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MEMPHIS, TN - (WMC) - Shelby County Commissioner Henri Brooks' case against the commission is expected to be heard in Chancery Court on Monday.

It comes just days after she filed a lawsuit following the investigation into her residency. The investigation resulted in her being removed from the commission after they could not establish that she lives in district two.

WMC Action News 5 asked her attorney where Brooks lives and he gave the following statement:

"And for privacy concerns, the county was advised of this, that is a different issue and I want to be careful to protect the families privacy and to protect the people she associates with and associated with to protect their privacies. But in terms She lived in district two and remains to live in district two and serve those constituents."

According to the county charter, if a commissioner moves out of their district they have to give up their seat.

Brooks' attorney says the investigation was not thorough, but Commissioner Terry Roland is confident the results of the investigation will stay in place.

On July 7, commissioners could vote on Brooks' replacement for the two months she has left on the commission.

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MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Memphis veterans got a chance to take their complaints to the top. An acting under secretary for the Department of Veterans Affairs was in Memphis Friday at the request of Congressman Steve Cohen.

Cohen said he’d been on top of the issues from the beginning.

However, late last year, WREG asked the congressman about some of the problems vets were telling us about and he didn’t speak of any charge for change at that time. That didn’t come until other areas of the country started complaining. WREG asked him about that Friday.

Cohen responded, “My office deals with VA complaints on a regular basis so do I. I asked General Shinseki to come here. I personally talked to General Shinseki about Memphis. I got the Deputy Administrator to come here. Very few districts have got the Deputy Administrator to come.”

Cohen insists he’s always fought for vets and has staff members who specialize in their needs.

“This was an open meeting to get the word to Washington as well as the VA hospital about the problems that the veterans have,” said Cohen.

The meeting meant a packed house of vets at the Benjamin Hooks Library. Extra chairs had to be brought into the room.

Cohen brought with him Jan Murphy, part of the senior leadership of the Veterans Administration in Washington, D.C. A regional administrator was also on hand, as well as the physician who leads the Memphis facility.

However, the meeting may have been too late for some already frustrated vets.

The congressman spent a great deal of time trying to keep the crowd under control, even changing the format of the meeting several times. At first only written questions read by Cohen aids were going to be read, but vets demanded to speak from the floor and did.

The meeting got heated at times, with veterans venting about years of problems at the VA. They talked about long wait times to see the doctors, treatments being denied and relatives spoke about losing loved ones because of what they considered misdiagnosis.

The Memphis facility is one of those being looked at by the inspector, but during the meeting, Murphy said initially she doesn’t think there are many problems here.

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On Thursday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” State Sen. Chris McDaniel, the Republican candidate in last Tuesday’s GOP primary that fell just shy of defeating long-time incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS), reacted to the outcome.McDaniel laid out his Republican credentials and questioned why some within his state’s Republican Party had gone to such lengths to for Cochran.

“It was shocking,” McDaniel said. “I’m a two-term state senator. I’ve been a Republican since I was 13-years old. I’ve paid my dues. I’ve gone door to door. I’ve given money. I considered these men and woman to be my friends and colleagues. But desperation and the quest for power pushed them somewhat over the edge. And Tuesday evening the Republican primary in Mississippi was not decided by Republican voters. It was decided by 35,000-40,000 Democrats. That’s unprecedented and extraordinarily unusual.”

He also claimed he had evidence of more than 1,000 voting irregularities in just one country and pointed to the desperate tactics Cochran employed to get Democrats out to vote for him.

“It’s not so much a recount,” McDaniel continued. “We’re looking to the issue of whether or not people who participated in if June 3 Democrat Primary crossed over into the Republican Primary this Tuesday night. We’ve found more than 1,000 examples of that in one county alone. So, we’ve found widespread irregularities of ineligible voters. They should not have been there in the first place. And they were pushed there. This is what's shocking, Sean. They were pushed there be an overt action, an aggressive action on the part of Sen. Cochran’s campaign that was filled with race-baiting, lies, distortions. He literally ran the latter three weeks on food stamps. He ran on voter suppression and he ran on pork. Mississippi is a conservative state and one would think that our party was a conservative party. This proves otherwise.”

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Megyn Kelly destroyed State Department spokesperson Marie Harf tonight on The Kelly File.

In January Obama called ISIS an al-Qaeda “jayvee team.”

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EADS, TN -(WMC) - The attorneys for an accomplished Mid-South businessman, who's charged with a sex crime, says he was set up

Mark Giannini now has two mugshots: one taken Tuesday after an arrest on drug and weapons possession charges, for which he bonded out on, and one taken Wednesday when he was charged with aggravated rape.

Giannini has hired the so-called dream team Steve Farese and Leslie Ballin to defend him.

The successful business man is accused of luring a 26-year-old woman to his Eads estate with the promise of a cleaning job. According to the affidavit of complaint, he made her a drink that tasted like an orange push-up. When she told him she was ready to go home, he replied, "No, you're not."

Investigators say he then sexually assaulted her for the next three hours.The woman was taken to Baptist East where nurses noticed she was foaming at the mouth, according to the report.

"We think the facts will show the he is innocent, that he wasn't the one who called her. She called him to come get her," Farese said. "There's another witness who took her home and this certainly looks like a staged event."


After the Duke Lacrosse team false accusations, I think it's wise to reserve judgement on this....

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MEMPHIS, TN (localmemphis.com) - The process will be starting soon to replace Henri Brooks from the commission, after an investigation showed she didn't live in her district.

She is fighting the accusations and her attorneys said they are heading to court.

Meanwhile, commissioners have not decided what you are going to have to pay in property taxes.

There are two plans. One would do away with the different tax rate that exists in Shelby County outside of Memphis and would lower Memphis residents’ taxes by a penny.

