In your finest hour as governor, you said, "You cannot lead with a finger to the wind and an ear to the ground. It is an undignified position." Only now, as you teeter with your hindquarters in the air, do I fully understand how right you were.

Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, the nation's most prominent conservative Democrat, said today he will endorse President Bush for re-election in 2004 and campaign for him if Bush wishes him to. Miller said Bush is "the right man at the right time" to govern the country.

The next five years "will determine the kind of world my children and grandchildren will live in," Miller said in an interview. And he wouldn't "trust" any of the nine Democratic presidential candidates with governing during "that crucial period," he said. "This Democrat will vote for President Bush in 2004."

When the pound-keeper finally emerged from the Summit County Animal Shelter's "kill room" with a brown, striped pit bull, Sandi Regallis didn't need to see the dog's bloody face to know that it had been fighting. She had already heard the yelps and snarls from behind the metal door.

Still, Regallis, a deputy dog warden, sought confirmation of what her gut said was true: Jim Farrance was at it again. She called for co-workers David Johnson and Deborah Little. All three went to the garage and listened at the kill-room door, she says. Snarls were still audible. Johnson tried the knob, Regallis remembers, but the door was locked from the inside.

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Wal-Mart pays its in-house workers only $7 to $8 an hour. The federal poverty line for a family of four is $8.70 an hour. Wal-Mart's health insurance is so costly that fewer than half its workers can afford it. Many aren't even eligible.

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This is not about keeping prices low for consumers. A recent calculation based on payroll data showed if Wal-Mart gave all of its workers a $1-an-hour raise, the impact on prices would be one half of one cent.

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The cost to our society is enormous. Every day, one in four American workers does not earn enough to live on and support a family. There are now 30 million low-wage workers in this country.

With no health insurance, they are forced to go to emergency rooms for routine care. To make ends meet, they must apply for food stamps and rental assistance, use subsidized child care vouchers and draw on other government services.

This means we the taxpayers are involuntarily subsidizing low-wage employers, and in the process, are supporting a business strategy antithetical to the American dream: that hard work opens the door to upward mobility and economic freedom.

Turning the tide will take an enormous commitment. It will take re-establishing the right to organize for all workers -- both by enforcing existing labor laws and by instituting long-overdue changes to cover millions of Americans, including many "new economy" workers.

Two Brookwood High School seniors [Lloyd Goldsmith Jr. and Edward Alexander Morgan] and their fathers filed a federal lawsuit over the students' suspensions earlier this year for comments they made online that were critical of a teacher.

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While the lawsuit does not specify the comments posted on the Web site, it says that they "did not espouse, endorse or advocate violence, lawlessness or misconduct."

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The Web site was established as "an outlet to provide students, teachers and parents at Brookwood High School or other citizens a place to vent and post comments concerning a particular [Brookwood] teacher ... with whom many students were experiencing frustration and difficulty," said the lawsuit, which was filed Aug. 22.

ROME [GA] -- John Merchant, an Episcopal priest, accepted the job as chaplain at the Darlington School in Rome last summer. He was forced to resign and kicked off campus nine weeks later.

Merchant's troubles began when the student editor of Darlington's campus newspaper asked him to write a column about his views on homosexuality after the Episcopal Church's confirmation of V. Gene Robinson, an openly gay priest, as Episcopal bishop in New Hampshire.

Merchant, 57, supported the confirmation. He wrote that the Bible shouldn't always be interpreted literally and that God is more concerned with spirituality than sexual orientation.

"I didn't have to ponder where I stood," he said in a recent interview in Decatur. "But I took time to keep it brief and try to explain my beliefs. I was trying to convey it in a positive way."

Merchant resigned after the school administration asked him to meet with and apologize to dozens of people upset with the column.

Merchant said he thought about the administration's request and could come to only one conclusion: "I felt the apologies were both morally and academically intolerable."

"This flies in the face of academic honesty and independent thought, which a first-rate school should protect, not persecute," said [James] Polk, who won a Pulitzer Prize in national reporting in the 1970s for the Washington Star. "I'm concerned that this sort of thing could debase the value of a Darlington degree in the eyes of the better colleges in this country."

