Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
Republicans strode up to the plate in Raleigh with big bats and high hopes, then whiffed on three straight pitches. Strike one was teacher pay. Their top goal was to stop the bleeding on education. But their so-called pay raise was so full of holes, questions and confusion that nobody is satisfied, teachers are…
The battered and bedraggled Tea Partiers have been taking it on the chin – they’ve gotten pounded, losing races in Tennessee, Kansas, Texas, Kentucky, South Carolina and Mississippi so, now, the press is humming their funeral dirge while Washington Republicans are chortling the Tea Party’s headed for the elephant graveyard of political movements. So…
Thirteen years ago the terrorists blew up the World Trade Center and, since the terrorists lived in Afghanistan, we attacked Afghanistan. The terrorists then moved to Pakistan but we kept right on attacking Afghanistan. A decade later we killed the lead terrorist in Pakistan but we’re still fighting in Afghanistan. In…
Governor McCrory’s blast at The N&O got him another day of the “blaring, top-of-the-fold” headlines he blasted. But this is just the beginning of the Coal Ash Saga. We soon will have a U.S. Attorney’s investigation and a fight over who pays: McCrory’s former boss, Duke Energy, or his current boss, the People of North…
Our President praised the President of Iraq and urged Iraq’s new Prime Minister-to-be to bring Iraqis together and ‘form an inclusive new government.’ Which sure sounds fine. Except for one hitch. In New York City ‘inclusive’ means bringing together diverse ethnic groups and minorities in homogenized harmony, but in Iraq it means…
Well, looking back, it was bound to happen. First, John Boehner decided to sue Obama for not enforcing the Obamacare laws and most of the House Republicans went along on the theory even if they didn’t like Obamacare the laws are the laws and the President can’t just change one whenever it suits him.…
Long after Watergate brought him down (40 years ago this month), Richard Nixon told David Frost: “I gave them a sword, and they stuck it in and they twisted it with relish.” Now, Governor McCrory’s actions on coal ash don’t begin to approach Nixon’s on Watergate. But he has given his enemies a sword…
The other day Gary wrote, “For Democrats this election year, this legislature is the gift that keeps on giving. Maybe they’ll stay in session all the way to November” – considering by Speaker Thom Tillis’ announcement the legislature is about to return to town and pass the stuck ‘coal ash’ bill, Gary may get more…
Rob Christensen’s column about Tom Bradshaw accurately captures one of the most remarkable people I’ve met through 44 years in newspapers and politics. My first encounter with Bradshaw was much like Christensen’s. Tom was the “boy mayor” of Raleigh, and I was a cub reporter at The N&O. City government was my beat, just…
Some progressives groaned when Governor Josh Stein announced a bipartisan “Blue Ribbon Commission on Public Education”…
North Carolina voters don’t like either the Democratic or Republican parties. But Independent voters – who…
How do you get your news? Our statewide poll asked North Carolina voters what their primary…