Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
The stables badly need cleaning in the North Carolina House of Representatives. And Speaker Joe Hackney needs to step up to the job. So far, he hasn’t. It’s past time he did. In a way, the situation is unfair to Hackney. He spent decades building a reputation as a clean, hard-working legislator. He finally achieved…
Read MoreTwo more reasons why George Bush reminds me of Richard Nixon more and more every day: His aides pressured an ailing and hospitalized Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2004 to sign off on a domestic-eavesdropping plan that the Justice Department believed was illegal. (I never thought it was possible to make Ashcroft a hero, but…
Read MoreLast week something unusual happened on the City Council. Mayor Meeker recused himself from a vote. Why unusual? Well, for years, the Mayor’s been voting on city agreements with the downtown developer his son works with. So, what changed? The Mayor says the problem is his law firm is representing ‘a Fayetteville Street building owner…
Read MoreMayor Meeker’s passion for spending money downtown knows no bounds. It tests the borders of the infinite. First, he gets the city council to increase spending on his pink elephant Convention Center to $220 million. No sooner is that done than he gets the Council to spend three or four million on his English-style Roundabouts…
Read MoreAs the Bush administrationâs politics-in-Justice scandal mounts in Washington, one would be naïve not to wonder about recent federal prosecutions in Raleigh. No, Iâm not defending Jim Black, Michael Decker or Kevin Geddings. They clearly broke the law, betrayed the public trust and deserve punishment. But the harshness of their sentences does raise your antennae.…
Read MoreWatch for a John McCain comeback in the Republican presidential campaign. Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney have taken their star turns. And the social conservatives who dominate the Republican Party can’t be happy. Giuliani is taking them on directly. He says his support for abortion rights, gun control and gay rights should not matter. Good…
Read MoreThe other day two radio commentators on NPR were joking about a survey they’d taken of presidential candidates. One of the questions each candidate was asked, What is your dream job? The first commentator said, I love Congressman Tom Tancredo’s answer best. Tancredo – a dark horse candidate – when asked what his dream job…
Read MoreIt just seems like just yesterday that the newspapers reported the Democrats in Congress were about to pass legislation to let pharmacists and consumers buy prescription drugs in Canada. The pharmaceutical industry quashed that idea like a bug. It was alive one day and dead as a doornail the next. Why? The big pharmaceutical companies…
Read MoreIt’s all a vast right-wing conspiracy. And it’s about to wreck the Wake County schools. The plotters started by opposing a school-construction bond issue in 1999. They beat it. Then they targeted the school board elections, but lost. So they targeted election of the county commissioners, who control the school money. They won there. The…
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