Oh ye of little faith -- Georgians can always count on the Dean to tell it like it is -- Cong. Jack Kingston and Mayor Franklin

In an earlier post entitled "Does the Congressman think it is Republican money -- Hang tough Mayor Franklin," I said I must have been asleep at the wheel in missing an article on Mayor Franklin and a sitting Congressman and a Congressional candidate.

I wrote: "I can't believe I missed it and haven't seen anything about it anywhere else."

Well, even as I was pecking away, the good Dean had already penned and distributed another one of his classics on the subject. I should have known. I do have the faith.

Anybody can read and report. The Dean -- in a way that only the Dean can do and that makes him Georgia's Dean -- can tell like it is. Excerpts from one of Bill Shipp's weekly columns:

The latest news reports on 1st District Rep. Jack Kingston can't be true. He's too smart to make such a dumb move.

Kingston's aides say the Savannah congressman is having second thoughts about supporting federal funds for Atlanta's multibillion-dollar sewer makeover.

If Kingston says "no" to federal funds for Atlanta, then "no" it is. Kingston is the state's sole chairman of an appropriations subcommittee, chairman of the House GOP caucus and the closest thing Georgia has to congressional muscle in D.C.

He is angry at Democratic Mayor Franklin because she is supporting Democratic challenger John Barrow of Athens against incumbent 12th District Rep. Max Burns, R-Sylvania.

In this era of personalized, give-no-quarter partisanship, opposing funds for fixing Atlanta's sewers to exact revenge on a Democrat-controlled City Hall may make perfect sense to obtuse partisan zealots.

Never mind that Atlanta's untreated and unchanneled wastewater is defiling half the state, including the property of thousands of Kingston's constituents.

Never mind that when a new school is built or a road paved in rural Georgia (even in parts of Kingston's and Burns' districts), much of the tax-supported funding for the project can be traced back to metro Atlanta.

Downstate politicians may hate the idea, but Atlanta and environs are the economic engine of the state. What rational public official could possibly entertain undermining Atlanta's economy - no matter how badly he wishes to take a swipe at Her Honor?

For Georgia's ranking congressman - and a co-chief of the Republican National Convention - to move against Atlanta to satisfy a petty partisan grievance defies comprehension.

Most of Georgia's congressional delegation, including Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Moultrie, favors helping Atlanta. But Kingston holds the trump card and the power to trash the clean water project.

Say it ain't so, Jack. Say you were just fooling when your staff threatened to hit Atlanta where it hurts, in the federal pocketbook.

Say you didn't mean it when you sent word to career Democratic activist Franklin to keep her mouth shut in "a faraway from Atlanta" congressional contest against a GOP incumbent. That is not the democratic way, Jack, or the Republican one either.

We're sure the reports of such lunacy are way off base.

Get right, Jack. The elections will shortly be over. Governance goes on. You may return to Georgia one day. You don't want to find a state whose main rivers have turned into open sewers because a Savannah congressman split with an Atlanta mayor over a House election that has little to do with either of them.