Georgia Rep Jesse Petrea (R, Savannah) has dropped one-page legislation under the Gold Dome to begin the process of creating an official database of criminal aliens in the state prison system. The descriptive caption on Petrea’s new HB 202 reads:
to require the commissioner of corrections to report certain information regarding the immigration status, offenses, and home countries of persons who are confined under the authority of the Department of Corrections…
A staunch advocate of public safety, in 2017 Rep Petrea successfully sponsored HB 452 which required the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to share information it receives from the federal government on the release from federal custody of criminal aliens with Georgia sheriffs
“This bill is about transparency. The people have a right to know when criminal aliens are released back into our communities. That information is not now available to them. The people can form their own opinions based on the data made available to them. My goal is to make the information available” Petrea said at the time.
The current effort at creating official records of crime and punishment of aliens in Georgia will serve to document one of the costs to taxpayers of criminal activity by non-citizens regardless of their immigration status. Including former Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Safety, now Republican state Rep. Bill Hitchens, a partial list of cosigners to HB 202 can be seen on the top of Petrea’s bill, introduced yesterday. While only the federal government has authority to deport illegal aliens, Georgia’s new governor, Brian Kemp is expected to show support for the concept, as he ran on a platform of cracking down on criminal aliens and gangs. Georgia has suffered a noted increase in gang activity.
Rep. Jesse Petrea. Image: Georgia General Assembly
Expert observers predict that the corporate-funded anti-enforcement immigration lobby will offer strong resistance to Petrea’s public safety information sharing measure. Currently, the Coca Cola – funded GALEO Corp. is joined by the SPLC and FWD.US along with multiple other leftist groups in a massive lobbying force to convince the Republican-controlled Georgia legislature to kill any legislation that advances immigration enforcement or establishes official records of costs associated with illegal immigration.
Contacted by phone Friday, Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway expressed his strong support for Petrea’s bill, saying “it’s always a good idea to collect more information on crime and this is valuable information. It’s a no brainer”, said Conway. In 2009, Conway implemented the federal 287(g) program in the Gwinnett jail.
Legislators in other states have expressed interest in Petrea’s public safety move. Georgia Rep Jesse Petrea can be contacted through his Capitol office.
Will the General Assembly reverse the 2018 GDOT carve-out on E-Verify for contractor bids?
D.A. King
In last year’s legislative session Republican state Senator Steve Gooch (R-Dahlonega) introduced legislation that gutted the process intended to ensure that the Georgia Department of Transportation hires contractors that are using a legal workforce. In the haste and bedlam of 2018’s Sine Die, Senate Bill 445 sailed through both the House and Senate.
It is notable that SB 445 went through the Senate Transportation Committee, as Senators Brandon Beach, Butch Miller, Frank Ginn and Mike Dugan were bill signers, in that order. All are transportation committee members — with Beach as chairman.
On SB 445, Chairman Beach made it clear in his committee that “it’s a DOT bill” (professional transcription here. – two-minute archived committee video here).
Now that the cat is out of the bag on this caper- and we have a new governor — one “important issue” for the 2019 session should be to see if lawmakers will reinstate the bidding system for GDOT that all other public employers and their contractors are still supposed to follow.
We recognize many readers will view this as a dry topic – the only folks who may have a concern are those who don’t want their taxes used to pay illegal aliens on GDOT projects.
After mandates were put into place in the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act of 2006 (SB 529) to require all public employers and contractors to use E-Verify, adjustments were made in HB2 of 2009 to deal with the obvious problem that some public contractors were bidding on – and winning – contracts with bids that were based on the cost of black market labor before they swore on an affidavit that they were using E-Verify. This allowed contractors to hire a crew for a job that could not be verified as eligible to work using the E-Verify system, which can only be used for newly hired employees after receiving authorization from the feds to use the online system.
The 2009 solution to this chicanery was to change the law so that bids are not considered unless and until the E-Verify affidavit is presented.
In his quick presentation of the measure, Sen. Gooch told the committee the changes to the GDOT bid rules were being proposed to make life easier for contractors.
