Regular readers might recall that it has been since last July that this writer has written and investigated the case of Representatives Tony Shipley and Dale Ford, who stood accused of improperly using the influence of their offices to assist three Upper East Tennessee nurse-practitioners whose licenses had been revoked to get those licenses back. Almost from the beginning we pointed out in this column that what Shipley and Ford had been asking for was a fair hearing for the then-accused nurses, who were able to produce reasonable evidence that they weren't granted a fair hearing because they were not allowed to present evidence in their own defense.
Indeed, the evidence that the so-called investigation into Shipley and Ford was really a witch-hunt mounted as then-Health Commissioner Susan Cooper and former legislative aide to the Governor Dale Kelly were dismissed under rather mysterious circumstances. Both of those individuals had a hand in seeing to it that the nurses in question were given their licenses back. The Examiner was able to pose the hard questions to one of those nurses, Bob Reynolds, who put himself at some risk to bring us the truth of the case and of the politicized nature of certain officialdom at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to light. All along, this writer maintained that Reps. Shipley (R-Kingsport) and Ford (R-Jonesborough) were victims of a hatchet job, and were being used as political fall guys for the failure of the Board of Nursing to do its job correctly.
You heard it here first. Your Examiner has written all along that Shipley and Ford did nothing wrong, and-lo and behold-as if buried on the internet, away from the 24-hour news cycle and off of the front pages of the newspapers of this State, where the mainstream press cannot be made to appear as the lapdogs of the Democratic Party and the social and political Left that they are, we discover a story that appeared and very quickly was conveniently forgotten. The news was that the two Republican Representatives-one of which is a rising star within the Tennessee House Republican Caucus-were cleared of any wrongdoing in a useless "investigation" that cost the taxpayers of this State time and money in pursuit of the innocent.
The nurses were exonerated, but their lives have been forever changed. Bobby Reynolds might rightfully say that his life has been ruined, and he can't ever get back what the incompetence and unfairness of the Board of Nursing took from him and the other nurses. The State ruined the lives of three fine medical professionals because of someone's political agenda. At least the TBI can't ruin Tony Shipley and Dale Ford for doing their jobs as elected officials to exercise oversight of a taxpayer-funded agency of the State.
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