Bio: Billy Ball is an INDY Week staff writer.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/billy_k_ball
This is how Lucy Wilmer wants to remember Bill: the tousled brown hair, the wry grin, the sense that, before he even finishes this joke, he has two more waiting. “People tell me the world’s worse off because Bill is gone,” Wilmer says. “It sounds like a platitude, but it isn’t. He was just super […]
The Southern Environmental Law Center and the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources are not, it seems, on speaking terms. SELC has led efforts for years now to force clean-up at Duke Energy’s leaking coal ash sites across the state, frequently tangling with the state’s top environmental agency along the way. Based on a […]
Doc was never supposed to live this long. The 58-year-old’s stringy, chest-length hair, stuffed beneath a camouflage UNC hat, is mostly gray. His back, worn by a lifetime of construction, is giving him hell, so he’s made a reclining chair in his living room into a makeshift bed. Now that he doesn’t drink anymore, Doc […]
Creative Commons License As expected, Chatham County commissioners approved a two-year moratorium on natural gas drilling, better known as fracking, last night. The two-year moratorium would seem to flout a 2012 state law forbidding local government bans on drilling, but county leaders said Tuesday that the state law does not go so far as to […]
Photo courtesy of the Kerr familyMichael Kerr died of dehydration following a month-long stay in solitary confinement last year. A coalition of human rights groups are calling for a federal investigation of North Carolina’s use of solitary confinement, more than a year after the Indyuncovered the death of 53-year-old Michael Kerr, an Army veteran diagnosed […]
Between the rebel yells, incessant car horns, the hollow thump of counter-protesters’ homemade drums and the growl of revving motorcycle engines, someone sang “the Star-Spangled Banner.” You could barely hear it. Shortly afterward, at the “Taking Back Orange County” rally in Hillsborough on Saturday afternoon, the 300 or so Confederate flag-draped attendeesabout 700 fewer than […]
Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson A federal judge has dismissed the U.S. Department of Justice’s case against embattled but popular Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson. Claiming the federal agency failed to offer substantive proof that Johnson’s office targeted Latinos during traffic stops and checkpoints in order to spur their deportation, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas […]
Creative Commons License It seems Gov. Pat McCrory is hearing it from all sides when it comes to House Bill 774, the “Restoring Proper Justice Act.” The bill, sponsored by Johnston County Republican Leo Daughtry and approved by the state House and Senate last week, would render much about North Carolina’s execution process secret. That […]
When he finally died, Dennis McGuire had gasped, choked, writhed against his restraints and clenched his fists for more than 20 minutes. “I saw a man murdered,” says Father Lawrence Hummer, a pastor who witnessed McGuire’s death by lethal injection last January in Ohio. “It was just ghastly.” McGuire’s gruesomely lengthy executionit was supposed to […]
Creative Commons License This probably won’t be kind to North Carolina. The national nonprofit, Gay Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN), is expected to release a report Wednesday that will review the anti-bullying policies of more than 13,000 school districts across the country, including districts in North Carolina. The report, “From Statehouse to Schoolhouse: Anti-Bullying […]
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