NOT the law-bomb lobbing Bob Loblaw Law Blog.

Apparently Rush Limbaugh went off on Obama and his SC nominee today. He's upset that they're both "reverse racists". He claims that the SC nominee is a huge advocate of "reverse racism".

I don't know how to parse that. Is that like a reverse vampire? Is Limbaugh saying that he'd rather have a racist in the White House appointing racist judges? Would that make him happy? Or is he still strung out on painkillers and has no clue how the English language works?

I was hoping to put together a longer article with links and citations, but since Saxby's people have been beating the drums all day about Sarah Palin, I've been provoked into posting some quick thoughts. If you're a Saxby supporter, or you're on the fence between the two candidates, here are some things you need to consider. If you believe in small government or divided government, here are some good reasons why Jim Martin is your candidate and why you should fire Saxby Chambliss.

Saxby is bringing Sarah Palin in as his "special guest" at his final fundraiser. He's rented out the Gwinnett Arena for it. Folks, this is the kind of person that Saxby respects as a politician. When Saxby tells people that he doesn't know what "recession" means, when he tells people that he voted for the bailout because "the smart people on Wall Street told us they needed it", when he said with a straight face "Let me be clear: There is no stronger advocate for civil liberties in the Senate than myself." despite voting for the Patriot act twice... this is a man whose lack of intellectual depth is in line with Sarah "I help keep an eye on Moscow" Palin. And this is a man whose politics is the cause of the rottenness within the GOP.

If you're concerned that a vote for Jim Martin will help give Democrats a filibuster-proof majority, you're wrong. The Democrats will use the same "nuclear option" majority vote to end debate that the Republicans were going to use against Democrats whether Saxby is there or not. Turnabout is fair play, after all. It doesn't matter whether it's Saxby or Martin's ass sitting in that seat- the Democrats will get what they want at the end of the day.

If you're concerned that Martin will support big-government policies, you need to take a closer look at what Saxby has been up to. Do you really want someone up there who will defer to the same "smart people on Wall Street" who made the stupid choices that got them into this mess in the first place? Saxby voted for every one of Dubya's budgets.

The GOP says that Jim Martin supported "the largest tax increase in Georgia history". But they don't tell you what it was- a $0.01 increase in state sales tax. Well, here's the situation. The legislature felt they needed the revenue, and they were going to get it one way or another. Martin supported getting it via Saxby "Fair Tax" Chambliss' favorite method- the sales tax. This is another example of Chambliss' hypocrisy. AND- despite the increased revenues the sales tax increase brought in, the Republican politicians who have been running Georgia are STILL facing severe budget problems. Saxby has been an unabashed supporter of the Corporate Farmer Bailout, AKA the Farm Bill, which keeps our food prices artificially high.

The GOP says that Martin's only beef with the bailout is that he didn't think it went far enough, implying that Martin wanted to give MORE money to Wall Street. This is also untrue. What Martin said he wanted was regulatory reform rather than financial bailouts. Would his reforms cause other problems? Probably. But the difference between Martin's boneheaded reform plans and Saxby's bailout is simple- Martin's regulatory reform would have been acted through laws that were transparent and on public record. They could be tweaked or repealed at any time in the future. Saxby's bailout plan involved giving Wall Street billions of dollars and giving Paulson and Bernanke nontransparent powers to do what they please with our economy. To this day, nobody, not even Congress, has been able to get Paulson to reveal what he's doing with our tax dollars. I'd rather take Martin's plan, thank you very much.

In short, Saxby Chambliss is a poster child for what's wrong with the GOP. And he's unrepentant about it. Saxby Chambliss should be FIRED like the rest of the social conservative, small-minded big-government RINOs that plague the GOP. This past November 4th, you kicked a lot of the bums out. This December 2 you need to finish the job.

Update: Jason Pye has also posted an excellent debunking of Saxby here.

