The elections for North Carolina’s congressional districts have already been thrown into chaos by a shotgun court order to redraw the districts, the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and the uncertainty over whether or not state Republicans will be granted a stay. But the effects of the redistricting, should the new map gain […]
Paul Blest
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Meet North Carolina Conservatives’ New Plan to Rein In Government
If you’re a Republican in the state legislature, you have to know two things. First, you’ll eventually lose your supermajority. Second, there’s a decent chance that Pat McCrory won’t be governor in 2017, and the next administration might not be so obsequious to business interests. So what do you do? If the Art Pope–founded John […]
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Urine Trouble: Drug Testing Welfare Recipients Fails in N.C., Just Like Everywhere Else
North Carolina’s drug testing of welfare recipients has started, and surprise, surprise: the early numbers show that, like in other states that are drug testing welfare recipients, it’s a complete waste of time and money. The drug-testing provision for the Work First program, passed by the General Assembly in 2013 over Governor Pat McCrory’s veto, […]
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Study: Voter ID Laws Discourage Black Voting, Duh
Last week, around the time North Carolina’s voter ID law was going before a federal judge in Winston-Salem, researchers from the University of California-San Diego released a damning study of such laws around the country. In short, the report stated the obvious: these laws keep minorities from voting. In “Voter Identification Laws and the Suppression […]
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U.S. Senate Candidate Chris Rey Has a Stellar Résumé. Why Isn’t Anyone Taking Him Seriously?
On paper, there aren’t many stronger political résumés than Chris Rey’s. He’s young, smart, energetic, good-looking, a Signal Corps officer who was deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan, a major in the National Guard, the executive director of a health care nonprofit that assists thousands of uninsured people each year, a cybersecurity expert who spent […]
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Kevin Griffin, everyman: The Durham businessman’s case to be the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate
Politicians love to say they’ll fight for you. Kevin Griffin makes no such pledge. “That is such an overused and useless statement,” he says. “It means nothing.” The Durham businessman is fighting to be the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, though. Earlier this month, he launched an attack in The News & Observer on presumed […]
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Duane Hall wants to keep Big Brother out of students’ Internet accounts
Although the Internet is at the center of national political debates about civil liberties, it seems as though authorities at every level, from school administrators through the federal government to countries across the globe, have only done more and more to crack down on them in recent years, often in the name of national security […]
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N.C. Democratic senate candidates go hunting for the mythical moderate unicorn
It’s not often that you see Democratic senatorial candidates attacking their opponents for working for the ACLU, but a little more than two months out from the primary, here we are. On Sunday, Durham businessman and U.S. Senate candidate Kevin Griffin told The News & Observer that rival Deborah Ross‘ “history” as the state director […]
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Does downtown Raleigh really need a new stadium?
What’s wrong with dreaming big? In a Dec. 28 editorial, The News & Observer answered this painfully vague question with an unflinching, resounding nothing. The big dreams of which the N&O‘s editorial board offered a full-throated—if perhaps premature—endorsement are focused on the further revitalization of downtown Raleigh: specifically, a new arena or stadium on downtown’s […]
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House Majority Leader Mike Hager bemoans gerrymandering, declines to do anything about it
Colin Campbell has a piece in The News & Observer today highlighting that 53 state legislators are running unopposed in their bids for re-election next year. (The INDY reported the same thing yesterday, FWIW.) That fact alone paints a pretty dismal picture of our state’s democracy, but a quote from a certain state legislator in […]