Clint Cooper

It's not time to head back to the office, make a dinner reservation or attend the community Easter egg hunt.

In any disaster, government has a critical role to play in response and recovery. But government can only do so much, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said Friday.

When it comes to budgets, legislation, schools, politics and other aspects of daily life, people have various opinions, and that is their right. That's why we have two editorial pages in the Times Free Press — the Chattanooga Times and Chattanooga Free Press.

CNN newsman Jim Acosta, President Donald Trump's nemesis, thought he had decked up the question of the year last week.

It wasn't until several of his friends no longer came out to play in the summer of 1952 in Opp, Alabama, that gave young Scott Cook pause.

The coronavirus outbreak has exposed anew how the national media still haven't grasped why President Donald Trump appeals to many Americans.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee finally gave critics the words they wanted to hear Thursday, requiring Volunteer State residents to stay home during the coronavirus outbreak unless they are engaged in "essential activities."

When last we left House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D- California, she was trying to load up the coronavirus economic stimulus bill with ideological goodies for her supportive left-wing constituencies.

We first saw a Facebook post comparing coronavirus cases in Kentucky and Tennessee 11 days ago and wondered why in such a precarious atmosphere a media outlet would compare apples to oranges.

National Doctors Day, observed Monday, couldn't have come at a more appropriate time.

Trump's fault?

One could sympathize with President Donald Trump as he sat in his overcoat in the White House Rose Garden, tulips and the first flowers of spring blooming in the background.

It's true that we've never been here before as a nation, but that makes access to information more important rather than less.

"You can observe a lot just by watching," said the great American philosopher and former New York Yankees catcher, Yogi Berra.

If you have read most daily newspapers or watched broadcast or most cable television reports on the negotiations that have been working their way through the United States Senate on a $1.6 trillion coronavirus stimulus package, you would have read or seen that Republicans were making noises about getting something done for the American people and Democrats were contending the bill in question offered too much money for corporations.

One would think we the people would be hard to forget in doing the people's business, but Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee made sure we aren't forgotten with an executive order Friday ordering governmental bodies to "make reasonable efforts" to allow the public access to meetings held electronically in wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

It is disheartening in a time when people call on their religious faith to give them peace about a calamity as frightening as the coronavirus outbreak that a Cleveland, Tennessee, televangelist would describe the outbreak as God's retribution for the United States allowing abortion and same-sex marriage.

Apparently, the lie that President Trump called the coronavirus a hoax is being machined by the leftist national media to rank up there with the oft-repeated untruth that he praised racists during a 2017 Charlotte rally in which one person died.

Social distancing is a new concept for Americans born in the 21st century and late 20th century, but it was a practice rigidly used by diligent parents as recently as the early 1950s during the scourge of a different virus.

It was a scant few days before Christmas in 1776, and many Americans were still undecided about a war with Great Britain. How could they — as mere scattered colonists — take on a world power?