's primary election on Thursday - that voters are tired of the status quo.

Put 500 or so "law and order" Republicans in a Chattanooga Convention Center room in the middle of a pandemic, along with a sheriff who shares the general GOP disdain for anything common sense like the county's currently mandated social distancing and mask mandate, and ask yourselves what could possibly go right.

It grows tiresome to continue chronicling the bluster and misdirection of Donald Trump — especially at a time when our country so needs a real leader. But here we are — still without a real leader. Instead we have one who doesn't even know what he doesn't know.

This week begins bleakly for the nearly 30 million workers set to lose $600 in enhanced weekly unemployment benefits.

The Lincoln Project, lately dubbed the revenge of the Never Trumpers, is not just targeting the worst president in our history. It's also targeting his enablers - the GOP'rs who have no backbone or conscience.

Sorry, Southern governors. It appears you've made bad choices.

Over the years there's been a lot of talk about leveling the playing field for disadvantaged students in Hamilton County whose families don't have enough money to pay for an internet service that can help their youngsters learn and do their homework with school-provided tablets.

While COVID-19 marches over us like William Tecumseh Sherman's scorched earth march to the sea, most of the South's Republican governors - especially Tennessee's Bill Lee - dither.

It is shameful that Hamilton County has people so ill-informed and hateful that they play silly birther and "socialism" games with a school board race. But here we are.

"Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society."

Shame on Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp.

James Mackler, a Nashville attorney and decorated Iraq War veteran, is the name you should look for and mark for United States Senate on your state Democratic primary and Hamilton County general election ballot.

Hamilton County Schools have come a long way in the past four years since three of four school board members were voted out in 2016 and a new superintendent with energy and vision was hired.