My Morning Wooten

It's a full day today, children. So I hope you've had your Cheerios.

Libertarians and some conservatives worry about the potential for Big Brother snooping with national photo IDs and with allowing intelligence agencies to intercept calls into this country from suspected terrorists abroad. My Big Brother fear is the Neighborhood Water-Watch Gestapo mobilized during droughts to track down and punish offenders for some minor perceived rule-breaking offense. Get a life.

Okay. Let's see here. A ticket for being a jackass and not following reasonable restrictions in the middle of a drought vs. ripping up the U.S. Constitution like its just so many sheaves of toilet paper. I know which side I'm on. You pick which is the "conservative" position.

Sandy Springs City Councilwoman Ashley Jenkins offers just the right touch on the drought hysteria sweeping metro Atlanta. “Many of you have called or e-mailed about the new water restrictions,” she wrote constituents. So they don’t try to rat out neighbors for something that’s not a violation, she presented the rules. And added: “If you still feel the need to tattletale on your neighbor, you may call the City of Atlanta Water Department [which provides Sandy Springs water] and wait on hold for 10 minutes to report a violation. You can expect the City of Atlanta Water to promptly do nothing about your complaint. If you do actually get someone on the line, could you please have them fix the water gusher that has been coming out of the ground at Wycombe and Drummen for 2 weeks.” Later she told me: “We would have water in Lake Lanier if they just fixed the gushers in Sandy Springs.”

I really want to write something deep about the complexity of water rights and the effect of overdevelopment on the entire watershed, but really I just want to point out once again that the independent city of Sandy Springs still relies on the City of Atlanta Water Department. You give some people exactly what they want and still...

You know the service is bad when the real home-run king, Hank Aaron, calls the newspaper in desperation, hoping to shame the city of Atlanta into fixing a neighborhood bridge he considers dangerous and an eyesore. It’s on the list. …

Maybe the Hammer should have called the City Of Sandy Springs Street Repair Division. Oh wait a minute...

Twiggs County school officials failed to notify parents that their elementary school had failed academically — thus triggering school choice and tutoring options. An oversight, said school officials. Parents everywhere should be vigilant. School officials hate these provisions of the No Child Left Behind law. They’ll notify parents of the options just as soon as the lawyer who writes the fine print on credit card agreements becomes available — and send it out on election day, or some other where the attention of parents is directed elsewhere. Parents should always protest to the state — and to the feds.

School officials. Liars all. It's a wonder we ever got out of the frontier days with the vast public education conspiracy holding us down.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama grandly refused to vote on a Senate resolution condemning Moveon.org for its “General Betray Us” ad in the New York Times. Too frivolous, he claimed from the high road. But not too frivolous was a resolution condemning talk show host Rush Limbaugh for an opinion. In that case, he’s for taking up the Senate’s business with a resolution condemning Limbaugh.

I'll make a deal with you, Jim. Let's both call for the end to all useless resolutions. Then you and I can never write about this kind of idiocy again.

Professors lament that they age and their students don’t — with the consequence that a huge gap develops in their common knowledge. “You have to remind yourself” said one, “that they won’t know who George H.W. Bush was, or they’ll have vaguely heard of Reagan. Vietnam is a passing reference that people make.” All of which is offered here to explain why Wayne Willams continues to get hearings on his search for the real killer of Atlanta’s missing and murdered. Williams was convicted 25 years ago, after which the killings stopped.

For those of you playing Jim Wooten Non-Sequitur Bingo. I-24!

Headline: “Should smokers pick up tab for children’s health care?” No. The 39-cent per pack tax would go to $1 to partially finance a huge expansion of the federal program that largely funds PeachCare, which the president properly vetoed. The cigarette tax is an effort to drive a legitimate business out of existence — though, in the meantime, the tax burden will fall most heavily on the poor, since they’re the smokers. As with the Georgia Lottery, the poor will be asked to support something that will heavily benefit the middle class.

Jim, can you explain to me in the middle of all this fairness and graciousness to the poor (you know, those people who smoke and probably also drink the whiskey and do whatever things the poor people do), how this philosophy applies to a tax plan which removes the tax burden from a $10 million piece of property and replaces it buy jacking up the price on a pack of smokes. Not to mention food, diapers, laundry detergent, etc. etc. etc.

My goodness. That rollercoaster was so much fun, it ought to be at Six Flags!