Things were so slow at City Hall last week, WJBF-TV (Channel 6) reporter George Eskola was out showing pictures of dilapidated houses in Augusta again, and I was tracking down rumors about 10th District Congressional incumbent Paul Broun's telephone polls.

The main action, so I hear, was at Sconyers Bar-B-Que, where cars were lined up from Peach Orchard Road up the hill to the restaurant, where a line of folks waiting to pick up holiday orders moved at a snail's pace.

Mr. Eskola and I have been doing stories about Augusta's dilapidated houses for more than a decade. There seems to be an endless supply. Every time the city demolishes a dozen, a dozen more appear to take their places. And then, on top of the demolition costs, the city has to keep the weeds cut and the trash picked up from the vacant lots. City officials say they do it and bill the property owners on their tax bills, but that's a joke. Sometimes they don't know where the owners are, and even if they do, there's a good chance they haven't paid their tax bills in years.

So on a slow news day, there are always dilapidated houses. I wish I'd thought of that last week when I was looking too idle to suit Bill Kirby, the metro news editor, who asked me to check on a complaint he'd received about a "robo call." If you supported Mr. Broun, according to the complainant, you were asked to press 1, and if you supported his challenger, Barry Fleming, you were supposed to press 2. Only when you pressed 2, you got "invalid entry, please try again," which the complainant said he did 10 times. He suspected it was some sort of Broun ploy to come up with big poll numbers that could be cited at a later time.

But some of my colleagues wondered if it could be a Fleming trick to get people mad at Mr. Broun.

Well, the congressman's spokeswoman Jessica Morris told me Mr. Broun wouldn't have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for four polls by three reputable companies just to get bad numbers. And several hours later, she sent out a news release reporting Mr. Broun was a runaway leader in the latest polls.

VOTE EARLY. VOTE OFTEN: Advance voting for the July 15 primary starts Monday and runs through Friday at the Board of Elections office at 530 Greene St.; the Henry Brigham Recreation Center at 2463 Golden Camp Road; and at the Warren Road Recreation Center at 300 Warren Road. Don't forget to bring one of the six types of photo ID required under Georgia law.

COLISEUM AUTHORITY member William "The Defender" Fennoy and citizen activist Woody "The Defender" Merry will appear in Richmond County State Court on Friday for arraignment on simple battery charges stemming from their smackdown at the civic center May 30. Actually, only Mr. Merry got smacked down, but Civil and Magistrate Court Judge Scott Allen arrested them both a week ago after urging them to shake hands, go home and quit embarrassing themselves and the community.

Mr. Merry's attorney, Chris Hudson, said that's what Mr. Merry wants to do, but Mr. Fennoy won't hear of it, so his client will plead not guilty and ask for a jury trial.

Mr. Fennoy insists he was attacked for no reason, and he intends to see justice done.

The burning question now is, Will the $3,000 the Coliseum Authority paid for his legal defense in the first round be enough to see him through a State Court trial?

What do you think?

DISSED AND DISMISSED: So rasslin' on the Coliseum Authority has become a spectator sport, but it's not the only fight in town. A much bigger one of far greater significance is going on between the Medical College of Georgia Foundation and MCG President Dan Rahn, et al.

It's not the sort of battle to excite the passions of the average sports fan because the combatants duel mainly behind the scenes, through formal letters and speak publicly only when they score or the other side has drawn blood.

But what it boils down to is this: The foundation has $150 million in endowments, and Dr. Rahn wants to get his hands on some of it. That and the suspicion by some foundation members that Dr. Rahn is part of a grand scheme to move MCG to Athens. If not, they say, why did he not accept a $5 million lease-purchase agreement similar to the $25 million one the Board of Regents approved June 11 for the initial home for the MCG/UGA medical partnership in Athens.

Anyway, when the foundation turned down Dr. Rahn's latest request for $5 million for the dental school, he got the Board of Regents on his side and set a deadline for the foundation board members to resign. If they didn't, MCG would form its own foundation. They didn't. Not all of them anyway. And MCG intends to do what Dr. Rahn promised.

TAKE THAT, DAN RAHN! A week ago, foundation Chairman William E. Mayher III wrote Dr. Rahn challenging the legality of his coup d'etat. The good doctor claimed there's no provision in the bylaws of the foundation that allows him or anybody else to appoint members to the board. Furthermore, he wrote, it "flies in the face" of a previous opinion by Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker and Board of Regent policy about the need for separation between a foundation and the institution it supports.

Then, after recounting how the foundation board has been watching over the cookie jar that was filled by previous presidents over the past 54 years, Dr. Mayher punched 'em in the gut. He said Dr. Rahn had asked the foundation to contribute $5 million to the Charles Walker Foundation, which they declined to do (in 2002).

"As you are well aware, Mr. Walker is now in prison, having been convicted of, among other things, misappropriating his foundation's funds," Dr. Mayher said.

As for Dr. Rahn's request for $5 million for the dental school, Dr. Mayher stated that the foundation declined that, too, because it had only $8 million to spare, with no way to get it back after it was gone.

"RESOLVED, that it be recommended to the respective Assemblies and Conventions of the United Colonies, where no Government sufficient to the exigencies of their affairs has been hitherto established, to adopt such Governments as shall in the opinion of the Representatives of the People best conduce to the happiness and safety of their Constituents in particular, and Americans in general."

-- John Adams, May 1776

"Adams immediately described these words to a friend as 'the most important Revolution that ever was taken in America' and went to his grave fifty years later insisting that he, not Thomas Jefferson, drafted the real declaration of American independence," author Joseph J. Ellis states in American Creation .

"Somehow, Adams complained, an alternative story line had found its way into the history books, a narrative that featured the Declaration of Independence as the decisive event and Thomas Jefferson as the major figure," Mr. Ellis wrote.

"Was there ever a Coup de Theatre, that had so great an effect as Jefferson's Penmanship of the Declaration of Independence?' Adams asked incredulously. The Declaration was merely 'a theatrical side show ... Jefferson ran away with the stage effect -- and all the glory of it.'"

Mr. Ellis asks, "Should we take Adams at his obviously self-serving word?

Maybe not, but isn't that the way it always is? You do the work, and somebody else gets the credit.