Free Republic

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) may be dominating the headlines and stealing attention with its prolific propaganda, but CBS News' Bob Orr reports, another group in Syria -- one few have even heard of because information about it has been kept secret -- is considered a more urgent concern. Sources tell CBS News that operatives and explosives experts from Osama bin Laden's old al Qaeda network may again present an immediate threat to the U.S. homeland. At two dozen foreign airports, U.S.-bound passengers are undergoing enhanced security screening. Agents are searching for hidden explosives. Laptops and phones...

June Atkinson has won her court fight over who is in charge of public education in North Carolina. Superior Court Judge Robert Hobgood ruled today that Atkinson, who was elected statewide as the state superintendent of public instruction, has the authority under North Carolina's constitution to run the state's schools. Hobgood ruled that the State Board of Education has the authority to set policy for the state's public schools, but that the state constitution dictates that Atkinson, as the state superintendent, is responsible for implementing those policies. Atkinson, a Democrat, had sued Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue and the State Board...

School superintendent June Atkinson plans to sue the state so she can run the state Department of Public Instruction. The suit will be announced at a news conference tomorrow. She will be represented by former Supreme Court Justice Robert Orr, who runs the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law. Gov. Beverly Perdue, the State Board of Education, and William Harrison, whom Perdue appointed to run the education agency, will be defendants, Orr said. Atkinson, who was elected to a second term in November, has never run the state education agency. The state constitution and state law have made muddled mess of...

Takes an embarrassment to know one? Four days after the CBS panel report documented CBS's embarrassing lack of concern for basic journalistic standards in using forged memos to try to take down President Bush, and how Dan Rather hurled unsubstantiated accusations that those who realized CBS's duplicity were "partisan political operatives," Rather had the chutzpah on Thursday night to lead with what he described as "a major embarrassment for the FBI: An expensive new component of its war on terror doesn't work." CBS reporter Bob Orr soon echoed Rather in calling the failed computer system "another embarrassment for the FBI."...

RALEIGH --The North Carolina Republican Party on Saturday endorsed Raleigh lawyer Paul Newby for the Supreme Court seat vacated by Justice Robert Orr, and the gesture gave an inkling of how the two major political parties might treat the nonpartisan races this year. The 2004 campaign marks the first election in which candidates for appellate court judgeships cannot denote their party affiliation on the ballot. The Democrat-dominated General Assembly applied the new restrictions during the 2002 session after a string of Republican successes in Supreme Court and Appeals Court races in recent election cycles. Interviews with candidates and party officials,...

RALEIGH - ... "There's been a cavalier attitude toward issues of the state constitution as fewer and fewer attorneys serve in the General Assembly. The state constitution has become an area that is less meaningful to them...." Orr said. ... Orr-- [as] the new executive director of the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law, a nonprofit formed at the end of 2003 to both litigate in what it calls defense of the constitution and to raise public awareness of it (snip) --already has one target: the legality of business incentives. Or, as the former justice says: "What is the public purpose,...