Free Republic

Former presidential contender John Edwards has reactivated his license to practice law and is setting out on the speaking circuit. The two-time presidential candidate and former North Carolina senator is scheduled to appear June 6 at a private retreat in Orlando, Fla., for lawyer clients of the marketing firm PMP. A records check with the N.C. State Bar shows Edwards has also reactivated his license to practice law, which had been inactive for more than a decade.....

Thread for the All-star weekend and Charlotte. Charlotte is a Sunday "night" race.

A North Carolina teacher is brain-washing students telling them Republican policies are hurting schools.EAG News reported: It appears that one North Carolina teacher is getting into the spirit of the new Common Core learning standards that promote the use of “informational” texts in the classroom. According to the StopCommonCoreNC.com, a fourth-grade teacher with Henderson County Public Schools gave students a brief reading assignment, titled “Raleigh’s Educational Plan.”(continued)

RALEIGH — The historians, doctors, preachers, lawyers, raging grannies, students and others gathered around the second-floor fountain inside the Legislative Building and belted out “This Little Light of Mine” and other songs. They were diverse in age and backgrounds but united in voice as part of a protest movement gaining numbers in recent weeks. In the four months since North Carolina Republicans took control of both General Assembly chambers and the governor’s mansion, the lawmakers have proposed rapid and sweeping change to the state’s electoral processes, health care policies, welfare management and publicly-funded education systems. The Republicans, some who emerged...

Shortly after Barack Obama won reelection in November, New Jersey governor Chris Christie pointed out that Republicans’ cloudy political prospects had a bright silver lining. “One of the reasons you have 30 Republican governors in America, and why we’re the only organization to add Republican strength,” Christie said, “is because people see us getting things done.” Christie’s stance countered most of the elite postelection commentary, which gleefully pronounced the Republican Party’s political irrelevance. But the governor was right. Since Obama first took office in 2008, Republicans have picked up a net nine governorships, bringing their total to 30 states,...

WASHINGTON – Nearly 12 years after 9/11, Americans are still waiting for the U.S. government to release key information about the attack that killed more than 3,000 of their countrymen. Related topics Reps. Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Peter King, R-N.Y., introduced legislation in 2011 to review the original 9/11 Commission findings. Their bill passed the House Homeland Security Committee and was referred to three additional committees: the House Committees on Energy and Commerce, Space Science and Technology, and Transportation and Infrastructure. But the measure has yet to be acted upon by the House as a whole. Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C.,...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. June 21 — Two brothers were convicted Friday of helping run a North Carolina-based support cell that funneled cigarette-smuggling profits to the militant group Hezbollah. Mohamad Hammoud, 28, accused of being the leader of the cell, was convicted of 16 counts that included providing material support to Hezbollah. Chawki Hammoud, 37, was found guilty of charges including cigarette smuggling, credit card fraud, money laundering and racketeering. Jurors deliberated 21 hours over three days. On Friday afternoon, they told the judge they were deadlocked on one count, a charge that Mohammad Hammoud conspired with others to provide material support...

On yesterday’s edition of “All In with Chris Hayes” we were greeted with narrative creation at its finest as host Chris Hayes attempted to define the arguments in favor of Voter Identification laws in North Carolina as merely the spoils of victory as opposed to any type of actual reasoned position.(VIDEO-AT-LINK) HAYES: If a skeptical person looks at what’s going on in north carolina and says, look, this is why we had elections, we had elections, the republicans won, they won the governorship, they haven’t had it since 1988, they’ve got all three branches of state government for the first...

On Tuesday's All In show, MSNBC host Chris Hayes asserted that, since Republicans have taken control of the North Carolina state government, the state is moving toward becoming an "insane right-wing dystopia," and claimed that the GOP wants to engage in "voter suppression" in the state. Hayes: It's a state that, to everyone's surprise, went blue in 2008 and was narrowly carried by Mitt Romney in 2012, a state viewed by many as an emerging Democratic foothold in the South, as evidenced by the party holding their convention in Charlotte in 2012. But a state that, since the election of...

the Obama administration’s political appointees at the Justice and Agriculture Departments engineered a stunning turnabout: they committed $1.33 billion to compensate... The deal... was fashioned in White House meetings... the $50,000 payouts to black farmers had proved a magnet for fraud. the claims process prompted allegations of widespread fraud and criticism that its very design encouraged people to lie... Agriculture Department reviewers found reams of suspicious claims, from nursery-school-age children and pockets of urban dwellers, sometimes in the same handwriting with nearly identical accounts of discrimination. As a senator, Barack Obama supported expanding compensation for black farmers, and then as...

