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Along These Lines: Adventures in smuggling
The ingenuity of criminals never fails to amaze. Take smugglers, for instance. They can be incredibly resourceful at packing contraband into extraordinarily places. And while often ingenious, smugglers can also be mind-bogglingly inept. Consider the woman traveling through the Bangkok airport back in 2010, who attempted to smuggle a drugged, live baby tiger in a suitcase full of stuffed, toy tigers. Airport security tend to get suspicious w...
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Tar Heel View: Industry can’t set fracking rules
We’re disturbed that a new rule set for approval by the North Carolina Mining and Energy Commission requiring some disclosure of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing was withdrawn at the request of industry giant Halliburton. Fracking could be economically beneficially here if done right, but the recent move does not fit that standard. The News & Observer of Raleigh reported that the state commission, created by the legislature last year,...
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My Spin: NC moving forward
Government is nothing more than a social contract. An essential function of government is to provide infrastructure for the common good that is too costly, too big or impractical for individuals to undertake themselves. A look at our history reveals that public infrastructure has been funded through bonds, taxes, tolls and the lottery. We boast the opening of the first public university in 1795, financed in part by a lottery. With stagnatio...
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Tar Heel View: Separate public, charter school boards will hurt education
Republicans in the state legislature are in the process of making a multitude of bad decisions with regard to public education. And the antipathy they feel toward public school teachers, some of whom have criticized cuts to education, is leading GOP lawmakers down a path that will do much damage, from making it harder to get good teachers in the state to dividing public school governance between charter schools and conventional schools to p...
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Thom Goolsby
Sex trafficking puts on a human face
A human face was put on sex trafficking in a recent Senate Judiciary 1 committee meeting. Anna, a young lady who was the victim of sex trafficking when she was a teenager, gave powerful testimony before the committee. She told the senators how as a teen she was raped hundreds of times, as well as being photographed and videotaped by a pornographer. Anna showed the committee a somewhat graphic picture of herself that she never remembers bein...
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D.G. Martin
Good books you won’t see on ‘Bookwatch’
Here are some important new books you will not learn about on UNC-TV’s “North Carolina Bookwatch.” Before I explain, let me tell you a little bit about the books. Popular novelist Clyde Edgerton’s “Papadaddy’s Book for New Fathers: Advice to Dads of All Ages” is based on what he has learned as the older father of three young children. He will be 69 on May 20. Edgerton embraces the opportunities young children present to an older parent ...
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Rep. Hudson
This Week in Washington for May 11, 2013
As I travel throughout North Carolina’s communities, I hear regularly from families who are struggling to balance the ever-increasing demands of work with the desire to care for and be with their family. This got me thinking about the reasons folks start their own business, and I believe one of the biggest motivating factors is the desire to have some control over their own lives. Part of the vision that my House Republican colleagues and I a...
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I do not understand
Dear Editor, My sister and I gave our dog a bath and then took her for a walk on Martin Street. As we were walking, a dog that appeared to be a German Shepard came viciously barking and jumping at us and our dog. We didn’t know what to do. We didn’t have our cells because we were using water and left them at home. When we finally made it home I called a number and a lady forwarded me to the animal control but I did not get an answer so ...
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Our View: From seed to sky
I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree … A tree that may in summer wear A nest of robins in her hair … Writer Joyce Kilmer recognized the tremendous value of trees when he penned those famous lines so long ago. We need the trees. To feed us. To cool us. To provide us shelter. To ground us and bind us. To hold the fragile soil strong, and be a haven for our critters and squirrels. Our relationship with th...
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Yet you still voted for him
Dear Editor, Now you people knew before the last vote how ignorant this man was. Yet you chose to to re-elect him. We all saw how this green energy mess failed. It was all about our money in certain people’s pockets because of politics. This man has never operated so much as a snow-ball stand. Why do you think you have been paying such a high price for everything that is moved by transportation? Why do you wonder why your money goes now...
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The picture is of the Philadelphia Convention with George Washington presiding.
Notes on Quotes: Almost losing our Bill of Rights
“A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.” — Thomas Jefferson, U. S. President, 1801- 1809 As the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention recessed in 1787, the delegates were reasonably confident that their work on a strong national constitutional form of government with separation of powers and checks and balances would be easily rat...
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Tar Heel View: On a healthier state
North Carolina can boast exceptional resources devoted to the maintenance and improvement of health, including those like East Carolina University’s Brody School of Medicine here in Pitt County. Yet, despite such facilities and organizations working toward that common goal, the state lags behind much of the country in overall general health, consistently ranking in the bottom third by most measures. Now state officials, led by a former assi...
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Each year we look forward to this time
Dear Editor, On behalf of the Richmond County Adult Corrections, we would like to take this opportunity to thank several businesses for helping make lunch a success at this year’s Special Olympics at Richmond Senior High School. Each year as our contribution, we enjoy serving hamburgers, hot dogs, and the fixings to the kids and adults of Special Olympics. This would not have been possible this year without the Food Lions of Rockingham an...
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A smiling member of the community
Dear Editor, The obituary column in the Weekender noted that a well-known man in Richmond County died. Jerry Hilton “Punky” Martin Jr. died at age 41. Even in his later years confined to a wheelchair, Punky was always a smiling member of the community. He is best known for traveling around the county raising money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Many generous people in the county rallied around him to be sure he had a house ...
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My Spin: Tax reform requires wisdom and courage
For weeks we’ve heard the legislature will present details of a significant tax reform package. Lawmakers agree they want to lower personal and corporate income tax rates while expanding the tax base to include a wider range of sales and service taxes, but the devil is in tax reform details. Our current tax codes, first passed in 1939, have been modified, amended and expanded so many times they are overly complicated, sometimes contradictor...
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