Seven bands from the region are still going head-to-head in online voting to see who will get a shot at making the live finals at the Historic DeSoto Theatre on June 15 at 7 p.m.

Tickets are on sale now for $12. Tickets can be ordered online at https://app.ticketturtle.com/index.php?ticketing=hdtf or by calling the DeSoto Theatre Box Office at 706-295-7171 to order tickets over the phone.

The Grand Prize for winning the Judges’ Choice is a gig at the Brewhouse Music & Grill as well as a $500 cash prize from the Rome Area Council for the Arts.  A People’s Choice Award also will be presented to the band that garners the most votes from the public through June 15. That winner will get to perform at the Oct. 26 Broad Street party presented by Rome’s Downtown Development Authority, a $200 gift certificate from Stephen’s Music Store and a studio photo session with Tracy Page of Babycake Studios.

The 2013 semifinalists are The Kamikaze Dali, The Strange, Melissa Singer, Five40, Wolves in DC, Chasing December and Cornbread Killers.

95.7 The Ridge’s Matt Davis said he’s pleased with the range of this year’s group of bands. “This year’s lineup of contestants is a great example of Rome and the surrounding area’s musical diversity. We have jazz, country, rock, folk, reggae, as well as several other genres of music represented. Several of the artists incorporate a blend of many different genres into their repertoire,” he said.

The Battle of the Band judges are Jay Shell, veteran musician and owner of Brewhouse Music & Grill; Erica Simpson, program director for RACA; Scott Moody, retired fine arts coordinator for Floyd County Schools; Lavon Lacey, agent with The People Store and Quantum Entertainment in Atlanta; and Holly Moore, cancer survivor and owner of Imagine Studio for Hair and Art in downtown Rome.

Online voting for semifinalists continues through 11:59 p.m. May 31. On June 1 online voting switches over to just the five finalists. Go to the www.theridge957.com/battle2013 to vote. This year voting is taking the form of donations for Cancer Navigators with $1 equal to 1 vote.

“A $10 donation gets a band 10 votes; $25 gets them 25, etc. There’s no limit on votes since people are voting with their donations,” said Charlotte Atkins, executive director for Cancer Navigators. “So, of course, as a nonprofit that gets 100 percent of our funding from donations, we want to see lots of votes because that translates into front-line services for cancer patients in the region.”

The bands’ songs are being played on the radio during Davis’ morning show “Your Morning Experience with Matt D and SCAAAHT!”  as well as during the NWGA Music Hour.

“The targeting of conservative groups by the IRS completely undermines the American public’s confidence in the agency’s integrity. We need to get to the bottom of what happened at the IRS because the American people deserve answers,” said Isakson, who is a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees the IRS. “I am proud to co-sponsor these bills to help ensure that this type of outrageous political discrimination never happens again.”

Isakson co-sponsored S.941, the Taxpayer Nondiscrimination & Protection Act of 2013, a bill introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., that would add criminal penalties for IRS employees who target political organizations. Isakson also co-sponsored S.937, the Project Against Ideology-Based Targeting Act, which was introduced by Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., that would prohibit the IRS from targeting organizations based on ideology. Sen. Flake’s bill would also require the semi-annual report to Congress from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration to include information about complaints of ideology-based targeting.

In the letter to President Obama, Georgia Senators Isakson and Chambliss outlined concerns regarding conflicting responses from the nonpartisan agency and said it is imperative the Administration work with Congress to restore public confidence. The full text of the senators’ letter is below.

Dear Mr. President:

We are writing to express our grave concerns and deep disappointment about the revelations in a report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had specifically targeted certain organizations for extra scrutiny as part of their approval review of applications for tax-exempt 501(c)(4) status.  This appears to be a wholly inappropriate action that threatens to silence political dissent and brings partisan politics into what used to be a nonpartisan, unbiased and fact-based review process.  The public’s confidence in the IRS relies on fair and apolitical application of the law. Actions such as these undermine taxpayers’ ability to trust its government to fairly implement the law.

According to information given to Congress in a timeline provided by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), in early 2010 “specialists had been asked to be on the lookout for Tea Party applications, and the IRS Determinations Unit had begun searching its database for applications with ‘Tea Party,’ ‘Patriots,’ or ’9/12′ in the organization’s name.”  The report goes on to state that “By June 2011, some IRS specialists were probing applications using the following criteria to identify tea-party cases, according to the Treasury inspector general findings: “‘Tea Party,’ ‘Patriots’ or ’9/12 Project’ is referenced in the case file; issues include government spending, government debt or taxes; education of the public by advocacy/lobbying to ‘make America a better place to live’; statements in the case file criticize how the country is being run.”

We are deeply disturbed that agents of the government were directed to give greater scrutiny to groups engaged in conduct questioning the actions of their government. This type of purely political scrutiny being conducted by an Executive Branch Agency is yet another completely inexcusable attempt to chill the speech of political opponents and those who would question their government, consistent with a broader pattern of intimidation by arms of your administration to silence political dissent.