"It seemed he was watering down the word of God," said Jeff Gable, 33, of Rome. "From my background, I was taught the Bible was absolute. Now we're to think that wife-swapping is OK. That homosexuality is OK. That you can be gay and be a good Christian.

A history teacher, Merchant couldn't help but see the irony in the price he paid for writing the column. "I had spent the first weeks in class teaching religious tolerance, dealing with the settlement of the Colonies," Merchant said.

The following day I was taken out of class by the school resource officer. At first I was really worried that something had happened to one of my parents. When I was told it was about my journal, I thought that it was ridiculous to have an armed guard escort me to the office.

My parents were called and I was taken home. The next day I was told that I would be suspended for 10 days, and at the end of that period a tribunal would decide whether I was guilty of threatening a school employee's life.

My tribunal was on Oct. 22. It was a closed trial that lasted for three hours. David Bottoms, Georgia's poet laureate, and Megan Sexton, editor of Five Points Magazine, testified on my behalf. We also presented written testimony from the Heritage Professor of Writing at George Mason University, David Bausch, the author of 15 books. The hearing officer found me guilty and sentenced me to expulsion. I don't think it would have made a difference if the pope had testified on my behalf. The decision was made before I even entered the room.

With Schwarzenegger in Sacramento, Franken cracked, "I'm just worried that every guy in California will think this gives him license to grope Maria Shriver."

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The good thing about the Clinton sex scandal, he offered, is that married couples "are having open discussion about what constitutes adultery. My wife thinks that oral sex is adultery -- which probably explains why we haven't had any since we got married."

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O'Reilly, true to form, is still on Franken's butt. "He guaranteed to his listeners that, had we had a shootout in the Old West, he would have won. This is a quote: 'I would've shot Franken between the head.' "

"I think Rachel has been treated unfairly," her father [David Boim] said. "I believe the school system is asking her to cede her Fourth Amendment right, her First Amendment right and her right to due process. Basically, the school system is saying they decide what is an appropriate topic to write about and what is an inappropriate topic."

He said the family moved to Roswell from Colorado three years ago. Because they lived in suburban Denver at the time, the Boims often talked at home about the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, in which two students used pipe bombs and gunfire to kill 12 classmates and a teacher before killing themselves.

"Thomas Wolfe, Faulkner, all wrote about the South because that was their experience," Boim said. "Students today are very aware of the violence around them. The shootings in school, we all hear about that and they affect children. Creative writers, or people who create art, write about what's happening in their society."

Rachel's journal, one of many, contains a whole range of musings, he said -- some dark and disturbing. Others her father described as "springlike" and "very fluffy kind of stuff." The story that prompted her suspension was in a section titled "Dreams."

"She writes about death and pain," Boim said. "But we're also talking about a kid who is a vegetarian because she can't stand the thought of animals being killed. Her writing reflects a full gamut of emotions. . . . We're not saying this shouldn't have been brought to our attention. But the decision was made to expel Rachel without any understanding of the fact that this was just a story."

The Republican-controlled Congress has, for the first time in history, banned a medical procedure termed "partial-birth" abortion. The Republican governor of Florida has overridden a man's pleas that his comatose wife not be kept alive by extreme measures. The Republican administration in the White House tried its best to prevent physicians from prescribing marijuana to their severely ill patients.

Whatever happened to the party of "limited government"? Whatever became of the Republicans who strangled the Clinton health care plan at birth, lest the government interfere in the doctor-patient relationship?

As the echo of the war drums fades away and the angry masses calling for blood slowly disperse, we, as a nation must now confront the truth. We face the unpleasant reality of an uncertain future, compromised safety, a failing economy, and the question of how a society of otherwise reasonable citizens was systematically lied to and manipulated into backing the political "hijacking" of Iraq.