The gov't has a great idea on how to get the bailout deal to pass. Since we citizens are so angry about the government going into deeper and deeper debt to bailout banks that made stupid decisions, they figure that adding a tax cut to the bailout plan will gain enough support for the thing to pass.

I swear I am not making this up.

How can we pass bad legislation? By making it worse!

Write and call your congresscritter TODAY and tell them what you think.

Last Tuesday, a guy in Houston named Bill Perkins took out a full-page New York Times ad to express his thoughts on the Wall Street bailout. Such ads don't come cheap- he spent $130,000 on the ad. The ad gets your attention for two reasons- first, the page is mostly white space as the ad is almost entirely above the fold. Secondly, the ad is a hand-drawn cartoon showing Bush, Bernanke, and Paulson planting an American flag with the communist hammer-and-sickle, and the names of "Big insurance, Detroit auto, Wall St Banks" on it. It's titled "The New Communist".
Below the cartoon is just his name and address.

While his grasp of political ideology is a little off, it's certainly an attention-getting ad. Other newspapers have taken notice and written articles about him, but I have yet to see any of them link to a scan of the ad. So here it is, for your viewing pleasure.

The cartoon

Name and address

He also got the Marx quote wrong- It's supposed to be "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". For a $130k ad, you'd think there'd be a proofreader. But he got his idea across anyway.

Tags: current events

I saw this photo in the AJC last night, and couldn't resist making it into a poster..

SUBJECT: REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

DEAR AMERICAN:

I NEED TO ASK YOU TO SUPPORT AN URGENT SECRET BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH A TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF GREAT MAGNITUDE.

I AM MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY OF THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA. MY COUNTRY HAS HAD CRISIS THAT HAS CAUSED THE NEED FOR LARGE TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF 800 BILLION DOLLARS US. IF YOU WOULD ASSIST ME IN THIS TRANSFER, IT WOULD BE MOST PROFITABLE TO YOU.

I AM WORKING WITH MR. PHIL GRAM, LOBBYIST FOR UBS, WHO WILL BE MY REPLACEMENT AS MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY IN JANUARY. AS A SENATOR, YOU MAY KNOW HIM AS THE LEADER OF THE AMERICAN BANKING DEREGULATION MOVEMENT IN THE 1990S. THIS TRANSACTIN IS 100% SAFE.

THIS IS A MATTER OF GREAT URGENCY. WE NEED A BLANK CHECK. WE NEED THE FUNDS AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. WE CANNOT DIRECTLY TRANSFER THESE FUNDS IN THE NAMES OF OUR CLOSE FRIENDS BECAUSE WE ARE CONSTANTLY UNDER SURVEILLANCE. MY FAMILY LAWYER ADVISED ME THAT I SHOULD LOOK FOR A RELIABLE AND TRUSTWORTHY PERSON WHO WILL ACT AS A NEXT OF KIN SO THE FUNDS CAN BE TRANSFERRED.

PLEASE REPLY WITH ALL OF YOUR BANK ACCOUNT, IRA AND COLLEGE FUND ACCOUNT NUMBERS AND THOSE OF YOUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN TO WALLSTREETBAILOUT@TREASURY.GOV SO THAT WE MAY TRANSFER YOUR COMMISSION FOR THIS TRANSACTION. AFTER I RECEIVE THAT INFORMATION, I WILL RESPOND WITH DETAILED INFORMATION ABOUT SAFEGUARDS THAT WILL BE USED TO PROTECT THE FUNDS.

YOURS FAITHFULLY MINISTER OF TREASURY PAULSON

Since the government is in the process of going on a spending spree with our money to bail out companies that made stupid decisions (because Bush and friends think that markets function by giving profits to shareholders and charging losses to taxpayers), the news is awfully grim these days. We're going into deeper and deeper debt, and the only thing Washington can do is to slap shiny platinum band-aids on everything rather than looking at the problems that actually caused the mess in the first place.

But there's humor in all this:

Buy My Shitpile will let you offer your own bad investments you need a bailout on to the government.

