Carolina Politics Online

The bill before the House Judiciary Committee today comes from the Senate, but there are proposed amendments that Carrigan argues are weaker than the local laws already passed.

A clause was initially proposed forbidding local governments from creating their own anti-smoking ordinances, but it was pulled to allow the Supreme Court time to issue its opinion.

Public schools, health-care facilities, licensed childcare facilities, government buildings, elevators and public transportation except for taxis would go smoke-free under the bill, though some buildings would be allowed to maintain employee smoking areas.

Private residences, some hotel rooms, cigar bars, tobacco stores and private clubs would be specifically allowed to permit smoking.

And so would bars and restaurants, provided they applied for a smoking bar permit and met all the conditions.

The business would have to contain smoking in a special area not accessible to those younger than 18. The bar or restaurant would have to obtain a state alcohol license and post the hours during which smoking is allowed.

The Greenville News

Who comes up with this crap?  Special smoking hours?  A smoking bar permit? Special access areas for adults only?  What happened to clamping down on the laws that go too far??

This is why bureaucracy is so damn incompetent.  They just can’t do something simple.  Either ban it or don’t!  Don’t bog it down with all of these special exceptions and exemptions that will put the IRS tax code to shame.

There is a very easy answer to all of this, however, that seems to be escaping our “representatives.”  How about dropping the whole thing and try protecting private property rights for a change!  If I am a bar or restaurant owner it is not Columbia’s decision to tell me whether or not I can permit a perfectly LEGAL activity in my establishment and on my private property.  It’s my decision!  All of this nonsense is why the government needs to be kept out of our lives as much as possible.

And this Carrigan twerp needs to be tarred, feathered and run out of town for trying to use the government to infringe on our personal liberties.

FLORENCE — Florence attorney Stephen J. Wukela will run against Florence Mayor Frank Willis in the city’s upcoming Democratic primary. Wukela said he stands for leadership, openness and change in what he calls a city “divided against itself.”

“The center of that division, as I see it, is downtown Florence — it’s been left to rot,” he said. “It serves as nothing more than a haven for drugs and gangs. And for all of our leadership’s talk about downtown revitalization, nothing has been done in that core of our city, and that division remains.”

Morning News

U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint is using the Internet more than ever — perhaps more than any other Senator — to mobilize voters across the country behind some of his biggest issues, such as eliminating earmarks and strengthening the border.

He knows his ability to twist arms under the Capitol dome is often limited, but if he can craft a suitable message and spread it all over the Web, then eventually bloggers, talk radio hosts and the mainstream media will get the word out in a way DeMint never could before.

The Post and Courier

Jim DeMint is the taxpayer’s hero.  He has been at the forefront of rooting out waste in the Federal Government and while fiscal conservatives across this country may be getting frustrated feeling that we are getting nowhere on restoring fiscal sanity, there has been slow progress.  Just last week the House and Senate voted on an earmark moratorium.  Granted, it failed, but the fact that the vote even took place was a monumental step forward.

COLUMBIA — Government has all sorts of creative ways to strike a balance between enhancing your life and regulating it to death, and this two-year legislative session is no different.

“There are more inane laws introduced than you could shake a stick at,” House Majority Leader Jim Merrill, R-Daniel Island, said. “Somebody at the grocery store says they’re having trouble with this or that, and they (some legislators) feel they need to introduce a law about it.”

Among the several thousand bills filed this session were proposals to stop parents from smoking in cars if a child younger than 10 is riding along, suspend driver’s licenses for high school students who are absent too often and require restaurants to post notices if they serve food with trans fats.

There’s also a proposal that would prevent people from suing restaurants if they get fat.

The Post and Courier

I can’t believe I am actually hearing a lawmaker acknowledge this.  I mean, he’s right.  There are a lot of stupid laws out there and there are people in government who think that another law is the solution to every problem.  Those kind of people do not belong in Columbia or Washington.  There was a state legislator in Pennsylvania a few years back who introduced a bill that would have required people to seat belt their dogs when they have them in the car, had it passed.  This inanity is a waste of lawmakers’ time and our tax dollars at work.

