Two transgender people and a lesbian law school professor, along with the ACLU of North Carolina and Equality NC, filed a federal lawsuit today to challenge the new North Carolina law that blocks local governments from passing anti-discrimination rules and requiring transgender students to use bathrooms assigned to their biological sex. While I would have preferred that the lawsuit take on the … Read More
When You Don’t Think
The backlash and fallout against North Carolina’s HB2 law continues, and what is getting a lot of attention are pictures and tweets from transgender people like Michael Hughes, a 45-year-old trans man in Rochester, Minn. Take a look at this picture: That’s Michael Hughes and two of his female friends in a womens’ bathroom. Under the new law passed by the … Read More
Repercussions
I know the Republican lawmakers don’t give a damn about non-straight people, but they’re supposed to give a damn about business. Apparently, they didn’t think about the effect on the economy: American Airlines and other major businesses across the state and nation are taking a stand against a bill signed into law Wednesday by N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory that invalidates Charlotte’s … Read More
Police-Related Racial Homicide in Winston-Salem?
On December 9th, Winston-Salem resident Travis Page died after being handcuffed by four Winston-Salem police officers. After being handcuffed. It’s a story all too familiar — a young black man dies — not in a shootout with police — but while under police custody. It is irrelevant what Travis Page did or was accused of doing. Unless he was attacking police … Read More
Where’s Winter?
It’s beginning to look a lot like…. Arbor Day? Unseasonably mild temperatures are spreading over the eastern half of the country and about 75% of the U.S. population will see the temperature climb over 60°F by the end of the weekend. Not exactly Christmas season. This is true even in the winter-whipped city of Buffalo. There, the first snow normally … Read More
NC-GOP Poll: Carson Over Trump By Double Digits
GOP Presidential Primary – Respondent’s First Choice Registered voters who were self-identified Republicans or Independents who lean Republican were asked who they planned to vote for if the presidential primary were held today. Fourteen candidate names were read to respondents, with names randomly rotated to prevent primacy and recency effects. The survey found Carson in the lead with 31 percent. … Read More
Election Day 2015
An off election year, which means that nobody went to the polls, practically. But there were two local results that caught my eye: My friend Dawn Morgan was re-elected mayor of Kernersville for the 300th time (it seems) — she won 95.8% of the vote. It helped, I suppose, that she ran unopposed. And in Walnut Cove, they passed a … Read More
Hurricane Joaquin Probably Not Going To Be A Big Deal
In spite of some very premature comparisons to Sandy, new projections show Hurricane Joaquin appears to be heading east and may not make landfall in the United States. Different models gaming out the path of the Category-4 storm were initially split on their forecasts, but as the storm has stalled over the Bahamas, the likelihood of it reaching the U.S. … Read More
RIP Confederate Flag (In South Carolina)
After a contentious and often emotional debate in the SC House, with a lot of political wrangling (and attachments of bill-killing amendments, all of which failed), Governor Nikki Haley signed the bill yesterday, and the flag came down today Well, that only took 5+ decades. Here in North Carolina, they took down the Confederate flag from inside the state capitol building … Read More
And Then There Were 8
I’ve got to just put a counter on the right hand column: SURF CITY, N.C. — A North Carolina hospital confirmed Monday there has been another shark bite along the North Carolina coast — the eighth bite along the coast in less than a month. A spokesman for the Naval Hospital at Camp Lejeune told WITN News a shark bite victim was brought … Read More
Down The Street From Me…. Murder Most Foul!
Oh my: As a result of a joint investigation between the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office and the WSPD, along with the Forsyth County District Attorney’s Office, investigators have charged two Pfafftown residents after finding human remains in their back yard. During the course of a WSPD Missing Person investigation, information was obtained that led Investigators to a home located at … Read More
North Carolina Is Shark Central
Number of shark attacks in NC waters 2004-2014: 25 (average of 2.5 every year) Number of shark attacks in NC water this year: 4 so far (and it isn’t even July yet) Why? “It’s kind of a perfect storm,” says George H. Burgess, the director of the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Burgess says … Read More
North Carolina GOP-Controlled Legislature Punishes NC Law School For Not Firing Professor
WRAL: A last-minute amendment by Senate leaders Wednesday docked the University of North Carolina School of Law budget by $3 million. Democrats say it’s political payback for the school’s employment of legislative critic Gene Nichol. Despite the fact that Republican Senate leaders have been working on the budget behind closed doors for nearly three weeks, Senate Rules Committee Chairmam Tom … Read More
NC Shark Attacks
I don’t like writing about shark attacks because I am old enough to remember the summer of 2001, where the BIG neverending news story was the number of shark attacks, or near-shark-attacks that were happening. On September 4, 2001, for example, a man was killed and his girlfriend critically injured off the NC beaches, by a shark. Those news stories … Read More