EdCone.com

Pricey Harrison emails: "The General Assembly will meet in Greensboro in honor of the city’s Bicentennial on Thursday, May 22, at 11 a.m., in Harrison Hall on the campus of North Carolina A&T University. All are welcome to attend, come help us celebrate this historic occasion and to see your Legislature in action."

Packer: "The fact that the least conservative, least divisive Republican in the 2008 race is the last one standing — despite being despised by significant voices on the right — shows how little life is left in the movement that Goldwater began, Nixon brought into power, Ronald Reagan gave mass appeal, Newt Gingrich radicalized, Tom DeLay criminalized, and Bush allowed to break into pieces."

What's left for this campaign cycle, he says, are "the spasms of nerve endings in an organism that's brain-dead."

Bar Camp RDU is set for August 2 at Red Hat HQ in Raleigh.

I plan on being there.

My Cousin the Saint: A Search for Faith, Family, and Miracles, by Justin Catanoso, in a bookstore near you today.

Jim Vanore writes about the book here.

Justin will be signing copies at the Friendly Center Barnes & Noble on June 3 at 7:30 pm.

McCain declared: "In all my reforms, the goal is not to denigrate government but to make it better, not to deride government but to restore its good name."

Obama, sad to say, failed the farm bill test. McCain may have found a theme for a nation that has lost faith in its own institutions.

I doubt McCain's good government push will be enough to overcome his many liabilities, but it's a healthy conversation in any case.

The bar is set low in North Carolina in terms of local government transparency, but Greensboro and Guilford County still manage to trip over it.

This seems to be an area in which that newfangled electronical media I've been hearing so much about might be useful -- as wielded by the government, the paid press, and the people.

75K. That's a lot of people for a political rally.

So if credit is going to be tight well into the future, shouldn't it be more expensive?

I understand that the Fed has been making money cheap to keep the wheels turning. It's just odd to read that companies are starved for funding when my bank account doesn't pay me squat.

Register here for the Society of Professional Journalists' Citizen Journalism Academy , June 7 at Guilford College.

Registration deadline is this Saturday, 5/24.

It looks like a worthwhile program, but I have to ask (having done a quick Google search that came up empty)...are any of the professionals also bloggers? Are they just bringing fire to the mortals, or are they listening, too?

Miss the modern home tour in Durham? Sally Greene took pictures.

An interesting look at Blackwater and its web of associations and influence.

Municipal broadband: rural electrification for the the internet age?

"Some 60 towns and small cities, including Bristol, Va., Barnsville, Minn., and Sallisaw, Okla., have built state-of-the-art fiber networks, capable of speeds many times faster than most existing connections from cable and telecom companies. An additional two dozen municipalities, including Chattanooga, have launched or are considering similar initiatives."

Why?

More after the jump.

Binker ponders the Hagan/Dole matchup and concludes, "we have a race on our hands."

McCain loses yet another interest-conflicted staffer.

McCain will depend heavily on high-dollar donors to the RNC, which will get him plenty of money, but also make it harder to run away from Bush: "Republican officials said they were enlisting President Bush, a formidable fund-raiser who has raised more than $36 million this year for Republican candidates and committees, for three events on Mr. McCain’s behalf. They will appear together at a fund-raiser in Phoenix on May 27."

Who got to the local legislative delegation and persuaded them not to press for protest petitions?

The answer is unsurprising: the local real estate group and a prominent, politically-wired construction company. You can read the emails after the jump.

And so it falls to the Greensboro City Council to decide what comes next.

The developers have made their case against protest petitions. Will anyone step up to argue in favor of discussing them? Will our elected officials consider this topic, or will the developers call the tune?

The Cornwallis/Lawndale group, the neighborhoods near Friendly who recently lost to Mega, David Craft, Robbie Perkins...will anyone take the lead?

Allen Johnson has an interesting post-mortem on the Guilford County elections.

He says the bonds wouldn't have passed if Hillary hadn't stayed in the race, thus increasing pro-bond turnout. Thanks, Hillary!

