This shocking use of TBI to intimidate proponents of fair elections in Tennessee by Secretary of State Tre Hargett deserves attention. What’s more shocking is how very little local media seems to care. Jeff Woods cares.

Newly installed Republican Secretary of State Tre Hargett sicked the TBI on a political opponent on a trumped-up charge of making a “terrorist threat.” The case is now closed, the TBI having found no justification for Hargett’s complaint. Yes, it matters who governs.

Bernie Ellis, founder of the group Gathering to Save Our Democracy, says TBI agents came to his farm yesterday to question him about whether he threatened the Secretary of State’s office in an email. Ellis said he never sent an email to that office, and the agents left after asking him a few questions.

Pith phoned Hargett’s spokesman, Blake Fontenay, for comment today. Guess what? He’d love to talk, of course, but he just can’t. The TBI won’t let him, he says, “because they’re still investigating.” Yes, it’s the old “we never comment on pending investigations” trick.

“I really am not supposed to say anything more than that at this point,” Fontenay apologized. “We’d love to respond but we were asked by the TBI specifically not to respond. There definitely is another side to this, and we wish we could talk about it, but it’s not usually advisable to get the TBI mad at you. My hands are tied at this time.”

So then we phoned the TBI, whose spokeswoman Kristin Helm said basically there is no investigation, and she doesn’t know what Fontenay is talking about.

“We had to go pay Bernie a little visit,” Helm said. “We had a public official who felt as though he was being threatened, who felt there was something floating around in cyberland that was a threat. A couple of agents went to talk to Bernie and pretty much found the threats were unsubstantiated.”

Let’s explore what the Battle of Athens was all about. In a nutshell, it was about citizens of McMinn Tennessee , returning G.I.s from World War II, taking up arms against corrupt government officials who obstructed justice and subverted the constitutional rights of voters in McMinn, TN to have their voices count in fair elections.

That doesn’t sound like the actions of terrorists to me. It sounds a lot like the kind of heroes Americans are currently rallying behind in Iran.

On 2 August 1946, some Americans, brutalized by their county government, used armed force to overturn it. These Americans wanted honest, open elections. For years they had asked for state or Federal election monitors to prevent vote fraud — forged ballots, secret ballot counts, and intimidation by armed sheriff’s deputies — by the local political boss. They got no help.

These Americans’ absolute refusal to knuckle-under had been hardened by service in World War II. Having fought to free other countries from murderous regimes, they rejected vicious abuse by their county government. These Americans had a choice. Their state’s Constitution - Article 1, Section 26 - recorded their right to keep and bear arms for the common defense. Few “gun control” laws had been enacted.

Read more from bloggers across the state:

Newscoma:

I remember when I thought my vote counted. I’ve said it before, if I can get a receipt for a quarter pounder with cheese, why can’t I get one when I vote?

Liberadio:

Or perhaps election integrity activist Bernie Ellis is guilty of misuse of a metaphor. But what he is decidedly not guilty of - contrary to the opinion of Secretary of State Tre Hargett - is making a “terrorist threat” against the government of the state of Tennessee.

Tom Humphrey:

Ellis said he had never sent any emails to the secretary of state’s office, but has occasionally invoked the Battle of Athens in his writings as “the only alternative available to the citizenry if the sanctity of the ballot box cannot be assured.”

Ellis was active in the past legislative session opposing legislation that would have postponed until 2012 the scheduled replacement of voting machines in most Tennessee counties. The postponement bill failed, leaving current law in place that calls for the new machines to be available by the 2010 elections.

Michael Silence:

Hmmmmmm. Why does “abuse of power” come to mind?

Pith in The Wind:

Here’s the moral of this little tale of jackassery: Don’t mess with aging hippies. They’re meaner than you think. Hargett sees them as a bunch of pansies. But the pansies kicked his ass on this legislation, so he was embarrassed and decided it was time for payback. Sending a couple of TBI agents to Ellis’ house would screw with his mind. Right? Unfortunately for Hargett, Ellis, who’s a really nice guy, has more than a few friends in the media. As soon as the TBI left his farm, he sat down at his computer and sent an email to these friends. When the first blog post hit the web, it must have been an oh-shit moment for the new secretary of state.

Memphis Flyer:

Thereupon the Battle of Ellis’ Farm ended without the firing of a single shot — a victory over state power, it would seem, in defense of the First Amendment which, in this case, had been exercised, in the most innocuous possible way, to refer to a long-ago circumstance involving the Second Amendment.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 9:17 am and is filed under Elections, Politics, Republicans, Tennessee. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.