“Sure, Dorsett made some fiery speeches. But if he hadn’t, he would have been worthless.”
Jon Elliston
Posted inNews
The disaster that shouldn’t have been
With outrage still building over the excruciatingly inadequate federal response to Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is facing a political storm of its own. The question of how FEMA–the government agency most responsible for containing the damage of such catastrophes–seemed to have abandoned hundreds of thousands of suffering Americans now seems destined for […]
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Chatham man cleared by judge
Juan Manuel Reyes-Alonso said all along this would happen. “I was expecting this, of course,” he told the Independent in a July 4 interview. “Because I’m innocent, I don’t have anything to fear.” What Reyes-Alonso, a 37-year-old Cuban immigrant who has lived in Chatham County for five years, was expecting was for U.S. authorities to […]
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Hot topic
Choice and Coercion: Birth Control, Sterilization, and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare By Johanna Schoen University of North Carolina Press, 331 pp., $19.95 (paperback) On March 11, the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women concluded a two-week session called to revisit the platform of the landmark 1995 women’s conference in Beijing. One […]
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We’ve got a secret
Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs, and Operations in the 9/11 World William M. Arkin Steerforth Press, 608 pp., $27.95 Keeping secrets is a bitch. Making secrets, on the other hand, is as easy as opening an ink pad and whipping out a government-issue CLASSIFIED stamp. Earlier this month, the National Archives’ Information Security […]
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Hard landing
No one can accuse North Carolina of being inhospitable to the military, especially not in 2005. This year, the Defense Department will conduct a new round of the “base realignment and closure” process, a periodic review intended to trim the fat out of the military’s infrastructure. As a result, the Easley administration and the General […]
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A man of the times
Zeb Vance: North Carolina’s Civil War Governor and Gilded Age Political Leader By Gordon B. McKinney University of North Carolina Press, 496 pp., $45.00 The history of the Civil War, it seems, will never rest. Even after 140 years, it’s still clawing out of its grave, going back to battle and haunting the country’s collective […]
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The past is present
There’s Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI Counterintelligence By David Cunningham University of California Press, 382 pp., $27.50 On Dec. 2, the American Civil Liberties Union filed Freedom of Information Act requests in 10 states and the District of Columbia asking for government files on the surveillance and questioning of nonviolent […]
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$66,000 later, Reyes-Alonso is released
Last Saturday afternoon found Chatham County overcast and chilly, but that didn’t stop Juan Manuel Reyes-Alonso and Amber Harmon from stepping outside their home to conduct their summertime ritual: They sat down next to a small goldfish pond, fired up a couple cigars and proceeded to catch up with each other. The couple, married since […]
Posted inGuides
El Pueblo votes!
North Carolina hosts the country’s second-fastest growing Latino population, so it’s not surprising that our state has also hosted heated debates about immigration. And yet, the anti-immigrant venom that recently surfaced in North Carolina politics surprised even veterans of the struggle to secure the Latino community’s standing in our state. Andrea Bazan-Manson, executive director of […]