LOLFED crosses LOLcats with the financial news.

Poorly managed banks like WaMu are attracting takeover offers from unlikely sources.

And finally, two guys deal with their sadness over Lehman Bros' failure the only way they can:



(And in other political news, Ron Paul endorsed the presidential candidate of the crypto-theocratic Constitution Party today. When I said Paul was a nut earlier, I really wasn't kidding, folks. It's not just his followers who are kooky.)

Tags: current events, linkfest

So, since Russia is all about letting people secede into new states in Georgia, one can only assume that they'll be letting Chechnya spin themselves off into a new country Real Soon Now.

Jeff Carter has posted an insider's overview of his father's trip to the Middle East and his talks with Hamas.

A South African radio morning show has a difficult time getting information about the Zimbabwean election from the embassy's phone system:



This is hilarious.

"Our office hour is 11:00-11:30 Tuesday"

Hat Tip: Ethan Zuckerman

Nobody can design a get out the vote effort like Robert Mugabe. Unfortunately this time it looks like he forgot to send out his enthusiastic armed teams of thugs^H^H^H^H^Hparty workers to threaten^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hencourage Zimbabweans to vote for him and the ZANU-PF.

But it's not too early to get a head start on drumming up support for the next election.

There were rumors floating around last week that Mugabe was in private talks with the MDC to quietly leave office. Considering all the heat he's under, and his age, that would certainly seem to be a reasonable option. I was never completely convinced that he'd do such a thing, though. He's way too much of a firebrand to just quietly walk away. And now, with his supporters running amok again while the electoral commission continues to delay releasing any presidential vote results, any chances that he might be using this election as an opportunity to retire gracefully are fading very fast.

Also- late last week, there were reports that ZANU-PF "war veterans" were occupying white farms again. Are there actually very many white farmers left in Zimbabwe?

Heather and I moved back to the US from Nigeria at the end of 2001. We had spent most of the year fighting with various government ministries over the ability to buy radio frequency licenses that would have let us roll out a very cool new wireless Internet product. I had countless meetings with both the Minister and Minister of State for Communications, as well as the Chair of the NCC over this. At first, neither organization could determine which of them was the appropriate group to issue the license. Finally, both agreed that the NCC was the group we needed to deal with (after the Ministry of Communications secretariat staff hit us up for seemingly endless bribes at every turn). The NCC was a dead end, as they weren't interested in issuing the licenses we wanted.

So, I read in the news today that the ICPC (Nigeria's independent investigatory body that investigates and prosecutes government corruption) is going after the Minister and Minister of State for Communications for soliciting and accepting millions of pounds in bribes from Siemens. Unfortunately, Haruna Elewi is dead, but Bello Mohammed Hailru is still around. Of course, it remains to be seen whether the ICPC has the ability or desire to actually _do_ anything about this. I'd be naive to say that I hope this helps clean up the terrible corruption I ran up against in the Ministry of Communications, but if you're going to try and clean things up a bit, you've got to start somewhere.

In defense of Siemens, I have to say that in many areas, it's simply not possible to do business in Nigeria without bribery. It doesn't matter where the blame lies- with the foreign corporations that show up and splash money all over the place, or the spoiled and corrupt government officials who ask for and receive money for favors, the culture of corruption is there. I've seen first hand what happens when you try and start a business in Nigeria and try to do things the honest way..... nothing happens at all, because you won't even get your company incorporated in the first place without paying a small dash to a clerk at the Corporate Affairs Commission to handle your paperwork. The EU and US governments can make as much of a stink as they like about how it's illegal for their corporations to pay bribes overseas, but the fact remains that the list of American and European companies and nonprofits that regularly pay bribes to the Nigerian government is exactly the same as the list of American and European companies and nonprofits that do any business in those countries in the first place.

Anyway, going back to my original thought on the issue- I'm very glad to see that there's at least a slight possibility that Bello Mohammed might get what's coming to him after all the crap he and his ministry put me through.

