Don’t forget that, like every Wednesday, Birmingham Weekly columnist Kyle Whitmire will be on WBHM (90.3 FM) at 4:30 pm.\
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Yesterday, the Jefferson County Commission rejected a bankruptcy proposal in a 3-2, even as the U.S. Treasury rejected Gov. Riley’s request that JeffCo receive some money from the $700 billion federal bail-out (or as Thomason Tracts puts it, “Fed to JeffCo: Drop dead”). The treasury said the language of the legislation simply could not include municipalities. Birmingham News ran a compelling editorial today saying that JeffCo should keep up the fight to get its debt insured by the Federal government. The solution to the debt problem, County Commission President Bettye Collins suggests, is a rate hike for sewer customers. Kathy at Birmingham Blues isn’t happy. But Scott Stantis finds the humor in all this, at the end of the toilet paper roll.\
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In Birmingham news, Mayor Larry Langford is receiving help from a pro-bono legal group in his civil suit with Central Alabama Pride, which you can read about here. The legal group helping Langford is associated with Liberty College, which was founded by Jerry Falwell. Thomason Tracts asks “Seriously, did\’a0 you try Bob Jones U first?”\
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Republican Jeff Sessions, who is up enough in the polls so that this won’t matter, has decided against debating Democratic party challenger Vivian Figures.\
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Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative activist who founded the Eagle Forum to fight the Equal Rights Amendment, talked to the Kiwanis Club of Birmingham yesterday, and drummed up some fear about Obama (his autobiography is “downright scary,” she said) and a ’stolen election.’\
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That’s it for today.