Tennessee’s new law went into effect Monday, the same day that the governor of Arizona signed a similar bill into law. Arizona’s restaurant/gun law becomes active on Sept. 30.

In Tennessee, people with valid handgun-carry permits can now go armed  into Tennessee restaurants and bars, provided the establishment doesn’t ban guns on the premises.

A lawsuit seeking to overturn the law was a non-starter, because the judge ruled that restaurants and other businesses still have a legal right to ban guns from their premises by posting notices. Several other legal actions are pending.

Opponents of Tennessee’s law say that even if a gun owner has the best of intentions, carrying a gun into an establishment serving alcohol is an accident waiting to happen. Aside from potential accidents, a bad guy could grab a gun away from a responsible gun-carrier. Or drunk gun-carriers might pull their weapons on each other. Or a criminal with a legal permit could bring a gun in and use it to rob the establishment or wreak other havoc.

In Arizona, the law is much the same. The law has expanded the rights of gun owners by allowing those with a concealed-carry permit to take their firearms into establishments that serve alcohol. There are 125,000 such permit holders in Arizona.

Mellow rented his office space from himself at over $3,000 a month.

A 1978 state ethics law forbid lawmakers from using their position “for the private pecuniary benefit of himself, a member of his immediate family or a business with which he or a member of his immediate family is associated.” In 1990, it was clarified to forbid lawmakers from renting office space from themselves.

From 1990 to 2001, Mellow rented the building from a top aide. In 2001, Mellow’s wife attained a 50% share in the building. When the Mellows divorced, ownership transferred to Mellow in 2007.

That makes it sound like a clear ethics violation, doesn’t it?

Not according to Mellow. He cites a Senate resolution routinely passed since the 1980’s which states that if a Senator rents office space from himself, then he the Clerk of the Senate must get an appraisal. Mellow has introduced this resolution at least 3 times this decade.

Thus, Mellow argues that a resolution passed only by the Senate, allowed him to skirt around state law.

Mellow’s arrogance that places him above the law doesn’t stop there.

He doesn’t think there was any problem with the state ethics laws when his wife was owner of the building.

“If I thought I had done something inappropriate back in 2000, I never would have made the declaration in 2006, to expose myself,” Mellow said.

Of course not, if he was going to do something crooked, then he would keep it secret.

What a guy.

Yet, Mellow cannot claim he is a paragon of openness, either.

When he attained ownership, he realized the problem but waited until the latest possible filing in 2008 to claim that he was paying himself rent in 2007.

Then there is that appraisal that the Clerk of the Senate is supposed to attain on Senator-owned property. Mellow said it is up to the Senate to attain the appraisal, not him or his then wife. He should know. He introduced the resolution authorizing that requirement.

The problem is that Russell Faber, the chief clerk, never got an appraisal because he never knew of Mellow’s wife’s interest in the property. When he did learn about in 2006, Mellow told him he was selling the property so Faber figured he would be saving the state the cost of an appraisal by foregoing it.

The reason Faber did not know of the Mellows’ interest in the building was because the resolution that Mellow kept introducing did not require Mellow to notify the clerk.

How conveniently everything fit.

The building did sell, but the new owner had a bonus with a reliable tenant — the state. Even though Mellow’s term expires in 2010, the lease between Mellow and the state for the building continues for six more years at the the premium rent of $4,600 a month.

Altogether, the state has paid the Mellows about $200,000 for renting an office space that violated state law.

• Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, roommate and friend of fellow Senator John Ensign, advised Ensign about Ensign’s relationship with his mistress. Coburn denies that he suggested that Ensign pay her off. However, Coburn also refuses to divulge all details and said he would not testify if there is a Senate investigation, claiming privileged communication as a counselor, physician and ordained deacon.
• German prosecutors have formally charged John Demanjuk with 27,900 counts of being an accessory to murder at a Nazi death camp.
• Due to the budget crisis in Mississippi, the state is now limiting state troopers to one box of ammunition per year. The highway patrol is “trying to be conservative on the ammo it does use in the down budget times the state finds itself in,”a Department of Public Safety spokesman said.
• If you are holding California IOUs, you are running out of banks that will cash them. Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America are no longer accepting them as of Friday. The cash-strapped state started issuing the IOUs on July 2 to state contractors, social service agencies and those owed income tax refunds.
• Vermont, unlike most other U.S. states, has a general fund in the black. However, the tiny state avoided a deficit primarily because more than $10 million in taxes were paid on one deceased person’s estate in May.
• Steven Conroy, Australia’s Communication Minister, has been named Internet Villain of the Year for his internet censorship policies.
• Reports from South Korea claim that North Korean leader Kim Jung-Il has pancreatic cancer.
• British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith admitted that she knew her husband was watching taxpayer-funded porn films.
• It looks like Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi spent a weekend last November at a luxurious health spa with an entourage of women.
• Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, the most senior contemporary Shi’ite cleric, issued a fatwa against the Iranian regime for “offenses against the people’s rights.”
• The Wall Street Journal reports that the secret CIA plan withheld from Congress was to kill al-Qaeda leaders. Why was that a secret? Clinton tried to do that in 1998. I think most people figured that was part of the plan since 2001 fight against terrorism.
• While the New York State Senate wallows in stagnation, top staffers received salary increases of up to $32,000.
• Iran summoned the Italian Ambassador to criticize the Italian use of violence to suppress anti-G8 protests … or maybe they just wanted to learn Italian tactics.
• Russian President Dmitry Medvedev showed off a coin for a “united future world currency” at the G8 summit.
• Zoo New England has said that it may euthanize some animals if the state proceeds with its budget cuts. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick accused the zoo of “spreading inaccurate and incendiary information.”
• Sarah Palin said she would hit the campaign trail for conservative Democrats. Thus far, there have not been any takers.
• Sarah Palin’s oldest son, Track, is not a Republican, but is registered as non-partisan.

Six-foot tall posters of a child eating dog poop appears to have shocked dog owners enough that complaints of dog feces littering public places dropped from 400 in April to 185 in June.

Surprisingly, the ad campaign did not generate any complaints. Instead, it got calls from the public stating that it was about time that a hard-hitting ad campaign was initiated.

Repeat it in the U.S., and I bet the complaints would outnumber the compliments.

Sometimes, there’s no need to pretty up a disgusting problem.

Did you notice that the first definiton of leadership stresses “maintain…leadership?’ It seems hard to find how resignation would fit under any of these categories, unless it was meant comically.

The other interesting part of this interview with John McCain is that he doesn’t think that running for an office with a set term is a “promise” to the voters to finish out that term.