Per Jim Galloway, Senator Renee Unterman (R-right for once) is showing some spunk on the child prostitution bill. As we've mentioned in the past, Unterman is the sponsor of SB 304 (Rep. Wendell Willard is sponsoring a similar House bill). SB 304 would set a threshold age of 16 years as the minimum age for which a person could be charged with prostitution.

Unterman is righteously angry, as she should be. Here's what she said:

I have worked tirelessly for years to protect the children of Georgia from predatory and despicable acts of sexual exploitation and prostitution. I’m severely disappointed and personally insulted that conservative groups I have worked with and supported have chosen to misrepresent all the work I have put into protecting Georgia’s children.

So, the political echo chamber is all a-buzz about the little contretemps between former Chief of Voter Disenfranchisement Secretary of State Karen Handel and the Georgia House of Representatives, specifically Rep. Ben Harbin (R-0.08) The two are at odds over Handel's refusal to participate in the mandatory furloughing of state employees.

To be fair to Handel, she managed to scrape together the necessary budget cuts in her department through other means, making the furloughs far less necessary. But, according to Ben Harbin, orders are orders, and Handel should've participated. Makes all the other employees who did have to take days off somewhat jealous, you know.

As noted earlier, a somewhat shady group calling themselves "We Are Change Atlanta" has put out a video attacking SB 304 and HB 582 for allegedly legalizing child prostitution. As also noted, this is about as far from reality as one can be. Let's fact check the video, which I've reluctantly embedded at the end of this post.

0:23 "Senate Bill 204 and House Bill 582 seek to decriminalize child prostitution in Georgia"

Right now, there are thousands of child prostitutes forced to give up their innocence on the streets of cities across this state. It's a terrible practice, it speaks to the worst impulses of humankind - for the sick, twisted individuals who patronize these children and for the sick, twisted profiteers who benefit from something that is, at best, one step removed from sex slavery.

It's a violent, brutal, and demeaning existence.

And it's even more disgusting that some people want to criminalize these children. Not assist them, not lend them a helping hand, not pull them out of a miserable and brutal existence, but instead, throw them into jail.

From Jason Pye comes tidings that a Republican state senator is sponsoring a bill making it easier for third parties to be viable in Georgia. Right now, getting a third party candidate on the ballot (for a non-statewide race) is a bit of an undertaking, requiring a lot of signature gathering. More importantly, if you're a third party organization, you've got to do the same signature gathering each and every year.

I'll quote Jason Pye:

...in order to get on the ballot a candidate must turn in petitions equaling 5 percent of the registered voters from the district he plans to run in. If a candidate plans to run statewide, he must get signatures from 1 percent of registered voters in the state.

So, it's a little bit of a burden. And, you can argue that it shouldn't be. More and more Americans are turning away from the traditional party labels. People want alternatives. They want options. That's what Shafer's bill appears to do:

Here's a new thing we're going to try to do, the most popular posts on the blog for this week.

Here's what they said, in part:

“This approach continues the Republican ‘top-down’ method of governing,” said Jane Kidd, Democratic Party of Georgia Chair. “The Republican plan hatched by Perdue, [Rep. Jerry] Keen and [Sen. Bill] Heath sounds more like a plot to limit democracy and ignore the Constitution.”

In past years, Georgia’s Republican leadership has purged voter rolls and introduced red tape into voter registration. “Republicans are now limiting the very positions that our citizens can vote upon. Georgians like their elected public servants to be autonomous and answerable to the people and not be one of the governor's best friends, cronies or political allies,” Kidd continued.

Senator Heath defended the policy by stating, “in the election process it’s not always the most qualified person who wins,” according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

A quick update on the Rob Teilhet hatchet job I wrote about earlier. I talked to a couple of folks about this, and apparently someone has been pushing it around to any journalist and blogger who would listen. It seems that Andre is the only one who took the bait. If that's true, and I don't have any reason to suspect it's not, then it's pretty much proof positive that there's just not a story here. As one of my friends who knows more about this than I do says, "there’s just no 'there' there." I agree.

What you've got instead are some unconnected facts, that someone would like us to believe are connected. They're not, and the fact that Andre was the only person who took the bait brings some serious doubt onto his credibility as well.

[Full disclosure: Rob Teilhet is a friend, and I'm going to be proud to vote for him.]

Andre Walker pulls out the long knives this morning and tries to carve up Democratic candidate for Attorney General Rob Teilhet. Unfortunately, instead of eviscerating Teilhet, Andre just sort of builds a house of cards, without much of a foundation.

Andre's lede makes it sound like Teilhet is more like Ken Lay. (Say it out loud and that sentence makes sense.) Sez Andre, "The lingering stench coming from the collapse of a large, Georgia-based insurance company has now drifted over the campaign of a candidate for Attorney General."

Ahh... someone's thinking 'legacy.'

I was a little taken aback this morning when I read the details about Sonny Perdue's plan to "shake up" state government by taking electoral power for some statewide offices out of our hands and putting it in the Governor's office. Essentially, Perdue wants a constitutional amendment (so, we'll get a chance to vote on this thing) that will make the offices of Agriculture Commissioner, Insurance Commissioner, Labor Commissioner, and State School Superintendent appointed, rather than elected.