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A high school in Smithfield, NC now offers another lane of study for some students: Members of the Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program are able to study their aim on campus. The JROTC built a 1,200-square-foot, six-lane, indoor shooting range at the Smithfield-Selma High School and students began using the facility last week. The $10,000 in costs for the range was donated by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission and the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

The British government is advising lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens to pay special attention when traveling to North Carolina and Mississippi. […] The British advisory says new laws in North Carolina and Mississippi may affect LGBT travelers and directs those seeking more detail to the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT civil rights organization. The advisory adds that attitudes toward LGBT people differ widely across the United States. …

On Tuesday, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) Center for State Fiscal Reform released the ninth edition of the Rich States, Poor States ALEC-Laffer State Economic Competitiveness Index rankings. The study ranks all 50 states based on their economic outlook, calculated by weighing 15 variables in critical economic policy areas. Therefore, it is no surprise that of the states in the top 10 for economic outlook, six (Wisconsin, Florida, Indiana, Arizona, North Dakota and North Carolina) also qualified for the most recent State Tax Cut Roundup as states that substantially reduced taxes... Wisconsin earned an all-time best ranking of nine,...

PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi said Monday the company is reshaping its product lineup to better reflect the growing interest in healthy eating and noted it has reduced its reliance on colas for sales. The maker of Frito-Lay snacks, Mountain Dew, Naked juices and Quaker Oats now gets less than 25 percent of its global sales from soda, Nooyi said. And she said just 12 percent of global sales comes from its namesake soda. Representatives for PepsiCo were unable to provide how those figures have changed in recent the years.The remarks underscore PepsiCo’s recent shift in tone as the world’s biggest...

Duran Duran, an English band out of Birmingham, UK, considered canceling their Charlotte show over House Bill 2. Band member Simon Le Bon took to twitter Thursday to share the band's viewpoint on playing in North Carolina. Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/entertainment/music-news-reviews/article72009507.html#storylink=cpy

Famed filmmaker and gelatinous force of raging hypocrisy Michael Moore has threatened to eat North Carolina unless it agrees to allow men into women’s restrooms by high noon on Monday. “The way that North Carolina is imposing its morality upon others is just disgusting,” raged the multi-multi-millionaire who has made many fortunes by crafting and selling movies on the evils of capitalism. “And if North Carolina doesn’t cave completely to my demands to obliterate gender distinctions and let men into women’s restrooms, I’m literally gonna eat the whole sorry state for lunch!” The threat to eat the entire state was...

Truncated title. Full title: Cirque du Solei Cancels North Carolina Shows Over Public Facilities Act — Plans Shows In Dubai, Where Gays Are Put to Death. Canada-based circus and theater entertainment company Cirque du Soleil has canceled its upcoming shows in Greensboro, Charlotte, and Raleigh in North Carolina to protest the state’s Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act. “Cirque du Soleil strongly believes in diversity and equality for every individual and is opposed to discrimination in any form,” the group announced Friday in a press release. “The new HB2 legislation passed in North Carolina is an important regression to ensuring...

A bipartisan group of senators has asked NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to pull the league's 2017 All-Star game from North Carolina because of a law in that state that many say discriminates against gay and transgender people. . . . Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Pat Leahy, D-Vt., Cory Booker, D-N.J., Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Mark Kirk, R-Ill., all signed onto the letter sent Tuesday. Kirk is the only Republican signed onto the letter and is running for reelection this year.

A major porn website has announced that it is blocking North Carolina users in protest of HB2, the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act.So, North Carolina decides to keep its bathrooms and locker rooms safe from sexual predators and a porn company gets morally indignant.Oh, the irony. (For the bathroom side of the bill, see my questions to Bruce Springsteen; for the religious protections side, see the points made by Ryan Anderson; for Gov. McCrory’s partial compromise, while standing strong on other key points, see here.)An internet porn company, by definition, is not only immoral but literally traffics in immorality,...

at :07 ...it's getting downright frickin kooky out there...uh....I mean wow...So on my Facebook today I um see something come from Sgt. Moe and apparently there's two more arrests, one has already occurred.....