“Section 3… makes clear that the deadline for a bidder to supply their signed notarized e-verify affidavit is prior to contract award as opposed to the bid submission. This has caused a problem with some of the contractors that submitted their e-verify affidavits but they didn’t reach to the department either by mail or by other means of delivery in time for the bid, um, deadlines and therefore they were disqualified from bidding on the work. Now essentially requires ’em to submit those E-Verifies prior to the contracts being awarded” said Gooch (emphasis mine).
It is hard to accept that this is a constructive or plausible reason to make changes to the GDOT bidding system, as the existing law is clear that bids and E-Verify affidavits may be submitted electronically. If a contract bidder is indeed an E-Verify user, he can easily send that documentation along with his bid from his computer.
This writer asked GDOT for comment on this curious scenario. One of the questions asked for verification that SB 445 was in fact a GDOT bill, as Chairman Beach told the committee. That question went unanswered.
This is not the first adventure in state law on E-Verify, bids, and contractors for GDOT.
CBS Atlanta 46 TV News did a series of stories on GDOT’s violations of the bidding/E-Verify law in 2010 that illustrated the lack of concern for the hard-fought mandate designed to make Georgia unwelcoming to illegal employers and illegal labor – and to safeguard taxpayer dollars. We have archived some of those reports:
* “Activist: GDOT Is Breaking State’s Immigration Law – Violation May Make It Easier For Contractors To Hire Illegal Immigrants. Here.
* “CBS Atlanta Asks If GDOT Contractor Is Hiring Illegal Workers.” CBS Atlanta 46 news video here.
* “GDOT Didn’t Know About The Illegal Immigrant Labor Law.” Here.
* “Federal Document Shows GDOT Contractor Lied On Affidavit – Company Swore To Check Employee’s Legal Status in Federal Database.” Here.
* “GDOT: Worker May Have Been Illegal. The Georgia Department of Transportation said Wednesday that one of its subcontractors may have been in the country illegally. The admission came after a CBS Atlanta investigation…” (No link)
* “GDOT Admits Mistake For Breaking Immigration Law: GDOT Commissioner Dodges Tough Questions About Hiring Illegal Worker.” Here.
IAG will follow up on this later in the legislative session, there is more.
You read it here first.
D.A. King is president of the Dustin Inman Society and proprietor of ImmigrationPoliticsGA.com. He has worked on the law featured above since 2006.
Editors determined to sway public opinion at the liberal AJC may have learned their lesson on mentioning illegal immigration. Apparently too many people are still paying attention to that crisis. Despite a January Harvard CAPS/Harris poll showing that a plurality of U.S. voters point to immigration as the most important issue facing the country, the AJC did not include any question on immigration in their own recent poll of issues and voter opinion.
The AJC poll of 702 registered voters was conducted Jan. 7-17 by the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs.
Voter ballots, gun rights, our new governor, health care/Obamacare and a possible new internet tax were all included as questions, but illegal immigration was absent from the AJC poll. According to DHS Georgia is home to more illegal aliens than is border-state Arizona. According to the left leaning Migration Policy Institute in Washington DC and the corporate funded anti-enforcement Georgia Budget and Policy Institute more illegal aliens than green card holders call Georgia home. Free car wash for readers who and a news item in the AJC on these facts.
Image: GBPI.org More illegal aliens than Lawful Permanent Residents – green card holders
A June, 2017 AJC poll of voters in Georgia’s 6th District showed metro Atlanta’s infamous traffic congestion, abortion, government spending, and “climate change” all attracted fewer reactions from voters as being very or somewhat important than illegal immigration. Nevertheless, the AJC went with the headline: “Most Georgia 6th voters very concerned about climate change.”
It was bad news for the liberals when the AJC had to report in 2010 that a statewide poll they participated in showed that two-thirds of Georgians wanted to bar “the undocumented” from attending taxpayer-funded state universities — at any tuition rate.
In the pre-Trump, state-wide poll, two-thirds of Georgians wanted to bar “the undocumented” from attending taxpayer-funded state universities — even if they pay out of state tuition. Sixty-seven percent of people polled in September 2010 by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research for the Georgia Newspaper Partnership, which included the AJC, favored a law requiring proof of legal residency to even attend a Georgia college or university.
It couldn’t have made the editors at the AJC happy to report that polling showed most Georgia voters wanted an “Arizona style immigration law in Georgia” in 2010 either. It should be noted that such a law was passed under the Gold Dome, but it is not enforced by the Republicans who rule the state government. That fact is also not “news” at the liberal AJC.
