Archive for March 2015
Justice for Jamie
Off and on the last month I’ve been uncharacteristically uninterested in blogging or even talking about politics. It generally happened after I sat in on the trial of the man who murdered Jamie Kirk Hahn, tried to murder Nation Hahn and in a real sense took the lives of many people in their families. …
Read MoreWaking Up
Yes, the Republicans’ Wake County power grab is raw, cynical politics. But it could help Democrats win legislative seats, the Governor’s Office, the U.S. Senate race and even a U.S. Senate majority and the Presidency next year. Wake is the biggest-voting county and the biggest swing-vote county in a big state that could decide…
Read MoreDeceiving Ourselves?
Back when Navy Seals evened the score with Osama bin Laden, the Secretary of Defense proclaimed “defeating al-Qaeda” was within our grasp. Victory was at hand. Then the wheel came off the cart. And now up in Washington the Director of National Intelligence is telling Congress the threat of ‘terrorism is worse than…
Read MoreApril Fool
A TAPster alerts us to another potential April surprise for taxpayers: Republicans in the legislature left a little bag of stink on the doorsteps of millions of self-employed North Carolinians who’ll step in it when they calculate their state taxes in the next month. The Repubs proudly boast of reducing state tax rates.…
Read MoreClaude Sitton
Claude Sitton was, indeed, forceful and fearless. But not without flaws, flaws that show what is great and what can be dangerous about journalism. Sitton’s forcefulness shaped a controversy that rages more than two decades later: Did the N&O unfairly railroad Jim Valvano? Many State fans neither forgive nor forget. One said this week,…
Read MoreHate Online
The Internet, social media and cable TV may make us more informed, but they also make us more inflamed. And more apt to go down in flames. Frat boys sing a racist song, it goes viral and they are expelled, their parents humiliated and their reputations irreparably ruined. A corporate executive posts a racist…
Read MoreThe Same Old Mistake
Over a decade ago some genius up in Washington – I think it may have been Donald Rumsfeld – figured we could conquer Iraq with 150,000 soldiers; that we could fight a little war with a little pain and have the troops home by Christmas – so we rolled straight into Baghdad then found out…
Read MoreTwo Sides of a Coin
There’re two sides to every coin. Last year, when the State Senate took away Governor McCrory’s appointments to the Board of Review, the Governor vetoed the bill. Then the Senate overrode his veto. Then the Governor sued the Senate. Then, this year, as soon as the Senate got back to town it passed another…
Read MoreSave Your Breath
Before any 2016 death match, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush face a death march through the media and their own parties’ chattering crowds. Last week’s crisis was Clinton’s email while Secretary of State. The DC media pounced and some Democrats went into a frenzy of fretting: The Clintons are their own worst enemies! They…
Read MoreA Strange Cure
President Obama held a summit up in Washington about terrorism but decided not to say the words ‘Muslim terrorist.’ Instead, he announced, he was leading a crusade to stop ‘Violent Extremism’ and, then he put his finger on the root cause of the villainy: Violent Extremism, he said, is caused by political disenfranchisement and…
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