Free Republic

When it came time for Maj. Gen. Lawrence Wells, who had been stationed at Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, to retire last year, he and his wife had to weigh two things. Stay in South Carolina with their extensive community connections and well-established base of friends, or move to North Carolina to be nearer their three grown children. When they listed the pros and cons, the two states came out even -- except for one thing. South Carolina was going to tax his $120,000 annual military retirement pay at $8,400 a year. North Carolina wasn't. "That was the deciding...

Some Los Angeles donors who attended a Sept. 30 fundraiser for Clay Aiken in Los Angeles feel “duped” after the announcement, just hours after he lost his race for a North Carolina congressional seat, that Esquire Network had been producing a “docu-series” about his campaign. According to Karen Ocamb of FrontiersLA, donors are asking that footage of the event not be included in the documentary. Donors have complained that a film crew following Aiken around that night asked attendees to sign release forms, but told them that it was for a BBC documentary that would not air in the U.S....

GREENSBORO, N.C. - Another question some of you may have had about Tuesday's election:What role did Libertarian candidate Sean Haugh play in the Senate race results? The answer may depend on who you ask. UNCG political science professor Thom Little said Haugh didn't make much of an impact. He told our Ben Briscoe the polls he looked at showed Haugh took more votes from Thom Tillis than he did Kay Hagan. But Elon university professor Kenneth Fernandez said the voters that supported Haugh did play a role in Hagan's loss. In a recent online experiment, researchers found two-thirds of Haugh's...

WASHINGTON – Sen. Mitch McConnell appears on the verge of achieving his lifelong goal to serve as majority leader in the upper chamber after easily dispatching Democratic Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky Tuesday night, winning an unprecedented sixth six-year term in the process. The race was expected to be close according to the late polls but, as was experienced throughout Election Day, the surveys seemed to undercount Republican strength to a substantial degree. With all of the commonwealth’s precincts reporting, McConnell ended up with 806,689 votes, good for 56 percent of the total while Grimes garnered 584,625,...

GREENSBORO — People who want to get rid of firearms can do so at five locations in Greensboro on Thursday and Friday. The Greensboro Police Department will accept handguns, rifles, shotguns and ammunition from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday. Anyone over 18 can turn in a weapon. Nothing will be given in exchange. The weapons can be turned in anonymously, police said.

The chairwoman of the Stokes County Democratic Party told King police that the man she is accused of assaulting Tuesday had argued with her and called her a profane name and a liar before she kicked him in the groin and threw herbal tea on him, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.

Clay Aiken came in second yet again. The American Idol and Celebrity Apprentice runner-up was defeated by incumbent Rep. Renee Ellmers in Tuesday's election, losing his bid to represent North Carolina's 2nd Congressional District, The Associated Press reports. Aiken, 35, won the Democratic nomination after his opponent in the race died suddenly during the primary campaign. If the Idol alum had won, he would have been the first openly gay congressman elected in the South.

Esquire Network will go behind the scenes of Clay Aiken's failed congressional bid with a new docuseries. The NBCUniversal-owned cable network announced late Tuesday — following Aiken's defeat in North Carolina — that camera crews have been documenting the American Idol alum's bid for a seat in the House. ... "We were granted incredible access during the making of this documentary, and in turn were able to capture the internal workings of an American campaign — the good, the bad and the ugly," Simon Chinn said. Added Jonathan Chinn: "We’re thrilled to be partnering with Esquire Network, who are tackling...

Chuck Burton - AP Republican Senate candidate Thom Tillis, left, greeted a voter at a polling place in Charlotte Tuesday. Tillis, the N.C. House Speaker, is running against Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton) Store Republican Thom Tillis clinched a narrow victory over incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan in North Carolina’s bitter U.S. Senate race. With nearly 98 percent of precincts in, Tillis had 48.95 percent to Hagan’s 47.14 percent. Libertarian Sean Haugh fielded about 4 percent. Tillis, from Huntersville, held a 50,000-vote lead with some votes from Mecklenburg and other urban counties still out. But several new organizations declared...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Liberal MSNBC contributor Jimmy Williams said the “old white people” in the South who vote Republican are “going to die someday” and hopefully usher in a new era of Democratic rule in the region. Host Krystal Ball, a former failed Democratic congressional candidate, asked Williams whether white Southerners should just be written off by the party, but Williams said never, saying that since they are “for people” and Republicans aren’t, they would eventually win the day. “Mitt Romney only won South Carolina with 53 [percent], John McCain with 52,” he said. “That’s a changing South. Those old white people? They’re...

