Boring, Predictable Weather Ends

1. For the first time this week, we could see a serious shift in the weather, according to the National Weather Service. A partly sunny day with a high of about 87 has a 40 percent chance of giving way to showers and thunderstorms with winds gusting to 25 mph, and rain is likely tonight, when the low will be around 61. The storms could be severe, although nothing like what the Midwest and parts of the Upper South have seen this week. Still, now that the kids are out of school for the summer, it will be a shame if rain keeps them inside much of the day.

2. We're in the middle of high school graduations. Class of 2011 graduates this afternoon at 2:30 at the KSU Convocation Center, the same place where graduated Wednesday night and where seniors will make their walk Friday night at 7. We'll have two dozen photos from Walton's celebration on East Cobb Patch today, and you can watch the Pope ceremony through the school system's website.

3. Also on East Cobb Patch today is a report from Wednesday night's appearance by Cobb Board of Commissioners Chairman Tim Lee before the East Cobb Civic Association. The bottom line is that the county's bottom line does not look pretty for fiscal 2012.

4. Fiscal 2012 starts Oct. 1. For the current budget, Friday marks the first of five furlough days the commissioners instituted to close the deficit. Get your county business done today or you'll have to wait until Tuesday because Monday is Memorial Day.

5. Although school's out for summer, here's an interesting note from History.com about this date in history. On May 26, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed the stringent Comprehensive Immigration Act. The law set up an annual quota of 2 percent of the immigrants a country already had in the United States as of 1890, giving an edge to western and northern Europe. A cap of 150,000 immigrants a year replaced the 2 percent rule in 1927. That's just a little of the history of immigration laws that led to Georgia's new immigration law, H.B. 87, and protests such as a at .