Patrick O'Neill

While rolling up and down the hills of Raleigh’s Wade Avenue last week on a drive to an anti-war meeting in Chapel Hill, I spied a white Buick with the North Carolina license plate “US Representative 2.” Realizing I might be just a few cars behind my Congressman, Lillington Democrat Bob Etheridge of the 2nd […]

WASHINGTON, D.C.–It struck again. That never-ending deception of how many people are at a protest rally. Is it a media conspiracy that the numbers reported are always inexplicably low? If you were among the quarter- to half-million people who marched Saturday through the cold streets of the nation’s capital to protest the president’s war plans, […]

The meat industry has lots of money to promote consumption of beef, poultry and pork. The anti-meat industry–namely People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Norfolk, Va.-based animal rights group–admits it has to push the limits to get people’s attention. “We don’t have the ad budget of the turkey industry or Butterball, so we’re […]

On Dec. 3, James Basden came to the State Capitol clutching an 8-by-10 glossy of a young soldier in uniform, standing in front of a U.S. flag. The photo was of his baby brother, Ernest, who spent a decade on Central Prison’s death row before Gov. Mike Easley denied clemency. Ernest, 50, who was the […]

The State Fair, which runs through Sunday, isn’t all cows, chickens, dizzying rides and fried dough. It’s also a soapbox for political groups that try to hawk ideas instead of cotton candy. For $550, plus the cost of mandatory insurance, a group such as North Carolina Coastal Federation and the state Democratic Party can get […]

When filmmaker Ken Burns released his documentary, Baseball, in 1994, he reported on the rich 100-year legacy of what is popularly known as the Negro Leagues, those segregated African-American baseball leagues that represent an important era in U.S. sports history. This week, America’s pastime has a spotlight focused on baseball’s best as the San Francisco […]