Fall In

Like President Biden, I fell this weekend. And I’m only 74. He tripped on an ill-placed sandbag. I slipped on a slick boardwalk in Manteo. He fell more gracefully than I did. My feet went out from under me, and I ended up flat on my back. No damage done, except for some soreness and…

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Freedom Versus Control

Ron DeSantis may be more dangerous to America than Trump. On Memorial Day, when we honored the men and women who died protecting our freedom and liberty, DeSantis told Fox News that as President, “I will be able to destroy leftism in this country.” “Destroy” leftism? DeSantis’ extreme rhetoric reflects his record in Florida: banning…

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Revisiting Evil

Since our Danube cruise, my thoughts keep going back to three Holocaust memorials – and the line between good and evil in people. In Budapest, we saw the “Shoes on the Danube Bank,” (pictured) a memorial to 20,000 Jews who were rounded up and executed beside the river in 1944-45. They were ordered to take…

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Selling NC ‘24

North Carolina Democrats have a big selling job to do for 2024, and Anderson Clayton is selling hard. The state party chair was on ABC News’ GMA3 last week (link below) selling the idea that President Biden and other Democrats can win her state next year – and telling how to do it: “I really…

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Shut up, Gene?

Some North Carolina Democrats agree with Republican legislators on one thing: Gene Nichol should shut up. Or at least tone it down and turn down the volume. Ted Vaden writes in The Assembly that Nichol is “back in the spotlight, hurling his supercharged invective in a new book that surveys the changes that have occurred…

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GOP Control Freaks

How did the party of freedom, individual responsibility and limited government become the party of censorship, Big Brother and government control? Republican legislators in North Carolina, like their colleagues in other states and like Republican governors Ron DeSantis in Florida and Greg Abbott in Texas, want to control many things in our lives. Control what…

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The Danube isn’t Blue

Strauss’ waltz notwithstanding, the Danube River is brown. Its powerful current flows 1,770 miles from the Black Forest in Germany to the Black Sea in Romania, through 10 countries, past four national capitals and through 1,500 years of history. Gwyn and I took an eight-day cruise upriver from Budapest to Bratislava, Vienna, Krems, the Wachau…

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Cooper Drops the Mic – Twice

Just before we left for a European cruise (more on that later), Governor Roy Cooper held a boisterous Veto Rally that highlighted Republican legislators’ extreme abortion bill. The day we came back, he declared a “State of Emergency for public education” in a five-minute video that highlighted Republican legislators’ extreme anti-education budget. Supermajority-sotted Republicans called…

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A Democratic Republic

MAGA Republicans hate to use “Democratic” as an adjective. They won’t even say the United States is a “democracy.” Trump’s election-denier Cleta Mitchell calls the United States “a constitutional republic.” Other Republicans say, “We are a constitutional republic. We are not a democracy.” The Founding Fathers clearly said no: We are a democracy and a…

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