Last night, the Durham County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a 3-percent cut in funding–equal to $3.1 million–to Durham Public Schools, in order to help make up an estimated $14.25 million shortfall. Not present for the vote: Joe Bowser, who the Herald-Sun reports (reg. required) left the room due to a “bad cough,” and Chairman […]
Matt Saldaña
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Green jobs as a silver lining
For at least the past year, the U.S. economy has been in a steady freefall. Last November alone, more than a half-million Americans lost their jobs. Tomorrow we’ll know how many received pink slips in December. Unemployment in the U.S. is hovering near 8 percent. N.C. House Speaker Joe Hackney (D-Chatham, Orange) acknowledged as much […]
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Dan Way’s inflammatory column misses mark on Secure Communities
If you’re searching for a local example of what Barack Obama deemed the false choice “between our safety and our ideals,” look no further than Dan E. Way’s Sunday column in this week’s Chapel Hill Herald. In “Commissioners risk public safety with a PC policy,” the Herald editor favors hyperbole and fear over context and […]
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Orange Co. Sheriff insists that federal fingerprinting program ‘not like Alamance’
The Orange County Board of Commissioners began their Thursday night meeting by asking Sheriff Lindy Pendergrass to explain the county’s participation, beginning this month, in the “Secure Communities Program,” a pilot federal program that grants the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation automatic access to the personal information of people arrested […]
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Secure Communities: 287(g) with lipstick?
Orange County’s reputation as a welcoming place for immigrants, documented or undocumented, may be dented by the sheriff department’s participation in the federal “Secure Communities” program. At issue is whether Secure Communities significantly differs from the controversial federal 287(g) program. The Orange County Board of Commissioners last night asked Sheriff Lindy Pendergrass to explain the […]
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Obama issues order to close Guantanamo, secret prisons
Barack Obama has issued an executive order calling for the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay to be closed within a year, and for the Central Intelligence Agency to shut down a system of secret prisons immediately. From The New York Times: The order on Guantánamo says that the camp, which received its first hooded and […]
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Obama sets the course for change
Shouts of “O-ba-ma!” swept across the plain of the National Mall like a war cry, collecting in a wave that reached the U.S. Capitol, where Barack Hussein Obama was about to be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States in front of nearly 2 million jubilant constituents. The sonic effect would have […]
Posted inNews
Obama sets the course for change
Shouts of “O-ba-ma!” swept across the plain of the National Mall like a war cry, collecting in a wave that reached the U.S. Capitol, where Barack Hussein Obama was about to be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States in front of nearly 2 million jubilant constituents. The sonic effect would have […]
Posted inNews
‘I don’t know if you believe in God, but that was a miracle out there today’
All 155 passengers on Charlotte-bound U.S. Airways Flight 1549 survived a miraculous landing in the Hudson River after both engines failed, apparently from striking birds. The New York Times writes of pilot Chesley B. Sullenberger’s deft landing: What might have been a catastrophe in New York one that evoked the feel if not the scale […]
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Pam Spaulding in The New Yorker
This week’s issue of The New Yorker features a Talk of the Town article by Jeffrey Toobin (The Nine) about hackers infiltrating SoapBlox, a Denver company that administers the Web sites of over a hundred progressive blogs, including the compelling and prolific LGBT site, Pam’s House Blend, edited and published by Durham’s own Pam Spaulding. […]
