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I can’t defend Governor Easley’s comments about the N&O not being “nice” to him – and accusing the paper of a “hatchet job.”   In a recent term-ending interview, the Governor said he often avoids public events because he likes to have time to think things out. He should have thought this out better. He…

From the N&O’s Under the Dome: Karl Rove thinks U.S. Sen. Richard Burr could help save the GOP. In a proposed road map out of the political wilderness published last week in Newsweek, the former political strategist for President Bush said that Burr could be a fresh face for the Republican Party. He contended that…

Not long ago a School Board member railed at the Wake County Commissioners by saying they were about to destroy world-class schools in Raleigh. Well, the County Commissioners can stop trying. The No Child Left Behind Act has done it for them. Now, I know No Child Left Behind is not the most popular program.…

Here’s why, in political campaigns, Dick Morris was fun to work with. Dick could look at a poll and within ten seconds get ten ideas. I’ve only met three people like that: Tom Ellis, Arthur Finkelstein, and Dick Morris. Once, sitting in a meeting, Dick was arguing for one of his ideas with a New…

While Kay Hagan’s singing Kumbaya with Republicans, I must be getting more partisan. Because I’m having trouble seeing the Democrats’ side of things. Senator Richard Burr recently sponsored a bill saying the Veterans Administration can’t declare a veteran ‘nuts’ (actually the politically correct term is ‘mentally deficient’) – unless a judge agrees. Burr’s bill sounds…

I’ve decided to strike another blow for partisanship. Because Barack Obama’s really beginning to trouble me. Not content running for President of the United States, he’s now running for President or Prime Minister or whatever it is in Europe too. And his appeal seems to be intercontinental. Two hundred thousand Germans poured into a Berlin…

So much for Bev Perdue’s no more negative attacks pledge. She just called Richard Moore, Jesse Helms – which is about as mean a charge as you can lay on a fellow in a Democratic Primary. Then, in case anyone missed her point, she added Moore (who attacked for her for voting, twenty-years ago, against…

Just like John Edwards’s “two Americas,” today we have two Democratic parties: the Obama party and the Clinton party. If you want to know where this kind of split leads, read about Kennedy v Carter in 1980, Ford v Reagan in 1976 and McCarthy v Humphrey in 1968. This is a formula for defeat in…

Just before he left office, former Governor Jim Hunt wrote (with a little bit of help from me, I’m proud to say) a book about education. He said in it that North Carolina’s education-reform efforts had been hampered for decades by a start-and-stop approach. The state would start a good initiative, then lose interest and…

After the federal Department of Transportation killed Mayor Meeker’s Triangle Transit Authority’s plan to spend a billion dollars to build lite-rail (because too few people would ride it) taxpayers heaved a sigh of relief. But the TTA didn’t fade quietly into the sunset. The monster is back. Leaders of a new Special Transit Advisory Commission…