These disclosures are even more unsettling as they contradict prior statements made by representatives of the Administration on this matter. In response to questions raised in 2012 on this issue by Republican Senators, Steven T. Miller, the Deputy Commissioner for Services and Enforcement at the IRS, specifically (and falsely) stated that there was an unbiased, technical screening process used to determine which applications for 501(c)(4) organizations merited further review.  In two separate letters to Finance Committee Ranking Member Orrin Hatch, Mr. Miller failed to note that explicitly political screens were used in reviewing applications, despite the fact the practice was apparently well known within the IRS as early as 2010.

Given these strong and clear statements by the Administration in 2012 that no such targeted review or specified politically motivated criteria existed, these revelations raise serious questions about the entire application review process, and the controls in place at the IRS to stop this sort of political interference once and for all. According to TIGTA these actions took place more than two years ago, yet without this information becoming public, there is no evidence that your administration would have done anything to make sure these abuses were brought to light and dealt with in a transparent way.

The American people deserve to know what actions will be taken to ensure those who made these policy decisions at the IRS are being held fully accountable and more importantly what is being done to ensure that this kind of raw partisanship is fully eliminated from these critically important non-partisan government functions. As such, we demand that your Administration comply with all requests related to Congressional inquiries without any delay, including making available all IRS employees involved in designing and implementing these prohibited political screenings, so that the public has a full accounting of these actions.  It is imperative that the Administration be fully forthcoming to ensure that we begin to restore the confidence of our fellow citizens after this blatant violation of their trust. We look forward to working on this critical issue with the Administration’s full cooperation.

The film stars Dominic Cooper, Aaron Paul, Michael Keaton and Imogen Poots. The plot follows a cross country race framed by a massive bounty.

Filming will take place on the Rome Bypass from Highway 27 to Blacks Bluff Road, Cave Spring Road, and Myrtle Hill Cemetery in Historic Downtown Rome.

The Rome Bypass from Highway 27 to Blacks Bluff Road will be closed for traffic from Thursday, May 16 – Saturday, May 18.

On Thursday, May 16, Cave Spring Road near Bagwell Road will see minor delays due to intermittent traffic control. All traffic will be temporarily stopped while filming takes place, and then will be released in-between each film shot.

Also on Thursday, Pennington Avenue at Myrtle Hill Cemetery will be closed between Myrtle Street and Branham Avenue from noon to 6pm. A funeral will be reenacted in the Historic Myrtle Hill Cemetery during this time and the cemetery will be closed to the public.

A helicopter will be used for filming on all days of operation and may be flown closer than 500 feet from the ground, but the public will never be in danger.

“Need for Speed” will be released in spring of 2014. This is the first major motion picture to film in Rome since “Sweet Home Alabama” was filmed in 2001.

Kiana Mata, an eighth-grader at Armuchee Middle School, earned Best in Show in the middle school division with her work in Mixed Media. Erica Dutton, a junior at Armuchee High took Best in Show in the high school division. Dutton’s work was also in Mixed Media.

Other first place winners included:

Colored Pencil

Celine Chen, seventh grade, Armuchee Middle

Dylan Hart, Armuchee High

Pencil

Kimberly Knight, eighth-grade, Coosa Middle

Kinsey O’Neal, Armuchee High

Painting

Kiana Mata, eighth-grade, Armuchee High

Ashleigh Breeden, Coosa High

Prints

Eman Khatib, sixth-grade, Coosa Middle

Printmaking

Katherine Leiter, Coosa High

Mosaics

Celeste Kelly, eighth-grade, Model Middle

Watercolor

Adrianna Hines, Pepperell High

Mixed Media

Kiana Mata, eighth-grade, Armuchee Middle

Kinsey O’Neal, Armuchee High

Scratchboard

Mason Siniard, seventh-grade, Armuchee Middle

Greg Rauch, Armuchee High

Sculpture

Ryan Lamb & Dawson Boatner, eighth-graders, Pepperell Middle

Sculpture (Clay)

Isaiah Lake, Pepperell High

Skylar Dobbs, eighth-grade, Armuchee Middle

Sculpture (Craft)

Kaitlyn Mauldin, Pepperell High

Ceramics Pottery

Kaitlin Mauldin, Pepperell High

Chalk

Aspen Simmons, Armuchee High

Collage
Ashley Breeden, Coosa High

“Government agencies should never be able to read our private emails without a warrant,” said Rep. Graves. “It is ridiculous for the IRS or any other federal agency to believe it is above our fundamental right to privacy, but it’s important that we update the law to keep up with modern communication and protect against government intrusion.”

“Today, we affirm what most Americans already assume, that Americans’ privacy should be protected from government intrusion. Our bill has a simple aim – all private communications stored online should have the same Fourth Amendment privacy protections under the Constitution as any other letters and documents Americans keep in their homes,” said Rep. Yoder.