Archive for May 2010
Getting His Story All Tangled Up
In a way Bill Randall was clever, taking a fifty year old document, Stan Evans’ ‘Sharon Statement,’ renaming it and posting it on his website as his own ‘Charter of Principles’ as if he’d written it. After all, it worked for almost a year – until last week when Randall got caught red-handed. …
Read MoreIn Praise of Campaign Money
It seems to be accepted truth today that all money in political campaigns is inherently evil. Let me offer a contrary view, thanks to Ferrel Guillory Ferrel is the ever-wise director of Program on Public Life at the UNCCenter for the Study of the American South. At breakfast the other day, we were…
Read MoreSlick
The Gulf oil spill set off massive responses. No, not the ones to stop the leak or clean up the spill. The political responses: Republicans and the media trying to stick the gooey blame on President Obama – and the White House, to keep it away. Sarah (“Drill, baby, drill”) Palin says the spill…
Read MoreThe ‘Helms Station’
It’s no surprise Jesse Helms cozied up to the FBI. He and J. Edgar Hoover were the leading enemies of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. But the revelations spotlight part of WRAL’s history that people at the station today might rather forget. In the 1960s, WRAL was known as the…
Read MoreNot Agent Pierce
I’ve been absolved. Several people asked if I’m the “Agent Pierce” on N&O Executive Editor John Drescher’s blog. Apparently, they think I went undercover by changing the spelling of my name. Drescher absolved me this week. It’s not me. I’ve read Drescher’s frustrations about dealing with bloggers who fling vitriol and venom…
Read MoreBroadband for Everyone?
There’s an interesting – and important – vote scheduled in the state Senate Finance Committee today at 1 p.m. The bill is S1209. The Broadband for Everyone NC coalition – which I’m working with – views this as an industry-sponsored bill that will give control of North Carolina’s broadband (and economic) future to Time…
Read MoreCrab Pots, Mental Health and a Perdue Meltdown
Last week over on NC Spin Tom Campbell published a glowing interview with Perdue Cabinet Secretary Lanier Cansler – but even before the ink dried on the page the yarn Cansler spun Campbell was coming undone. You might think before the Governor and Secretary Cansler put someone in charge of caring for the state’s…
Read MoreHeard of Google?
Governor Perdue and Lanier Cansler didnât need the John Tote fiasco. Perdue has made strides putting her administration in order. Cansler has the thankless task of managing an unmanageable department. But he has Carter and the home-health hounds gnawing on his leg, and the mainstream media is starting to chew too. Then comes…
Read MoreCorrection
An alert reader caught this in my blog yesterday about Mark Critz, the Democrat who won the special congressional election in Pennsylvania: “I don’t think Critz voted for health care bill (he wasn’t in Congress then). He did say he would not have voted for it.” The reader is correct, and I thank…
Read MoreWhoops!
Last Friday Bill Randall published his ‘Charter of Principles’ on Facebook. Then, so more people would read it, he published it again a few hours later. And with reason. It is an impressive statement. Eloquent. Profound. Articulate. The problem is Randall did not write it. He plagiarized it. Fifty years ago, back in…
Read More