The other would shift money to Pre-K.

County Mayor Mark Luttrell said this is a big issue that needs action right now.

“Oh, its vital. It's vital. That's how we collect our taxes, and we can't collect taxes unless we have a tax rate. And we can't run government without taxes, so it's a key ingredient to say the least,” Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell said. 

The tax rate debates were front and center for commissioners until one member grabbed the spotlight away from the issues.

“It has been a distraction as we've seen over the last two or three weeks. And the sooner they can get that resolved and get back to the business of setting a tax rate so we can move forward. But we cannot let this become an issue that impedes the operation of government,” Luttrell said. 

The commission will be meeting Monday to set the tax rate. If you don't want money being diverted from the general fund to go for pre-k, you might want to show up and tell them....

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MEMPHIS, TN (localmemphis.com) - Tempers flared, police were called, and a near fight was broken up in front of where Shelby County Commissioner Justin Ford claims to live. 

According to MLGW, the Whitehaven apartment Ford said he lives in has not had working utilities since 2011. 

Thursday, when Local 24 went to the apartment trying to get answers, the situation spiraled out of control. 

The county attorney is now looking into whether Ford's residency is legit. 

Ford doesn't want to talk about it. When we tried to ask questions, he called the police...and then his father.

And it all ended with people trying to break up a fight.

Ford didn't want to answer any questions about whether he lives in the apartment. 

According to MLGW records, utilities at the Whitehaven property were disconnected for non payment in December 2011. 

Records show he only attempted to get the utilities turned back on June 19th, days after the county attorney began a residency investigation into fellow commissioner Henri Brooks. 

“He is in and out. He is Justin Ford, I guess,” said resident Jonathon Burgess.  

Ford didn't like Local 24 being on the property, so he called the police.

Then cable show host Thaddeus Matthews showed up, trying to ask Ford the same questions.

“They want us to believe that Justin Ford is living in an apartment that hasn't had utilities on in the past few years,” Matthews said. 

Moments later, Justin Ford's father, former Shelby County Mayor Joe Ford, arrived and that is when things got really interesting. 

Joe Ford and Justin Ford lunged at Matthews and had to be held back.

“He's upset because I'm taking his picture. And then he tells me he is going to whoop my (expletive), and I said Joe and me are gonna go there,” Matthews said. 

Matthews said this is not how he expected the day would end. He was trying to get the truth.

“Are we to believe Justin Ford is paying $585 a month, living in a place that doesn't have any utilities? Or do we have a resident manager of a low income apartment complex taking up for a politician?” Matthews said. 

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Quite Possibly the Stupidest Thing To Come Out of the US DOE
In announcing a new emphasis and "major shift," the US Department of Education will now demand that states show educational progress for students with disabilities.

Arne Duncan announced that, shockingly, students with disabilities do poorly in school. They perform below level in both English and math. No, there aren't any qualifiers attached to that. Arne is bothered that students with very low IQs, students with low function, students who have processing problems, students who have any number of impairments-- these students are performing below grade level.

"We know that when students with disabilities are held to high expectations and have access to a robust curriculum, they excel," Duncan said. (per NPR coverage)

And I'm pretty sure we don't know any such thing. I'm pretty sure that the special needs students in schools across the country are special needs precisely because they have trouble meeting the usual expectations.

But who knows. Maybe Arne is on to something. Maybe blind students can't see because nobody expects them to. Maybe the student a colleague had in class years ago, who was literally rolled into the room and propped up in a corner so that he could be "exposed" to band-- maybe that child's problems were just low expectations. Maybe IEPs are actually assigned randomly, for no reason at all.

And that's not even the stupidest thing. We're not there yet.

Read the whole thing for the kicker...

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NASHVILLE — Gov. Bill Haslam said Monday that the 12-cent federal fuel-tax hike proposed by U.S. Sen. Bob Corker would help Tennessee fund its highway and bridge needs, but he stopped short of endorsing the plan until he gets more details.

“Would it help the state? Sure,” Haslam said. “Transportation funding both at the federal and state levels has been severely curtailed” due to slower fuel tax revenue from increased energy efficiency.

“Whether that’s the right thing or not, Congress will have to debate that out,” the governor said.

“There’s been a lot of debate about whether we should fund this (transportation) project or that project. Pretty soon it’s going to be a question of whether any project can get funded,” he said.

Corker, R-Tenn., and Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., unveiled the bipartisan plan last week to add 12 cents to both the 18.4 cents-a-gallon federal gas tax and 24.4 cents-a-gallon diesel tax over the next two years (six cents per year) and then index the tax rates to inflation. They also call for offsetting the tax increases with other tax cuts.

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The IRS is Not the Only Government Agency Hiding Documents from Congress

House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Wednesday said he would begin contempt proceedings against the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to give the committee documents it started asking for six months ago.

Last November, Issa subpoenaed the EPA for various emails and documents that Republicans suspect will show that the White House interfered with congressional requests for information.

In a Wednesday morning hearing, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said she was still not ready to hand over the documents Issa is seeking. McCarty indicated that EPA staff was still negotiating with committee staff and trying to work with the request for papers, but Issa said that answer wasn’t good enough after more than six months.

“Could you imagine if I just went ahead and set up a coal energy plant without a permit, started burning raw coal to produce electricity, and then told you for month after month after month that I look forward to working with you?” Issa said.

“I am informing you today that it is my intention to hold the Environmental Protection Agency in contempt and to schedule a business meeting to do so at the first business day available to this committee, which will be after next week.”

McCarthy said several times that EPA staff had shown committee staff one email “in camera,” or in private, which she said shows there was no coordination between the White House and EPA about what documents to give to Congress. McCarthy said this work is similar to work that has been done in the past between Congress and the EPA.