The Trials Ahead

A reader emailed: “Doing nothing heroic, I served in naval intelligence. My service required a top-secret clearance. Each time I saw a top-secret document, I recall saying to myself: ‘No wonder this is top secret.’  Similar reaction when I saw documents classified ‘secret,’ also reflecting compelling reasons to protect their confidentiality.  “Absorbing only what I…

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Just the Facts, Ma’am

Jack Smith looked a bit like Abe Lincoln and talked a lot like Sgt. Joe Friday. We saw and heard him Friday afternoon for the first time. In just under three minutes and just over 300 words – strong, striking, sledgehammer sentences – the special counsel laid out his case. “Good afternoon. Today, an indictment…

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Is Bipartisanship Dead?

At breakfast, a friend who has worked with the legislature for many years wondered if there is any hope for bipartisanship. “There are so many leadership-development groups in North Carolina,” he said. “Could they all come together and develop a new cohort of leaders and legislators who can work across party lines?” Given how toxic,…

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Folwell’s Foolishness

When State Treasurer Dale Folwell announced in March that he’s running for Governor, he said, “Voters like candidates who attack problems, not people.” That didn’t last long. He must have figured out that, in Trump’s Republican Party, the whole point of politics is to attack people. And – shades of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and…

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Biden Magic

Remember a few weeks ago when America was careening toward a debt-ceiling cliff, a fiscal crisis that would plunge us into economic catastrophe, stock-market collapse and 401k apocalypse? Then, suddenly – poof! presto! abracadabra! – it was gone. We avoided the cliff. We dodged disaster. Our pensions and portfolios are safe. The economy rolls on,…

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Fall In

Like President Biden, I fell this weekend. And I’m only 74. He tripped on an ill-placed sandbag. I slipped on a slick boardwalk in Manteo. He fell more gracefully than I did. My feet went out from under me, and I ended up flat on my back. No damage done, except for some soreness and…

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Freedom Versus Control

Ron DeSantis may be more dangerous to America than Trump. On Memorial Day, when we honored the men and women who died protecting our freedom and liberty, DeSantis told Fox News that as President, “I will be able to destroy leftism in this country.” “Destroy” leftism? DeSantis’ extreme rhetoric reflects his record in Florida: banning…

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Revisiting Evil

Since our Danube cruise, my thoughts keep going back to three Holocaust memorials – and the line between good and evil in people. In Budapest, we saw the “Shoes on the Danube Bank,” (pictured) a memorial to 20,000 Jews who were rounded up and executed beside the river in 1944-45. They were ordered to take…

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Selling NC ‘24

North Carolina Democrats have a big selling job to do for 2024, and Anderson Clayton is selling hard. The state party chair was on ABC News’ GMA3 last week (link below) selling the idea that President Biden and other Democrats can win her state next year – and telling how to do it: “I really…

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Shut up, Gene?

Some North Carolina Democrats agree with Republican legislators on one thing: Gene Nichol should shut up. Or at least tone it down and turn down the volume. Ted Vaden writes in The Assembly that Nichol is “back in the spotlight, hurling his supercharged invective in a new book that surveys the changes that have occurred…

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