Now, nonprofit environmental law organization Earthjustice is targeting the town for another instance of racial discrimination: its sewage treatment.

According to Earthjustice.org, "White residents of Rochelle live on the south side of the city’s railroad track. African-Americans live on the other side." The city maintains pipes in the predominantly white neighborhood, but not the African-American side. "As a result," writes Earthjustice, "untreated sewage backs up and overflows into the streets and the yards of residents on the north side of the tracks."

“Sewage overflows my pipes and flows under my house. It’s time somebody did something about it. They [the white community] live comfortably and I want to live comfortably, too,” said Rochelle resident Rufus Howard.

Howard is one of nine Rochelle residents represented by Earthjustice, who will file a lawsuit under the Clean Water Act if the city does not resolve the issue in 60 days.

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As the Atlantic's Andrew Cohen wrote on the decision to once again see the inmate put to death at the hands of the state of Georgia:

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From the Associated Press:

The question is whether a bruising party primary becomes a liability, particularly if voters nominate U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, who once called evolution and the Big Bang Theory "lies straight from the pit of hell."

Broun and U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey, both conservative physicians, are the only Republicans to announce officially since incumbent Saxby Chambliss said he will retire. But the GOP primary field eventually could include as many as a half-dozen candidates with a credible shot at a runoff spot.

"There's no question that the Republican Party in Georgia and the nation are concerned that we could have another Todd Akin-type scenario here," Heath Garrett, a GOP campaign consultant and former aide to Sen. Johnny Isakson, told the AP.

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Authorities say an unidentified man took the five firefighters hostage in a Gwinnett County home Wednesday, demanding that his cable and power be turned back on at the house, which is in foreclosure.

While the suspect let one firefighter leave, police said he held the others for hours before being shot dead during an exchange of gunfire when SWAT members stormed the house. A fire official said the hostages had cuts and bruises from explosions officers set off before moving in but were OK.

Authorities said one SWAT team member was shot in the hand or arm but was in good condition.

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Gwinnett County Police Cpl. Edwin Ritter says firefighters on Wednesday responded to a medical call in Suwanee and were taken hostage by a suspect he didn't identify.

Ritter says information on a possible motive was not immediately available and a SWAT team is on the scene. He gave no more details. A call to the Gwinnett County Fire Department was not immediately returned.

Suwanee is about 35 miles northeast of downtown Atlanta.

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From the Huffington Post:

"I don't want to pay for a sex-change operation," Broun told town hall attendees, presumably referring to a proposal, scrapped by the Obama administration late last month, that would have allowed gender reassignment surgeries to be covered under Medicare and Medicaid. "I'm not interested. I like being a boy."

The comments, first reported by the Barrow County News, are somewhat comparable to those made recently by Sen. Saxby Chambliss, also a Republican from Georgia, who said that he doesn't support gay marriage because "I’m not gay. So I’m not going to marry one."

Broun is running for Chambliss' seat when he retires in 2014.

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The 21-year-old Aguigui, according to Georgia state prosecutors, funded his dreams of overthrowing the government through a campaign of political assassination and other acts of terror with money from a $500,000 life insurance policy he received after the “highly suspicious” death in July 2011 of his wife, Deirdre, an army sergeant who had served a tour of duty in Iraq as a linguist.

While the army has been investigating Sgt. Aguigui’s death for nearly two years, military officials released no further details, according to The Associated Press.

Following his wife’s death, Aguigui and his followers spent $87,000 on military-grade weapons and bomb-making material.

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WSAV in Georgia reports that Wilcox County High School holds two proms for its students: a whites-only prom, and an integrated prom. WSAV notes that the school has never had a fully inclusive prom in its history.

Best friends Stephanie Sinnot, Mareshia Rucker, Quanesha Wallace and Keela Bloodworth are trying to change that. "We are all friends," said Sinnot. "That's just kind of not right that we can't go to prom together."

If any non-white person tried to attend the whites-only prom, "They would probably have the police come out there and escort them off the premises," said Bloodworth. According to WSAV, this was the case in 2012 when a biracial student who tried to attend the dance was "turned away by police."

The students are pushing to do end segregation at the dance, but are facing backlash. WSAV reports:

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“You may be as straight as an arrow, and you may have a friend that is as straight as an arrow,” Sue Everhart told the Marietta Daily Journal. “Say you had a great job with the government where you had this wonderful health plan. I mean, what would prohibit you from saying that you’re gay, and y’all get married and still live as separate, but you get all the benefits? I just see so much abuse in this it’s unreal. I believe a husband and a wife should be a man and a woman, the benefits should be for a man and a woman. There is no way that this is about equality. To me, it’s all about a free ride.”

“Lord, I’m going to get in trouble over this, but it is not natural for two women or two men to be married,” she also said. “If it was natural, they would have the equipment to have a sexual relationship.”

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Recipients of the 72nd annual Peabody Awards were announced by the University of Georgia's journalism school. They were chosen by the Peabody board as the best electronic media works of 2012.

Connecticut station WVIT-TV won an award for its "quick response and comprehensive coverage" of the December school shooting in Newtown, Conn.

Other winners for journalistic works included ABC News for its coverage of Superstorm Sandy. The network embedded a reporting team with a family in Breezy Point, N.Y., according to a description of the winning entries.

Documentaries receiving awards included "MLK: The Assassination Tapes," which aired on the Smithsonian Channel. The film was "painstakingly configured" from rare footage collected at the University of Memphis in 1968. It covers events leading up to the murder of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and its aftermath.

"Game Change," an HBO film about Sarah Palin's rise to the national political spotlight, also won a Peabody.

