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The Atlanta Department of Watershed Management will be working on sewers on Ponce de Leon Avenue near Parkway Drive this Wednesday and Thursday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Two lanes will be closed, so proceed with caution or hit up an alternate route.
Last week, the grown-ups running Georgia’s House of Representatives voted to stop the state from issuing license plates bearing the mascots of colleges and universities from outside Georgia.
The move came just two weeks after an AJC report raised the specter of Florida Gators commemorative plates, and three weeks after the House cried like colicky babies about how UGA didn’t get to play for the national championship this year.
Tomorrow, Georgia’s House of Representatives will vote on a state constitutional amendment that will make English the state’s official language. Never mind that English is already Georgia’s official language, by law.
The resolution, HR 413, was introduced by Rep. Timothy Bearden, a Republican from, of all cities, Villa Rica.
From the AJC:
“The coffee house is closing all 7,100 company-owned U.S. stores for three hours on Tuesday for remedial espresso training for its baristas.”
That Other Paper has a terrible habit of not printing our name. We’ve come to accept it here and find it almost laughable. The monolith decides what to acknowledge, we know.
So I was floored this morning while reading a Gay Talese-esque profile of John Woodham, the attorney who successfully battled the Beltline all the way to state Supreme Court.
During a recent weekday afternoon, an unshaven Woodham, dressed in an old fleece jacket and battered ballcap, returned from lunch carrying a piece of Fellini’s pizza and a Creative Loafing. He drives a Land Rover adorned with a “W” bumper sticker with a slash through it.
Emphasis added out of sheer amazement. This made me feel like an auto worker in Detroit who gets name-dropped during the State of the Union. When the editors opted to leave that reference in, did papers fly around the office? Did a portal to another dimension open, the fabric of time tear? Did Henry Grady rise from the ground and start high-kicking on Julia Wallace’s desk? The article also references comments made here.
But then again, since Woodham wouldn’t talk to the AJC, maybe saying that he was holding a copy of our paper was a clever way to describe him as a knowledgeable, astute, well-rounded man of immeasurable talent. Or a left-leaning badass.
Nice bumper sticker, too, John.
The U.S. and Iraqi governments claimed the Feb. 1 suicide bombing of a Baghdad pet market was carried out by two women with Down syndrome duped by al-Qaeda into carrying the bombs.
Subsequent reporting has uncovered that, other than the fact that the women didn’t have Down syndrome or any evident ties to al-Qaeda, the governments’ claims were spot-on.
Remember, these are the same people who keep telling you the surge is working.
Sorry, Jack. We’ll give you props for going on “Real Time with Bill Maher” and shooting the breeze, but you should try to lay off the GOP talking points while you prep in the green room. On his Friday appearance on the HBO show, Kingston — joined by David Frum, the poetic former speechwriter for President George W. Bush — decided to talk about a bunch of stunning, startling information about Barack Obama: He refuses to pledge allegiance to the flag! He doesn’t wear a flag pin on his lapel!
Only problem, Rep. Kingston, is that you’re wrong. (Click here for Kingston getting called out by Maher later that evening for not wearing a flag pin on his own lapel.) There are plenty of other neat idiot statements, including the “Barack Hussein Obama” line.
To the dunderheads running our country, I raise a glass to thee.
(Hat tip to Crooks and Liars)
Barring major reforms, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools will revoke Clayton County Public Schools’ accreditation in September. Clayton’s students will lose scholarship eligibility and will be unable to transfer their credits. In the past 20 years, only two school systems in the country have lost accreditation.
“The Clayton County Board of Education is dysfunctional. Currently the Board does not operate with unity or a common sense of purpose. Individuals on the Board act in their own best interest or that of special interest groups. As a result the Board operates in a constant of confusion and conflict.â€
— Southern Association of Colleges and School’s Feb. 15 report by the Special Review Team for Clayton County Public Schools
“ASSCLOWN!â€
— The label given to Clayton County school board members Lois Baines-Hunter, Ericka Davis, the Rev. W. Rod Johnson and Sandra Scott on the website www.give-em-the-boot.com. The site accuses several top county officials of incompetence and corruption.
By Sonia Clark
(photo by Joeff Davis)
Barbara Moody was a flight attendant for Delta Airlines for 45 years before retiring in December. Now she’s a professional pet sitter.