Often, it is an indicator of what real issues are when those topics are ignored by the AJC.
On the crime of illegal immigration, it is much more difficult to achieve the liberal goals – including another amnesty – when the pesky voters are allowed access to too much information. Thus the “no immigration polls for you” attitude at the “credible, compelling, complete” AJC.
Originally published in Pew’s Stateline, the below is from the influential Governing Magazine” From our eight years of personal experience with the IERB, we will have plenty to add soon, but a “parody of a Kangaroo Court” is a good start.
An Example of What Not to Do’: The State Where Immigration Law Is Enforced by Political Appointees Granted the Power of Courts
Over the past few years, statehouses around the country have tried to rein in cities deemed too friendly to undocumented immigrants. But Georgia is the only state that’s created an independent board with one specific mission: Punishing cities that aren’t doing enough to crack down on illegal immigration.
Typically, that responsibility falls to state attorneys general. But in Georgia, residents can file a complaint against any city or county they judge to be breaking state immigration law.
Until a recent case against the small liberal town of Decatur, though, all but one of the complaints had come from one private citizen, an avowed anti-illegal immigration activist who’s made this his life’s calling.
Then the lieutenant governor, Republican Casey Cagle, filed a complaint accusing Decatur of violating state immigration law last year as he was running for governor. And on Facebook, he threatened to yank its state funding.
“Liberal politicians in the City of Decatur are trying to put the interests of criminal illegal aliens ahead of our safety — and I will not allow it!” Cagle wrote. (He did not respond to repeated requests from Stateline for comment.)
Few locals have heard of it, but Georgia’s Immigration Enforcement Review Board was created seven years ago, when the state passed one of the nation’s strictest immigration laws. Trying to keep track of the legal comings and goings of the IERB, as the board is known, can be dizzying.
Most of its members are not attorneys or immigration experts. All are volunteers — and all are political appointees, which in this red state, makes it a majority Republican board.
And while technically not a court, the board has been given many of the powers of a court: It investigates alleged wrongdoing, subpoenas witnesses and hears testimony.
The board has the power to recommend sanctions against municipalities found to be in the wrong — and ultimately, withhold millions in state funding from them as punishment.
So far, though, it has levied just one lasting fine, for $1,000 against Atlanta. A handful of small cities, though, have been forced to spend time and money defending themselves against accusations.
Two of the immigration board members refused to step down years after their terms ended, and did so only in 2018, when they were sued by a Decatur resident and accused of violating Georgia law.
“The Georgia board is an example of what not to do, rather than a model for something effective,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, a national research and advocacy group that favors limited immigration to the United States.
“It’s troubling,” Vaughan said, “to have that authority go to a politically appointed group that lacks expertise in the subject matter.”
The city of Decatur has filed two lawsuits against the board, saying it has violated public meetings and public records laws; the Georgia First Amendment Foundation and the Southern Poverty Law Center joined one of the suits in December. (Under James Balli’s tenure as chair, he has made efforts to make the board more transparent, including releasing records to a reporter.)
Balli, said it is just complying with state immigration law in its work, and until that law is changed, it’ll continue with its charge.
The 2011 law the board is focused on, HB 87, permits law enforcement officers to stop anyone they deem to be “suspicious” and ask for their papers. The law also requires cities and counties, and many businesses, to use E-Verify to ensure workers are in the country legally; and punishes those who use fake identification to get work.
“The goal is compliance, not punishment,” Balli said.
“We’re not anti-immigration,” Balli said, adding that his grandmother was an immigrant from Mexico. “We don’t want that to be the picture of this board.”
Atlanta’s Hippie Cousin
Decatur’s been described as a speck of blue in a sea of red, and that is true — up to a point. There have always been specks of blue in Georgia, and the state is increasingly trending purple. In November, Democrat Stacey Abrams narrowly lost to Republican Brian Kemp in the race for governor.
But Decatur, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution puts it, is “renowned as a bastion of Southern liberalism.” It’s Atlanta’s hippie cousin — population 23,800 — 4 square miles of bungalows, yoga studios and farm-to-table fare. In 2016, 86 percent of voters here cast their lot with Hillary Clinton.
