Nine months into the new fiscal year and five months into the presidency of Barack Obama, the federal deficit has hit $1 trillion for the first time in history. Take note, children, and stop goofing off in school, demanding feel-good, esteem-raising “A’s” for “C-minus” work. You’ve a heavy debt burden [...]
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and her publicity-seeking stunts have finally achieved the attention she deserves: One- or two-paragraph stories that run with those that warn us that sheep on the remote Scottish island of Hirta are gradually shrinking because of global warming. Global warming’s [...]
No question, Sarah Palin is the Republican Democrats love to hate. They sense in her the small-town, outsider appeal that they find threatening. She scares them.
That’s why liberals spend an inordinate amount of time lamenting that she’s not ready for prime time or that poor old unsophisticated Sarah appeals to [...]
That Congress doesn’t work to serve our best interest is not news. Major legislation, including the $787 billion “stimulus” porker and the cap-and-trade energy tax legislation are essentially written by Democrats in leadership positions and then popped onto the floor for quick votes. As a result, almost nobody knows what’s [...]
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I agree with President Barack Obama. What? No lightning strikes me down? On his nomination of U.S. District Court Judge Beverly Martin to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, we are in agreement. She is, as he said, “a first rate jurist with unflagging [...]Presidents are free to stage their conversations with the American people however they choose. But some members of the White House press corps, including CBS’ Chip Reid and press room fixture Helen Thomas, are among those upset that this President is using stage-managed “Town Hall” events as pretend press conferences.
President [...]
Once upon a time, back oh, say, a year or so ago, back when ordinary public stockholders owned the car companies, it mattered a great deal. Now, maybe not.
At issue is whether a single state can implement pollution restrictions for cars that require national manufacturers to build one car for [...]
California has a one-year budget deficit that exceeds the cost of operating the entire State of Georgia. California’s deficit is $24 billion; Georgia’s 2010 budget, which goes into effect on Wednesday, is $18.6 billion. California’s population is 38.6 million; Georgia’s is 9.6.
The question is: Should the federal government ride to [...]
We’d all better hope that U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is right. “This bill coming out of the House is going nowhere in the Senate,” he said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” The bill he refers to is the Nancy Pelosi cram-down, with the support of eight wayward Republicans, of a cap-and-trade monstrosity guaranteed [...]
Not bad to have a book published one week and be cited by the U.S. Supreme Court the next.
That is the case for veteran Atlanta lawyer Alfred A. Lindseth, co-author with economist Eric A. Hanushek of a valuable new book that should be required reading for judges tempted to substitute [...]
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DeKalb County District Attorney Gwen Keyes Fleming will bring criminal charges against the former Atherton Elementary School principal and assistant principal for allegedly correcting students’ answers on a state CRCT test. This is an important message to send to school officials statewide who [...]The temptation today is to return to South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s affair. Undoubtedly, his chances of being the Republican presidential candidate in 2012 are nil as a result of his personal misconduct. Even though his wife had asked for a trial separation over a period that included Father’s Day, [...]
In the midst of a season where national unemployment is pressing against 10 percent, where GM is about to eliminate 4,000 white-collar jobs, where the number of mass layoffs (50 or more employees from a single employer) is at record levels, where a new President “sharpens” his rheotric on Iran but is [...]
The U.S. Supreme Court should, I suppose, be commended for exercising judicial restraint in declining to declare a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 unconstitutional — while signaling the belief that it is.
At issue is Section 5, a discriminatory provision of the act that holds Alabama, Alaska, [...]
Oh, my, here we go again. Another mayoral election looms in Atlanta, a city of padded payrolls and excess spending and what’s the cure candidates are embracing? Finding money from somebody else.
Candidates were asked for their views on a commuter tax. Here’s the answer from candidate Mary Norwood: “We could break [...]
Before I go, there’s one more story to tell.
It’s about a military guy who served his country for more than 20 years in the U.S. Navy, the last time at the Naval Submarine Base at Kings Bay, Ga.
As retirement loomed in 2006, Al Daniels approached his wife, the former Melaneise [...]