RALEIGH (WTVD) -- After a grueling months-long campaign that saw the candidates and outside groups spend over a $100 million on advertising, Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan and Republican challenger Thom Tillis were waiting for the final results after the polls closed Tuesday evening. The race seesawed back and forth through the evening with just a couple of percentage points separating the main contestants.

Ha an goes down by 1.5%.

Former Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon was stripped of his right to vote in October when he was sentenced to 44 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to felony corruption charges. But just over two weeks later, Cannon cast a ballot in North Carolina's midterm elections. And the vote, a violation of Cannon's bond, has again landed the former mayor in hot water. "Let's cut to the chase: He shouldn't have done that, and we're going to talk to him tomorrow," Greg Forrest, chief of the U.S. Probation Office in Charlotte, told the Charlotte Observer on Tuesday. Forrest said he...

Former Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon was stripped of his right to vote in October when he was sentenced to 44 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to felony corruption charges. But just over two weeks later, Cannon cast a ballot in North Carolina's midterm elections. And the vote, a violation of Cannon's bond, has again landed the former mayor in hot water. "Let's cut to the chase: He shouldn't have done that, and we're going to talk to him tomorrow," Greg Forrest, chief of the U.S. Probation Office in Charlotte, told the Charlotte Observer on Tuesday.

The lawlessness of UNC administrators continues to make headlines across the nation. Most of this lawlessness comes from administrative offices dedicated to promoting “diversity.” It is no wonder that most of the fake classes taken by student athletes at UNC were listed under African American Studies. Where we find multiculturalism, we find the denial of objective truth. Where we find the denial of objective truth, we find people who lie and deny it. Of course we find plenty of lies and deception associated with virtually every activity initiated by the LGBTQIA Office and Women's Resource Center (WRC) at UNCW. The...

There is one set of numbers in this breakdown of North Carolina early voting that really jumps out.  This year 52.2% of early voters in North Carolina were age 60 or over.  In 2012, that percentage was 35.5%.  Young voters were scarce among early voters this election.  In 2012, 13.2 percent of the early voters were ages 18-29.  This year the percentage fell to 5.1%, while there was a drop from 21.8 to 13.7% in the age 30-44 age bracket. We won't know what this all means until tonight, but I suspect that these numbers may be more significant than...

The party platforms are amended each Presidential election cycle during their nominating conventions. Therefore, what I wrote for the 2012 election is still relevant... sadly so. Voting Guide for Serious Catholics

Raleigh, N.C. — The man charged in the hit-and-run deaths of two Wake Technical Community College students on Friday night has a history of driving while impaired and was deported in 2011 from the United States, according to prosecutors. At a first court appearance Monday afternoon, a judge raised the bond for Mateo Guzman-Palacios, 32, to $510,000. He faces two counts of misdemeanor death by motor vehicle, driving with a suspended license, failing to stop at a red light and two counts of felony hit-and-run. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security also issued a detainer for Guzman-Palacios to notify local...

A record number of rogue Christian pastors are endorsing candidates from the pulpit this election cycle, using Sunday sermons to defiantly flout tax rules. Their message to the IRS: Sue me. But the tax agency is doing anything but. Although the IRS was sued itself for not enforcing the law and admitted about 100 churches may be breaking the rules, the pastors and their critics alike say the agency is looking the other way. The agency refuses to say if it is acting. At the same time, the number of pastors endorsing candidates in what they call Pulpit Freedom Sunday...

“Of all of the undercover investigations I’ve conducted, this was by far the easiest. They were willing to pass out fraudulently obtained ballots like it was Halloween candy,” said James O’Keefe. “With almost three-quarters-of-a-million inactive voters and no Voter ID law in place, we could have turned the election results for most major candidates in the state. What we uncovered in this video illustrates how easy it would be for a well-orchestrated campaign with no regard for the law to change the outcome of a major election. Voter laws across the country need to be changed immediately to prevent this...