I was so excited last week after receiving a reply to a message I had left on Rootsweb back in 2001 about my McWhorter family.

Oh, no, not another “town hall” meeting.

Or at least, that’s how I first reacted when I learned the Rev. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church intended to host an Obama-versus-McCain town hall forum at the evangelist’s California church.

Some professions are filled with stress. Every job has stress, of course, and some amounts of stress are considered good for performance. But there are those careers where stress can lead to burn-out and can become debilitating: air traffic controllers, firefighters, police officers, soldiers, emergency room workers, paramedics, for example ... and the list goes on and on.

The Democratic Party platform is like a bag of pork rinds. You never know what high-fat liberal government morsel you’re gonna get.

One major problem with politics — as we’ve all probably figured out by now — is that politicians view every human challenge as political in nature, meaning, particularly these last few years. Objective No. 1 in the political trade is sticking to it The Other Party.

What is happening in the republic of Georgia is all too reminiscent of what happened back in 1956, when Russian tanks rolled into Hungary — and the West did nothing.

The “civil forum” featuring presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain may not have been as exciting as Michael Phelps winning his eighth Olympic gold medal, but it was civil and it was a forum from which emerged useful information.

By taking a couple of courses in economic theory, we could immunize ourselves from nonsense spouted by politicians and pundits, but in the meantime check out Professor John R. Lott’s “Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works.”

One of the fun things about having a column like this is that I can float ideas for local governments to handle without having to invest my own blood, sweat and tears.

When I was a student, in my late teens, I wanted a summer job. I needed money and I had my eyes on getting a car. These summer jobs were not exactly easy to get. One summer the only job I could get was a janitorial job, cleaning government offices as part of a crew from midnight to 8 in the morning five days a week. This nightshift work was rough!

When I was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the campus mall, which opened onto Madison’s State Street, attracted not a few colorful characters. There were street musicians and jugglers, and people peddling political agendas.

It may seem surprising to you — for it is to me — that I, the undeniable embodiment of all things Southern, should become so fascinated by a Yankee.

Almost since its inception, much of Christianity has had a callous disregard for the principles Jesus taught. While there have been many true adherents who seemed to have grasped the moral principles Jesus illustrated, too many supposed Christians have read into the faith too much of their own prejudices. History is full of acts of the “faithful” far removed from the teachings of the New Testament.

Today started like any other day. I got up, walked the dog for an hour, ate breakfast, and kissed The Wife goodbye as she went off to work. It was my day off so I spent some time in the basement, did a little yard work and around noon came inside for lunch. I cut on the news just in time for the special report and immediately lost my appetite. It seems that the entire state of Georgia is at war with the Russians.

Some of you may know that I have this huge, sprawling family tree (nearly 20,000 people) on Rootsweb's WorldConnect Project and, by default, on Ancestry's World Tree. Many people in it are relatives and some are not. We call these semi-related and non-related families "collateral" and "allied" families because they are either related through marriage or connected through other means.

“Where you from?”

An illegal alien from Mexico, Pedro Espinoza, allegedly asked that of Jamiel Shaw Jr., 17 — before Espinoza shot and killed him.

Every so often, someone enters our lives that changes us for the good and leaves a lasting, positive impression. From the moment I met Kenneth Turner, I liked him. You had to like him — he didn’t really give you a choice. His warm smile, his generous hugs, his obvious love for God and those whom God had created, drove away frowns and self-pity.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently called congressional Republicans who want up-or-down drilling votes “hand maidens of the oil companies.” Let’s call Pelosi what she is: House girl of the Big Wind boondogglers.

When it’s “change” you’re merchandising, the easy phrases flow easily enough. Walls between people “cannot stand.” With “improbable hope,” we prepare to “to remake the world once again” — “a world that stands as one.” “This is our moment, this is our time,” proclaimed Barack Obama, when speaking in Berlin.

When people learn that for nearly 40 years — including more than 17 spent disagreeing, often heatedly, with him on CNN’s weekly “Capital Gang” — that columnist Robert Novak has been my good friend, they often shake their heads in disbelief.

We take it for granted that a vote means a secret ballot, but it was not always that way. Moreover, it will not remain that way for workers who vote on whether or not they want a labor union, if legislation sponsored by Congressional Democrats and endorsed by Senator Barack Obama becomes law.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia on the pretext of “protecting” Russian peacekeepers stationed in the separatist enclave of South Ossetia and ending the “ethnic cleansing” of native Russians living there, is a sobering reminder that the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 was not a sign that old-line communists were ready to walk the sawdust trail of repentance and convert to capitalism, democracy, human rights and religious freedom. Quite the contrary.

During his recent Middle East and European tour, Senator Barack Obama stated his strategic positions on Iraq and Afghanistan, which involves a timetable for withdrawal of most, if not all, U.S. forces from Iraq, and redeploying some forces to Afghanistan, which Obama seems to think is the epicenter of the misnamed “War on Terror.” This would constitute strategic disaster.

Thanks to the timing of this year’s Olympic games, the Democrats and the Republicans will be holding their presidential nominating conventions back to back. So by the time their staged, silly goings-on are over, the voters will have less than two months to properly vet John McCain and Barack Obama.

Most people know the tragic state of black education today. We know that billions of dollars are spent on federal government programs such as No Child Left Behind and the billions spent by state and local governments. If you were to ask an education “expert” to explain the tragedy, you’d get answers such as racial discrimination and underfunding.

It took awhile. You start with small steps. First I got Terri-at-the-Waffle House to give me a tall glass filled with ice, into which I poured my coffee. Then I got her to skip the cup and start pouring the coffee right over the ice.

A group of public health and emergency services officials in Fayette and Coweta counties met last week, along with their counterparts in the other counties in Georgia Public Health District 4, to discuss a response to a potential pandemic of avian flu. While not generally on the public radar, the planning by those responsible for addressing such a crisis head-on cannot be underestimated. Here’s why.

Why is it that so many Obama supporters seem to reach their decision by feelings while so many McCain supporters seem to reach their decision by thinking?

“The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.” — Jean Baptiste Colbert (French economist and Minister of Finance under King Louis XIV, 1619-83).

Right then and there in the Los Angeles International Airport, I thought I was going to have to pitch a conniption fit. That, to explain a conniption fit properly, is when a woman of Southern origin creates a scene of dramatic wailing and gnashing of teeth.