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The state should take over testing for, say, three to five years in any school where any individual in authority is suspected of cheating or allowing students to cheat on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, as was the case at Atherton Elementary School in DeKalb, [...]A Florida-based developer with a major project underway in DeKalb County wants $52 million in tax breaks — complete freedom from having to pay property taxes for the next 20 years on most of the Sembler Co. Town Brookhaven project on Peachtree Road near Oglethorpe University.
This should be the wake-up call Georgians [...]
When this President says he can find $300 billion in Medicare and Medicaid savings to partially fund a proposed new government health care entitlement, the skeptic is inclined to ask: If $300 billion in savings are possible when politicians are looking for money to spend, why wasn’t $300 billion in unnecessary [...]
We can appreciate the restraint of the Georgia Supreme Court in deferring to the General Assembly on the matter of a teacher-coach having sex with a 16-year-old she’d previously taught. It’s now up to the Legislature to make it perfectly clear in the law that it is sexual assault.
The case [...]
Can a white male conservative from Mississippi be elected President of the United States?
That’s the question for Republicans, and ultimately the nation, as Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, incoming chairman of the Republican Governor’s Association, headlines fund-raisers in Iowa and New Hampshire, the states that will launch the 2012 presidential campaign.
By [...]
One joy of life in the newspaper business is that it’s an open invitation to drop by — sometimes for a whuppin’, sometimes for a treat.
The first visit with Brunswick banker Ron Adams was for a whuppin’ — though I’d debate still whether it should have been his or mine. [...]
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Having NCR’s headquarters and a new ATM factory in Georgia are good. For us. But there is considerable irony in asking for federal stimulus money to renovate a factory in Columbus to make ATM terminals now being made in South Carolina for a company [...]The Obama Administration has appointed a compensation czar to determine pay for top executives at Government Motors, Chrysler, Bank of America, American International Group, Citigroup, Chrysler Financial and GMAC. The czar, Washington attorney Kenneth R. Feinberg, will also have authority to set compensation levels for executives at scores of other [...]
Barack Obama is the New Age President. In the New Age, majorities of Americans live on text-messages, are turned off by politics and are oblivious to the workings of government. The result is that this President can say anything, confident that he’ll not get trapped in the facts contained in the [...]
A Wisconsin man, eager to do his family’s part to elect Barack Obama, voted himself. And voted is wife. Only problem was that she was dead, having died of lung cancer more than two months before November’s election.
The living voter, Stephen Wrobleski of Milwaukee, knew of course how his wife [...]
With weeks to go before my longtime colleague and I part working company forever, the thing you wouldn’t know about Cynthia Tucker is something she doesn’t know herself. I’ve never brought it up.
It explains, though, why ideological differences never soured a collegial working relationship or a decades-long friendship. For probably more [...]
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When Atlanta traffic cameras produce 49,322 citations in one year at one intersection (Freedom Parkway and Boulevard), you’ve got to wonder whether the real problem’s motorists, designers or a quick camera. Second-most citations (19,101) are issued at Cobb Parkway and Windy Hill Road [...]Will former Gov. Roy Barnes’ entry into the 2010 gubernatorial race materially change Democratic prospects?
Probably not. It will certainly complicate life for Georgia House Minority Leader DuBose Porter of Dublin and for former Georgia Adjutant General David Poythress. It makes it more important, too, for Atty. Gen. Thurbert Baker to [...]
High-profile crimes in Atlanta raise the question: Do you feel more or less safe here than elsewhere?
A report by the FBI concludes that cities were safer in 2008 but small towns weren’t. Nationwide, violent crime dropped 2.5 percent and property crime 1.6 percent, based on preliminary data. Murders fell by [...]
Today is a sad one for America. A hundred-year-old company that once dominated the world’s automobile industries is in the arms of government, perhaps never to emerge as an independent company. The company said in bankruptcy filings in New York that it has debt of $172.81 billion, and less than [...]
On Monday it’s expected that General Motors will file for bankruptcy. In as little as 60 to 90 days, Government Motors will emerge, 72.5 percent owned by taxpayers and 17.5 percent owned by our Big Labor partners whose intransigence and greed helped to destroy the industry.
