This comes as no surprise, but Athens-Clarke Commissioner Kathy Hoard told blogger JMac that she is running for re-election this year.

Hoard, who has served on the commission since 2003 and previously served on the Athens City Council, had hinted that this would be her last term. After her husband died last year, though, she’s been hinting that she would return.

Defense attorney Bill Overend was poised to run if Hoard retired.

Bad to worse

Paulding County voters elected a young banker named Daniel Stout to replace former House Speaker Glenn Richardson, who resigned after news broke that he’d had an affair with a lobbyist.

Stout, 29, admits to sleeping with his first wife’s mother 10 years ago. They divorced, and he remarried in 2005.

Are you worried that the government will implant a microchip into your body without your consent? If so, the state Senate has your back.

From the Associated Press:

State senators are moving to protect Georgians from being implanted with a microchip without their permission.

The Senate voted 47-2 on Thursday to approve a bill banning the practice without consent. Doing so would be a misdemeanor considered assault and battery.

Even with permission, implantation could only be performed by a doctor. Anyone who has a microchip implanted without their permission would be entitled to sue for damages.

House Speaker David Ralston just announced committee assignments, and Rep. Bob Smith, R-Watkinsville, is out as chairman of Appropriations’ Higher Education Subcommittee, the body that decides how much money Georgia colleges and universities get.

Smith was coy about how he voted for speaker, but presumably he backed the wrong horse.

Rep. Terry England, R-Auburn, an early Ralston supporter, was rewarded. He is now a vice chairman on Appropriations and Industrial Relations, in addition to remaining vice chairman of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs.

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New Speaker David Ralston started shaking up House leadership on Thursday, getting rid of the hated “hawks” and announcing the resignations of two committee chairman who are running for statewide office.

The three hawks – empowered by former Speaker Glenn Richardson to sway votes in any committee and keep Republicans in line with his wishes – have resigned, and rule changes eliminating the positions are presumably forthcoming.

“While this system was initiated to enable House committees to more readily meet their quorum requirements, it has become a tool used strictly for partisan purposes,” Ralston said in a news release. “Under my leadership, I am committed to working across the aisle and ensuring an equal voice to all House members no matter their party affiliation.”

During the first day of the General Assembly’s 2010 session on Monday, we heard lots of words like openness, transparency, independence, bipartisanship, character, honesty and integrity. New Speaker David Ralston promised more civility and more debate. He even spoke to reporters – something Glenn Richardson hadn’t done for two years.

Today, House leaders kicked the media out of a Republican caucus meeting. Has anything really changed?

High praise for Murphy

After accepting the gavel from former Speaker Pro Tem Mark Burkhalter on Monday, Ralston showed he’s a student of history.

But what if God turns out to be a tax-and-spend liberal?

Anybody wondering how the Georgia General Assembly plans to deal with the steep decline in state tax revenues in the ongoing economic downturn -- a decline that has already forced furloughs of state employees and could soon force dramatic cuts in government services -- could have learned a couple of Sundays ago that divine intervention isn't off the table.

Newly minted Republican state Sen. Buddy Carter -- a former state representative who won a special election last month to fill former state Sen. Eric Johnson's Savannah-area seat (Johnson resigned to run for governor) -- said during his Nov. 22 swearing-in ceremony in Savannah's Wesley Monumental Methodist Church that in these tough times, "we (presumably including his legislative colleagues) should turn to God for strength and wisdom." He reprised the sentiment later in his speech, saying "let us look to God for strength and guidance."

Pre-files are like Christmas come early for political reporters.

Georgia lawmakers filed dozens of bills last week that will be considered when the legislature convenes in January. As always, there’s some weird, wild and wacky stuff. Most of it boils down to state legislators' newfound post-Obama love for the 10th Amendment, which is quickly supplanting the 2nd as conservatives' favorite part of the Constitution.

The full lists from House and Senate are both online for your reading enjoyment, but here are some of the highlights:

State Rep. Keith Heard, D-Athens?, was on a roll Monday night.

Rep. Doug McKillip, D-Athens, is usually the talkative one. But Heard, not generally known for an attack-dog style, got after it at a Federation of Neighborhoods meeting. After 15 years in office, he seemed fed up with what he called the most divisive session he’s ever experienced.

To start with, there was the resolution creating Confederate heritage month that the legislature passed.

“It’s so sad to see our state of Georgia is reliving the Civil War in 2009,” Heard said.

Then there was the one honoring President Barack Obama that the House voted down, making Georgia “look so backward.”

“We passed that in the Senate,” Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, said. “Of course, we also voted to secede from the Union,” he joked, referring to another resolution asserting Georgia’s right to leave the United States.

It rarely draws much attention because it is so routine, but the Georgia General Assembly so frequently commends this high school coach or that beauty queen that it often seems as if such resolutions, not laws or taxes, are its primary function.

Not so with resolution declaring President Barack Obama to be an honorary member of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus.

The resolution passed the Senate without incident, but the House shot it down. And the black caucus chairman, Sen. Emmanuel Jones, D-Ellenwood, is hopping mad about it. So, I would imagine, is the vice-chairman, Rep. Keith Heard, D-the open road (technically, Athens).

Here’s what Jones had to say:

Less than 24 hours after state Sen. Ralph Hudgens, R-Hull, said he’s running for insurance commissioner, we already have one taker for his seat.

Tim Echols, a conservative activist who lives in Winterville, is interested in running in the 47th, he said. The district includes eastern Clarke, Oglethorpe, Madison, part of Elbert, part of Jackson and Barrow counties.