Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
I’m the last person most Republicans would listen to for advice. But I’m struck lately by the concerns I’ve heard from serious and nonpartisan people about the GOP’s ambitious legislative agenda. As one veteran at the legislature observed: “If the Republicans try to do everything now, there won’t be a later for them.” …
As Claude Rains said in Rickâs Café in Casablanca, Iâm shocked, just shocked. Itâs like the world turned upside down â here on Talking About Politics. Iâm defending trial lawyers and Garyâs defending negligent doctors. The issue of âmedical malpractice reform,â in a unique way, boils down to hard-edged questions about personal responsibility⦠and…
Oh Lord, will we ever learn from our mistakes? There’s a restaurant near my office with a dozen television sets lining the walls (usually turned to basketball games) but the other night they were all turned to CNN and Fox as a Libyan fighter went down in flames and a cruise missile blew apart…
An N&O letter-writer takes umbrage at the bipartisan effort to pardon Civil War-era Governor W.W. Holden, denouncing him as a “pestiferous ulcer on the body politic.” (It’s hard to find good calumny like that anymore) Then someone leaves on senators’ desks an “unflattering biography of Holden that quoted histories written by a deceased white supremacist…
I do consulting work with doctors and hospitals, and my view of medical-malpractice reform differs from Carter’s. First off, personal-injury lawyers aren’t opposed to reform just out of tender hearts and a passion for justice. They’re looking after their bank accounts. Second, a lawyer who is a skilled courtroom performer can hit the…
Well, the United Nations has voted to go to war with Libya only it doesn’t call it a war it calls it a ‘no-fly zone’ – which is political double talk for filling the skies over Libya with American or French or British fighters blowing up Libyan tanks and artillery and air-defense batteries. The…
Once years ago at one of Jesse Helms rallies a local Republican official – one of the old-line party stalwarts Jesse used to call ‘pachyderms’ – cornered Jesse and pointing his finger started upbraiding him for not toting the party line up in the Senate and not voting the way the Republican leaders wanted him…
I love Public Policy Polling – and the almost-daily poll fix they give me. But I take issue with a recent analysis. PPP found that Senator Kay Hagan’s approval rating was up – to 39 percent, with 38 percent disapproval. According to the N&O: “Pollster Tom Jensen attributed Hagan’s improved standing to some more conservative…
It’s hard to make heads or tails of this: The Republican Legislature raises taxes on hospitals $215 million – and the hospitals are delighted, tickled to death. In fact, newspapers report, the legislature raised the ‘tax’ at the request of the Hospital Association. The explanation gets even stranger. And more confusing: The $215 million…
How do you get your news? Our statewide poll asked North Carolina voters what their primary…
Thom Tillis and Phil Berger fed the MAGA alligator. Then it ate them. Thomas Mills wrote…
Exactly 80 years ago, in 1946, Republicans took control of Congress with a simple message: “Had…