Two Charged in Robbing IRS Vehicle

By Jamie Satterfield knoxnews.com

 

Two Loudon County men are facing federal charges in connection with the burglary of an IRS criminal investigator's government vehicle.Jacob Ryan Johnson, 20, and James Richard Orr Jr., age not immediately available, are set to be arraigned today in U.S. District Court on charges of possession of stolen firearms and possession of a sawed-off shotgun.
According to a complaint filed by U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Agent Bernard "Bernie" Waggoner, the government-issued vehicle of an IRS criminal investigator was burglarized March 21. Taken were a shotgun, a sawed-off shotgun, a police scanner, handcuffs, ammunition, "entry tools," a pneumatic ram, ammunition, a bulletproof vest, flashlights and the investigator's badges.
The investigator is not identified in the complaint nor was the location of the burglary listed.
The complaint indicates the car was parked in the investigator's neighborhood and burglarized in a spree of similar crimes in that neighborhood.
The next day, the Lenoir City Police Department discovered the shotguns inside the vehicle of Nicholas Young, who had been involved in an auto accident, the complaint stated. Young told officers he bought the shotguns from Orr, who was his neighbor.
ATF agents confronted Orr, who admitted he was with Johnson when the guns were sold to Young but "falsely claimed to law enforcement that he did not know that the shotguns were stolen," Waggoner wrote.
The agents tracked down Johnson in Cookeville, Tenn. He agreed to a search of his vehicle, inside of which agents found the investigator's flashlights, according to the complaint. Johnson refused to be interviewed and was arrested, Waggoner wrote.
Interviewed a second time, Orr led agents to the home of Justin Carter, the complaint stated. Carter admitted buying the investigator's ammunition from Johnson and allowing him to stash at his home other items stolen both from the investigator and other victims in the investigator's neighborhood, according to the complaint.
The agents did not find the investigator's bulletproof vest and badges, however.
"Carter stressed … that he told Johnson that Johnson could not stash (the vest and badges) at Carter's house," Waggoner wrote.
Orr has been released pending trial. Johnson remained jailed Tuesday. A detention hearing is set for Johnson today.

Lenoir City business crafts 'durable' art pottery pieces

By KRISTIN FARLEY 
6 News Anchor/Reporter

LENOIR CITY (WATE) - If you're looking for some stoneware, a luminary, or maybe a one-of-a-kind handmade gift, a Lenoir City business may have just what you need.

Benjamin Qualls and Melissa Ball make hand thrown pottery at Stony Clay Station, 10389 Highway 11E. 

Melissa Ball finishes a piece of Pottery

It's art that's durable enough to be every day dinnerware. "We are at the upper tier of stoneware," Ball told us. "It is microwave, dishwasher and oven safe."

Ball started the business in 2008. Now she spends nearly 70 hours a week in the studio. With one look you can see she doesn't cut corners, doing even the finest detail by hand.

Stony Clay Station also makes all their own glazes resulting in individual, vibrant colors. "I never get bored with this. It is always a challenge. I always come up with new techniques," Ball laughed. "It never gets old."

The day Made in Tennessee visited, Ball was working on a large pot with three handles. It's a design she has won awards for.

Qualls was working on throwing clay for another creation. He also took time to explain how long it can take to make just one piece.

"We hand throw a piece on a potter's wheel. After it's made, we wait 24 hours for modifications. Then it needs to dry 24-36 hours after that. Then it needs to go into a kiln for initial firing, which hardens it enough for initial glazing," he said.

Qualls and Ball were getting ready for another busy summer season at local farmer's markets, which are more than just a place to sell their wares. They also help cultivate a sense of community.

In fact, the artists often make items intentionally to compliment other things you might find for sale at market. "So we do berry bowls, garlic pots, onion pots, outdoor luminaries and baking dishes," Ball said.

Stony Clay Station has a storefront right off Highway 11E. It's open five days a week, and they invite everyone to visit. 

