Issues
You Can’t Make This Up
Governor McCrory needed a lawyer to advise him on cleaning up Duke Energy’s coal ash ponds but the one he found raised eyebrows: He hired a Duke Energy attorney. The press naturally asked if that wasn’t a bit like having the fox guard the hen-house so the Governor had his spokesman explain to reporters,…
Read MoreLeft or Right?
Carter and I spoke Wednesday at a post-election panel sponsored by the Public School Forum, a group of education advocates. I suggested they have nothing to worry about in the coming legislature, since Republicans ran as Democrats, promising to raise teacher pay to the national average and improve the public schools. Tom Murry, who…
Read MoreGiving Up Roy’s Trophy?
The provost was heartbroken, the former faculty Chairwoman felt betrayed, and the poor tenured lambs on the faculty felt humiliated which, at the faculty meeting, bred a fervor not unlike a foot-washing Baptist in pursuit of the Devil which, of course, led to the demand the sinners – who’d caused the heartbreak and humiliation –…
Read MoreUp’s Down
It’s hard to sort out: Kaci Hickox sees healing the ill in Africa as a noble calling but protecting Americans from Ebola as pure villainy. Ole Obama rides to Hickox’s rescue, saying Chris Christie’s a mean-hearted varmint stigmatizing heroes with his quarantine then, in his next breath, Obama announces the Army’s going to quarantine soldiers…
Read MoreQuarantines
President Obama may have the most brilliant strategy on earth to defeat Ebola but, on the other hand, he may go down in history as the first head of a government to encourage thousands of people (doctors and nurses) to visit a plague zone and then return home to meld back into the population without,…
Read MoreNot a Ticket Splitter
A pollster will usually ask voters: Would you say you 1) Always vote Democratic, 2) Usually vote Democratic, 3) Always vote Republican, 4) Usually vote Republican or 5) would you say you split your ticket and vote for about as many Republicans as Democrats? Down at the Editorial Board (not in the news room)…
Read MoreMata Hari
Eric pointed to the word ‘backlash’ and said, They put a picture of a Black minister, sneering, beneath a headline saying ‘backlash’ then quote the ACLU as saying Black preachers want to punish gay people because of who they love. A trio of amenable grunts rose from the end of the table then out…
Read MoreThe Next Jonas Salk
Kaci Hickox was mad as hops – she’d gotten off the plane in Newark, been hustled straight into quarantine, and three days later she was still in quarantine only by then she’d hired a lawyer to sue Governor Chris Christie. A few days before Ms. Hickox flew from Sierra Leone to Newark, a doctor, who’d…
Read MoreIrony or Hypocrisy?
An African-American minister proclaimed that a gay person should not be a judge. He also joined Rep. Skip Stam-and apparently 27 other House Republicans-in proclaiming that magistrates, who are officers of the court, should not have to carry out laws and court decisions they don’t like. Forty years ago, several magistrates in North Carolina…
Read MoreTV and Turnout
As good citizens, we all know that these two truths are self-evident in politics. First, as both editorial writers and Walmart moms agreed in the paper today, big money and “assault ads” are bad. Second, (as everybody but the Republican legislature, Governor McCrory and the State Board of Elections apparently think) higher voter turnout is…
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