Both Decatur and its next-door neighbor Atlanta issued directives in 2017 ordering local police not to detain immigrants, barring a court order. Decatur doesn’t even have a jail — and has few immigrants.
But for the past year, it is Decatur, not Atlanta, that has been in battle with the state, fighting accusations that it is a sanctuary city.
And even though the IERB has yet to yank state funding in any of the cases it’s heard, Decatur officials say they worry the city could lose millions in funding if the board tried to take action.
‘Kangaroo Court’
Many critics of the board, who fall on both sides of the immigration battle, have said it should be disbanded.
“It’s a court that operates in very strange, mostly nontransparent ways and yet has a tremendous amount of power,” said Naomi Tsu, who oversees the legal and advocacy work on behalf of immigrants in the Deep South for the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center. The center has profiled the IERB on its “Hatewatch” blog.
Then there’s Marietta, Georgia, resident D.A. King, who’s filed 20 of the 22 complaints that have come before the board. He called the IERB a “parody of a kangaroo court.”
King, a Detroit native, describes himself as a nationalist “along the lines of a George Washington,” but says that he’s not a white supremacist. Nor is he against legal immigration. “My adopted sister is from Korea,” he said.
“I’m trying to educate people about immigration. It’s about the law and what’s good for America and Americans.” Read the rest of the report here.
Rep. Jesse Petrea. Image: Georgia General Assembly
“Currently in Georgia prisons are some 1,360 criminal aliens. These are criminals convicted of serious crimes. For example, 193 for child molestation, 65 for aggravated child molestation, 134 for murder, 103 for armed robbery, 98 for rape, 42 for statutory rape, 61 for kidnapping, 45 for manslaughter and 18 for vehicular homicide. All 1,360 of these individuals had at least one Georgia victim. All of these 1,360 crimes were avoidable.”
The below is a column published in the Savannah Morning News/SavannahNow.com from Georgia state Rep Jesse Petrea on his “Georgia Illegal Immigration Protection and Public Safety Act.”
Lawmakers Look To “Create a Better Georgia”
January 12, 2019
Rep Jesse Petrea
On Monday, Jan. 14, we will convene the 2019 Georgia legislative session in Atlanta. This year I have multiple bills I am working on to create a better Georgia. Today, I would like to explain my two legislative priorities for 2019.
First, I will attempt again to accomplish something that I have sponsored since my first term in the legislature. I have pre-filed House Bill 7 which would eliminate the state income tax on military retirement income. This is the right thing to do for the men and women who protect this country with a career of military service. Never in our history has a smaller percentage of veterans protected so many in our country.
Further, it will level the field to attract disciplined and skilled men and women to live and work in Georgia. Our industries and businesses desperately need this workforce. Many veterans retire at 40 to 50 years of age and are ready for a new career. They have the skills, discipline and work ethic that our employers so desperately need. However, currently, our neighboring states offer them huge cost savings. In Florida, Tennessee, Alabama and South Carolina, these veterans can save 5.75 percent of their income because these states do not tax this income as we do in Georgia.
Since being elected, I have made public safety my primary focus. So this year my second priority is to sponsor the Georgia Illegal Immigration Protection and Public Safety Act. Currently in Georgia prisons are some 1,360 criminal aliens. These are criminals convicted of serious crimes. For example, 193 for child molestation, 65 for aggravated child molestation, 134 for murder, 103 for armed robbery, 98 for rape, 42 for statutory rape, 61 for kidnapping, 45 for manslaughter and 18 for vehicular homicide. All 1,360 of these individuals had at least one Georgia victim. All of these 1,360 crimes were avoidable. Had our federal government done its job, none of these illegal immigrants would have been present to commit these crimes.
Joins a growing group of sheriffs nationwide expressing support for action on illegal border crossings
Cobb County, Georgia Sheriff Neil Warren. Image: CobbSheriff office.
Longtime Cobb County, Georgia Sheriff Neil Warren has made public a letter to President Trump expressing his support for a border wall.
