Short

subjects:

The Atlanta

Journal-Constitution came up with a great idea: rating

quality of life in all the metro Atlanta counties and

writing a series of articles plying on the NCAA

basketball tournament.

The idea is

to narrow down to a single best county using the scores

on the criteria to name the "sweet 16," etc.

Clever.

On the

first test, Fayette County did very poorly, second from

the bottom on the percentage of land set aside as green

space.

I couldn't

believe it.

I drive

around Fayette County a lot, and I see acre after acre of

uninterrupted farm land, woods, and neighborhoods with

tons of "common space," plus oodles of

undisturbed buffers.

Then it

dawned on me. The test is not about green space; it's

about government-owned green space.

I'm not

opposed to the government owning some parks and nature

preserves, and maybe Fayette could stand to do a bit more

in that area. I'm not even sure if the AJC was counting

privately owned nature preserves such as those maintained

At any

rate, Fayette's in the "Final Four" and next

Monday's AJC will have the final rankings on each

criterion. I'll be watching to see how many more criteria

are directly tied to the size of the government and the

degree to which it involves itself in our lives.

The

legislature has finished its work and gone home, and we

have a new education bill. As I said in an earlier

article, I'm happy with some parts and less happy with

others.

I think the

concentration of resources in the first three years of

schooling is fantastic. I think the concentration of more

power in the governor's hands is not.

The bill

needed another year to simmer before being served up to

the public, but Gov. Roy used his considerable political

ability (along with his party's majority) to ram it

through prematurely.

I like a

lot of what Roy Barnes is doing and how he thinks, but

I'm getting a sneaking, uneasy feeling about his methods.

Every great idea he has seems to wind up giving him and a

few others more power and more control over your life and

mine.

Methinks he

hath a lean and hungry look.

Along with

the education bill, another notable action of this

legislature was a bill doing away with Old Sparky.

The

electric chair will be thrown out in favor of the more

humane lethal injection.

This is

where I part company with many conservative pundits, who

seem to delight in thinking up the most inhumane

executions imaginable and waxing wistful over the fact

that such will never happen.

Yes, I'm

still for the death penalty. But for the sake of our own

humanity, not that of the pond scum who commit wanton

murder, executions should be handled as humanely as

possible.

We all die,

and after that ,

the judgment. I'm willing to leave it at that.