When Governor Sonny Perdue signed Georgia’s $21.1 billion budget for fiscal 2009, it contained $6 million for Local Assistance Grants (LAG), funds appropriated and allocated to a specific recipient or local government for a specific purpose. Lawmakers try to use the fact that these handouts are a relatively small part of the state budget — about 0.03 percent the ‘09 budget — to defend the spending.

If you don’t know what ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is all about, you better bone up.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — What is an “Obamacon?” The phrase surfaced in January to describe British Conservatives entranced by Barack Obama. On March 13, the American Spectator broadened the term to cover all “conservative supporters” of the Democratic presidential candidate. Their ranks, though growing, feature few famous people. But looming on the horizon are two big potential Obamacons: Colin Powell and Chuck Hagel.

If anyone suggested that Tiger Woods should try to be more like other golfers, people would question the sanity of whoever made that suggestion.

Why should Tiger Woods try to be more like Phil Mickelson? If Tiger turned around and tried to golf left-handed, like Mickelson, he probably wouldn’t be as good as Mickelson, much less as good as he is golfing the way he does right-handed.

Yet there are those who think that the United States should follow policies more like those in Europe, often with no stronger reason than the fact that Europeans follow such policies. For some Americans, it is considered chic to be like Europeans.

If Europeans have higher minimum wage laws and more welfare state benefits, then we should have higher minimum wage laws and more welfare state benefits, according to such people. If Europeans restrict pharmaceutical companies’ patents and profits, then we should do the same.

Some justices of the U.S. Supreme Court even seem to think that they should incorporate ideas from European laws in interpreting American laws.

Before we start imitating someone, we should first find out whether the results that they get are better than the results that we get. Across a very wide spectrum, the United States has been doing better than Europe for a very long time.

By comparison with most of the rest of the world, Europe is doing fine. But they are like Phil Mickelson, not Tiger Woods.

Minimum wage laws have the same effects in Europe as they have had in other places around the world. They price many low-skilled and inexperienced workers out of a job.

Because minimum wage laws are more generous in Europe than in the United States, they lead to chronically higher rates of unemployment in general and longer periods of unemployment than in the United States — but especially among younger, less experienced and less skilled workers.

Unemployment rates of 20 percent or more for young workers are common in a number of European countries. Among workers who are both younger and minority workers, such as young Muslims in France, unemployment rates are estimated at about 40 percent.

The American minimum wage laws do enough damage without our imitating European minimum wage laws. The last year in which the black unemployment rate was lower than the white unemployment rate in the United States was 1930.

The next year, the first federal minimum wage law, the Davis-Bacon Act, was passed. One of its sponsors explicitly stated that the purpose was to keep blacks from taking jobs from whites.

No one says things like that any more — which is a shame, because the effect of a minimum wage law does not depend on what anybody says. Blacks in general, and younger blacks in particular, are the biggest losers from such laws, just as younger and minority workers are in Europe.

Those Americans who are pushing us toward the kinds of policies that Europeans impose on pharmaceutical companies show not the slightest interest in what the consequences of such laws have been.

One consequence is that even European pharmaceutical companies do much of their research and development of new medications in the United States, in order to take advantage of American patent protections and freedom from price controls.

These are the very policies that the European imitators want us to change.

It is not a coincidence that such a high proportion of the major pharmaceutical drugs are developed in the United States. If we kill the goose that lays the golden egg, as the Europeans have done, both we and the Europeans — as well as the rest of the world — will be worse off, because there are few other places for such medications to be developed.

There are a lot of diseases still waiting for a cure, or even for relief for those suffering from those diseases. People stricken with these diseases will pay the price for blind imitation of Europe.

The United States leads the world in too many areas for us to start imitating those who are trailing behind.

There is a reason progress in Iraq is not receiving more attention. It isn’t that Americans are “bored” or “tired” or have “moved on” or “don’t care” or “have already made up their minds that the war was a colossal mistake.” All of these are variations on themes articulated by certain liberals, Bush-haters, Barack Obama supporters (but I repeat myself) inside and outside the big media.

“Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death.” — Auntie Mame

In today’s political climate, a liberal Auntie Mame might say that life is a banquet, which the government must pay for, and that those who can’t afford a place at the table should behave like it was an all-you-can eat buffet.

I have no idea of the number of traffic signals in our country, but whatever the number, how many of my fellow Americans would like the U.S. Congress to be in charge of their operation?

Gonna miss Dubya when he leaves office in January.

Never thought I’d say such a thing about the worst president I’ve ever lived under, did you?