April 23, 2013 New Congressional Quest: End Prison Phone Call Price Gouging Bridget Johnson The Congressional Black Caucus Working Group on Prison Telecomm Reform is protesting high call costs for phone-homers behind bars. The CBC group will hold a press conference with former inmates and family members “to expose the often exorbitant rates that prisoners and their families are being charged for telephone calls and to announce the CBC response to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to resolve the issue after more than a decade of delay,” according to D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton’s (D)...

Probably the most bracing aspect of Ira Katznelson's new history of the New Deal, Fear Itself, is his portrait of the marriage of progressive domestic policy and white supremacy. I knew the outlines of this stuff, but for a flaming commie like me, the extent of the embrace is hard to take: Far more enduring was the New Deal's intimate partnership with those in the South who preached white supremacy. For this whole period -- the last in American history when public racism was legitimate in speech and action -- southern representatives acted not on the fringes but as an...

Police at a public university locked down the campus for three-hours on Tuesday after school administrators misidentified a student’s umbrella as a rifle. “I had a bunch of automatic weapons pointed at me,” North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (A&T) economics professor Jeffrey Edwards, told The Winston-Salem Journal following the lockdown on Tuesday.

... Fayetteville Police tell WTVD both robbery suspects fled the home after the exchange of gunfire. One of the suspects, 25-year-old Dominik Council, was found dead on the side of the road nearly two hours after the incident. The other suspect, 20-year-old Xavier White, was found wounded and transported to an area hospital, where he later died, according to the station. ... Police on Saturday identified 24-year-old Lamyer Campbell and 24-year-old Derek Hair as suspects in the attempted home invasion.

Like several cases we have seen over the years, North Carolina resident Felicia Gibson was arrested for video recording a traffic stop from her front yard. Salisbury Police Sgt. Mark Hunter even went as far as chasing Gibson inside her home where he arrested her for resisting arrest. And when Gibson took the case to trial, Judge Beth Dixon further pissed on the Constitution by convicting her. The story struck such a nerve with me that I launched an online drive to derail her re-election campaign in 2010, which included several blog posts, localized online ads as well as a...

The Republican plan to block debate on Senate Bill 649, which requires background checks on almost all gun purchases and transfers, failed spectacularly Thursday morning when sixteen Republican Senators joined almost all of the Democrats to vote in favor opening debate on the bill. Among those voting to defeat the filibuster were 9 Democrats with “A” ratings from the National Rifle Association, and 12 A-rated Republicans (out of 16 Republican “ayes”). Two Democrats, Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) and Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK), joined the majority of Republican Senators who tried to prevent debate, much less a vote, on the bill....

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York judge has approved Bank of America's $2.43 billion settlement of a class action lawsuit brought by shareholders over the company's acquisition of former competitor Merrill Lynch. A judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Manhattan approved the settlement Friday. The bank proposed the settlement in late September. The agreement resolves allegations that Bank of America did not disclose the state of its finances or those of Merrill Lynch when it agreed to buy Merrill in September 2008. Judge Kevin Castel said the settlement was "hard fought," but called the...

Senate votes on climate change and the Keystone XL oil pipeline laid bare divisions among Democrats — and underscored why the White House, not Congress, will be where the critical climate decisions reside in President Obama’s second term.Several votes during the freewheeling debate over a nonbinding budget plan provided a political barometer of where the chamber, including vulnerable Democrats, stand on the topics. Advocates of the proposed pipeline scored a symbolic victory Friday when 62 lawmakers voted for an amendment backing the project to bring oil from Canadian tar sands projects to Gulf Coast refineries. Seventeen Democrats supported Sen....

Perfect flame-war bait for a slow news day.The bill itself doesn't mention a "state religion," although that power is implicit. The language is precise, and for a reason: The bill reads: SECTION 1. The North Carolina General Assembly asserts that the Constitution of the United States of America does not prohibit states or their subsidiaries from making laws respecting an establishment of religion. SECTION 2. The North Carolina General Assembly does not recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the State of North Carolina, its public schools, or any political subdivisions of the State from making laws respecting...

Last year, an outcry from voters forced the legislature to back off the idea of putting tolls on Interstate 95. This year, Jones Street is trying again. This time it’s on I-77 in Mecklenburg County. more...

