Issues
Second Fiddle to South Carolina
This is about as good a tale of conniving as I’ve heard: I can’t remember why but forty years ago back in 1976 the state legislature moved our Presidential primary up from May to March – then the unexpected struck and Ronald Reagan whipped Gerald Ford. It was the first time Reagan won a…
Read MoreCalling More Less
It rang a little jarring to open the newspaper and read, Stam Introduces First Bill of New Session – To Limit Eminent Domain. No doubt Representative Skip Stam was right but it was a little like watching a knight errant tilting at a windmill – because, after all, Eminent Domain isn’t one of the…
Read MoreA Darker Power?
The Reverend William Barber got up to pray at a memorial service for three Muslim students killed in Chapel Hill and, right in the middle of his prayer, pointed his finger straight at Reverend Franklin Graham and said Graham lit the fuse to the powder keg that led to the murders. Barber’s thinking went…
Read MoreInclined to Devilment
The local school board has a new training program to teach teachers that all cultures are equal and to move away from the ‘belief any culture is superior to another’ – which sounds fine except the concept of cultural equality rests on a kind of moral relativism that leads to odd places. Take ISIS.…
Read MoreShuttering the Center
The fur’s flying over in Chapel Hill – Dean Boger (at the Law School) along with a cohort of professors have lit into the Board of Governors saying closing the Law School’s Anti-Poverty Center leaves them with only one conclusion: The Board is for poverty. The Dean lamented the Board was guilty of every…
Read MoreA Carolina Gentleman
I was barely eighteen when, my first night in Chapel Hill, they herded all the male freshmen into an auditorium and an aging Dean stepped up to a podium, perched his half-glasses on the end of his nose, and explained genteelly from here on – for the next four years – we were expected to…
Read MoreValentine’s Day
When the State Ethics Commission ruled that a lobbyist having sex with a legislator didn’t violate the ban on gifts to legislators because sex acts do not constitute “things of value,” it got the attention of the redoubtable Ira David Wood, who’s surely NC’s most respected artist. Woods posted the entire newspaper article on…
Read MoreBlindness
After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt looked the American people in the eye and said, December 7th is a day that will live in infamy forever. After ISIS burned a hostage alive, President Obama told the American people, We’ve done some pretty bad things ourselves. Which is the proper response to…
Read MorePure Baloney
Reverend William Barber went down to the newspaper and sat down with Ned Barnett to have a chat about the state’s soul. Now the main problem with the state spiritually, according to Reverend Barber, is Republicans. He’s thundered from podiums from Asheville to Wilmington that Republicans are heartless varmints who stomp on women, children,…
Read MoreNo Saints
Once when Democratic County Commissioner Betty Lou Ward was in the hospital she asked the Republican Commissioners to allow her to participate in a board meeting by phone – but the Republicans said no. Another time, in the middle of a fight, the Republicans waited until Ward left the board room to go to…
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