Fresh Loaf

DEFENSES DOWN: The Fulton County Superior Court’s chief judge calls the mass layoffs of public defenders — which was announced Friday with lack of state funding as the reason — irresponsible, saying it could create a legal crisis.

ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES: Major restaurants and grocery store chains are voluntarily withdrawing raw tomatoes suspected of starting a 17-state salmonella outbreak, as officials continue searching for the source. Georgia tomatoes are fine.

OLD SHOULDERS NEVER DIE: John Smoltz is having season-ending shoulder surgery today.

CLAYTON: Corrective superintendent says the school district’s mandate-meeting progress can be quantified when SACS officials visit next month.

FIREBOMBING: Gwinnett radio station is attacked by a former employee armed with Molotov cocktails; a bystander corralls him, but the two of them are injured by the ensuing fire.

VOGTLE MAJORITY: The Marietta City Council unanimously votes to spend $405 million on the $14.2 billion nuclear expansion of Plant Vogtle. Since the city won’t need the energy until 2036, it will sell it to other utilities for 20 years, reducing the overall cost to $200 million.

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Gather ’round, Atlanta, Marietta, Sandy Springs — according to the Brookings Institution, your carbon footprint is shrinking. Everybody gets a gold star.

The Washington, D.C.-based think tank has released a study of the carbon footprint from transportation and residential energy uses of 100 metropolitan areas. The three-city survey conducted from 2000 to 2005 in our neck of the woods shows that our impact has decreased 4.75 percent while that of the average metropolitan areas and nation has increased 1.1 percent and 2.2 percent during this time, respectively. In all the rankings, the three cities hovered in the middle.

Hard to believe, eh? I know what you mean. That could be chalked up to the fact that the areas are more-or-less near one another, that a lot of other metro Atlantans travel from as far off as Gwinnett and Hall County to work in the city core, etc. The output surely hasn’t reduced because of public transit. With how sprawling metro Atlanta is, the three cities selected may not be suitable samples.

The study also doesn’t take into account our food supply, which according to a consultant with Mayor Shirley Franklin’s Sustainable Atlanta initiative, makes for up to a quarter of our carbon footprint that’s often overlooked.

What are the solutions? Researchers say:

Federal policy could play a powerful role in helping metropolitan areas—and so the nation—shrink their carbon footprint further. In addition to economy-wide policies to motivate action, five targeted policies are particularly important within metro areas and for the nation as a whole:

• Promote more transportation choices to expand transit and compact development options
• Introduce more energy-efficient freight operations with regional freight planning
• Require home energy cost disclosure when selling and “on-bill” financing to stimulate and scale up energy-efficient retrofitting of residential housing
• Use federal housing policy to create incentives for energy- and location-efficient decisions
• Issue a metropolitan challenge to develop innovative solutions that integrate multiple policy areas

Marilyn Brown of Georgia Tech, considered one of the leading researchers in energy policy, co-authored the study. After the jump, feast upon the numbers. To view the full study, click here.

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Watch CNN Headline News anchor Mike Galanos hammer Mulligan’s owner Mike Norman during a phone interview.

Incidentally, Norman says the cartoon monkey on the T-shirt is not in fact Curious George, but a spin-off called Satisfied Fred.

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A bar-owner in Marietta is selling t-shirts depicting Sen. Barack Obama as a banana-chomping chimp.

From AJC.com:

Marietta tavern owner Mike Norman says the T-shirts he’s peddling, featuring cartoon chimp Curious George peeling a banana, with “Obama in ‘08″ scrolled underneath, are “cute.” But to a coalition of critics, the shirts are an insulting exploitation of racial stereotypes from generations past.

But don’t call Mike Norman a racist!

Norman said those offended are “hunting for a reason to be mad” and insisted he is “not a racist.”

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A man calling himself Rudy Giuliani astounded Marietta citizens yesterday by swooping down on the suburb and crashing a well-attended rally organized by supporters of presidential candidate Ron Paul.

Operating under the guise of a “campaign stop,” Giuliani took the The Good Doctor’s peaceful foot soldiers by surprise. While the followers of Paul’s dark horse campaign rallied in the park, Giuliani holed up with fellow Republicans Sen. Johnny Isakson and state House Speaker Glenn Richardson in the Brumby Chair Co., hoarding media that had surely intended to cover all things Ron. Supporters were aghast at how a guy who used to be the mayor of some city in the upper corner of the country could steal the media spotlight.

“I don’t know who this guy thinks he is,” said Marvin Finkelstein, a nonexistent ham radio enthusiast from Mableton, referring to Giuliani. “We wanted to visit the Square on a Sunday and rally up some supporters. Then ‘America’s Mayor’ — what does that mean, anyway — decides it’s time to check out rocking chairs. The gall!”

OK, so there was no Marvin Finkelstein, and it was really a Giuliani campaign stop that the Paul supporters crashed. But judging from the turnout, it was easy to get confused.

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BLIND JAVELIN TOSS: Less dangerous than it sounds.

On Saturday, we stopped by Marietta High School for the U.S. Paralympics Track & Field National Championships. The event features hundreds of athletes with a variety of disabilities including amputations, paralysis and cerebral palsy competing in classic track and field events including, believe it or not, blind javelin throwers. Among the weekend’s competitors was Scott Winkler of Grovetown, Ga., whose 10.01-meter throw set a new world record in the men’s F54 shot put. Winkler became paraplegic in 2003 after he was injured while serving in the U.S. Army in Iraq.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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MARIETTA - Hours after rescinding a rule that would have banned VFW marchers from handing out American flags during the city’s Fourth of July parade, Marietta officials are once again courting controversy.

This afternoon, officials from the Marietta Department of Symbolism announced a citywide ban on apple pie and moms. The ban takes effect July 4.

Said a city spokesperson: “We’d love to be on Drudge. We’re all big fans.”

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