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"We ought to get rid of certain federal departments and agencies, stopping only to shift the role of governing back to the states, where it belongs," Broun writes. "The Departments of Education and Energy, for example, are two bloated bureaucracies that we don’t need; their core functions would be absorbed by the states through block grants, saving taxpayers at least $500 billion over the next decade."

From the Op-Ed:

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“I made a very awkward attempt to explain the unexplainable,” he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“Rape is rape," he continued. "If it’s rape, it’s legitimate. I certainly regret very much weighing in on that issue, which was something that was already pretty much roundly condemned and criticized. I felt so badly about it, because my profession is treating women."

From the AJC:

Gingrey said he has had conversations with James Breeden, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “We went over articles and more recent journals,” the congressman said.

“Whereas Todd said the panic would cause a body to shut down and prevent ovulation, more recent data suggests just the opposite is probably true,” the physician-congressman said. Adrenaline is more likely to spur ovulation, he said.

“So you learn,” Gingrey said.

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Politico reports:

The Republican primary for the open Senate seat in Georgia is shaping up to be a free-for-all, drawing interest from some of the most conservative members of the House and raising concerns that a race to the right could put in play what should be a safe seat. It comes as the party tries to head off the problem that cost it dearly in 2012: nominating candidates who say things so off-putting to mainstream voters that they blow the election.

Democrats acknowledge that Georgia’s rightward tilt gives Republicans the edge in the race to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss. But they’re hopeful that a candidate in the mold of Missouri’s Akin or Indiana’s Richard Mourdock emerges from a bare-knuckled Southern brawl.

So who are the potential candidates?

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According to the Guardian Friday, the state's speedy attempt to see the ruling overturned is no accident -- it is part of "a legal scramble to carry out capital sentences before its supply of lethal injection drugs reaches its expiry date of 1 March." Via the Guardian:

Georgia confirmed to the Guardian that its entire supply of pentobarbital expires on 1 March. The expiration date leaves the state in a quandary: it still has 93 men and one woman on death row, including Hill, but with no obvious means by which to execute them.

Anti-death penalty campaigners are scathing about the unseemly haste with which Georgia appears to rushing to beat the deadline. "This highlights the nastiness of the process that the AG should be racing to kill prisoners ahead of an expiration date," said Sara Totonchi, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights.

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As Salon noted on Monday, all medical specialists who have examined Hill --  a death row inmate of 16 years -- have now concluded that he is unfit to face the death penalty. A 2002 Supreme Court ruling prohibits executions of "mentally retarded" prisoners as a breach of constitutional protections from cruel and unusual punishment. Hill has nonetheless twice been within hours of scheduled death since 2011 before an appeals court has ordered a stay. Georgia is noted by experts as having a problematically high bar for proving mental unfitness for execution.

The Guardian noted how Hill's case has prompted less public outrage than Georgia's execution in 2011 of Troy Davis -- a man put to death for murder despite the majority of witnesses in his trial recanting their original testimonies:

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As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, Broun has been publicly playing the cool contender since announcing his run last week. But on the side to potential donors, he's brandishing his Tea Party background. "I was the first Member of Congress to call him a socialist who embraces Marxist-Leninist policies like government control of health care and redistribution of wealth," Broun wrote in an email.

He continued:

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Steve Kornacki mentioned Broun as a likely candidate to replace the retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss earlier this week. Now Broun's wife has made it semi-official, by declaring it to a roomful of people attending some sort of meeting.

Jaws hit the floor as Representative Broun took the stage and began discussing the usual/current problems in Washington: Congressional gridlock, damage made to the Republican brand, as well as the lack of leadership coming from the West Wing. As the speech wound down, most folks in the audience were looking at one another, presumably thinking the same thing: Is Congressman Broun going to state his case and make his formal announcement to run to replace retiring Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss? To everyone’s dismay, his closing statement did no such thing.

Thankfully, this isn’t where the story ended. As Congressman Broun sat down to a room full of applause followed by a short silence, Dr. Broun’s wife, Niki, stood up in front of the crowd and courageously declared that not only did her husband have her permission and support to run to be Georgia’s next junior U.S. Senator, but that he was openly announcing his candidacy, the first to formally do so in the wake of Senator Chambliss’ declaration to resign following the remainder of his current term.

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The conservative lawmaker was first elected to the House in the 1994 Republican wave. He moved up to the Senate after a rough 2002 campaign in which he defeated Democratic incumbent Max Cleland, a triple amputee from his Vietnam war service.

The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak in advance of an official announcement.

Chambliss has been a GOP loyalist throughout his career, but he drew criticism from tea party Republicans for his participation in a bipartisan Senate "Gang of Six" focusing on the budget. The group advocated a mix of tax increases and spending cuts but failed to produce a bargain.

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Timothy Joiner, a 22-year-old Iraq War veteran, pleaded guilty Tuesday in Liberty County, Ga., to more than 30 charges of burglary, financial-transaction-card thefts, and violations of the Georgia Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act among other crimes, according to the Associated Press.

The AP quoted the lead prosecutor in the case, Isabel Pauley, as saying Joiner’s crime wave was an attempt to raise enough money to bail another member of the militia out of jail. Joiner was arrested before that could happen.

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From earlier:

Depending on how the "fiscal cliff" negotiations go, Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., may challenge John Boehner, R-Ohio, for his speaker spot.

The National Review Online reports that Price, who recently lost a bid to become GOP conference chair to Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., is reportedly mulling a bid for speaker, and is talking with other conservatives including anti-tax activist Grover Norquist.

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