Republican presidential candidate and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said he supports the ability of North Carolina lawmakers to pass a law restricting bathroom access for gay and transgender people. Cruz said Thursday during taping of a MSNBC town hall in Buffalo, New York, that states can pass such laws because "men should not be going to the bathroom with little girls."

On Tuesday, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory (shown) caved to pressure from big businesses and the LGBT community and signed an executive order to change the state’s recently passed LGBT law that barred local governments from extending protections to gay and transgender individuals and mandated that individuals use bathrooms based on the biological sex that appears on their birth certificates. Unfortunately for the governor, the order failed to appease the law's critics and has provoked criticism from the law's supporters.

I got an email from the AFA today. It said, in part: "If you have a PayPal account, join American Family Association and cancel it today. Also, be sure to let PayPal know why you are canceling. TAKE ACTION Cancel your PayPal account today. Here's how: To close your account: Call: 1-888-221-1161 -Or- 1. Log in to your PayPal account online. 2. Click the Profile icon next to "Log Out." 3. Click "Close your account" under "Account options." If you don't have a PayPal account, you can still call and share your concern. If you're looking for an alternative to...

Gov. Nathan Deal said the uproar in North Carolina and Mississippi over new laws that critics say curb gay rights should give supporters of the “religious liberty” measure in Georgia second thoughts, and warned that he’s willing to pull out the veto pen again next year if similar legislation lands on his desk. In his first interview since his veto two weeks ago of House Bill 757, Deal said Tuesday he’s concerned religious conservatives who plan to revive the measure next year will put Georgia through another contentious debate. “I don’t want to go through the same process all over...

I have asked my distributor NOT to book my film in any theater in North Carolina due 2 their bigoted law against LGBTQ ppl. They have agreed

Santa Fe Mayor Javier Gonzales will travel this week to Qatar, and the trip is drawing criticism that the mayor is breaking his own directives. Qatar is known for its anti-LGBT laws, and Gonzales' trip was announced just days after the mayor reaffirmed Santa Fe's ban on city employee travel to states that have passed what advocates say are discrimination laws against the LGBT community.

Last week, many 2nd Vote members asked about alternative ways to make and process online payments after e-commerce giant PayPal joined the liberal misinformation campaign in North Carolina. The California based company announced that it would stand against North Carolina’s common sense protections for small business owners and religious liberty and withdrew plans for a global operations center in Charlotte in an attempt to bully the state economically.   Subsequently, our research team noticed a growing company called ProPay that provided many products for online merchants.   After looking very closely at ProPay’s record of advocacy on the issues, the company has earned...

  It's been a long time since I was a Springsteen fan. Back in 1974 (April 29) at my alma mater, the University of Connecticut, there was a spring concert. Three bands were featured: a local band called Fairport Convention, a relatively unknown called Aerosmith and another largely unknown named Bruce Springsteen. It was quite the concert. Then, as happens so often, Springsteen became wealthy and the wealthier he became the more liberal he became. And the more hypocritical he became and the less I liked him. Today I find him intolerable. He's become a complete asshat. Springsteen canceled a...

"The new law perpetuates discrimination and it violates the values and principles that are at the core of PayPal's mission and culture," CEO Dan Schulman wrote in a memorandum on the company's website. That's what a corporate bully looks like, folks. Conform to the demands of radical cultural militants or pay the price. "It is corporate blackmail," Lt. Gov. Dan Forest told me. But PayPal is not just a big business bully – they are also hypocrites. "PayPal does business in 25 countries where homosexual behavior is illegal, including five where the penalty is death," NC Rep. Robert Pittenger wrote...

I have asked my distributor NOT to book my film in any theater in North Carolina due 2 their bigoted law against LGBTQ ppl. They have agreed — Michael Moore (@MMFlint) April 12, 2016