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I keep thinking sooner or later it will turn out there’s nothing to one of these scandals involving Mike Easley – but he’s back in hot water.   According to the News and Observer here’s the prelude to Easley getting a $137,000 discount on a beach front lot: Easley’s aide Ruffin Poole 1) calls a…

My friend and New Media guru Matt Gross argues that President Obama is wrong to keep pushing health-care reform up the steep Senate hill.   Instead, Gross says, Obama should kill the bill, blame the Republicans and go to war over the public-option issue in the 2010 elections.    The White House is hostage to…

Here’s a strange tale straight out of the North Country of New York State.   The liberals in the Democratic Party absorb modern values like the air they breathe. Their belief in the Modern State is absolute. Their faith in diversity and pluralism is written in stone. Their doubt is nonexistent.   To a Republican…

Could there be three more quintessential American stories than Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Billy Mays?   Jackson was the Elvis Presley of his day. He and Elvis were racial crossovers, bringing black music into white America. Someone told me Jackson was the first black performer on MTV back in the days when the network…

Now that President Obama has signed the stimulus bill, the real free-for-all begins – both financial and political. The most popular people in Raleigh today are Dempsey Benton and Gene Conti. As DOT secretary, Conti has road money to spend. As Governor Perdue’s stimulus czar, Benton will oversee the rest of the windfall from Washington.…

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…