This legislative session, real estate agents and homebuilders will fight proposals to authorize impact fees on new development. Utilities companies will stand against a push to require that they use more renewable energy sources. Beer wholesalers will lobby against a new tax. And the legislators who vote on these and other special-interest bills will operate […]
Mosi Secret
Posted inNews
Eno puzzler
The North Carolina Room at the Durham County Library is a throwback to decades past. The dusty glass chandeliers, fading faux wood paneling and aqua green carpet evoke bell bottoms and wide lapels. And the books that fill the stacks contain countless bits of history and relics from old times. Among those books is a […]
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Three N.C. counties elect first black sheriffs
On Monday, Dec. 4, in Vance County, a superior court judge administered the oath of office to Peter White, the rural county’s first black sheriff. That same day down in sleepy Laurinburg, Shep Jones became sheriff, the first African American in Scotland County’s history. For both men, the swearing-in ceremonies marked the conclusion of heated […]
Posted inGuides
Lanya Shapiro & Traction
2006 Citizen Award winners Margie Ellison | Lanya Shapiro & Traction | Chad Johnston | Andrew Pearson | The Pesticide Education Project The morning after the first cold snap of the season, Durham voters bundled up in their winter coats lined the street leading to the county Board of Elections. It was Saturday, Nov. 4, […]
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N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission begins Nov. 1
For at least three decades, the wrongful convictions that jailed innocent people for crimes they didn’t commitpeople like Darryl Hunt, Lesly Jean and many othershave shaken public confidence in the police officers, prosecutors and judges who shepherd criminal defendants through North Carolina’s courts. On Nov. 1, the state launched a newly created commission that seeks […]
Posted inNews
Denied the vote
On the main residential campus of TROSA, where North Carolina’s substance abusers go to turn their lives around, four felons and recovering addicts sit at the head of a 25-foot boardroom table and discuss their voting rightsor perceived lack thereof. They all agree that their criminal histories have left them politically disenfranchised, but the exact […]
Posted inElections
U.S. House District 13 shocker: Robinson using sex to get votes!
Vernon Robinson, the indefatigable yet unsuccessful conservative candidate for public office in North Carolina, is a master of the campaign attack ad. His most recent commercials pillory his latest opponent, incumbent U.S. Rep. Brad Miller in the 13th Congressional District, which includes much of Raleigh. “Instead of spending money on cancer research, Brad Miller spent […]
Posted inElections
Jury out on judicial campaign reform
North Carolina’s 2002 reforms to judicial campaign financing were supposed to reduce the power of private donors in judges’ races, including limiting the role of donations from lawyers and others who have business in front of the courts. But as candidates Robin Hudson, Donna Stroud and Linda Stephens–all recipients of the so-called “clean money” provided […]
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Bashcroft
By the time a tidily dressed member of the Young America’s Foundation took the stage at UNC’s Memorial Hall on Sept. 12 to announce, “Any disruptions of the event are a violation of the honor code and will be handled appropriately,” it was too late. That’s probably why the newly renovated theater, with its world-class […]
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A year after Katrina
Glenda Edwards doesn’t have much to be happy about. A few hours after Hurricane Katrina swept through Mobile, Ala., the Coast Guard rescued her from a perch atop her china cabinet in her flooded home, placing her and her granddaughter, for whom she was caring at the time, into two separate boats. Her granddaughter hadn’t […]