Before a single bomb was ever dropped, some of us, formerly called the "anti-American and unpatriotic," have questioned or opposed this war. Now, each day, as the dust settles and the truth slowly surfaces, more and more people come to the inevitable conclusion of what a debacle this whole war was.

39,000 bombs later, no weapons of mass destruction uncovered, no dangerous dictators captured, no connection to Sept 11. What have we gained but relentless media coverage of a fallen statue and some stolen oil fields -- the spoils of this misadventure. Not to mention lucrative corporate payoffs and an enormous price tag of over 80 Billion dollars . . . some tax cut.

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The word Democracy means literally "by the people." This is the basis of our government and society. It is what this country was founded upon and what makes us American. It is not just our "right" but also our duty to speak out and voice our thoughts and opinions. How, then, was it possible that, in the land of freedom, those who opposed the common opinion were called"un-American?" Resentfully, we wonder.

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Who is to say what is or isn't "patriotic?" Do the flags that wave from every minivan really offer any support? Where is the support for the thousands of service men and women who return to the states to see their benefits cut, their health problems ignored, their jobs gone and their families living in poverty? How are they repaid for their efforts; for risking or losing their lives? So far, dismally.

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The Governor of California was removed from office based on finance troubles. And yet George W Bush has lied to us, failed to keep our own borders secure, entered a war under false pretense, endangered lives, and created financial chaos. How is it that he hasn't been recalled? Perhaps this time we could even have a real election . . . but that wouldn't fit the Bush administration's "take what you want and fire people later" policy. Take an election; take an oil field; take advantage of your own people -- a game of political Three-Card Monte.

The fight for freedom in this country has been long, painful, and ongoing. It is time to take back our country. Take it back from political agendas, corporate greed and overall manipulation. It is time to take action here in our land, in our own schools, neighborhoods, farms, and businesses. We have been lied to and terrorized by our own government, and it is time to take action. Now is the time to come together.

"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's going to happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Oh, I mean, it's, not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" - Barbara Bush, 03/18/03

For Phillippia Faust, it was like manna from heaven -- a half-million federal dollars for her one-woman program teaching sexual abstinence to teens.

"Still I sit in awe and say, 'Ain't nobody like Jesus!' " Faust said of her grant from the Department of Health and Human Services. "It affords me the opportunity to, throughout every day, live out the passion of my soul."

Sarah Miller, 16, of Monticello was among several teens who attended last week's meeting at Dr. Lee Rippy's ob-gyn practice in Covington. Her 2-week-old son, Daa'ylan, and her mother, Brenda Miller, accompanied her. Sarah said having abstinence education earlier might have prevented her pregnancy.

This man [Zell Miller] stood by while his colleague, the good, honorable and decent Senator Max Cleland, was crucified by the Bush Administration, morphed into Osama bin Laden, and dragged through the mud. He watched as a decorated triple amputee veteran had his patriotism questioned and as the Georgia Republican Party seized the Confederate Flag issue and brought the racists out of the woods to defeat the Governor he once considered a friend.

Senator Miller's response? If we don't want to lose again, we should be nicer to these people and stop challenging them.

Screw you, Zell. You make Alabama Senator Shelby (Traitor-Alabama) look like a moderate. If by "writing off the South" you mean we lose retrograde jackasses like you to whom party means nothing but a feeding hand to bite, then good riddance.

Hello, my name is Rush Limbaugh and I am a recovering big, fat idiot and a drug addict.

By the grace of God and the fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous, I have not found it necessary to swallow a single pill of hillbilly heroin in two weeks. Like all addicts, I did not face my problem until I hit bottom. That came for me when my feminazi housekeeper Hillary Clinton -- I mean Wilma Cline -- reported to police and The National Enquirer that she'd been supplying me with OxyContin.

I have to admit I'll never understand why a woman whom I paid $375 a week just to sweep my house and sell me 43,000 pain pills would betray me. Hell, I even paid her to keep her mouth shut. But I'm not blaming anyone because, you know, when you point a finger at someone, you are always pointing three back at yourself.

