by Ray Hill | Mar 5, 2017 | Columnist, Hill, Stories In This Week's Focus:
By 1939 Franklin Delano Roosevelt was fast approaching perhaps the biggest crisis of his presidency, aside from the Great Depression, with war looming in Europe. Roosevelt turned to his Secretary of State, Cordell Hull of Tennessee. Tall, stately, dignified and...
by Ray Hill | Feb 26, 2017 | Columnist, Hill, Stories In This Week's Focus:
By Ray Hill When author Mark Twain was informed a newspaper had printed his obituary, he tartly replied, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Tennessee’s Senator Kenneth D. McKellar was seventy-seven years old in 1946 when he sought reelection for a...
by Ray Hill | Feb 19, 2017 | Columnist, Hill, Stories In This Week's Focus:
By Ray Hill Many people are under the misapprehension colleagues of the same party representing the same state in the United States Senate are close friends, or at least friendly. Oftentimes that is not the case. There is frequently a rivalry between colleagues...
by Ray Hill | Feb 12, 2017 | Columnist, Hill, Stories In This Week's Focus:
By Ray Hill Cordell Hull had been in Congress since 1907 when he had only narrowly won the Democratic nomination, which inside Tennessee’s Fourth Congressional district was tantamount to election. Hull, only thirty-seven years old at the time, had been nominated by...
by Ray Hill | Feb 5, 2017 | Columnist, Hill, Stories In This Week's Focus:
By Ray Hill Cordell Hull, for fourteen years the congressman from Tennessee’s Fourth District, had lost his reelection bid in the 1920 Republican landslide. Tennessee had lost three longtime incumbents during the 1920 elections: besides Cordell Hull, Thetus W. Sims of...
by Ray Hill | Jan 29, 2017 | Columnist, Hill, Stories In This Week's Focus:
By Ray Hill Congressman Cordell Hull of Tennessee is frequently credited with being the “Father of the Income Tax.” Today, that is likely a dubious distinction. When the income tax was first approved in 1913, the tax code was fifteen pages long. Today, the tax code...