They will also take custom orders, but remember one piece alone can take more than two weeks to make.

Update: Lenoir City woman charged for carrying gun at TYS

The RUGER pistol confiscated by TSA officials.
(COURTESY: TSA)

Author: Bob Norris
Source: The Maryville Daily Times

The Transportation Security Administration discovered a loaded firearm in a Lenior City woman's carry-on bag Wednesday evening at the security checkpoint at McGhee Tyson Airport.

A .380-caliber Ruger pistol was revealed to a screener at about 8:21 p.m. by X-ray when Brittany Shook, 27, of Lenior City, was going through the checkpoint, according to a report by the Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority police.

The handgun was in a soft case inside a pocketbook belonging to Shook. The weapon was fully loaded with a magazine and seven rounds. Shook told authorities that she forgot the weapon was in her pocketbook.

She was scheduled to fly on Allegiant Air Flight 897 to St. Pete Clearwater, Fla.

Shook was cited to Blount County Sessions Court for possession of a weapon with a court date of April 23. The Ruger was placed in evidence storage at the airport police office.

This is the fifth firearm discovery at the checkpoint at McGhee Tyson so far this year. A total of 17 firearms were discovered by TSA at the checkpoint in 2011.

Nationwide, there were more than 1,300 firearms discovered at TSA checkpoints last year.

"Passengers are reminded to look through the contents of their carry-on bags before coming to the airport," Stephen Wood, TSA federal security director, said in a prepared statement.

Airline travelers are allowed only to transport unloaded firearms in a locked, hard-sided container in or as checked baggage.

All firearms, ammunition and firearm parts, including frames and receivers, are prohibited in carry-on baggage.

No Response from Yale yet.

Author: Jeremy Styron

Source: News-Herald

While the unemployment rate in Loudon County is the second lowest in the region behind Knox County, local officials could see an uptick in that figure after the recent announcement that Yale Locks & Hardware is closing its Lenoir City location.

According to the most recent data from the Tennessee Department of Labor in February, unemployment in Loudon was at 6.7 percent, which is fourth lowest in the state. Knox's jobless rate was at 6.1 percent.

About 230 jobs are affected by the March 30 announcement that Yale Locks is shutting down.
Loudon County Commission and Lenoir City Council recently voted unanimously to provide Yale Locks with a 10-year, 100 percent tax break, amounting to about $1,028,000, if the company would remain in the county.

Loudon County Economic Development Agency President Pat Phillips said Yale Locks has not made a decision regarding the municipalities' recent action.

"Nothing has changed," Phillips said. "We're still in conversation with the state, and right now we're working predominantly through our state representatives and state senator, but nothing has changed."

He recently met with representatives from the company, but any decision on keeping the plant in Lenoir City is out of the hands of the local manager.

"I think it's more beyond their control, and this is totally corporate," Phillips said.

Of the more than 200 employees at the plant, about 130-140 live in Loudon.

"It'll start drawing down if the plant continues as proposed by the company," Phillips said about the county unemployment rate. "It'll start probably in the (next) 60 to 90 days."

Yale Locks is not the only business to announce it was closing down. Save-A-Lot, located on Bon Street, shut its doors seemingly without notice, affecting residents in the immediate area who did not have transportation. Other tenants in the shopping center cited a leaky roof and problems with the landlord, The Heights Real Estate Company in New York City, as possible reasons behind the closure.
Jennifer Bara, manager at Dollar General, said she thought her store didn't have any plans of closing or relocating.

"As far as I know, we're staying; we're not going nowhere," Bara said, noting that her business has seen some decreased foot traffic because of Save-A-Lot's recent action.

"It's slowed down a little bit, but not much," she said.

Phillips said that he did not know how the unemployment rate would be affected after Yale Locks shuts down for good.