Fayette County Department of Family and Children’s Services (DFCS) Director Mary Davis met her political match last week when she was “reassigned” out of Fayette and into another area of the agency.

During my 50 or so years of experience with environmental issues, I have often witnessed how the public perception of such issues varied. Lately, environmental protection has once again been reduced as an issue of concern, at least for some of our politicians.

It is not certain how we got on the subject, but somehow a friend mentioned that when he dies, he wants “What A Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong to be played at his funeral.

Barack Obama made history this week. He announced he will become the first major-party presidential nominee since Richard M. Nixon in 1972 to fund his general election campaign solely by private contributions.

John 6:56-69; Exodus 16:4a, 13-15.

More years ago than I care to remember, when I was about 14, my family and I lived for a while on the coast of southern Spain. My early-morning task each day was to walk perhaps a quarter mile along a cliff-top path some 50 feet above the Mediterranean Sea, and then cut inland another quarter mile to a small village. My objective was the local bakery.

When summer time hits and the high school ball fields are empty, the sports pages need to be filled. We receive news of little league baseball teams, soccer teams, roller hockey teams, swimmers, golfers, drivers of all ages and track athletes. In addition to all of these stories, my colleague Kevin Wandra and I have started a summer tradition of challenging each other to sporting activities around the county and seeing how we stack up. Last year, we went miniature golfing at DixieLand Fun Park. I won the first course and Kevin won the second, also eking out a one-stroke overall win.

As far back as I can remember, Dad told me if I live a good and righteous life, God would never give me a task I could not handle. Never would I be faced with a decision I could not make.

“I was struck when I got to Iowa and New Hampshire in January,” said Joan Walsh, editor-in-chief of the liberal website Salon.com, “by how our media colleagues were just swooning over Barack Obama. That is not too strong a word. They were swooning. ... The downside, though, is that they hate — hate Hillary Clinton, most of them. Hate is not too strong a word.”

Over the course of my life I have been in court numerous times. Because of my past involvement with child protective services and law enforcement, and my work in ministry for several decades, I suppose I have been to court dozens of times. I never fail to be amazed about what people wear and how they behave when they are about to appear before a judge.

I interrupt the presidential campaign to bring you an important question:

Can we get serious here? About hyper-serious things?

The obsession of many high school students and their parents about getting into a prestige college or university is part of the social scene of our time. So is the experience of parents going deep into hock to finance sending a son or daughter off to Ivy U. or the flagship campus of the state university system.

It’s been at least five years since I’ve flown commercial, and for good reason: I don’t wish to be arrested for questioning actions by often arrogant, rude Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers.

The boat has not been out of its slip much this year. The weather, of course, gets some of the blame, and low water, but that’s not the whole story. For most of the spring, Lake Eufaula actually has had plenty of water, although one must remain watchful and keep the speed down.

Pastors get some of the most interesting questions from people they meet and people in their congregations. Here are a few questions that I've gotten during my years of ministry and via email for this column.

This column is a continuation from the one I began last week. It’s meant to address the belief that this nation is in a condition of economic slavery and why apathy is not the answer to that condition.

Barack Obama’s presidential campaign plans to strike at the heart of the Republican base by attempting to woo Evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics to his side.

Once when I was young and love had broken my heart for the first time, I thought I would never recover from the agony resulting when the bliss had been sucker-punched and sent packing.

My thoughts turned to fear and courage on Fathers Day as I held my 6-year-old daughter, Kristen, in her room in Children’s Hospital at Scottish Rites in Atlanta.

For Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, the stars certainly seem aligned.

Seventy percent of Americans consider the economy in a recession. Two-thirds consider the war in Iraq a bad idea. A new Gallup Poll shows Obama leading presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain 46 to 44 percent. And the ratings for “American Idol” fell 10 percent. Given all this, plus a swooning, pro-Obama media, what’s a Republican to do?

The event snuck up on me. Quietly, without fanfare, the 25th anniversary of my family’s relocation to and ministry in Fayette and Coweta counties arrived. There was no announcement, no fanfare, no parade, no banners, no balloons or streamers. It came and it went like a Georgia snowfall.

In these hazy, 90-degree Georgia days, with gas prices soaring and smog hovering, the guilt trip that global warming proponents are selling is easy to buy. And with industry and academia seeing the green in being “green,” it’s even to tougher for ordinary Georgians to resist the strengthening tendrils of government mission creep on the subject.

If you’re going to promise “new politics,” it would probably be wise to eschew the same old Beltway cronies and insiders who have served presidential nominees of yore.