Richmond County sheriff's Investigator Richard Roundtree said he thinks someone has illegally accessed his account at The Augusta Chronicle and posted online messages praising him and signing them "GratefulMother."

Well, I think Sheriff Ronnie Strength should launch a full-scale investigation into this alleged crime against Investigator Roundtree, perpetrated by GratefulMother, who posted under stories critical of Investigator Roundtree for moving off and leaving seven murder-case files, a gun, ammunition and SWAT gear in an apartment.

And when she's finally found out, GratefulMother should be punished to the fullest extent of the law for slipping into Investigator Roundtree's office 24 times and using his laptop to post such things as, "It's no secrete (sic) that I am a Roundtree supporter because he was the one who solved my son's murder but since all we can do is find fault in an individual, heres an excert (sic) from channel 12's story ..."

GratefulMother even followed him to the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., and posted from there.

On Sept. 20, GratefulMother once again slipped onto Investigator Roundtree's laptop to post, "Nothing is done on cold cases unless someone like Roundtree cares enough and takes the time to actualy (sic) look at one."

This case would not be hard to solve. All the sheriff has to do is ask everybody in the sheriff's department to spell "secret," "excerpt," "employees" and "actually."

Anybody who misspelled all four should be indicted on charges of lying like a plat-eye.

YOU AND EVERYBODY ELSE: At last week's Richmond County school board meeting, someone asked how much money the school system had lost on the Wachovia stock it owns.

Trustee Frank Dolan didn't hesitate. "You lost your ass on it!" he said.

A JUDICIOUS AFFAIR: There were more people than you could shake a weenie at Friday at the judges, lawyers, district attorneys, solicitor, probation officers and friends' 19th annual Hot Dog Luncheon on the River. Everybody who's anybody, and a few who aren't, were at the event at the boathouse. It was the judicial version of the peaceable kingdom, with Republicans and Democrats glad-handing each other right and left. Congressman John Barrow was holding court by the condiment table, while his Republican challenger, John Stone , was doing the same elsewhere in the crowded room.

Attorney Nathan Jolles , whose father, Howard , started the hot dog luncheon, along with Langdon Atkins , the now-retired chief probation officer for the Augusta Judicial Circuit, was serving alongside District Attorney Ashley Wright .

INCUMBENTS STAY SEATED: All incumbents in state Senate and school board races were returned to office by members of the Augusta-Richmond County Committee for Good Government last week.

Incumbent District 22 Democrat Sen. Ed Tarver received 96 percent of the vote to Republican John Butler's 4 percent. Mr. Butler has suspended his campaign, so the vote was moot, I guess. Incumbent District 23 Democrat J.B. Powell won with 72 percent of the votes to his Republican challenger Napoleon Jenkins' 28 percent.

School board President Jimmy Atkins received 91 percent of votes to challenger Mary Oglesby's 9 percent. Vice President Joe Scott won 65 percent over James Williams Jr.

TRASH AND TREASURE: I don't know what I'm going to do with my "Burk Stops Here" sign when I leave here. I inherited it from police reporter Greg Rickabaugh when he left. It's a metal sign they say was posted to keep Martha Burk , the leader of the National Council of Women's Organizations, and her protesters from getting too close to the main entrance of Augusta National when they came to crusade against the club's all-male membership during the 2003 Masters Golf Tournament.

Right now it's propped up in my cubicle beside my corkboard filled with memorabilia from bygone elections. And then there are the boxes of old city budgets, campaign disclosure forms, pictures and letters under the desk to deal with. I went through a rubber band-bound pack of letters and columns last week. One letter was from William H. Craven Jr. , of Waynesboro, Ga., thanking me for a "well penned" story in The Chronicle about the Beech Island Agricultural Club.

Another in beautiful script was from Andy Chandler , of Augusta, who enclosed a 1995 editorial page he wanted me to see and get republished, if possible. It wasn't. There was a sweet note from Aurora M. Britton , of Hillsinger Road, a Christmas card from Grace Edwards , the daughter of Chronicle reporter Johnny Edwards , and letters from "concerned citizens" wanting me to investigate allegations of wrongdoing. So much wrongdoing, so little time.

There was a letter from Merle Temple in federal prison in Edgefield, S.C., offering to "talk now about it all, politics, behind-the-scene stuff, etc." He said if I sent him a list of questions, he would answer them all.

I did. He didn't. But maybe he will yet. He's still got a few years to go in federal prison for helping Linda Schrenko embezzle $600,000 while she was the state school superintendent.

BARKRUPT: One of the columns from 2007 about our dogs is my favorite.

"At the checkout line at PetsMart the clerks always ask, "What kind of dogs do you have?'

"Every kind there is," is the truthful answer. With so many American classics of "part-something" ancestry, odds are, every breed is represented.

The only purebred one is Molly the border collie. The way to describe her is to relate a story from a sports reporter who was in Scotland for a golf tournament. While interviewing one of the Scottish caddies, the reporter was asked, "Do you speak the Gaelic?"

"No," the reporter answered, "but I understand it."

"Ach, mon!" the caddy responded, eyeing the reporter with shock and pity. "Me dog understands it."

Molly would, too. She certainly understands English, along with Bolognese, German Snausage and Italian Pup-Peroni."

Since I wrote that, Molly has developed Cushing's disease and has lost so much weight she's skin and bones. She's on a new and expensive medicine, but I don't think it's working. That's why I spend time playing Frisbee with her every morning, no matter how late it makes me for my day job.

A LEGACY IN HER OWN TIME: Another favorite from August 1997 was among those in the rubber band-bound pack.

"I once chewed four packs of Juicy Fruit gum at once just because I wanted to. I used to love the smell of Vitalis hair tonic, so I got a bottle and rubbed it on my face and up my nose and got so sick and dizzy I fell down in the front yard and threw up.

"My older sister, June -- you remember, the perfect one -- said I was a nut. Mama said I was just happy-go-lucky. But most people agreed with June. That's why they blackballed me from Sigma Delta Sigma, a sorority of Tifton debutantes, being a member of which was akin to being on the social register of Alligator, Miss. But I didn't care. I didn't want to go to meetings and work on projects. I was wild and free, doing flips in our front yard and dreaming of being in the circus or playing with the stray animals and staying up all night reading. The night I read Black Beauty , I couldn't stop crying until the next day.

"Was that normal?

"Anyway, when I didn't get into the SDS, June said she had to take a stand.

" 'Why, you're a legacy,' she said.

"I didn't know what a legacy was, but I knew it was something I didn't want to be.

"So she resigned, but it didn't hurt her any. She was still the most popular girl in school, and all her boyfriends drove big cars. They all turned out to be losers though."