There is so much to [...]
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Some of the prettiest homes in all of metro Atlanta are the small brick houses with picture windows that Lockheed jobs built near the plant in Cobb County. I love the add-ons and the revisions that are signs of a family’s American Dream coming [...]California is lined up, hands extended, palm up, imploring the Obama Administration to guarantee its debt – a guarantee as inconceivable as state ownership of General Motors once was.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger projects that California will create a deficit of $23.4 billion over the next year, a deficit bigger than Georgia’s entire [...]
One of the problems with the on-going negotiations involving the automobile companies, government and the union that helped destroy General Motors and Chrysler is that, when it’s all over, the union ends up in the driver’s seat.
The United Auto Workers, an extension of the Democratic Party, will wind up with a controlling [...]
Some commentary has a longer shelf life than others. An earlier posting lasted minutes before President Barack Obama announced the appointment of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to fill the David Souter vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.
She’ll attract considerable debate, largely because of a speech she made in 2001 where she [...]
It’s granted that Barack Obama will appoint a liberal to replace David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. Democrats in the White House are far better than Republicans at recognizing potential justices who share their interpretation of the Constitution. Too, the politicization of the nominating process has worked in the [...]
Almost half a century ago, the nation — starting in New York — embraced a sweeping regulatory strategy as the solution to rising health care costs.
The approach was to keep costs down by controlling hospital beds and equipment. Before expanding or buying expensive new equipment, providers had to prove “need.”
Mostly [...]
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Jermaine Dupri is committed enough to Janet Jackson to tattoo her image along his lower right side from chest to waist — but they’re not committed enough to marry. Such is our culture. No need to waterboard Joe Biden. If he knows, you know. Real [...]The President of Chrysler-Government Motors may soon create a public sector subsidiary to acquire failed states, starting with California. Voters on Tuesday rejected a package of tax increases, mushy spending caps and borrowing from future lottery revenues to balance the budget. The only measure approved would ban raises for legislators and [...]
At the state Republican convention in Savannah, national party chairman Michael Steele asked the young to stand.
About 50 did. No further invitation is needed, he told them. You are here and now given license to work actively to expand the party.
The gesture was as much for the elders as for [...]
Ordinarily with armed robbers, I’m for locking them up and tossing the key. They’re a particularly dangerous lot. By the time they pull a weapon and utter a demand, they’ve already decided they’ll kill. Bad guys. Truly bad guys.
But there’s one armed robber I’d turn loose. That’s Richard Paul Boucher, 56, an [...]
The group might be called “I love my city, but I’m sick of my government.”
Both are true.
Sitting around the breakfast table, Lynn Irvin and other members of a group called Campaign for Atlanta discuss their frustration with a government that doesn’t work.
Like any Atlantan who has phoned City Hall or [...]
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A warning to conservatives wishing to avoid being trampled in a stampede: Never stand in the path of a liberal determined to give a Republican governor a big hug for vetoing a tax cut. Won’t give ’em a vote, but will give ’em a [...]On most occasions when President Barack Obama reverses field, it is a good thing. He’s never out of the campaign mode, so “candidate” Obama says things that President Obama lives to regret.
A good example was “candidate” Obama’s declaration that he’d not oppose the release of dozens of photos from military investigations [...]
America’s dirty little secret, cleverly hidden from illegal immigrants, is that while many of them get a free ride up front, there’s a heck of a bill that’ll be dropped on them before they exit this life.
It’s coming in the form of a federal deficit, projected to be $1.84 trillion [...]
At the age of 12, the young Wilcox County farmer Melvin Everson made his first big-league speech at a Future Farmers of America gathering at Atlanta’s Sheraton Biltmore hotel.
By the time he settled in at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College (ABAC) in Tifton, the young Everson had been cured of the [...]
No question, the long process has begun. In journalistic short-hand, it’s being cast as this: Should the Republican Party follow the path of Colin Powell or Rush Limbaugh?
Former Vice President Dick Cheney weighed in Sunday. Here’s the transcript of an exchange with Bob Schieffer, host of CBS’s “Face the Nation”:
SCHIEFFER: Let’s talk [...]
