How inconvenient, for the power company to change its tune on solar energy in the middle of an election year. As recently as last week, Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers was predicting to the Athens Banner-Herald ...

Last week two lockouts came to an end. While there was a sense of relief in both cases, the two episodes ended very differently. The National Football League officials’ lockout concluded with what must be the ...

With all the exciting politics going on these days, it’s small wonder that a vote last week on a referendum to change the Alabama Constitution received scant attention outside our neighboring state. But obscure votes ...

Ethics, a subject long unattended in Georgia, is suddenly all the buzz. The idea of a total gift ban on lobbyists, once dismissed by the legislative brass as unnecessary, is now on the front burner, with ...

Atlanta’s greatest cultural edifice is nothing made of marble, steel or glass. But it is monumental, as anyone should understand who has heard the combined Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus do a big piece like ...

As the Democrats gather for the second of the nation’s quadrennial tribal gatherings, students of politics might want to ponder some recent developments in the field of linguistics. A few decades ago, experts in the language ...

In the courtroom sketches, they look like they could be aging character actors, grinding out one last movie about a couple of loveable old curmudgeons who get themselves into a mess of trouble, before everything ...

Very shortly, two Southern cities, neither of which is Atlanta, will be in the national spotlight as they host the two national party conventions over the next couple of weeks. And maybe that’s a good ...

When neither party picked a Southerner on their tickets in the 2008 presidential election, a string which went back to 1972 was broken. With Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan, it’s now two elections ...

Last week, on the same day Metro Atlanta voters were turning down the TSPLOST referendum, the Mississippi Supreme Court denied a motion by Mississippi Power (which like Georgia Power is a Southern Co. subsidiary) ...

Design-wise, the ballot Georgia voters will see when they go to the polls Tuesday is a hot mess. It puts wishful thinking ahead of real choices and doesn’t get to the toughest questions until the ...

Another school year will be beginning soon, and Tom Keating will be about the mission which has occupied nearly half his 40-year career as an educator: school toilets. He has, he says, “been a lot of ...

How hot is it? Why, it’s so hot, that last week, a South Carolina Republican who had a 93 rating with the American Conservative Union when he was in Congress announced he’s heading up a ...

In many ways, Georgia has sleepwalked through its housing crisis. It wasn’t a poster child for the real estate bust in the way Arizona, Florida and other Sunbelt states were, back when the collapse in home ...

Later, we called him Dr. Margarita. He was the admitting doctor at the rehab center where they took my brother after his Medicare days ran out at the hospital. Standing bedside on his one room visit ...

They don’t have a catchy name yet, like soccer moms or NASCAR dads, but Latino voters have grown large enough in number, particular in several of the key swing states in this year’s presidential election, ...

It was a very L.A. kind of riot. The sky seemed especially gray the evening I drove up from San Diego in 1992 to join a team covering the outbreak of violence after the acquittal ...

Up in North Carolina, a state once admired for its relative enlightenment, the legislature has been talking about regulating the sea level. Alarmed by a science advisory panel’s recommendation that the Tarheel State should plan for ...

It has been three years since they took down the water tower with the “Success Lives Here” sign that used to welcome interstate motorists to Gwinnett County, and since then the county has been losing ...

Compared to more competitive years, the scene at the Capitol on the final day of qualifying to run for state offices last Friday was pretty listless. With a new map drawn by the Republican majority, ...