Ever since the Republican-dominated General Assembly put six constitutional amendments on the November ballot in June, Senator Jeff Jackson, a Charlotte Democrat, has been trying to get anyone who will listen to pay attention to one of them. Not even what’s in the amendment, but rather what’s not therefour words that he contends could fundamentally […]
Jeffrey C. Billman
Posted inSoapboxer
Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely: How to Understand the Legislature’s Latest Half-Baked Special Session
If I were cynical enough to look past the blasé evisceration of democratic norms in pursuit of raw political power that took place on Jones Street last weekand is coming up again this weekend, when the Republican-led General Assembly returns to indulge in its favorite hobby, overriding Governor Cooper’s vetoesI’d probably appreciate, maybe even admire, […]
Posted inTravel Guide
Trainspotting: To Mark the Opening of Raleigh’s Union Station, We Sent Five Writers to Ride the Rails
Last Tuesday, after three years of planning, two years of construction, and months of delays, Raleigh finally opened its much-hyped Union Station, a sleek, state-of-the-art, $111 million, multimodal (eventuallybuses will begin stopping there in a few years), twenty-six-thousand-square-foot transit facility in a former Dillon Supply Co. warehouse. The project, pitched as a catalyst for economic […]
Posted inSoapboxer
Counterpoint: The Durham City Council Said Exactly What Needed to Be Said About Jordan Peterson
A few years ago, while I was editing a newspaper in Jacksonville, Florida, the Bible-thumping president of the city council wandered into the Museum of Contemporary Art one day—he was grabbing lunch at the museum’s cafe—and came upon an image of a woman who was eight months pregnant, reclining on a couch, breasts exposed. He […]
Posted inSoapboxer
Now We Know Who Trump’s Next Supreme Court Appointment Is. How Screwed Are We?
In retrospect, Justice Anthony Kennedy had been telegraphing his imminent departure all term. The court effectively punted on several big cases, ruling on narrow, technical grounds rather than making sweeping decisions. Partisan gerrymandering went back to the lower courts on a standing issue. The case of the anti-gay baker in Colorado was reversed largely because […]
Posted inUncategorized
Did the Montessori School of Raleigh Fire a Beloved Teacher Because She Talked to the Cops About the School’s Sex-Abuse Scandal?
On May 16, the day police arrested Montessori School of Raleigh headmistress Nancy Errichetti on charges of aiding and abetting alleged sexual abuser and former middle-school teacher Nick Smith, more than two-dozen parents fired off an email to the school’s Board of Trustees, begging the board to rethink what they believed to be one of […]
Posted inSoapboxer
The General Assembly Knows Better Than Silly Jurors: Big Pork Must Be Protected
On Sunday, state Representative Jimmy Dixon, a Republican from Duplin County, published a remarkable op-ed in the Goldsboro News-Argus. Reacting to the $25.1 million verdict that came down against Smithfield Foods Friday in the second of twenty-six scheduled hog-farm-nuisance trials taking place in Raleigh, Dixon, an unabashed Smithfield apologist, lashed out at the plaintiffs’ lawyers […]
Posted inNews
Montessori School of Raleigh Directress Says She Was Fired for Talking to the Cops About Sexual Abuse at the School
In a lawsuit filed Thursday in Wake County Superior Court, the former Children’s House directress at the embattled Montessori School of Raleigh claims her employment was terminated because she cooperated with the police investigation into allegations of sexual abuse against former middle-school teacher Nicholas Conlon Smith and the handling of those allegations by head of […]
Posted inSoapboxer
This Is America: We’re Better Than Trump’s Border Cruelty (and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves)
To fully reckon with the depth and magnitude of the moral depravity we stared in the face last week, as the Trump administration ripped screaming children from their mothers and erected kiddie concentration campssorry, “tender-age shelters”in South Texas, offering patently absurd and constantly shifting justifications and outright lies all the while, we must first reckon […]
Posted inNews
Dallas Woodhouse Believes Undocumented Immigrants Are “Infesting” the Country
Are you among the vast majority of Americans who are pissed off that the Trump administration is ripping crying children from their parents’ arms and throwing them into cages to use as leverage in the president’s quest for a border wall? Are you angry about Trumpworld’s shifting explanations and outright mendacity, the fearmongering and bogus […]
