Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
Speaker Pelosi and her leadership team sure looked beaten when they went before the press to explain – and defend – their deal with President Bush and the Republicans on Iraq. It’s easy to see why: they had surrendered on the fight for troop-withdrawal deadlines. Pelosi said she might vote against it herself. Congressmen Obey…
Russ Stephenson, the at-large Raleigh city councilman, told my mother he hopes I’ll say something nice about him in my blog. So here goes. I’ve had some criticism of Russ. I think he – and too much of the current council – is too downtown-focused. As a Democrat, I’m concerned that Russ and some of…
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…
Two 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…
Last 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…
Mayor 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…
As 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.…
Watch 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…
The 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…
Senator Phil Berger was out of touch with voters in his district – and suffered the…
A reassuring lesson from our trip to Germany and Czechia is that dictators, despots and tyrants…
Gwyn and I just returned from a 12-day journey through 1,000 years of history in Germany…