With the usual note that the source is not reliable, the Washington Post reports big money Democratic donors such as Buzzfeed’s Kenneth Lerer have given the Democrats an ultimatum.. Pass gun controls or you get no more money from us On the other hand, if the Dimmos do pass gun control they will almost certainly suffer the consequences in both Congress and at the State level. Which puts Andy Jackson’s Jackass Partei on the horns of the dilemma. Briefly quoting the item linked above: Lerer also said he would be intensifying his contributions to Democratic Senate candidates in the next...

ASHEVILLE — The Asheville Citizen Times is reporting that police on Wednesday charged an Asheville midwife with killing an unborn child through a mishandled delivery. Tina Louise Bailey, 44, of Craig Circle Drive, provided medical services to a woman in labor in July, according to an arrest warrant. Those included catheterization and internal obstetrical examinations, police said. Bailey also gave medical advice without the training to do so, investigators said.

North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan said Wednesday she backs marriage rights for same-sex couples, joining a growing number of Democratic Party politicians ahead of her re-election race next year. Hagan announced her position as the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the federal Defense of Marriage Act, a law that denies federal benefits to married same-sex couples. "Marriage equality is a complex issue with strong feelings on both sides, and I have a great deal of respect for varying opinions on the issue," Hagan said on her official Facebook account. "After much thought and prayer, I have come to...

A North Carolina couple are facing assault and weapons charges after the husband opened fire on a truckload of men a during an ugly road rage brawl over the weekend, police said. Bradley Turner, 40, of La Grange, was caught on cellphone video on Sunday afternoon slugging a young driver he accused of cutting him off on a road in James City, local WITN-TV reported. The driver and a friend in the pickup's backseat quickly retaliated, punching and kneeing Turner in the face several times before throwing him to the ground. Turner's wife, Christy, 30, jumped out of their car...

Hundreds of young illegal immigrants across North Carolina took advantage of their first chance Monday to apply for the privilege to drive a car. The state Division of Motor Vehicles began issuing driver’s licenses to immigrants enrolled in a federal program that defers deportation for teens and young adults who were brought to the United States illegally as children or stayed illegally after their visas expired. More than 16,500 immigrants in North Carolina have received or applied for two-year work permits from the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Monday was the first day DMV accepted these work...

What parts of America have been growing during these years of sluggish economic growth? Answers come from comparing the Census Bureau's just-released estimates of metropolitan area populations in July 2012 with the results of the Census conducted in 2010. The focus here is on the 51 metro areas with populations of more than 1 million where 55 percent of Americans live, most of them of course not in central cities but in suburbs and exurbs. Two growth champs stick out -- Austin and Raleigh. A half-century ago, neither of them amounted to much. The counties now in metro Austin had...

he North Carolina deputy who was forced to resign this week after committing an act of road rage that was caught on video was rehired a few days later, proving that the Onslow County Sheriff’s Office was merely trying to appease the media after drafting a lengthy press release. Craig Culpepper thanked the lord on his Facebook page when he announced the news to his friends and family. He should also publicly thank the North Charleston Police Department for not citing him, even though they acknowledged he was at fault for the accident he caused when he cut off another...

FULL TITLE: Girl, 16, found dead on train tracks next to her best friend, 18, was 'in a dark place' after break-up with her girlfriend Two teenagers have been found dead side-by-side on train tracks after one of the girls was 'in a dark place' following a recent break up with her long-time girlfriend. Arielle Troutman, 16, and Hannah Rigley, 18, were found dead beneath a train on the edge of the McAlpine Creek Greenway in Charlotte, North Carolina early on Sunday morning. The train driver had seen them apparently sleeping on the track, sounded his bell and pulled his...

Actual (very long) headline: The rugged outdoorsman who has been dubbed the 'Last American Man' is facing a government shutdown of his camp in the Appalachian Mountains for not adhering to building codes A man who has dedicated nearly 30 years to building and living off of his 500-acre farm is facing having his entire way of life shut down by the state government. Eustace Conway, 51, who has been called ‘The Last Great American Man’ for his rustic way of living, could lose his camp in the Appalachian Mountains, his home for the past three decades. The Watauga County...

Senators are pushing to reinstate tuition assistance for members of the U.S. military, decrying a move by the administration to suspend the program citing the sequester. "The president wants Americans to feel the pain of the arbitrary across-the-board budget cuts from sequestration, but to cut off promised education assistance for our service members when there are other lower priority spending programs to draw from is an injustice," Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. He and Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina introduced an amendment Wednesday to a stopgap...

