It’s too hot to go back to school! Up in the Midwest, school doesn’t start for another two weeks and, for the most part, it’s cooler up there than it is in Georgia.

It took a collapsing bridge in Minnesota to alert people across the country to the fact that many other bridges in many other places have been allowed to deteriorate without adequate maintenance.

Triple H days: hot, humid, and hello. At least that’s what Bubba Hanks use to call the sticky days of August. If you understood what he meant by hot, humid, and hello, then you understood Bubba.

With Rupert Murdoch having won his war for control of The Wall Street Journal, we can begin to reflect on the Meaning of It All.

First, the disclaimer: I appear on Fox News Channel, one of Rupert Murdoch’s media properties, as a paid contributor. I received neither instructions, nor promises of benefits, in exchange for what I am about to write. We now rejoin our regularly scheduled column.

News item on July 26: Governor Sonny Perdue has announced the availability of an additional $1 million to assist local communities in establishing wireless broadband networks through the Wireless Communities Georgia Program (WCG).

Plopped down in a restaurant in the supposedly Southern city of Charlotte, N.C., the proclamation came as a shock to me.

Where do these people come from, and how do they know when we are at our most vulnerable? When in the grip of the medical industry, even if for only a few weeks, one also learns that most of the ads in evening news are directed at oneself. Who’d have thought I’d ever care which brand of artificial knee has advantages over another or what granny panty gives enough protection but not too much?

Want to refresh your spiritual life? Want to benefit from the joy of giving of yourself? Then go on a mission trip. Take time away to serve the Lord in a missions context.

WASHINGTON — Mid-term elections 13 days earlier had been disastrous for Republicans, but Sara Taylor on Nov. 20, 2006, gushed in her thank you message to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The 32-year-old White House political director praised drug czar John Walters and his deputies for attending 20 campaign events for vulnerable Republican members of Congress. On Friday this week, Taylor as a private citizen will testify under oath about the propriety of this political activity.

I did it again — opened my mouth.

I drove behind a car carrying two guys. Their bumper sticker read, “War Is Not the Answer.” I knew better, but I pulled up next to them at a red light, rolled down my window, and said, “OK. If war is not the answer, what is?”

While politicians have hacked and sloughed their way through the issue of illegal immigration, one sheriff in Atlanta has taken matters into his own hands by doing what the law already allows law enforcement to do — begin deportation proceedings against illegal aliens who are charged with crimes.

Unlike most kids on Flamingo Street, I always looked forward to the first day of school. Okay, so I’m a little odd. But there’s just no other day like it in the entire year. A new school year always means a fresh start, a chance to see old friends, make new ones, and most importantly, a chance that you-know-who would end up in someone’s else’s class besides mine.

WASHINGTON — Speaking at his $1,000-a-ticket fund-raiser at the J.W. Marriott hotel in downtown Washington Monday night, Fred Thompson began by introducing “my campaign manager — oh, I mean my wife.”

I was eating lunch alone a few days ago in Newnan, Ga., at the Red Lobster. It was one of those rare times when I had some down time, no appointments, was in non-clerical clothing, and the cell phone remained quiet.

Those with Joneses in their family pedigree have a daunting task in separating, categorizing, and compartmentalizing the many families of this surname as they migrated to America and spread out over this new land. I, myself, have one Jones that I have only half-heartedly attempted to research - Henry Jones of South Carolina and Troup County who married Nancy Elizabeth Fincher. He was my fourth great-grandfather.

Occasionally, I’ll send Brandon, the nice young man who helps me out around the house, over to Mama’s to do errands or yard work for her.

In the reporting and commentary that preceded Sunday’s Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony for San Diego’s Tony Gwynn and Baltimore’s Cal Ripken Jr., one ESPN sports journalist observed: “They did it the right way.”

When Judi-ann Rutherford resigned from the Peachtree City Council recently, I took notice because she seemed to be a decent lady whose voting record was in line with my attitude on issues like TDK.

The trip appeared jinxed from the very beginning. The weather was hot and traffic was heavy, although it could have been worse heading north through town late on a Monday morning. I drove the first leg, and got us to Greensboro, N.C., where we left I-85 and latched onto U.S. Highway 29.

Mark 12:38 – 44

Dear Yahweh,
Only You will know what I hold in my hand as I stand here with all the important men of the synagogue — Scribes, Pharisees, wealthy people. I clasp my fingers around these two half-pennies so no one will see what a pitiful offering I give to you, but, really no one seems to see me, anyway. Interesting how since my husband died I became invisible except for a few kind-hearted people who give me some of their leftover food or coins. Don’t get me wrong; I’m grateful for those leftovers because I know it’s You who put Your kindness into their hearts.

WASHINGTON — The morass in Iraq and deepening difficulties in Afghanistan have not deterred the Bush administration from taking on a dangerous and questionable new secret operation.

In 1961, when astronaut Gus Grissom tried to avoid responsibility for losing his spacecraft, he said, “the hatch just blew.” Or so Tom Wolfe reports in “The Right Stuff” (1979), which four years later became a great movie.

WASHINGTON — Mid-term elections 13 days earlier had been disastrous for Republicans, but Sara Taylor on Nov. 20, 2006, gushed in her thank you message to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The 32-year-old White House political director praised drug czar John Walters and his deputies for attending 20 campaign events for vulnerable Republican members of Congress. On Friday this week, Taylor as a private citizen will testify under oath about the propriety of this political activity.

Sen. Joe Biden is the embodiment of snide. Snide is the embodiment of the left-wing attitude toward gun owners. So when snide Joe Biden confronted a YouTube user who asked Democrat presidential candidates about gun control during a debate Monday night, what unfolded was a Teachable YouTube Moment — the caught-on-tape embodiment of ideological snideness toward the Second Amendment and those who defend it.

In 1961, when astronaut Gus Grissom tried to avoid responsibility for losing his spacecraft, he said, “the hatch just blew.” Or so Tom Wolfe reports in “The Right Stuff” (1979), which four years later became a great movie.

Sen. Joe Biden is the embodiment of snide. Snide is the embodiment of the left-wing attitude toward gun owners. So when snide Joe Biden confronted a YouTube user who asked Democrat presidential candidates about gun control during a debate Monday night, what unfolded was a Teachable YouTube Moment — the caught-on-tape embodiment of ideological snideness toward the Second Amendment and those who defend it.

The following letter should have been written, but was not, by an illegal alien:

Dear American People,

I entered your country illegally. Several years ago, I paid thousands of dollars to a “coyote” to sneak me out of Mexico through your southern border.

Well, it took two-and-a-half years, but the University of Colorado finally axed the nutty professor.

Ward Churchill has been fired for academic misconduct, including plagiarism. Despite those assertions, this was really about an out-of-control teacher earning nearly $100,000 a year saying things so foolish that no institute of learning could support them.

WASHINGTON — Karl Rove, President Bush’s political lieutenant, told a closed-door meeting of 2008 Republican House candidates and their aides Tuesday that it was less the war in Iraq than corruption in Congress that caused their party’s defeat in the 2006 elections.