BBC: Nigeria probes Siemens bribe case

Update: Jeremy at Naijablog also comments on this controvery. He says:


It must fast be dawning on multi-nationals wishing to bag contracts that bribes and kick-backs can no longer be the way to go in Nigeria - and that they must behave in Nigeria as they would behave in their home country.


I've gotten in real trouble for talking about this before- I was once shouted down by a Nigerian medical professional at the CDC at a forum where I spoke about Nigeria. But, if you put 100% of the blame for this situation on the companies offering the bribes you're missing the point. If I walk into a Nigerian government ministry office in Abuja tomorrow and ask for a major license of permit, I'm not going to get anything at all unless I've got some cash to spread around. Is it wrong? Damn straight it is. But in many parts of bureaucratic life in Nigeria, it's just how business is done. It's a Catch-22.... the bribers perpetuate the bribery. If every business decided to stop bribing officials, the officials would stop asking for bribes. But the odds of that happening are so small as to be nonexistent. What's the answer? I'm not sure, but I know that the solution has to involve both sides of the equation.

Perhaps things have changed drastically since 2001 when I butted heads with the MoC. But I doubt they've changed _that_ much.

So, we're in the middle of another water shortage in Atlanta. This one is worse than most- Lake Lanier apparently only has enough water to supply the metro area through January. Well, had enough water to supply us through January- the Corps of Engineers is about to start dumping even more water from the lake to keep shellfish wet in Florida.

Some people (like the Governor and most elected officials) are pointing the finger at the Corps of Engineers for getting us in this mess. They accidentally released way more water from Lanier last year due to malfunctioning measurement equipment, supposedly about a month's supply. Gov. Perdue is making all sorts of noises about suing the Corps to prevent them from releasing more water from the lake.

But is the problem really with the Corps of Engineers? Water experts quoted in the AJC talk about how Atlanta has been severely overtaxing Lanier and the Chattahoochee River for years. We've had summer watering bans and talk of potential water shortages going back to at least the early 1990s or late '80s. And yet state and local governments have been pushing ever onward with development in the area. Atlanta has grown like a weed over the last 30 years, and while government officials happily sell building permits and rake in extra taxes from new residents and businesses, they sure haven't been spending these revenues to upgrade the infrastructure to actually support all the growth.

Governor Perdue and the rest of our elected officials have spent the last few decades ignoring this situation and trying to shift blame elsewhere. The blame belongs squarely on our state and local government officials who would rather waste time fighting the perceived menace of gay marriage and other junk than actually dealing with real problems that actually affect real people. Perdue has known for years that the Corps controls water releases from Lake Lanier, and that they're required by federal law to release enough to supply downstream power plants and keep Florida shellfish wet. There's nothing he can do about that... is the Corps expected to cut off power to parts of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida just for Atlanta?

Why hasn't our state looked at building additional reservoirs to handle the ever increasing need for water in north Georgia? According to the AJC, a study is being commissioned to look into this possibility.... but.... any actual new water reservoirs are years away from happening. We know so little about the water situation in Georgia that nobody can even guess what effect a new reservoir of X capacity would have on the metro area's supply. So this new study is going to have to start at zero. And you can't just add a reservoir- you've got to obtain the land, build a dam, etc. And there are negatives to reservoirs- they can severely impact the health of a river, and the increased surface area of a lake increases the rate of water loss through evaporation. Expect years of studies and debates just to get the basic information needed to determine where to start on a water plan. Meanwhile, expect our elected officials to blame the Corps of Engineers out one side of their mouth while they cut deals with developers out of the other side.

(note: I'm not saying there's anything wrong with developers and development. I'm saying that there needs to be appropriate resource planning to go along with it.)

Courtesy of jdhenchman, watch almost all of the GOP presidential candidates dither on a simple question: Does the President need Congress's permission to go to war?