The idea of requiring North Carolina voters to show photo identification before being allowed to cast a ballot was sharply criticized and rousingly supported Tuesday during a public hearing at the legislature. via WRAL

A nonprofit organization in North Carolina funded by progressive mega-donor George Soros has been linked to a partisan strategy memo aimed at derailing the state Republican leadership’s legislative agenda, throwing light on the shadowy network of liberal groups that operate in the state.

North Carolina’s new Lt. Governor, Dan Forest, held forth in a rambling talk at a John Locke Foundation “Shaftsbury Society luncheon” earlier this week and in watching the 41 minute video one gets a real taste of the strange brew of ill-conceived and contradictory policy positions that now dominates on the modern American-Fox News-Tea Partying right. more...

If you think by abstaining from teaching about sex within a moral framework that Planned Parenthood is not teaching a definite belief system to children, think again. ETR Associates—a sex program clearinghouse and offshoot of Planned Parenthood of Santa Cruz—admits on its webpage that a program being taught in North Carolina schools and elsewhere across the nation teaches toward four major “outcome expectancies or behavioral beliefs.” Belief number 4 is described in the ETR overview as “Hedonistic Beliefs.” Hedonistic philosophy places pleasure above everything else—as the greatest good. For more than 13 years, North Carolina mandated that its schools teach...

Humans and dogs enjoy a prehistoric relationship, a longstanding bond with its origins in a time when dogs as we know them evolved from wild animals into our domesticated companions. Now, a canine living in a manner similar to that of dogs from those ancient days may have been discovered in isolated stretches of longleaf pines and cypress swamps in the American Southeast. The Carolina Dog, a familiar-looking animal long known in the rural South as the "yaller dog," may be more than the common mutt that immediately meets the eye. I. Lehr Brisbin, Jr., Senior Ecologist at the University...

"The Dixie Dingo" "The Native American Dog" "The American Dingo" " Southern Aboriginal Dog" "The Indian's Dog" Still living Wild in the bottom land swamps and forests of the Southeastern United States. Genetic (mitochondrial DNA) testing being performed at the University of South Carolina, College of Science and Mathematics, indicates that these dogs, related to the earliest domesticated dogs, are the remnant descendants of the feral pariah canids who came across the Bering land mass 8,000 to 11,000 years ago as hunting companions to the ancestors of the Native Americans. However, their future in the wild looks bleak. Loss ...

Court records show the new head of the North Carolina Democratic Party owes nearly $286,000 in back taxes and penalties. Pittsboro Mayor Randy Voller was elected party chair earlier this month, pledging to rebuild an organization still reeling from defeats at the ballot box in November.

Beyond the Beltway, the Right is thriving Inauguration Day 2013 was a moment of jubilation for conservatives. After four years of lackluster economic growth and a series of personal and policy mistakes, the incumbent chief executive, a history-making Democrat, was replaced by a conservative with an attractive policy agenda and a skillful campaign team. In a concise, hopeful inaugural address, the newly elected Republican leader of the executive branch promised to focus the administration’s attention and resources on job creation and economic growth in the short run, while setting the stage for long-term solutions to the government’s fiscal woes. I’m...

A George Soros-tied nonprofit that is reportedly linked to a memo that proposed using private investigators and other tough political-opposition tactics to "eviscerate" North Carolina Republican leaders now faces losing nearly half its funding, after the plans were uncovered last week. The Charlotte Observer first reported that an official with Blueprint North Carolina emailed a memo to partner nonprofits calling for "crippling" Republican leaders and launching direct attacks on Republican Gov. Pat McCrory. “Pressure McCrory at every public event,” the official recommended, according to the confidential memo obtained by the newspaper. “Slam him when he contradicts his -snip

North Carolina’s newly elected Republican governor Pat McCrory hasn’t been in office for even two months, and already progressive groups and their allies within North Carolina’s state Democratic party have the long knives out. That is, if a leaked memo from the progressive organization Blueprint North Carolina is to be believed. The controversial memo was first reported on by the Charlotte Observer this past Friday. The Observer reported: A group that sent out a memo with tips on how to attack Gov. Pat McCrory and other Republican leaders exercised “bad judgment” that could jeopardize its funding, the director of a...

