Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
The Republican presidential race is serving one useful purpose. It is forcing us to think about the role of religion in politics. Too many people either assume or dismiss that role without thinking hard about it. Examine this statement by Mitt Romney: “Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom.” Really? Does freedom really require…
I must admit Romney’s statement – “Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom” – sounds like a political slogan, not theology. After all, religion has been around since before God told Abraham to leave Ur and go to The Promised Land; it survived the Pharaohs, Romans and The Dark Ages when there was little…
Mike Huckabee is to this presidential race as Howard Dean was to 2004: Both were small-start Governors with modest records. Both started out as minor candidates. Both catapulted to the front by capturing a bloc of voters who were leaderless: the Democratic antiwar left and the Republican Christian right. Both turned out to have a…
The City Fathers up in Roanoke Rapids are giving Randy Parton a good old-fashioned drubbing. He’s been accused, one way or another, of everything from drunkenness to negligence to mismanagement. But, after all, who’s really to blame? The City Fathers, not Parton, decided to borrow $21.5 million to go into the country music business –…
Hillary Clinton is imploding in Iowa. Will she finish second or third? So her campaign started a website about “The Hillary You Don’t Know.” Voters do know her. They’ve watched her up close for 16 years. She can’t do what Bill Clinton did in 1992, when he reintroduced himself mid-campaign as The Man From Hope.…
Here is the latest sighting of the Most Overused Cliché in Political Reporting. CNNâs coverage of the Iowa race early Tuesday morning was bannered: âRace Heating Up.â Reporters especially love using âheating upâ when the weather is snowy and below zero. As in: âIt may be cold and snowy here in Iowa, but the race…
One of our frequent readers – and commentators on Raleigh issues – sent us the following email. It gives a sensible perspective on the teardown/infill fight now going on at the City Council. So here it is, in full: This Council has a solution in search of a problem. The solution is regulation to limit…
It is true that the presidential race – in both parties – has seen numerous twists, turns, surprises and swings in momentum. But it is also true that the fundamental dynamic of both races is the same today as a year ago. For Democrats, the question is still who will make it a two-person race…
Everybody who wants to know what’s next in the Raleigh Scandals can get the preview by reading the following email sent out this morning by Joe (the Sledgehammer) Sinsheimer. Inadvertently, I’m sure, Joe revealed the emails of everyone to whom he sent the statement. That makes interesting reading, but I’m not passing the list along,…
Carter Wrenn and I are moving to Substack. That’s where you’ll find our blogs in the…
The political sniping began even as chaos still reigned at the White House Correspondents Dinner. My…
A new nationwide poll shows that, if they could run against each other in 2028, Barack…