The part where Bruce Davis blames his skunking by Katie Dorsett on the Simkins PAC is doubly funny -- first because it comes after an item about the waning power of the PAC, and second because Davis doomed himself by coming across as an ill-informed opportunist in his challenge to the incumbent.

I like AJ's idea of running an expanded version of his newspaper column in his blog, too.

What Edwards wants from Obama: a focus on poverty.

Dole shakes up campaign staff.

Blue NC is unimpressed.

Dole has  a decent campaign site up.

Hagan/Dole is still not on the radar of some big-name analysts, including Cook and Sabato. Does that say more about the optimism of NC Democrats, or about the analysts (Cook has NC "solid republican" but hasn't updated since late March, Sabato's latest Senate update is from December '07)?

Seems that Kay Hagan's people should be very nice to Obama's people.

Don Luskin is an economic advisor to McCain, although I'm not sure what that title really means.

Not much, I hope.

CR leads his Yeah That Worked Out Well series with Kudlow, a fan fave around here.

Lisa Scheer took this pic late last month near Maxton, NC.

McCain campaign continues purge of staffers with "ties to private interests, foreign governments or independent political groups."

The numbers could add up. "A campaign spokeswoman said it was too soon to say how many campaign officials might be removed under the new rules...About a sixth of the campaign’s 106 top fund-raisers — dubbed innovators and trailblazers — are lobbyists."

It won't be easy: "[T]he new policy was disseminated by a former lobbyist: Mr. McCain’s top campaign adviser, Rick Davis...Another top strategist, Charlie Black, was one of Washington's best-known Republican lobbyists until he joined the campaign."

The Edgar award statuette is an oddly made thing, but this one sure looks nice in John Hart's Greensboro office (click image to enlarge).

Old rules vs new rules in TV news.

Blame for the new rules is said to lie in part with "the preponderance of sales managers becoming TV station general managers."

("Old rule: Follow the news director's lead   New rule: Who's the news director?")

From what I can tell, WXLV (ABC) is the only local station run by a sales person, and they don't even have local news any more, do they?

Last night's post on changes at Gannett and their impact on WFMY has been updated with reports of local job losses.

Last month a US court ruled that border agents can search your laptop, or any other electronic device, when you're entering the country. They can take your computer and download its entire contents, or keep it for several days. Customs and Border Patrol has not published any rules regarding this practice...

But the US is not alone. British customs agents search laptops for pornography. And there are reports on the internet of this sort of thing happening at other borders, too. You might not like it, but it's a fact. So how do you protect yourself?

Schneier has some answers.

The short version: "Delete everything you don't absolutely need."

Noonan says the Democrats are "busy being born. The Republicans? Busy dying."

Many are ambivalent, deep inside, about the decisions made the past seven years in the White House. But they've publicly supported it so long they think they . . . support it. They get confused. Late at night they toss and turn in the antique mahogany sleigh bed in the carpeted house in McLean and try to remember what it is they really do think, and what those thoughts imply.

And those are the bright ones. The rest are in Perpetual 1980: We have the country, the troops will rally in the fall.

...But this week a House Republican said publicly what many say privately, that there is another truth. "Members and pundits . . . fail to understand the deep seated antipathy toward the president, the war, gas prices, the economy, foreclosures," said Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia in a 20-page memo to House GOP leaders.

She also makes a point I've tried to make many times before: "What happens to the Republicans in 2008 will likely be dictated by what didn't happen in 2005, and '06, and '07. The moment when the party could have broken, on principle, with the administration – over the thinking behind and the carrying out of the war, over immigration, spending and the size of government – has passed. What two years ago would have been honorable and wise will now look craven. They're stuck."

Cillizza adds NC to his list of competitive Senate races: "Kay Hagan (D) ran a solid primary campaign and gets rave reviews from Democratic operatives who aren't easily impressed. Democrats are also overjoyed with several polls (of varying credibility) that show Hagan running virtually even with Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R). That seems a bit ambitious but with Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) promising to contest the Tarheel State and Hagan preparing to run a well funded and active campaign, this race could get interesting."

