Dropping a column

I know how to drop a column from a table by selecting into a new table the columns I want to keep. However the problem
Iam running into is that some of the columns in my original table have certain attibutes (auto incrememnting, default
values,etc) however the method of: 

SELECT id,name,description INTO TABLE temp FROM origtable;
DROP TABLE origtable;
ALTER TABLE temp RENAME TO origtable;

Preserves my data but not the extra column information (at least according to a \d tablename)

Anyone know if it is possible to do this?

Thanks.

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 Patrick Aland                          paland@stetson.edu
 Network Administrator                  Voice: 904.822.7217
 Stetson University                     Fax: 904.822.7367
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