"You just don't know how the rate will actually flow," he said. "We hope the economy is picking up, and there are some signs of that, and there is some hiring occurring, but whether those positions will be picked up, we don't know. It's hard to tell. It'll certainly have an effect. It'll probably affect it negatively, but to what extent, it's too early to tell."

He said the county currently has four potential industrial prospects and if all of them came to the county, that could mean close to 1,000 new jobs.

"That's in an ideal environment where everything just fell in place, which is not likely, but it could," Phillips said.

The types of companies considering Loudon are of broad variety, but he could not reveal details about the prospects.

"We haven't had, up until the Yale announcement, any significant layoffs and no closures to speak of," Phillips said. "I think it plays into the whole regional issue of people going across county lines for employment. Fifty percent of the residents of Loudon County work outside the county, so what happens in Oak Ridge, what happens in Knoxville, Maryville, Alcoa and surrounding communities, all has a great impact on us and vice versa."

AMBER ALERT | Cancelled

GREENEVILLE (WATE) - Two Greene County children have been found safe after an Amber Alert.

The alert for Kimberly McLean, 2, and Isaiah McLean, 1, began Wednesday night as an Endangered Child Alert. Authorities made it an Amber Alert Thursday afternoon after the Greene County Sheriff's Office issued felony warrants for the parents.

Deputies say the children were to be placed into protective custody Wednesday, but they were taken by their non-custodial parents, David Shawn Perry and Shena McLean Perry. Both were taken into custody on Thursday.

The Honda Accord they were believed to be traveling in was also recovered.

Lenoir City Schools Board: Prayer Compromise

By Hugh G. Willett knoxnews.com

 

LENOIR CITY — The Lenoir City school board will observe a moment of silence before meetings in a compromise with secular organizations that have complained about prayer before the meetings.Lenoir City Superintendent Wayne Miller outlined the district's policy at a school board meeting Thursday.
Miller said that although he and the school board members are people of faith, they are also sworn to follow the law.
"For that reason, we will provide an opportunity for people of faith to have an individual prayer during a moment of silence before each board meeting," he said. "After many hours of consultation, this seems to be our only legal recourse."
Miller said that the decision to limit prayer during school activities was made by the Supreme Court many years ago, yet for the most part the public remained silent. He urged board members to become politically active on the subject.
"If you have an opinion regarding this matter, the productive place to direct your energies is at the federal level," he said.
Board Chairwoman Rosemary Quillen said she knows how she will use her moment of silence.
"During this time, I will continue to pray for guidance, wisdom and vision for our decisions as a school board," she said.
Rebecca Market, staff attorney for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a secular organization that first challenged Lenoir City about prayer in the schools, said the "moment of silence" is acceptable to the organization.
"We're very pleased," she said.
The new policy comes only days after the district received a letter from Americans United, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that supports separation of church and state. The letter outlines what the group considers constitutional violations.
In addition to prayer during board meetings and before high school football games, the letter included new allegations of prayer before basketball games and during a graduation, and it cited posters from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
The letter specifically mentioned Lenoir City High School Principal Steve Millsaps and an alleged prayer during a 2010 graduation ceremony.
Millsaps said he had think carefully before he realized the letter was referring to a speech he made at the 2010 ceremony in which he quoted from the Bob Dylan song "Forever Young."
"Is that a prayer? I know I was thinking about one of our students who died that year and about how we were sending these kids out into the world to become adults," he said. "The words from that song expressed how I felt."
Meanwhile, the Loudon County school board continues to pray out loud before meetings. The agenda for Thursday's meeting listed prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Latest letter to the board of education from Atheist Organization

Natalie Shapero* Steven Gey Fellow shapero@au.org
(202) 466-3234 x237
1301 K Street, NW
Washington, DC 20005

April 10, 2012

By Email and First-Class Mail

Lenoir City Board of Education
Bobby Johnson
Rick Chadwick
Glenn McNish, Sr.
Rosemary Quillen
Mitch Ledbetter