He's not from around here, so forgive him for calling NC "a conservative state" rather than the more accurate "a complex and changing state that should not be confused with the Deep South as it keeps Democrats running the show in Raleigh and elects a lot of Democrats to Congress but has gone Republican in presidential elections for a generation and Republican in Senate races during presidential years since 1968."

What kind of weak-kneed appeaser would even suggest talking to Hamas?

If you throw around historical terms on teevee, it helps to know what they mean.

Justin Catanoso is blogging in anticipation of the May 20 release of his book, My Cousin the Saint.

He'll be signing copies at the Friendly Center Barnes & Noble on June 3 at 7:30 pm.

I'm reading it now, it's quite good.

I ran into Justin after the Weatherspoon annual meeting on Wednesday night, and we ended up talking over dinner with the sculptor Judith Shea, who spoke at the meeting. Her piece, Urban Francis, is in the Spoon's new sculpture courtyard. Urban Francis (pictured at the previous link) is a take on St. Francis of Assisi, and the conversation about modern Americans -- no matter how detached from traditional Catholicism -- and our relationships with saints was pretty interesting.

Will WFMY gain jobs as Gannett consolidates operations? UPDATE: A commenter says, "1 word NO. We actually lost some very talented people today.  Sadly this is round 1 of local TV.   It will only get worse." Any information about layoffs is welcome, via comments or email.

UPDATE 2: A reader says WFMY is losing both its graphic artists, and all graphics will be imported from Denver.

UPDATE 3: Gannett Blog has more on the consolidation in Denver.

Alert reader CR passes along this tidbit from TV Spy:

"Gannett is purging stations - so far KPNX in Phoenix has lost 2 graphic artists - farming out to Denver also WTSP in Tampa is losing 8-6 MC-TOC and 2 graphic artists. Word has it, that WTSP is going to be run out of Greensboro NC. I would not be surprised to see WXIA, WMAZ and other east coast stations lose their MC functions."

More here.

"Same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, the California Supreme Court ruled  Thursday." Story here.

Previously: "I was reminded of the bass-ackwardness of the debate over gay marriage."

Previously: "I like to think that I love my family almost as much as opponents of gay marriage love their families."

Nick Carr gives Clay Shirky's cognitive surplus thesis (video version here) a critical reading; Shirky (and many others) respond in Carr's comments.

Carr and Shirky are both right, of course.

Previously: Shirky questions Carr's open-source analysis.

The Ginger v Mary Ann debate is raging everywhere.

That’s the brilliance of books like William Gibson’s Neuromancer and films like Blade Runner: They don’t predict a utopian future where technology makes people better; they predict an updated present where cooler gadgets are wielded by (and against) people who are just as flawed and scared as we are.

I'm always happy when I can sneak a little nerdiness into my geeky job.

Previously: PKD (who wrote the story on which Blade Runner was based) makes the transition from "genre-hack-to-hidden-genius."

Pete Newcomb posts a great remix of the Bill O'Reilly meltdown. Not safe for work, people with good taste, people who object to vulgar language, people who just ate, etc.

UPDATE: Local delegation won't propose protest petition bill for GSO because the city council didn't weigh in on the issue.

Interesting that Phil Berger was the lead vote against it, as it's a Greensboro issue and his relationship to Greensboro is the most distant of any "local" legislator.

Thanks for your leadership, city council!

You can contact council members here.

Keith Brown has an opinion column in this morning's N&R supporting protest petitions for Greensboro.

The silence of our city council on this issue is deafening.

Robbie Perkins said not long ago, "Greensboro developers need to reverse the perception that they get everything they want. Otherwise, the pendulum will swing and development in the city will be severely curtailed." He also said, "Protest petitions do not seem to have slowed other cities down. If the end result is higher quality development and restored trust in the approval process, I am supportive of the effort."

How's that going?

Jim Yardley files a wrenching report from Juyuan, China. "The bodies are everywhere. Some are zipped inside white vinyl bags and strewn on the floor. Others have been covered in a favorite blanket or dressed in new clothes. There are so many bodies that undertakers want to cremate them in groups. They are all children."

The other day on NPR Melissa Block had to work to compose herself after leaving a collapsed school.

