Richard Hart

This is my last column as editor of the Independent. After five years, 265 issues and countless calls and e-mails from flacks, fans, African lotteries and annoyed readers, it’s time to move on. Which is not to say that I haven’t treasured every minute of it. I have. The Independent is a remarkable institution that […]

There’s a shift developing in the Triangle’s discussion of the vital role artists and the arts play in the community, and it’s about time. In two recent meetingsa brainstorming potluck last week sponsored by the Raleigh organizers of Spark Con and a high-end forum Tuesday on “Building a Creative Community for a New Creative Economy” […]

The phrase “award-winning journalism” has become a meaningless cliché. There are so many contests and so few (good) newspapers, it’s kind of like making it to the NBA playoffs (and about as exciting). But some contests matter more than others because of the caliber of the judges and the competition. We’ve just won a few […]

For all the hype about the Triangle, none of us actually lives there. We live in Cary and Carrboro and Durham and Wake Forest and Holly Springs and Raleigh. As much as we talk about the region, we spend most of our lives in one city or town, or maybe two if we commute to […]

This started with a simple question: Why should I pay the City of Durham $51.48 a year to pick up my trash, recycling and yard wasteas proposed by the city’s garbage honchoswhen I’m already paying property taxes? Isn’t garbage collection a fundamental municipal service, like maintaining streetlights or letting developers build whatever they want? Then […]

Just when it seems like everything’s going to hell in a handbasket (or, these days, south on a Segway), something comes up to give us hope. Maybe I was inspired by a magnificent Memorial Day weekend (knowing, though, there’s more to memorialize every day) or the upcoming summer vacation (even for my son in a […]

“This entire experience has opened my eyes up to a tragic world of injustice I never knew existed. If police officers and a district attorney can systematically railroad us with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, I can’t imagine what they’d do to people who do not have the resources to defend themselves.” Reade Seligmann, former Duke […]

We depend on agencies like the North Carolina State Bar to protect us. Like it or not, the law plays an increasingly important role in every part of our liveswhen we’re born, get sick, do business, get married (and divorced), buy property, are ready to dieand we need lawyers to defend and represent us more […]

With this issue, we begin running a weekly tally of the casualties being suffered in Iraq by Americans, our allies and the Iraqi people (see “Iraq War Toll“). It is a humbling set of numbers: more than 30,000 Americans killed or injured, hundreds more of our allies killed, and tens of thousands of Iraqis, mostly […]