The all-male county commission of New Hanover County, NC, has voted down a grant from the state of North Carolina in the amount of $8899 to fund family planning.

According to the county health department, the money was for family planning funds that would "provide medical services related to...

On Monday, Sept. 12, the North Carolina House of Representatives voted to put on the May primary vote a referendum on amending the state constitution to prohibit gay marriage in North Carolina. North Carolina already has a constitutional clause that explains marriage as between a man and a woman and...

Thom Goolsby, a Republican from New Hanover County, North Carolina, who was elected to the state Senate in 2010 as a part of a big Tea Party wave, sent out an e-mail to his supporters on August 10, in which he call President Obama's "socialist policies" a great...

John McCain and Russ Feingold, 1999. Gerald Ford, 2000. Kofi Annan, 2004. Edward Kennedy, 2009. Elizabeth Redenbaugh, 2011. These are some of the recipients of the Profile in Courage Award, an honor given to public servants by the JFK library. The names are highly recognizable, except for one: Who is...

In February, 2010, I reported on the grassroot effort to derail Titan America's plan to build the 4th largest cement plant in the nation in Castle Hayne on Cape Fear River near Wilmington, NC. (For reasons for opposing the plant, click here.) The area, located in...

The school board of Wake County, where the state capital of North Carolina, Raleigh, is located, has been news a lot lately. Even Stephen Colbert used it in his "Word" segment on January 18, mocking the comments of a board member, John Tedesco. He and other Republican board...

Is it a good idea to have a shooting contest for a fundraiser? If you are just an ex-Marine who once faced pre-meditated murder charges, it may not. But if you are Ilario Pantano, the Republican Congressional candidate and Tea Party darling of the North Carolina Congressional District...

As the days drag on into the November mid-term election, there is no doubt that there has been a lot of political posturing and grandstanding from many candidates running for offices and those who are trying to hold on to their offices. They seek political gain by latching onto the...

I wrote a piece in March about the strategy the GOP has taken under Mitch McConnell's leadership. I pointed out that McConnell's strategy was to plant seeds of doubt about the democratic process by insinuating that the government was not to be trusted and that it was somehow...

North Carolina's Congressional races are becoming more and more interesting by the day. Two of them are shaping up to be particularly interesting. First there is the well-publicized story in District 8 of Tim D'Annunzio, the Tea Party backed candidate, against Harold Johnson, the GOP backed candidate. D'Annunzio and Johnson...

On May 18, Will Breazeale and Randy Crow, the losing candidates in the Republican primary for the Congressional seat in the 7th House District of North Carolina, publicly called on Ilario Pantano, the winner of the primary, to quit the race. Breazeale's stated reason for this call is...

Carl Hulse and Adam Nagourney wrote an interesting article in the New York Times on March 16th that, in my opinion, did not get as much attention as it deserved. It was about the political strategy that Mitch McConnell has taken to bring the GOP back from irrelevance...

Citizens United Against Cement Plant in North Carolina

That is a good question. In the state of North Carolina, this is an especially interesting and complicated one, especially when it comes to backroom dealings, corrupt state officials, and citizens demanding to be informed and heard.

New Hanover County in the...

As the Senate prepares to vote on health care reform, BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina sent its enrollees a mass mailing on Wednesday asking them to oppose health care reform by sending a pre-paid postcard to Senator Kay Hagan, a Democrat and supporter.

The cover of the mailing asks:

Public...

In order to rethink fundamentally the debate surrounding health care reform, we need to first understand what exactly health insurance is and what it insures. With external objects, such as a home, a car, or a boat, we know exactly what a policy insures: a home, a car, a boat,...

The Huffington Post reported on September 29th that the support for health care reform is again on the rise after the down slide of August. The report is based upon the newly released poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation that shows that fifty-seven percent of Americans now believe that...

A controversy is brewing in the little town of Wilmington, NC. It involves an event to take the main stage on Saturday, October 3, from 11 to 2 during the very popular Wilmington Riverfest, which draws thousands from near and far. It is being called "I Love America Rally 2009."...

This morning during its Morning Edition, NPR played a refreshing interview Steve Inskeep conducted with the Secretary of Energy, Steve Chu. Chu is a non-politician in a political position, but no one doubts that he is a very logical choice to be in charge of energy policies in this...

I wrote an article in December of last year about the interview Steve Inskeep of NPR's All Things Considered conducted with Mike Duncan, the then chairman of GOP. In that article I observed the GOP was heralding Bobby Jindal and Ahn Cao as the saviors of the party because it...

Daphne Eviatar of The Washington Independent reported on August 19 of the rising likelihood of the GOP alienating the Latino vote bloc by embracing the nativist stance on Health Care. She reports that "protesters at town hall meetings are increasingly railing against lawmakers for seeking to provide health care...