Buying Drugs in Canada

It 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…

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The Wake Schools Plot

It’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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The Deal of a Lifetime

Imagine this. Your employer loans you $12.5 million to build a country-western music theatre, pays you $1.5 million a year to manage it, then tells you when the debt is repaid you can buy the theatre for $1. And as a perk he gives you a house to live in. That would never happen you…

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Democratic Derby

If the Democratic presidential race was the Kentucky Derby, John Edwards would be the third-place horse hoping for Hillary and Obama to stumble – or leave him a gap to run through. Edwards’ best chance for a breakthrough is on the war. No other issue matters: health care, global warming, none of them. It’s all…

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Putin’s Soul

Two things jumped out from the pictures taken of George Bush senior, Bill Clinton and Vladimir Putin at Boris Yeltsin’s funeral: Putin’s cold killer’s eyes. Which reminds us what George Bush junior said when he met Putin: he looked in his eyes and saw his soul. And decided it was good. Which explains why Bush…

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With Friends Like These…

Driving along U.S. 64 to the Outer Banks – through Martin, Washington and Tyrrell counties – you see an endless string of “No OLF” signs. Handmade, in various sizes, shapes and lettering, they make clear residents’ opposition to the Navy’s Outlying Landing Field. Now virtually every politician in Raleigh has jumped on the “No OLF”…

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Our Commander-in-Chief

President Bush calls himself “the decider.” Now he has a new wartime title, bestowed upon himself by himself. Bush met with congressional leaders Wednesday on the war-spending bill. Then he gave a speech criticizing Democrats for their get-out-of-Iraq deadline. He added: “The question is, ‘who ought to make that decision, the Congress or the commanders?’…

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The End of the Bush Era

Former CIA Director George Tenet (in his new book) says the debate within the Bush Administration before the invasion of Iraq ‘was not about imminence, it was about acting before Saddam did.’ In other words, President Bush invaded Iraq not because Saddam was on the verge of giving al-Qaeda weapons of mass destruction but because…

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A Simple Bill

First, State Treasurer Richard Moore hired Quellos money management to help him invest state pension funds, then he paid them hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees, then he solicited their executives for contributions to his campaigns. Now the Charlotte Observer reports Quellos has some problems of its own. It has been sued for violating…

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Rahmbo Secrecy

I’m ashamed of my fellow Democrats. They shut the press out of last weekend’s Jefferson-Jackson Day speech by Congressman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois. What could Rahmbo have said that was so hush-hush? A secret plan to end the war in Iraq? A secret plan to take over the White House and increase Democratic congressional majorities…

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