We return, after our summer sojourn, to find North Carolina matters about where we left them. Johnny Edwards is still wandering in the desert of presidential politicking. Mike Easley has come out boldly for “Andy Griffith.” And the Wake Republicans, unaccustomed as they are to actually running anything, are upset that the schools cost money–they […]
Bob Geary
Posted inNews
Reflections on an execution
At the end, there is the cruelty of it. The methodical, unblinking, unyielding torture that we sanction–for 16 years in William Quentin Jones’ case–as our response to a single outburst of madness, violence and murder. It’s in the blank stares of the dozens of cops and corrections officials who form the cast for his execution […]
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A time to speak
There seems to be some question whether the proposed moratorium on executions in North Carolina, approved by the state Senate, will even get a vote in the House before the General Assembly adjourns for the year. What a shame if it doesn’t. People opposed to the death penalty, or opposed to the scattershot way it’s […]
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Citizen
There was a time early in our national history when people brought their own ballots to the polling place. It was your vote, why not? Besides, the government wasn’t going to print ballots at public expense when the private sector could handle that job so nicely. But soon the parties were printing up ballots, and […]
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Citizen
Large-animal metaphors were used a lot Saturday in Apex at the forum on nuclear waste sponsored by N.C. WARN and Public Citizen. Lisa Gue, PC’s senior energy analyst, got off the first gigantism to the crowd of more than 100: Wastes are a problem, but nuclear power itself is “the gorilla in the living room” […]
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What if?
One spring day in 2002, an inmate escaped from a state prison farm in Richmond County and, seeing a train heading north, jumped on. He jumped right off when he saw the armed security guards and state troopers aboard. Clearly, he’d picked the wrong train. This was the one that runs regularly from Progress Energy’s […]
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‘We’d survive it anyway’
When the realization struck that one of the World Trade Center airliners had flown right over the Indian Point nuclear power plant outside New York City, a few members of Congress, mainly from New York and Massachusetts, started asking questions–What if terrorists dive-bombed a reactor? What if they infiltrated a plant? The Nuclear Regulatory Commission […]
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Back to the future
It wasn’t so many years ago that Steve Bass was riding the roads, playin’ guitar in a band, rockin’ and rollin’ and hair down to– Oh, wait a minute. That was a long time ago, back when your band could get on hometown radio and your radio was AM. Back in the ’60s. Today, Bass, […]
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Citizen
Here’s an idea for congressional Democrats, who are trying so hard to be heard–but so unsuccessfully–by a country fixated on Clay Aiken-or-Ruben Studdard. It’s a TV show called American Idle. Every week, unemployed people are invited to display their talents, and sing a little too, while Democratic candidates for president tell us what they’d do […]
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Citizen
Some 800 of us–parents and teachers and principals and others with the morning free–packed the hall last week for “Many Voices, Smart Choices,” Wake County’s 2003 Education Summit. A record turnout for a system under tremendous pressures as this fall’s school board elections near. Diversity? Neighborhood schools? Huge issues. And then there was Goal 2003: […]