“As one of more than 3,000 sheriffs across this nation, I am painfully aware of the continuing loss of the innocent American lives and the escalating numbers of overdoses and drug-related deaths caused by members of Congress refusing to fund border security initiatives,” Warren wrote in his Monday letter. “The intentional indifference of those who are more interested in their personal political agenda than our public safety needs undermines law enforcement’s ability to fulfill our promise to keep our citizens, communities and nation safe” goes Warren’s letter, in part.
Sheriff Warren has served in his position since 2004 and was the first sheriff in Georgia to take advantage of the federal 287(g) program that expands the local law enforcement’s authority to help enforce immigration law.
Regarded as a hero to pro-enforcement Americans, Warren has been attacked by the corporate-funded anti-borders groups in the state for more than a decade. Estimates are that Georgia taxpayers spend approximately $2.5 billion annually on illegal immigration.
According to the left-leaning Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, Georgia is home to more illegal aliens than green card holders and more than the border state of Arizona. Cobb County is ranked number three in county populations of illegal aliens in the state.
Immigration Enforcement Review Board (IERB) established in OCGA 50-36-3 (2011, HB87)
The seven original IERB members were appointed between July and Sept. 2, 2011.
State law is clear that members are limited to two terms of two years per term.
OCGA 50-36-3 (b) The Immigration Enforcement Review Board is established and shall consist of seven members. Three members shall be appointed by the Governor, two members shall be appointed by the Lieutenant Governor, and two members shall be appointed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives. A chairperson shall be selected by a majority vote of the members. All matters before the board shall be determined by a majority vote of qualified board members. Members shall be appointed for terms of two years and shall continue to hold such position until their successors are duly appointed and qualified. A member may be reappointed to an additional term. If a vacancy occurs in the membership of the board, the appropriate appointing party shall appoint a successor for the remainder of the unexpired term and until a successor is appointed and qualified.
Appointed by Gov. Deal: Phil Kent, Shawn Hanley and Ben Vinson Appointed by Lt. Gov Cagle: Boyd Austin, Mike Yeager Appointed by Speaker Ralston: Robert Mumford, Terry Clark.
With the end of the first term, original members still on the IERB should have been reappointed in July and Sept. 2013 – with the end of that term being July/Sept. 2015. With the exception of the Speaker’s office on the reappointment of Terry Clark, it appears that none of the three offices that made the original appointments can produce any paperwork reflecting any reappointments. After a request for public records, Cagle’s office claimed exclusion from open records laws due to being part of the legislature.
Lt. Governor is an executive branch office under the state constitution.
Without being legally reappointed and without authority, members Kent, Hanley, Vinson, Yeager and Clark served well beyond the end of the four year limitation. As of December 29, 2018 Clark is still serving.
Ben Vinson resigned IERB sometime in June of July, 2017 after being appointed to the State Board of worker’s Compensation by Gov. Deal. In violation of state law, Vinson was active as IERB Chair from Sept. 2015 to the date of his resignation.
Shawn Hanley and Phil Kent both resigned in August 2018 when the term limit violation was made public.
In the same report linked above, it looks like the AG is staying far away from the entire matter.
IERB member John Kennedy was appointed in January 2013 after Robert Mumford resigned to become a judge. Kennedy won election to the state senate and James Balli was appointed to replace him by Speaker Ralston in Feb. 2014. The appointment letter specifically states Balli’s appointment would end in July 2015 or “until a successor is duly appointed.”
That would mean Balli’s two term limit would end in July 2017 – if he was duly reappointed. Public records of any such reappointment have not been produced.
* It could be that Balli will claim he was appointed to finish Kennedy’s term and could lawfully serve two terms of his own. I assert that argument is contrary to the language and intent of OCGA 50-36-3.
With this line of thinking: Mumford’s first term ended in Sept. 2013, Kennedy would have finished that term in 2015, but was replaced by Balli who was appointed in Feb 2014. Again, the Balli appointment letter states his term ends in 2015 or until a lawful reappointment or a successor appointment.
Reappointment of Balli would expire in 2017 – if he was duly reappointed.
Regardless of the question on Balli’s reappointment or his merely finishing another member’s term, because of the fact that that members Kent, Vinson, Hanley and Clark served and voted without authority after Sept. 2015, it is my position that any actions taken after Sept. 2015, including sanctions, complaint dismissals and board votes were done in violation of state law and are thereby null and void.