Lenoir City Schools
2145 Harrison Avenue
Lenoir City, TN 37771

Wayne Miller, Superintendent
Lenoir City Schools
2145 Harrison Ave.
Lenoir City, TN 37771
waynemiller@lenoircityschools.com

Steven Millsaps, Principal
Lenoir City High School
1485 Old Highway 95
Lenoir City, TN 37771
smillsaps@lenoircityschools.com

Re: Promotion of Religion at Lenoir City Schools

Dear Superintendent Miller, Principal Millsaps, and Board members:

On March 12, 2012, we wrote to you about several complaints we had received from community members about the ongoing promotion of religion in the Lenoir City  Schools. We requested an answer within ten days. Several weeks have passed, and we have yet to receive a response.

Although we have read press coverage of purported changes to certain school practices, we have received no confirmation of these changes from the school district.
Rather, according to news reports, the school district intends to respond by saying, “Thank you very much. We will handle this locally.” Tenn. School Board Halts Prayers at Meetings, Football Games, Associated Press, Mar. 22, 2012, available at http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/tenn-school-board-halts-prayers-at-meetingsfootball-
games.


We assure you that the protection of your local students’ First Amendment right to religious freedom is very much an issue of national concern. In enforcing the
Establishment Clause against local school districts, the U.S. Supreme Court has reiterated “how firmly embedded in our constitutional jurisprudence is the proposition
that the several States have no greater power to restrain the individual freedoms protected by the First Amendment than does the Congress of the United States.”
Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 48–49 (1985). And although we do so only as a last resort, we have not hesitated to represent local residents in federal court against local governments that have refused to comply with the Establishment Clause. See, e.g., Stewart v. Johnson County, No. 2:11-cv-12 (E.D. Tenn. 2011) (following lawsuit by Americans United, county government advised by Alliance Defense Fund agreed to provide plaintiff with extensive injunctive relief, nominal damages, and attorneys’ fees).

Accordingly, we urge you to immediately remedy the following practices.

A. Complaints raised in our March 12 letter.

Our March 12, 2012 letter raised concerns about four practices, none of which the School District has adequately addressed.

Prayers at board meetings/football games.

According to one media account, the school district plans to suspend prayers at board meetings and football games. See Hugh G. Willett, Lenoir City School System Curtailing Prayers at Public Meetings (Mar. 1, 2012, 4:00 a.m.), http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/mar/21/lenoir-city-schoolsystem-curtailing-prayers-at/. If true, these are welcome developments, but we have received no confirmation of them from the school district. Please confirm that the school district has in fact decided to suspend prayers at these events, and please advise when these changes will take effect.

Prayers at graduation ceremonies.

With respect to our concerns about student prayers at graduation ceremonies, we have seen no indication that the school district
intends to suspend this practice. Even media reports reflect only that the Superintendent has denied—contrary to the citizen complaints that we described—that
there have been student prayers at graduation ceremonies, and has not committed to stopping the practice. As we explained in our March 12 letter, the First Amendment prohibits even student-led prayers at school-sponsored graduation ceremonies. See, e.g., Santa Fe Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290 (2000); Corder v. Lewis Palmer Sch. Dist. No. 38, 566 F.3d 1219 (10th Cir. 2009); Lassonde v. Pleasanton Unified Sch. Dist., 320 F.3d 979 (9th Cir. 2003); ACLU of N.J. v. Black Horse Pike Reg’l Bd. of Educ., 84 F.3d 1471 (3d Cir. 1996) (en banc). Please confirm that you will ensure that your high school graduations—including this year’s ceremony—will not feature prayers, student-led or otherwise.

Promotion of religion by physical-education teacher.

We have seen no response—in the media, or otherwise—to the complaints that we raised about the promotion of religion by a school physical-education teacher and coach, Ms. Herron. These practices include reading to students from the Bible and encouraging students to
attend meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. As detailed in our March 12 letter, the Establishment Clause plainly prohibits public-school teachers from
promoting religion to students. See, e.g., Lee v. York Cnty. Sch. Div., 484 F.3d 687 (4th Cir. 2007); Doe v. Porter, 370 F.3d 558 (6th Cir. 2004); Roberts v. Madigan, 921 F.2d 1047 (10th Cir. 1990). There should be no delay in bringing these practices to an
immediate end.