NARAL and Edwards for Obama, Clinton passes on a chance to attack him...looks like the party-unity phase of the campaign has begun.

Maybe McCain's close ties to lobbyists will turn out to be a factor after all.

I hope the N&R collected its normal ad rates for this letter to the editor from the head of the local realtor's association.

Maybe the association will make up the difference to anyone who buys into this "stable and quite affordable" market if prices continue to go down. As noted in the second link, we're not as bad off as many parts of the country, but it seems a little early to declare even the local problem solved. I'm still hearing stories -- as recently as this morning -- about properties being sold at a loss.

That said, I'd guess GSO real estate is a good buy if you are in it for the long haul.

UPDATE: Greensboro Real Estate Blog offers a reality check: "Housing market news is getting a little hard to spin. Translated, the NAR is telling us that two of three metro areas tanked, and the GRRA may as well say, 'holy crap, there are a lot of houses for sale around here.'"

Alfred Brophy, guest-blogging at GreeneSpace, gets ready for a talk on "the relationship between landscape art and property law."

Often, he says, "landscape art is part of the celebration of human's use of land."

I borrowed the image of Frederick Church's painting of Natural Bridge, VA, even though it's offered as something of an exception to Brophy's theme, for the interesting-only-to-me reason that my great-great-grandmother Cone was from there.

The much-loved clip of a younger Bill O'Reilly acting like the kind of guy who might grow up to do this prompted Gawker to assemble a reel of on-camera meltdowns.

Here's a nasty little email phishing scam -- smarter than most, because it's keyed to something real: your tax rebate.

Over 130 million Americans will receive refunds as part of President Bush program to jumpstart the economy.

Our records indicate that you are qualified to receive the 2008 Economic Stimulus Refund.

The fastest and easiest way to receive your refund is by direct deposit to your checking/savings account.

Please click on the link and fill out the form and submit before May 16th, 2008 to ensure that your refund will be processed as soon as possible.

Submitting your form on May 16th, 2008 or later means that your refund will be delayed due to the volume of requests we anticipate for the Economic Stimulus Refund.

To access Economic Stimulus Refund, please click here.

© Copyright 2008, Internal Revenue Service U.S.A. All rights reserved.

The link takes you to an official-enough-looking website (if you don't look at the URL, which uses a Canadian domain, or note the email's sloppy punctuation and the confusion of "refund" and "rebate", etc.; the email is from "service@irs.gov") that asks for a bunch of sensitive info.

The "new Cold War" in the Middle East: "Team America is losing on just about every front. How come? The short answer is that Iran is smart and ruthless, America is dumb and weak, and the Sunni Arab world is feckless and divided."

Poor Lebanon.

"There is no district that is safe for Republican candidates," says DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen. Hyperbole, to be sure, but you can see why he's excited.

N&R says legislators should restore GSO's right to protest petitions.

Our delegation is leaning in that direction, but it would help to have the GSO City Council come out in support of the petitions.

If only there was a way to contact council members...

Jack Betts has a remembrance of an old Greensboro newspaper man, Holley Mack Bell, who died Sunday in Windsor, NC after a distinguished career in journalism.

Airline passengers behaving badly.

Some of the bad behavior is blamed on unhappiness with "being stuffed in close proximity with others and forced to share space...As planes get more crowded, people get more cramped. The decline in air service likely has also exacerbated the problem."

Huh. Who knew people didn't like being stuffed into close quarters and dealing with companies that don't seem to care about service?

To be clear, everybody on my flight the other night was polite to the flight attendants, and I'm such a little old lady about public behavior that during my layover in O'Hare I thought about printing up cards to hand out to my fellow passengers, with handy phrases like "A gentleman always covers his mouth when he yawns," and "Chewing gum in public is vulgar."

I'm scheduled to be on the Cavuto program on Fox Business Thursday evening to talk about airline service.

Personal Democracy Forum 2008, New York, June 23-24. I'm going. If you're interested in politics and the interwebs, you might want to go, too.

Howard Coble launches a campaign website.

Here's the one for his challenger, Teresa Bratton.

They're both on Facebook, too.