Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
Years ago sitting in a Republican convention I stared at a stranger standing at a microphone – I had no idea who he was but we were on opposite sides and when he finished speaking I had no doubt he’d handed us a problem. Back then Bob Orr was what I called a Mountain Republican.…
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Worshipping idols instead of God is an old sin – after Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, camped at the foot of Mount Sinai, the Israelites built a Golden Calf, worshipped it not God. Even Solomon, after he married pagan wives, built altars to pagan idols. These days ideologies – creeds – have taken…
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In a small Virginia church at the end of the Roaring Twenties my grandfather married my grandmother – a month later the Stock Market crashed. During the Great Depression he struggled for a decade. Hitler marched into Austria and Czechoslovakia, German tanks rolled over Poland, Belgium, France, British soldiers fled Dunkirk. Staring at storm clouds…
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Alexei Navalny was a hero, an inspiring leader and a man of courage, compassion and character who stood up to men of cowardice, corruption and cruelty. He was also a politician, in the best and noblest sense of that much-maligned and despised word. He was a political threat. He would have beaten Putin in a…
Read MoreThe primary’s heating up in the new 13th Congressional District – there’re 14 candidates in all but four are dominating the race: Kelly Daughtry, Fred Von Canon, Brad Knott and DeVan Barbour. DeVan Barbour and Kelly Daughtry both ran in the primary two years ago. Barbour finished 2nd. Daughtry 3rd. Both are from Johnston County…
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The MAGA meltdown over Taylor Swift explains much about politics today – and for the last 70 years. It’s about old white men who are angry about being knocked off their perch by women, Blacks, Latinos, young people and LGBTQ people. It’s been going on since May 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared school…
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Bill Graham, a Republican candidate for governor, is trying to become the second trial lawyer to win high office in North Carolina. The first was John Edwards, a Democrat who was elected U.S. Senator in 1998. Like Edwards, Graham comes from humble roots and made millions of dollars as a plaintiffs’ lawyer representing little guys…
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As always, Iowa and New Hampshire changed everything. President Biden is no longer running against a non-existent ideal. It’s him or Trump. America or MAGA. Democracy or dictatorship. Trump looks unbeatable in the Republican race. And unelectable in November. The New York Times, which for months harped on Biden’s liabilities, now notes: “Mr. Trump’s campaign…
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I was struck last week by Republican politicians posting tributes to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., even as they fight everything he stood, marched and died for. Forty years ago, in 1984, the King holiday was a big issue in the Senate race between Jesse Helms and Jim Hunt. Helms opposed the holiday. He filibustered…
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A peasant’s son Martin Luther never knew the year he was born. Believing children were wicked…
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After Rodrigo Borgia died, soft-spoken but cunning Leo de Medici became pope, after bribing cardinals ended…
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It was a time, Tom Hanks wrote describing the end of the Middle Ages, when dukes…
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