Typically, cops tell us, the first time someone is arrested for shoplifting isn’t the first time the person has stolen. The thief usually commits the crime two or three times before getting caught.

Cops also know those crimes are more likely to stop the sooner the shoplifter is caught in that cycle.

So it goes with other crimes, too. And in the case of Scott Dean, convicted Thursday on two counts of child molestation, prosecutors worked to establish that Dean’s criminal sexual history spanned more than two decades.

Here are the instructions for building a windmill.

When riled-up voters decide they’re mad enough at an elected official – say, a county commissioner – to believe he should be booted from office rather than waiting until the next election, they often demand a recall.

Some people have been muttering the word “recall” since the commissioners’ Magnolia Trace debacle. It’s easy to demand, especially when you don’t have a clue about how it’s done or any actual intention of doing it.

Wherever you or I live, next door is a bad place for a lighted football field. Or a landfill. Or a low-income rental housing project.

We don’t so much mind those things somewhere else. In fact, we kind of like them. Somewhere else, that is.

We like that Richmond County has a big landfill. That gives us a convenient place to dump garbage since Columbia County’s landfill closed. We love lighted football fields, happily drive to them for Friday night games and enjoy them even more afterward the farther away they are in our rear-view mirrors.

Should health insurance programs pay for stomach stapling for fat people?

Stated as insensitively as possible, that’s a major philosophical question right now for Columbia County. The county government’s health insurance won’t pay for it, and after the first of the year the school system’s plan no longer will, either.

Other health insurance programs from private employers are all over the map on the issue, but those two government entities also are two of the area’s largest employers, so their direction is significant.