Tea Party Hits the Skids

The battered and bedraggled Tea Partiers have been taking it on the chin – they’ve gotten pounded, losing races in Tennessee, Kansas, Texas, Kentucky, South Carolina and Mississippi so, now, the press is humming their funeral dirge while Washington Republicans are chortling the Tea Party’s headed for the elephant graveyard of political movements.   So…

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Foreign Policy?

  Thirteen years ago the terrorists blew up the World Trade Center and, since the terrorists lived in Afghanistan, we attacked Afghanistan.   The terrorists then moved to Pakistan but we kept right on attacking Afghanistan.   A decade later we killed the lead terrorist in Pakistan but we’re still fighting in Afghanistan.   In…

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Day Two, But Still Part One

Governor McCrory’s blast at The N&O got him another day of the “blaring, top-of-the-fold” headlines he blasted. But this is just the beginning of the Coal Ash Saga. We soon will have a U.S. Attorney’s investigation and a fight over who pays: McCrory’s former boss, Duke Energy, or his current boss, the People of North…

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Inclusive

Our President praised the President of Iraq and urged Iraq’s new Prime Minister-to-be to bring Iraqis together and ‘form an inclusive new government.’   Which sure sounds fine.   Except for one hitch.   In New York City ‘inclusive’ means bringing together diverse ethnic groups and minorities in homogenized harmony, but in Iraq it means…

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Infectious?

Well, looking back, it was bound to happen.    First, John Boehner decided to sue Obama for not enforcing the Obamacare laws and most of the House Republicans went along on the theory even if they didn’t like Obamacare the laws are the laws and the President can’t just change one whenever it suits him.…

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McCrory’s Coal Ash Sword

Long after Watergate brought him down (40 years ago this month), Richard Nixon told David Frost: “I gave them a sword, and they stuck it in and they twisted it with relish.”   Now, Governor McCrory’s actions on coal ash don’t begin to approach Nixon’s on Watergate. But he has given his enemies a sword…

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The Best Lobbyists on earth

 The other day Gary wrote, “For Democrats this election year, this legislature is the gift that keeps on giving. Maybe they’ll stay in session all the way to November” – considering by Speaker Thom Tillis’ announcement the legislature is about to return to town and pass the stuck ‘coal ash’ bill, Gary may get more…

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A Raleigh Boy’s Story

Rob Christensen’s column about Tom Bradshaw accurately captures one of the most remarkable people I’ve met through 44 years in newspapers and politics.   My first encounter with Bradshaw was much like Christensen’s. Tom was the “boy mayor” of Raleigh, and I was a cub reporter at The N&O. City government was my beat, just…

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Reading the Morning Newspapers

I swear it looks like there’s not a peaceful corner on the planet.   We’re bombing the Taliban in Afghanistan. There’s a war in Iraq. And Syria. And Gaza. And this morning NATO reports Russia is about to invade the Ukraine.   It’s like every varmint on the globe got loose at once and went…

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The N&O at 120

My first thought when I read that The News & Observer is 120 years old was, “Holy cow, that’s old.” My second thought was, “Hold the coffee, I’ve been reading the paper for HALF ITS LIFE!”   My dad moved to Raleigh to work in the N&O composing room when I was a year old.…

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