Full text of their responses

Abbreviated response summaries:

Romney: Go talk to your lawyers, they'll tell you what to do.
Hunter: Go to Congress only if you have time.
Paul: The Constitution says you have to, so you have to.
Huckabee: If you have time and feel like it, then sure, go to Congress. But otherwise, let's go bomb Iran.
McCain: Talk to Congressional leaders at a minimum, because you want them to be your friends and like you and stuff.
Thompson: Talk to Congressional leaders, and maybe even Congress, because it'll "help you with the American people".
Giuliani: It's nice to go to Congress and follow the laws and stuff, but you might not be able to.

You have GOT to be kidding me.

Many of my friends (and probably many enemies, too) have gotten really excited about the FairTax over the last few years. The idea of getting rid of the IRS is a popular concept, and growing popular support has brought some legislators (such as Rep. John Linder and Sen. Saxby Chambliss) on-board as well.

I've never been sold on the idea. I'm not an economist, but I'm concerned that the push for FairTax passage is based more around it being something that sounds good, rather than something that works well fiscally. Politicians are good at rallying people around ideas that work well as sound bites but may not work out so well in the real world (see: Iraq, Patriot Act, any politician who utters the phrase "do it for the children", Social Security, etc). There are some really misleading numbers being thrown around by some FairTax supporters (like Rep. Linder and radio host Neal Boortz), such as the idea that the national retail sales tax would be 23%. That's true, if you suddenly decide to start calculating sales taxes in a completely different way than anyone ever has before. When you calculate it the way sales taxes are actually calculated, the number is 30% (if you buy something worth $1, you're charged $.30 tax on it- 30%. FairTaxers get their lower number by saying that $.30 is only 23% of $1.30). I've always thought this was very dishonest- and that makes me wonder what other numbers are being fluffed here and there. If it's such a good idea, why do you have to mislead people into supporting it?

Saturday's Wall Street Journal has a scathing editorial from Bruce Bartlett, former deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury, on the FairTax. I'm including the text of the editorial after the cut, but I want to digress for a minute on a bit of information that was incredibly enlightening about where the idea for the FairTax came from in the first place.


It [the FairTax] was originally developed by the Church of Scientology in the early 1990s as a way to get rid of the Internal Revenue Service, with which the church was then at war (at the time the IRS refused to recognize it as a legitimate religion). The Scientologists' idea was that since almost all states have sales taxes, replacing federal taxes with the same sort of tax would allow them to collect the federal government's revenue and thereby get rid of their hated enemy, the IRS.


Wow. I mean, wow. Cultists are behind the Fairtax? I'd never heard this before. So I did some googling around. The World magazine did an article on Citizens for an Alternative Tax System (CATS), the original group behind the FairTax (or national retail sales tax (NRST) as they called before adopting a catchier name). But they're now charging to read it. That's OK, someone else has posted the text elsewhere. There are more links out there on them and their Scientology roots.

I can see the "DEFEAT XENU! SUPPORT THE FAIRTAX!" tshirts now. Or maybe the bit about the FairTax supposedly being 23% is a tip that the whole FairTax thing is a Discordian joke, as 23 is a Discordian cosmic number. Maybe if I look at the FairTax website text long enough, I'll be able to see the fnords.

Thank god there's Wikipedia out there to explain the obscure references in my jokes :-)

The editorial:
( Read more... )

The Bush administration is once again enjoying the new powers granted to it by our Congress.

"In a little noticed provision included in the Patriot Act reauthorization last year, the Administration's authority to appoint interim U.S. Attorneys was greatly expanded. The law was changed so that if a vacancy arises the Attorney General may appoint a replacement for an indefinite period of time – thus completely avoiding the Senate confirmation process"

The DoJ has recently asked at least seven US Attorneys to resign without cause.

Feinstein, Patrick Leahy, and Mark Pryor have introduced a bill that tries to close this loophole. Except there's one interesting thing about this- Leahy is the only one of the three who actually voted against reauthorizing the Patriot Act.

