A Turn of Phrase

After Paris when President Obama stood up and declared America had to summon up the courage to not ‘succumb to fear’ he sounded like Winston Churchill after Dunkirk – his words evoked echoes of long sanctified courage from General Washington on his knees in the snow at Valley Forge to the Alamo to the surrounded…

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Trump disease

Donald Trump is like a fever in the Republican body politic: a sign of sickness. A lot of Republicans are hoping and praying the fever breaks before the sickness infects the entire body. Trump has owned about a third of the Republican vote in polls since he announced. That one-third gravitated to him when he…

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Signs

Their facts are the same. But they’re telling two different stories. The Governor’s folks explain how Graeme Keith got his $3 million state contract this way: The Governor met with Keith and Secretary Frank Perry and Keith made his case – that it would be cheaper for his company to provide maintenance for the state…

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Civilization With Its Pants Down

It was like a curtain parting and catching a glimpse of a backroom filled with politicians – there, sitting in the middle of the hearing, were two of the Governor’s aides testifying and doing their best to wriggle out of the pickle they’d landed in. A businessman – who’d given $12,000 to the Governor’s campaign…

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It’s Called Denial

Brussels is on lockdown. Paris has hospital wards full of wounded. Russia has an airliner in pieces. Mali has a blown-up hotel. And, in Kuala Lumpur, President Obama is explaining how terrorists’ attacks on restaurants and concert halls are not the new normal. The five bullet riddled restaurants, the men firing Kalashnikovs, the blown up…

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Cooper and refugees, continued

Several Democratic friends took issue with my defense of Roy Cooper on the refugee issue. One tweeted, “Absolute bull!” Another sidled up to me at the Y: “I agree with your blog 97 percent of the time, but this….” On Facebook, another posted a line-by-line rebuttal. Certainly, I take no offense. My reaction is more…

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We’ll Find a Way…to Blow It

When I opened the newspaper and read the Governor explaining he was having a side conversation and didn’t hear Graeme Keith say he wanted a state contract in return for his contributions, I thought, That sounds thin. When Phil Berger called a hearing about Graeme Keith’s state contract, I thought, This could get out of…

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Cooper’s critics get it wrong

Roy Cooper caught flak from the left when he said Washington should pause before admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees and make sure we balance humanitarianism with security. He’s right, and his critics are wrong. And it’s not a case of “he had to do it politically.” It’s the right thing to do. Period. It’s wrong for…

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The Next Morning

When the Chancellor called the Town Hall meeting the demonstrators saw their opportunity: Marching to the front of Memorial Hall they took over the meeting and read a list of demands they said were needed to end racism. When the meeting was over the Chancellor, emoting sincerity, told the students, I feel your pain. Now,…

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Illusions

There was ole Pat Caudell the pollster saying, ‘Obama’s bubble just burst,’ but he wasn’t talking about polls he was saying what burst (on the streets of Paris) was Obama’s illusion he was whipping ISIS. But, then, the next day there was Obama standing at the microphone at the G-20 meeting talking about how ISIS’s…

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