Political Insider

With fewer than 48 hours before a campaign contribution deadline, GOP presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty will make a quick ATM stop in Atlanta this evening, with a fundraiser at the Cherokee Town and Country Club on West Paces Ferry.

But first, the Minnesota governor had a speech to give before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Pawlenty didn’t mention Mitt Romney by name, but one passage seemed directed at the GOP frontrunner. From The Hill:

[Pawlenty] said that members of his party cannot afford to forgo their traditionally bold, muscular foreign policy.

While it’s OK to question the Obama administration’s military tactics in Libya or the pace of the Afghan withdrawal, he said, “what is wrong, is for the Republican Party to shrink from the challenges of American leadership in the world.

“History repeatedly warns us that in the long run, weakness in foreign policy costs us and our children much more than we’ll save in a budget line item.”

- By Jim …

Continue reading Before Atlanta stop, Tim Pawlenty warns Republicans on foreign policy »

Secretary of State Brian Kemp called this morning, during the commute to the state Capitol. So you’ll pardon the lack of direct quotes.

Our topic was South Carolina’s unfunded presidential primary – and the chance that the February winner-take-all event could devolve into a less-influential caucus. Here’s the latest from The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C.:

State law allows the S.C. Election Commission to run the 2012 S.C. Republican presidential primary even if Gov. Nikki Haley vetoes sections of the state budget intended to ensure the agency oversees that vote, according to an opinion issued Monday by S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson.

Haley has threatened to veto sections of the budget that allow the Election Commission to use $680,000 in its savings to help pay the primary’s estimated $1.5 million cost. Republican Haley repeatedly has said taxpayers should not pay for the primary.

S.C. GOP chairman Chad Connelly said last week that, without the state’s …

Continue reading On reviving the ‘World’s Largest Cocktail Party’ with a Georgia-Florida primary »

Down on the Georgia coast, the long arm of Chatham County officials are reaching into the backyards of celebrity cook Paula Deen and others – for keeping chickens in a non-agricultural zone.

From the Savannah Morning News:

Deen’s publicist Nancy Assuncao said Deen believes she is in compliance with the zoning ordinance. If the county finds otherwise, Assuncao said, it would upset Deen to have to get rid of her beloved birds, which were rescued after serving as monitors for West Nile virus for the Chatham County Mosquito Control Board.

“I don’t know what to say; it’ll be devastating to her,” Assuncao said. “When she’s home the thing she loves so much is to see her chickens at the start of the day. She holds them like they’re little babies.”

Sounds like a job for former Gov. Roy Barnes, who recently beat a similar ordinance in Roswell.

- By Jim Galloway, Political Insider

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Continue reading You can fry chickens, but you can’t keep ‘em, zoning officials tell Paula Deen »

Former Fulton County judge Michael Johnson on Monday made his case for next year’s Democratic challenge to U.S. Rep. John Lewis to Lori Geary of Channel 2 Action news.

Said Johnson: “You can’t change the results of the game without sometimes changing the players in the game.” Watch it here:

- By Jim Galloway, Political Insider

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Continue reading Michael Johnson makes the case for a run against John Lewis »

In the aftermath of Monday’s decision by U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash to block, at least temporarily, key provisions of Georgia’s new immigration law, Attorney General Sam Olens tried to look on the bright side.

“[E]ven after this ruling, 21 of the 23 sections of HB 87 will go into effect as planned. My office plans to appeal the court’s finding that Sections 7 and 8 of the law are preempted,” Olens said in a quickly issued news release.

Last night, former DeKalb County judge Keegan Federal, one of the attorneys seeking to block HB 87, used his blog to dismiss any attempt by Olens or other state officials to claim victory. From Federal’s Law:

We only challenged two of provisions. The other 21 weren’t argued, and Judge Thrash certainly didn’t “uphold” them. We won total victory on those sections of the statute we sought to invalidate at this phase…..

It is true that a “substantive” provision dealing with E-Verify was not overturned by the judge — and …

Continue reading Your morning jolt: Parsing claims of victory in illegal immigration decision »

As Attorney General Sam Olens points out, in the aftermath of U.S. District Judge Tom Thrash’s ruling, 21 of 23 sections of Georgia’s new illegal immigration law remain intact and go into effect on Friday.

