My Dad died almost seven years ago. At the time, my wife Heidi and I lived out West and we were expecting our first child. I distinctly remember talking with my Dad on July 4, 2001. It was, in fact, the last time we would ever speak. My Dad spoke to me from his hospital […]
I stay fairly close to the political action in Charlotte-Mecklenburg and was a little bewildered by some of the comments I’ve seen in response to Tom Ashcraft’s latest HouseGuest column. If any of the candidates running for at-large Mecklenburg County commissioner have put forth the conservative positions listed in Tom’s article, I have not heard […]
Mecklenburg County is in a fiscal mess because of the leadership of various people in positions of influence and power whose ambitions were to spend the taxpayer’s money on their own projects with no consideration of the future. The players were often led by Parks Helms. Helms was a member of the Board of County […]
One of the most mind-jarring images of the current disaster in the Gulf, besides the thousands of dead wildlife in the water so far, has been the sight of lawyers and environmental activists getting out of their monster Escalades or Yukon SUVs in Louisiana to ‘investigate the damage caused by that awful oil company, BP […]
Before the 1986 election, the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) was five members, all elected at large. Candidates were sometimes concentrated from affluent areas, and incumbents seeking re-election enjoyed the normal advantages. Nonetheless, this arrangement did allow voters to participate in selecting the entire Board or, as sometimes was the case, in “throwing the […]
Americans once loved nothing more than a good fight. But times have changed and our scrappiness has surrendered to a love of conspiracy. Examples are myriad. Reagan cut a deal with Iran’s revolutionary government to detain American hostages until after the 1980 election. Neill Armstrong walked on a movie set and the Illuminati stores space […]
We have been wondering when and how American politics got to the point where it seems as if hardly anything can get done anymore. On a truly bi-partisan basis, at least. We think we crossed the River of Rubicon when President George H.W. Bush, 41, uttered these (in)famous words at the 1988 Republican convention: “Read […]
The Daily Diatribe: I thought transparency was supposed to be the new buzzword on Wall Street. After last week’s 1,000 point, 20-minute meltdown, one would have thought that we would have already captured the culprit, doused him or her in tar and feathers, and gotten about our business. Instead, the SEC, lead by Sheila Bair, […]
Much has been written over the past year about the ongoing “civil war” within the Republican Party. To a certain extent, this is hyperbole; Democrats and much of the mainstream media outlets in this country would love nothing better than to see the GOP tear itself apart in an ideological bloodletting, driving either moderates or […]
If there is to be a National Day of Prayer it shouldn’t become an exercise in politically correct nonsense. But when the Pentagon bowed to pressure from pro-Islamic groups and rescinded Rev. Franklin Graham’s invitation to speak, nonsense is exactly what the event became. The opposition to the Graham invitation was vehement. A spokesman from […]