The war of ideas is alive and well. In North Carolina, it’s taken a vicious turn,with progressives targeting the state’s Republican leadership and Governor Pat McCrory, who was elected in 2012. Spearheading this effort is a 501 (c)(3) group known as BluePrint NC, which, according to their website: is a partnership of public policy, advocacy, and grassroots organizing nonprofits dedicated to achieving a better, fairer, healthier North Carolina through the development of an integrated communications and civic engagement strategy. Ultimately, Blueprint aims to influence state policy in NC so that residents of the state benefit from more progressive policies such...

IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED! Make ‘Five Phone Calls for Freedom’ We are asking millions of Second Amendment supporters, represented by the Coalition and others, to deliver a loud and clear message to Congress by making 5 phone calls on Monday and Tuesday (Feb. 25 & 26). Please note that we said CALL, not email. We want millions of voices to ring through the congressional switchboard, so please note that you might have to try several times to get through. Specifically, we are asking you to call: 1. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell at 202-224-2541 2. House Speaker John Boehner at 202-225-0600...

Blueprint NC is “a nonprofit that coordinates the activities of liberal-leaning nonprofits” in North Carolina and when this 501(c) group’s communications director Stephanie Bass forwarded a strategy memo to member organizations, she included a disclaimer: “CONFIDENTIAL to Blueprint, so please be careful – share with your boards and appropriate staff, but not the whole world.” Oops. The memo got leaked to reporter Mark Binker at WRAL in Raleigh. The contents are quite disturbing and clearly partisan: “The most effective way to mitigate the worst legislation is to weaken our opponents’ ability to govern by crippling their leaders (McCrory, Tillis, Berger,...

After we learn of a morally-crippled poll worker named 'Melowese' voting for Obama at least six times in Ohio, now a report comes out that has the Obama regime itself working directly with like-minded scum at the North Carolina Board of Elections (BoE) to illegally register 11,000+ people. They also paid a company per registration to scrape-up voters, a blatant, in-your-face violation of federal law... ______________________________________________________________________________ The Examiner: North Carolina's Civitas Institute has revealed that the NC State Board of Elections and the Obama campaign conspired to register at least 11,000 people via the internet in violation of state law. This has been confirmed through...

North Carolina’s Civitas Institute has revealed that the North Carolina State Board of Elections and the Obama campaign conspired to register at least 11,000 people via the internet in violation of state law. This has been confirmed through records requests filed with all of North Carolina’s 100 counties. The counting is not yet complete. North Carolina does not allow online voting, but according to Civitas, SBE staff authorized an Obama campaign website, Gottaregister.com, to use a web-based registration program. The SBE’s chief lawyer responded to the charge with a plainly disingenuous 1984-newspeak answer: Wright repeatedly denied that the SBE allowed...

In a blatantly partisan move, the staff of the North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBE) successfully subverted state law to facilitate online voter registration in North Carolina by the 2012 Barack Obama campaign. In doing so they coordinated with partisans behind closed doors, lied about the NC Attorney General’s Office concurring with the SBE staff on the issue, and dodged oversight by their own board and the legislature. The end result was to add thousands of people to the North Carolina voter rolls illegally. The SBE staff’s audacity is so breath-taking that it’s hard to believe, so let us...

Elon University has now ceased to be a serious institution of higher learning. In fact, it no longer deserves to be called a university in the wake of its decision to create a new Vendor Policy Study Committee. The committee, which was created by Elon's Board of Trustees in October, is part of a response to efforts to ban Chick-fil-A from the Elon campus. Its very existence shows that Elon cannot expeditiously handle simple issues concerning tolerance and inclusion. Instead, it legitimates bigotry by giving serious consideration to anti-religious zealots who would best be ignored. Elon's 15-member committee is...

William Bowden painted “Screwed by the Town of Cary” on his house after a road-widening project (allegedly) directed runoff onto his property, damaging his North Carolina home. Within hours, zoning officials paid him a visit, ordering him to remove the sign or pay fines of up to $500 for each day of noncompliance.

A Republican House freshman will be in the spotlight Friday at an NAACP press conference for an email he sent to the state organization, calling the group and its leader "racist" and "race-opportunists." Rep. Michael Speciale, R-Craven, along with all other state lawmakers, received an emailed version of a statement last week by NAACP state president William Barber on proposed voter ID legislation. In the statement, Barber calls voter ID initiatives "national propaganda efforts by the far-right to justify the obvious tactic to suppress the votes of minorities, youth, disabled and the elderly," and urges Republican legislative leaders to abandon...