Distribution of religious literature on school grounds by church members.

We have received complaints that, even after our March 12 letter, members of a local church
are distributing Christian literature to students on school grounds during the school day. As we detailed in our previous letter, the Establishment Clause plainly prohibits a public school from allowing a church to proselytize on school grounds during the school day. See, e.g., Doe v. Wilson Cnty. Sch. Sys., 564 F. Supp. 2d 766, 797 (M.D. Tenn. 2008). The school district should likewise halt this practice immediately.

B. Additional Establishment Clause complaints.

Since our previous letter, we have also received complaints about additional constitutional violations at Lenoir City Schools.

Prayer by school officials at school events.

We have received complaints that the principal, Mr. Millsaps, delivered a prayer at the high school’s 2010 graduation ceremony, and that the high school’s athletic director has recited the Lord’s Prayer to students over the loudspeaker during basketball games. As the U.S. Supreme Court has explained repeatedly, the delivery of prayers at school events is unconstitutional— especially when requested or delivered by school officials. See, e.g., Santa Fe, 530 U.S. at 302 (Establishment Clause prohibits “invocations [that] are authorized by government policy and take place on government property at government-sponsored school-related events”); Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577, 587 (1992) (Establishment Clause violation when “[a] school official, the principal, decided that an invocation and a benediction should be given” at high-school graduation); Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962) (“by using its public school system to encourage recitation of the Regents’ prayer, the [government] has adopted a practice wholly inconsistent with the Establishment Clause”). The prayers by the principal and athletic director fall squarely within that prohibition.

Fellowship of Christian Athletes posters.

We also understand that since the concerns about religion at the school have become public, the posters advertising meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA)—which are posted in the highschool’s hallway—have become even more overtly religious, and now feature prominent images of crosses. FCA members do not have free reign to proselytize on school walls during the school day. See, e.g., Bannon v. Sch. Dist., 387 F.3d 1208, 1217 (11th Cir. 2004) (per curiam) (upholding removal of proselytizing FCA mural from high-school hallway). Especially light of at least one teacher’s improper promotion of FCA meetings, the school district must make every effort to avoid endorsement of FCA’s mission and message.


We will continue to investigate complaints about Lenoir City Schools and monitor the school district’s responses closely. Please respond to the concerns raised by
this letter—as well as those identified in our March 12 letter—by the close-of-business on Monday, April 16, 2012. If you have any questions or would like to discuss these issues further, please contact Natalie Shapero at (202) 466-3234 or shapero@au.org.

Sincerely,

Gregory M. Lipper, Senior Litigation Counsel
Natalie Shapero, Steven Gey Fellow*

*Admitted in Pennsylvania only. Supervised by
Gregory M. Lipper, a member of the D.C. bar.

New beer sold in TN gives to Military, Families

(WBIR) Founding Fathers Beer is now available in Tennessee, and it's got a mission to help the military.

The Minnesota-based company that brews this new lager will donate half of its profits to troops and their families.

In Tennessee, two non-profit organizations will help distribute the funds.   Those groups are Operation Homefront Tennessee and The Armed Forces Relief Trust.

Founding Fathers focuses both on producing an American-brewed beer  and helping troops across the country.

"To be able to give back to theses troops is an exciting adventure. We want to be known as the new American Lager and when people see the Founding Fathers logo we want them to realize this is a company that really helped support America and the families of our troops, the greatest military on earth," said Phil Knutsen, Founding Fathers President/CEO and Founder.

Cherokee Distributing will be Founding Fathers' distributor here in Knoxville.

The new beer is the first product for Founding Fathers and the company says it hopes to expand its business in the future.