Other victories for the state side of the argument include the judge’s dismissal of plaintiffs’ assertions that the law would violate a citizen’s right to travel.

Read the entire decision here.

However, it’s clear that Thrash is no fan of the core thought behind the bill. Here’s what he said about the key portion of the Georgia law — which he enjoined — that permits law enforcement officers to require proof of legal U.S. residency after individuals have been stopped for other purposes:

”HB 87 is state regulation of immigration. Section 8 attempts an end-run – not around federal criminal law – but around federal statutes defining the role of state and local officers in immigration enforcement….[B]oth the United States government and several foreign nations …

Continue reading Excerpts from judge’s ruling on Georgia’s immigration bill »

Worth reading from today’s Daily Beast — and note the quote at the end:

Ken Mehlman managed President George W. Bush’ s re-election drive in 2004.

Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman at the 2005 National Conference in 2005. AP

Courting the evangelical Christian voting bloc so crucial to the Republican Party, Mehlman’s boss campaigned on a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. When asked by Tim Russert in 2005 whether homosexuality is a choice, Mehlman, famous for sticking like pine tar to his talking points, said, “I don’ t know the answer to that question.”

But last year, Mehlman, at the age of 43, announced that he was gay. Turning the personal political, Mehlman then worked alongside a host of tightly organized conservative donors and operatives to plot a victory for same-sex marriage in New York.

When the effort paid off, after days of high-wire suspense, arm-twisting, and a dramatic late-night vote, gay New Yorkers flooded into the …

Continue reading The role of George W. Bush’s campaign manager in N.Y. gay marriage vote »

This post has been updated below.

Original: Georgia car tags may be about to get a dose of religion. The state Department of Revenue on Friday posted images of the eight semi-finalist entries in its competition to design a new look for your back bumper.

Three of those eight incorporate “In God We Trust” – the same motto found on U.S. currency:

Online voting concludes July 8. The three license plates garnering the most votes will be presented to Gov. Nathan Deal. There the selection process gets foggy – the press release merely says the winner will be announced July 15.

But if a car tag bearing the word “God” makes it to the finals, it’s hard to imagine a Republican politician who would want to be seen rejecting it.

Still, if a declaration of faith is inevitable, we would at least suggest adding an asterisk, followed in small print with this:

“*All others must provide proof of legal U.S. residency.”

Updated at 5:05 p.m.: The rules for Georgia’s license tag …

Continue reading Your morning jolt: Georgia car tags and ‘In God We Trust’ »

For the last couple years, the focus has been on transportation as the public policy issue likely to dominate the 2012 political season.

But the Georgia Supreme Court may have changed that with its recent decision that declared the state’s involvement in the establishment of public charter schools was unconstitutional.

A small crowd braved the rainy weather to attend a rally for charter schools at the state Capitol on Thursday. Bob Andres, bandres@ajc.com

Specifically, the court said the state had no business depriving local school systems of nearly $8 million in funding in order to establish alternative schools in their midst.

The only way to overturn the 4-3 decision is through a constitutional amendment that would be presented statewide to voters in November 2012. All the ingredients for a knockdown, drag-out fight are there:

– School choice is a foundational tenet of current Republican philosophy. Depending on the GOP nominee for president, turning out core voters could …

Continue reading The brewing of a bruising fight over charter schools »

Things are getting testy between charter school advocates and the Cherokee County Board of Education.

Ever since the Georgia Supreme Court put the state out of the charter school business, a dozen and more charter schools have been forced to go back to local school systems to ask that they be given the financial wherewithal to survive.

Among them is the Cherokee Charter Academy. Suspicious that the school board hasn’t been playing fair with the request, the Georgia Charter Schools Association dropped an open records request on the Cherokee school board – demanding what to know what it’s been saying about the request in emails and other communications.

You can read the request here. The response from Barbara Jacoby, director of public information for the school board, closed with this:

The administrative costs for available documents are estimated at $286,600.27, for 6,185 hours of work by seven different employees. This total includes a manual search of emails. If CCSD …

Continue reading We can give you the information, says Cherokee school board — but it will cost you $324,608.52 »