John McCain may have figured out a way to breathe new life into his flagging Presidential campaign. What’s puzzling is why no other Republican candidates have tried it. McCain’s strategy is simple. Attack Hillary. “Defeatism will not buy peace in our time,” McCain told Republicans at a rally in New Hampshire (AP, 7-14-07). “It will…
Read MoreTwo college students in Wilmington beat up a third student and stole a PlayStation. Campus police called the sheriff’s department. The sheriff’s department sent a swat team to get it back. Why a swat team? Because the students had posted a photograph on the Internet showing them holding semi-automatic rifles and pistols. So the sheriff’s…
Read MoreErskine Bowles should receive the “Magician of the Year” award. He’s just about done the impossible. Usually, anyone (much less the President of the UNC System) who proposes cutting the universities’ budgets, (News & Observer, 7-9-07), faces a public lynching from outraged faculty – who view every penny spent (except on basketball) on their campuses…
Read MoreWhen Iraq’s Prime Minister al-Maliki said U.S. forces could leave “any time they want,” I thought the Democrats in Congress would take him up on his offer the next day. That every Democrat from Harry Reid to Hillary would say, Well, it doesn’t look like we have to stay in Iraq until next spring after…
Read MoreThe Wake County School Board got three “black eyes” in one day (last Tuesday) in The News and Observer. The first was the continuing a saga of the Boards ‘Land Acquisitions Office.’ If you buy a home the bank requires an appraisal. But the ‘Land Acquisition Office’ says that’s folly. It’s administrators want to buy…
Read MoreIn Argentina they’re celebrating the first snowfall in Buenos Aires since 1918. At Cape Canaveral they’re getting ready to launch a new spacecraft to Mars. And in Afghanistan a man just traded his sixteen-year-old daughter to settle a debt he owed for nine sheep. Which turns out not to be unusual. In Afghanistan fathers trade…
Read MoreSometimes scientists say some pretty incredible things. Like the geologist who said – without a doubt – that he’d discovered indisputable proof while digging in the mud in the Amazon that South America was once part of Africa, ten million years ago. Or like the statistician who said he’d proved with a certainty of three…
Read MoreFred Thompson is surging in the polls so the political long knives are out on, of all things, Watergate. According to the spin Thompson – who was Republican counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee – was too pro Nixon in 1974 (AP, 7-8-07). Pro Nixon? Thompson was the man who asked the question that revealed…
Read MoreWhat is it about House Democrats and office buildings? Earlier this year, Democratic Representative Thomas Wright landed in hot water for using campaign funds to buy an office building in Wilmington. Now, former Speaker Jim Black is trying to explain away the $500,000 he got from a lobbyist and deposited in his campaign by saying…
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