I'm really starting to like the Read The Bills campaign's idea that all bills must be read and legislators must legally confirm that they've read the bills they vote on. All the bellyaching by legislators about the Patriot Act by people who voted to pass it is disgusting.

For the political addicts out there, here's a quick link to the SoS website with the live election returns. Only 26 minutes until the polls close in GA..

There are several constitutional amendments on the ballot this election:

Amendment 1: To restrict the use of eminent domain. “Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended so as to prohibit the use of eminent domain by certain non-elected authorities and to prohibit the contested use of eminent domain except for public use as defined by general law?”

I support this. It's not worded as well as it could be, but it's what we've got. The Institute for Justice has endorsed this amendment as "some of the nation’s most complete protections from eminent domain abuse".

Amendment 2: To protect the traditions of fishing and hunting. "Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended so as to provide that the tradition of fishing and hunting and the taking of fish and wildlife shall be preserved for the people and shall be managed by law and regulation for the public good?”

This is a silly amendment that states the obvious, but I'll probably vote yes on it anyway.

Amendment 3: To authorize the General Assembly to dedicate revenue from special motor vehicle license plates. “Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended so as to authorize the General Assembly to provide for special motor vehicle license plates and dedicate the revenue from such plates for stated purposes, including dedications for the ultimate use of agencies, funds or non-profit corporations where it is found that there will be a benefit to the state?”

This is a big NO. The state should not be in the business of fundraising for private organizations, especially now that political groups (like GA Right to Life) are coming out with their own license plates. The state does already do this with some plates (like the wildlife tag), but that is in violation of the state constitution. Making it legal doesn't change the fact that this is without a doubt an area the government has no business being.

Tax Referendums

I used to vote for all tax cut referendums. But I've thought about it and realized that spot tax cuts only lead to spot tax increases elsewhere. Overall government revenue isn't going to decrease- the legislature will just find other places to get money to make up for it. So there are now only a few times I'll vote for spot tax breaks. Still, I could see voting either way on most of these, so your mileage may vary here, and I'm not really going to argue much over them.

1: To expand the ad valorem tax exemption for farm equipment. "Shall the Act be approved which expands the ad valorem tax exemption for agricultural products and equipment to include certain additional farm equipment held under a lease purchase agreement?"

No. It could be argued that this is ok, since it's just giving leased equipment the same treatment as purchased equipment, but I'm still iffy on it.

2: To expand the ad valorem exemption for veterans organizations to include organizations which refurbish and operate historic military aircraft for educational purposes. "Shall the Act be approved which expands the ad valorem tax exemption for veterans organizations to include certain additional nonprofit veterans organizations which refurbish and operate historic military aircraft for educational purposes?"

No. This is a tax cut for a legislator's specific pet project.

3: To expand the ad valorem tax exemption for property of charitable institutions. "Shall the Act be approved which grants an exemption from ad valorem taxation on property owned by a charitable institution which generates income when that income is used exclusively for the operation of such charitable institution?"

No.

4: To provide a homestead exemption to certain residents who are senior citizens with respect to state ad valorem taxes. "Shall the Act be approved which provides a homestead exemption for senior citizens in an amount equal to the actual levy for state ad valorem purposes on the homestead?"

No.

5: To provide a homestead exemption for the surviving spouse of a peace officer or firefighter killed in the line of duty. "Shall the Act be approved which provides a homestead exemption for the full value of the homestead with respect to all ad valorem taxes for the unremarried surviving spouse of a peace officer or firefighter who was killed in the line of duty?"

Yes. Firefighters and other peace officers get paid next to nothing (if they get paid at all) for risking their lives.

6: To provide that a surviving spouse shall be entitled to a continuation of the base year value under a base year assessed value. "Shall the Act be approved which provides that with respect to base year assessed value homestead exemptions, the surviving spouse of a deceased spouse who has been granted such a homestead exemption shall receive that exemption at the same base year valuation that applied to the deceased spouse so long as that surviving spouse continues to occupy the home as a residence and homestead?"