Her career choice was inspired by the flight attendants she saw as a high school student in Hawaii. “They all looked so glamorous. I thought, ‘That’s what I want to do.’â€
Moody graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1962: “I went to college, graduated, went home, changed clothes and went to work for Delta.â€
Her first flight was on a Convair 440 to Charleston: “One of the passengers had to tell me where the [cabin] light switch was. The passengers knew the plane better than I did.â€
On the difference between pets and passengers: “People sometimes cannot accept that they are one out of 300. Pets don’t talk back and you can come to some kind of mutual agreement with them.â€
In 2002, Barb volunteered for military charter flights to Kuwait. Once, while a plane was still on the ground in Kuwait, sirens went off indicating incoming fire. Barb and her fellow crew members had to don gas masks.
Although she was given the option by Delta not to fly anymore, Barb continued to fly after the 9/11 attacks because she did not want to give terrorists the satisfaction. “I was angry about what had happened, but I wasn’t going to change the way I lived.â€
What Moody misses most about being a flight attendant: “Being able to go to dinner in a foreign city.â€
The environment’s one of the most important issues our country and world face, but to this point has gone relatively uncovered. This is the best rundown on the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates’ positions I’ve seen yet. It’s filled with links to other articles and resources. Brookings did a great job on this.
Of the few politicians who write blogs, state Senate President Pro-Tem Eric Johnson does a great job — and I really mean that. Often times the posts legislators write are rambling or appear half-hearted. Sometimes they overuse exclamation points. Johnson writes these bizarrely captivating bullet-point posts about his day and the political process, what it means, and how it works. And believe it or not, they’re actually entertaining. This one yesterday really made me scratch my head, though. I have to wonder if our most recent Add It Up was his muse.
Did ya hear about this plant? GreenLaw has. The Atlanta-based environmental law firm is representing 15 groups that say a proposed power plant 60 miles outside of Macon in Sandersville has not efficiently outlined a strategy for how exactly it plans to control pollutants emitted from the facility.
Power4Georgians LLC has touted the plant as a safer, more efficient power facility that uses cleaner technologies and will have less of an impact on water resources than its antiquated counterparts. But GreenLaw considers it an unhealthy — and financially risky — energy option for Georgia. Keep in mind that Plant Scherer, branded as the nation’s foulest power plant, sits just north of Macon. (For an interesting read on how the coal used at Plant Scherer gets from Wyoming to Georgia, click here.)
“At a time when innovative, cleaner ways of producing energy are becoming more economically feasible, Georgia must look to new technologies as well as to greater conservation measures to achieve the economic growth that we expect,†Patty Durand, Georgia chapter director of the Sierra Club, said in a press release. “We need to attract more ‘green collar’ jobs for Georgia and keep our air clean for breathing.”
Click here for GreenLaw’s take on the matter. Information about the proposed plant, made available by Power4Georgians LLC, is available here.
THE REV. MARKEL HUTCHINS TAKES ON REP. JOHN LEWIS: “The winds of change are blowing. Dress in layers.â€
(photo by Joeff Davis)
Accompanied by a smooth-jazz rendition of “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now,†the Rev. Markel Hutchins strode up to the small crowd assembled outside the Russell Federal Building downtown Wednesday to announce he’s running for Congress.
The 30-year-old minister and activist, best known as the spokesman for the family of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston after she was gunned down by Atlanta police, is taking on 11-term Rep. John Lewis in the Democratic primary. Hutchins called Lewis the candidate of “yesteryears†– a great icon, but a lousy advocate for the 5th District in D.C.
The odds against Hutchins are steep. So steep, in fact, that during his speech he said, “I’m not crazy.†“The winds of change†are blowing, he insisted. I don’t know if they were winds of change or not, but the wind was blowing so hard during his announcement that I left during the Q&A with reporters. I was cold.
The New York Times weighs in with a hilarious take on state Sen. David Shafer’s and Rep. Harry Geisinger’s twin resolutions calling for the citizens of Georgia to rise up and reclaim our God-given land, dammit.
From Politico:
President George Bush has chosen Southern Methodist University in Dallas as the site of his presidential library, officials familiar with the decision said.
