Tennessee Now in Tight Race for Wingnut Crown

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Tennessee, which appears to be giving South Carolina a serious run for the title of Wingnut Central, is now at the forefront of one of the tea party’s more peculiar pet rocks: repealing the 17th Amendment, by hook or by crook.

Why are they opposed to electing senators? Hard to say. It was a Bircher thing back in the 60s (Robert Welch was apparently convinced that it represented a poisonous concentration of power in the federal government), and now it’s a thing again. The names change, but the obsessions just go on and on. There’s probably no point in asking why.

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OUR DEADLINE MATH PROBLEM

It’s risky, but also unavoidable: A full one-third of the dollars that we need to pay for the journalism you rely on has to get raised in December. A good December means our newsroom is fully staffed, well-resourced, and on the beat. A bad one portends budget trouble and hard choices.

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We simply can’t afford to come up short. There is no cushion in our razor-thin budget—no backup, no alternative sources of revenue to balance our books. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the fierce journalism we do. That’s why we need you to show up for us right now.

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