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A few years back, Columbia public relations guru Bud Ferillo made a film about several economically distressed counties that he dubbed the “Corridor of Shame.” This area, which stretched along Interstate 95 in South Carolina from Dillon County to Jasper County, got a lot of attention when then-presidential candidate Barack Obama toured an old Dillon middle school in the run-up to the 2008 election. But did you ever wonder whether South Carolina’s Corridor of Shame was an anomaly — or whether something similar was happening on the other sides of our state borders?

As it says in my by-line, in the several items I’ve posted previously on “Like the Dew,” I recently ran for Congress. But I am not a politician, nor possessed of a personal ambition to hold public office. I ran, rather, because for the past nine years I have had a message that I regard as so urgent that I’ve been willing to do whatever I can to spread it far and wide in order to persuade my fellow citizens of its truth and importance.

If you’re a head of household in little Nelson, Georgia, you’re about to be required to have a gun and ammo. If you want to, and if you can afford it. But not if you’re a convicted felon or have certain physical or mental disabilities.

The law is just a stupid as the reasons for it. The police chief, also the town’s only police officer, said he hoped the law would make Nelson safer…

My beloved colleagues in Teh Media sure get on my last damn nerve. Most of the time it’s just from sloppy work or jumping on whatever bandwagon is rolling by at the time, something along the lines of a pet peeve. Like when my Twitter list of political reporters blows up with some hashtag meme instead of actual reporting. Today it’s #Obamacareinthreewords, launched by that icon of credibility, Rep. Darrell Issa. It’s the second time around for that one — Rep. Kevin McCarthy launched it the first time last June.

For some reason, a letter from the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation was characterized as having been received by NBC News, as if it were some sort of privileged communication. In fact, the thing was a press release and rather obviously designed to change the conversation about the Heritage Foundation from trying to defend the indefensible “study” of Hispanic intellectual insufficiency to food stamps, a real two-fer issue.

In this day of anonymous email trashings, un-informed blog posts, and you tube mistakes that last forever, we rarely see political second chances. But last week a disgraced public servant rose like a Phoenix from the ashes to reclaim former glory in the political arena.

Mark Sanford has been elected to represent Charleston, and South Carolina, in the United States Congress. In a room where everyone is addressed as “honorable” Sanford will have an opportunity to regain the revered glow…

If state Democrats want to win big elections like the one they lost Tuesday on the coast, they’re going to have to get busy and retake control of the state Senate.

Why? Because the outcome of Tuesday’s election was practically determined two years before the special contest between GOP former Gov. Mark Sanford and challenger Elizabeth Colbert Busch. Why? Because constitutionally-required redistricting to even population changes after the 2010 census made it tough for any Democrat to win.