But I do blame myself. One thing this sordid affair tells me, my friends, is this: Don't ever hire a white woman as a cleaning lady...

As America is learning, the war on terror is a costly undertaking. In his address to the nation in early September, President George W. Bush spelled out some of those costs: $87 billion, on top of the roughly $63 billion already requested, for the war and reconstruction in Iraq. This year alone another $28 billion will be spent by the recently created Department of Homeland Security to thwart terrorism at home. "This will take time and require sacrifice," our president sermonized. "Yet we will do whatever is necessary, we will spend whatever is necessary to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror."

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But protecting America is a demanding proposition. So demanding that upon considering the formidable tasks that awaited him in Miami, [Rear Admiral Harvey] Johnson [of the U.S. Coast Guard] thumbed his nose at the District Seven commander's long-standing official residence -- the so-called "flag quarters" -- within the Coast Guard's Richmond Heights housing complex near Metrozoo in South Miami-Dade. It was too old, too outmoded, and too far from civilized Miami. To unwind each day and to assure victory in the war on terror, the commander would need something a little larger. And more modern. And with a pool. And for his wife, he'd like something not too far from fashionable shopping districts. And if possible he'd like neighbors a bit more socially connected than your average enlisted man.

The housing search produced an obvious choice: the posh waterfront Coral Gables enclave of Cocoplum. Johnson and his wife Janet, taking to heart our commander-in-chief's freewheeling approach to military spending, now reside in a 6200-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-bath home that costs taxpayers $111,600 per year in lease payments. Utilities, maintenance, and other upkeep (such as the cleaning service for the back yard swimming pool) are extra.

Thanks to an anonymous tip, authorities believe they have found the owner of a small, mixed-breed dog that was found with its muzzle and nose duct-taped shut about two weeks ago.

Authorities are investigating whether the alleged owner had any involvement in the incident.


Authorities emphasized the alleged owner has not been charged and they are continuing to carefully investigating the case.

Police would not release the suspected owner's name or place of residency because the investigation is ongoing.

DNA samples of hairs found in a dog cage from the alleged owner's residence were taken, according to Bill Hanby, animal and cruelty investigator for the Lower Alloways Creek Township Police Department.

He said the samples are being compared to hairs from the duct tape on the dog, which had to be euthanized because of the severe nature of its injuries.

"He just sat there, you know, just sat there. It was so forlorn and sad," said shelter worker Diane Harrel. (It was the) most pitiful thing I've ever seen.

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Lynn Harris found the dog at a farm last Friday and is haunted by the image of the tortured creature ever since.

"I think about it every day and whoever did it should be severely punished for doing such a thing to an animal," Harris said. "I really hope we can catch the person and get some information."

The society is offering a reward. She's calling it Rusty's Reward. By the time the dog came to her, the only thing Harrel said she could do is give him a name and put him to sleep.

Helmet foes make great organ donors

So a letter writer thinks there's no rational way to oppose helmet laws? Two words: organ donors. Untold thousands of people are in desperate need of new livers, kidneys, hearts, lungs, etc., and where are they going to get them?

If there are those who fail to take proper care of their internal organs by riding down the road at 70 mph on a two-wheeled vehicle without a head covering, perhaps the next person in possession of their internal organs will behave in a more propitious manner.

M. R. "MICKEY" ROBERSON, JR., Dunwoody

Unfortunately, something's gone awry in the Boy Scout movement I knew and loved. Last weekend, I went to a Scout fund-raiser in Lilburn billed as a patriotic "rally for America." It certainly had all the trappings of such an event, from a row of American flags across the stage to prerecorded patriotic music and polite, fresh-faced Boy Scouts, draped in merit badges.

In reality, though, this was a strident political rally, run by and for the Boy Scouts, in which the beliefs, patriotism and moral decency of roughly half the American people were considered fair game. That wasn't a surprise, though -- not when the evening's star attractions were syndicated columnist Ann Coulter and Fox News star Oliver North.

What did you say back there? You can't hear back there? See, you should have got the $5.50 seats up front.