Yes. There's no reason for a home's value to be recalculated when someone dies for purposes of that year's homestead exemption.

I forgot a couple.

Sec. of Education: David Chastain Yes, I'm voting for the Libertarian. Denise Majette shouldn't be allowed anywhere near an elected office again. She's completely unqualified. And, like a ferret around shiny objects, Majette will run for any office that's availible. Kathy Cox has actually not done a bad job, but her push to remove evolution from science textbooks shows she's one egg short of a dozen. While I disagree with some of David's political ideas, his plank of making the Sec. of Education an appointed education professional rather than an elected political official sounds like a good idea to me.

Georgia House 85th district: Stephanie Stuckey Benfield (D-Decatur) She's the legislator to thank for the fact that you can now buy high gravity beer in Georgia. And she's open to potentially loosening or removing completely the regulations that prohibit out of state wine shipments to Georgians. She's also worked to reduce property taxes.

I'm not particularly happy with many of the candidates running this year, so I'm not endorsing several races. I take a little different view of some races than many of my fiscally-conservative friends. I'm fiscally conservative, but I'm also socially liberal. In my opinion, these two things go together very well. I think that there are a limited number of areas the government should be involved in, and regulating what people do on their own time in their own homes is out of their jurisdiction. I think the recent focus of the government on the ten commandments, gay marriage, and flag burning is a complete and utter waste of time and money. And so I can't support any legislator who runs for office on a platform of "vote for me and I'll ignore real issues while bloviating about things that don't matter one bit!".

The quick crib sheet for people in the 4th District: Write in Loren Collins for Congressional District 4.

Secretary of State: Karen Handel. She's fiscally conservative and not a nut on social issues. Say what you will about her backpedaling on some issues during her campaign, this is politics and in order for her to get elected she has to appeal to voters. She's already made her real opinions clear, IMHO.

Attorney General: Thurbert Baker. His opponent makes silly statements like he will "stand up to the ACLU to stop them from preying on Georgia’s communities" He's on the record as equating gays with pedophiles. And he wants to spend state money to defend any government in Georgia who decides to post the ten commandments on public property. I think the state has more important things to focus on, as well as better ways to spend the public's tax dollars.

State Supreme Court: Carol Hunstein. Her opponent Mike Wiggins is ex-Homeland Security. He's an advocate of his own flavor of judicial activism. He's never been a judge. He's too socially conservative. And he's pro-"giving the president whatever powers and tools he needs to do whatever he wants". Plus, some of his under-the-board campaign activities are highly distasteful. And did I mention that he's ex-Homeland Security?

House Rep, district 4: Loren Collins (write in candidate). Let me make a plea for people to consider Loren. First, Catherine Davis is never in a million, zillion, zillion years going to win. Hank Johnson has this in the bag. But Hank's main platform was "I'm not Cynthia McKinney". While that's a great platform for the Democratic primary, he has yet to really expand beyond this for the election. Loren is a fiscally conservative, socially liberal candidate. In fact, he may actually be the candidate I most support this year, and certainly the one I'm most excited about voting for. His website is: www.voteloren.com. Just remember to write his name down and take it with you to the polls to make sure you spell it right. And besides, don't you want to see how write in candidates work with our new electronic voting system? :-)

State Senate district 41: Steve Henson (D-Tucker). He's a good guy, and his the postcards his opponent has been mailing me get more and more amusing (implying that allowing illegal aliens to drive will cause you to die in a horrible car crash and that Henson apparently supports child sex slavery). Auman isn't even a serious candidate- he ran simply so voters would have a choice, his campaign mailings are all funded and mailed by the state Republican party, and he doesn't even have a website. The Republican party is insulting the intelligence of voters in my district if they think that people will vote for someone just because there's an "R" after his name on the ballot.

State House district 82: Steve Schultz, but just barely. His website is incredibly skimpy when it comes to issues (He's for education and against taxes and traffic- that's his entire platform). But he signed the RLC's Liberty Compact, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he'll be a good representative.