Maria Palasios, GALEO staffer and former illegal alien “dreamer” lobbying in the Georgia Capitol against passage of a bill to reform illegal alien drivers licenses, March, 2018. Image: DAKing
D.A. King
The L.A. Times has put out a news report about the hard work of the illegal aliens who former President Barack Hussien Obama granted executive amnesty with his DACA program to flip the U.S. House to Democrat control. As one who has watched these perpetually angry illegals – called “dreamers” by the liberal media – lobby against immigration enforcement and official English in the Georgia Capitol for the last five years, this writer can attest that they are quite active. And that many Republican state legislators are very timid in dealing with them. When the effort was made to end the current Georgia policy of giving “dreamers” the same exact drivers license and ID Cards as legal immigrants and guest workers here on legal visas, it was these corporate-funded illegals who succesfully led the fight against passage. In 2012, Obama told us the the DACA illegals could never become U.S. citizens. That is not true. One of the “dreamers” Maria Palasios is now a U.S. citizen and works for the far-left and discredited GALEO Corp. and has even run for stat office here in Georgia.
The L.A. times story explains how involved and influential the illegal aliens – foreigners here illegally with a deferral on deportation – have become in American elections.
Imagine the influence the incoming batch of “dreamers” will have on American politics. Right now, there are about 15,000 “migrant” children, mostly from Central America, being cared for in shelters paid for by American tax dollars waiting to be distributed across the country. Along with “family units” who are setting records for crossing American borders, according to Customs and Border Protection, an average of 175 unaccompanied ‘children’ cross the southern border illegally every day. In a few years, they will be marching in the streets of America as teens and twenty-somethings screaming that they are “Americans without papers” and demanding another DACA-type amnesty. And, they will likely be successful. All the time, they will be lobbying in Washington DC and state Capitols as victims of borders and intimidating politicians who would rather capitulate than risk name-calling by the left and the media. Sorry for the repetition.
From the L.A. Times:
“Gabriela Cruz, who was brought to the U.S. illegally when she was 1, couldn’t vote, but in the final hours before the Nov. 6 election, she was making one last run to get people to the polls.
The sun was setting in Modesto when she found Ronald Silva, 41, smoking a cigarette on a tattered old couch behind a group home. He politely tried to wave her off until she reminded him he had a right that she as an immigrant without citizenship didn’t have.
“It could really make a change for us,” said Cruz, 29.
Half an hour later, she was helping Silva look up candidates as he filled out his ballot by the light of her phone. “I’m glad you guys came,” he said. “I was going to leave it in my drawer.”
Young immigrants, known as “Dreamers,” have become a political force over the last two decades as they have pushed Congress to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws. Part of a new wave of immigrant activists who mobilized this year to return control of the House to Democrats, Cruz and others in the movement see in President Trump an existential threat to their futures, and to their friends and family.”
DA King: GOP Blocks Georgia Immigration Enforcement Bill, But OKs Traffic Cameras
The Republican Speaker of the Georgia House blocked a bill that would help deport criminal illegal aliens, but he pushed through a last-minute bill touted by his lobbyist son, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Georgia House Speaker David Ralston delayed the end of this year’s legislative session past a midnight deadline so lawmakers could vote on a bill to allow speeding ticket cameras in school zones.
The bill was pushed by Ralston’s son, a lobbyist for an Arizona-based company, American Traffic Solutions, that sells the camera systems to local governments.
…
Ralston and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, the president of the state Senate, agreed to continue working past midnight to allow the House to approve the bill after it had passed the Senate a few minutes earlier, said Kaleb McMichen, a spokesman for Ralston, a Blue Ridge Republican.
In contrast, Ralston refused to allow a vote on a public safety bill in the GOP-dominated House before ended its annual session on March 30. Corporate-funded anti-borders groups took credit for the defeating the bill, which would have required state officials to notify federal immigration-enforcement officers of illegal migrants in the state’s jails.
Image: ICE, via AP and Breitbart News
GOP leaders offered excuses for blocking the popular immigration-reform bill
“We ran out of time before we had finished all the bills that were worthwhile,” said House Majority Whip, Christian Coomer. “Other bills took priority and SB452 wasn’t called before the clock struck midnight,” he told the liberal Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper. Read the rest here.