Now that they acknowledge that such silliness inhabits the law books I would like to see them start introducing bills to repeal some of these laws.

Hilton Head Island developer David Staley and his financial partners this week backed out of a $26 million deal to buy the 316-acre port property, citing a lack of funds. The developer was supposed to have come up with $2 million to secure the deal by Monday. That deadline, which already had been extended twice, was missed.Sanford, who in November abstained from the state Budget and Control Board’s vote to sell the property to Staley and his Port Royal Harbour group, was widely criticized last month for relaying information about the developer to members of the S.C. State Ports Authority’s board of directors.

The criticism led Sen. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, to call for an investigation into Sanford, a stance he said Thursday wouldn’t change despite the sale falling through.

“The fact that we’re going to have to look for a new purchaser doesn’t change what happened,” Hutto said, adding that he expects the Senate’s Transportation Committee to grill three ports board members, including vice chairman Bill Stern, when they go before the committee next month for confirmation of their reappointments. “They’ll be under oath, and I’m sure they’ll have to answer questions about what went on.”

Hutto is not a member of the Transportation Committee.

But Sanford, who repeatedly has said he’d welcome an objective investigation, maintains he did nothing wrong and thinks last week’s events support what he was trying to get across.

“This is a fella who wasn’t experienced in large-scale, mixed-use development,” the governor said Thursday of Staley. “But now you’re going to experiment on your first deal? This is exactly what was uncovered when I did the due diligence, but I got widely criticized. It turns out all those suspicions that were raised when I did my due-diligence calls came to fruition.”

The Beaufort Gazette

It certainly looks that way. The guy was supposed to come up with the money to secure the deal twice and missed both deadlines. Sanford has been opposed to the land being sold to this developer. Now the developer backs out due to lack of funds. This would seem to vindicate Sanford’s objections about the land deal to this particular individual. There have been accusations flying from Sanford’s opponents that his objections were due to him favoring another buyer who has contributed financially to his campaign, but nothing has been proven.

It will interesting to see if this whole affair will simply fall by the wayside now. Sanford has a lot of political enemies, though, so they may not let it die so easily.

Thomas Wright is wasting no time to trying to get back his seat in the General Assembly.

The former New Hanover County legislator was booted Thursday from the N.C. House. Today, his attorney was at Wake County Superior Court, filing paperwork seeking to overturn the overwhelming vote.

Wilmington Star

You must admire the man’s spirit, but only for a few seconds at which point you remind yourself as to what a lousy sack of monkey crap he is.  Even if Wright truly believes he has done nothing wrong, which he knows damn well he’s guilty, but even if he legitimately believed he has been wrongly accused, why on Earth would he want to go back to Raleigh.  He is finished, washed up, kaput.  Nobody is going to give him the time of day.  He’d be ostracized from the time he’d return.  He wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything in the House because nobody would ally themselves with him.  Wright can no longer adequately represent his district.  He is tainted.  For once in your life, Mr. Wright, do the right thing.  Move on.

This marked the Cherryville Republican’s first trip to Iraq, something McHenry had been hoping to do for a while.

“It’s important to see this one-on-one rather than rely on others’ reporting,” McHenry said. “I wanted to ask questions myself.”

McHenry said he’d had a full day traveling around Baghdad, talking with soldiers and meeting with both U.S. and Iraqi officials.

McHenry spent almost two hours speaking with Gen. David Petraeus about the surge strategy.

“He was very candid. He didn’t sugarcoat anything, that’s not his style.” McHenry said. “My conclusion is it appears to be working. Attacks are down substantially over the last year.”

Another thing that surprised McHenry was the attitude of the Iraqi people, he said.

“Until I was here on the ground it did not feel as if the Iraqis wanted to pull themselves up. I had doubts about that,” McHenry said. “But meeting with local officials, they really want to take their country back.”

“Two years ago they wouldn’t have been able to do that at all,” McHenry said. “The market was closed.”

The Star

It’s nice to hear good news out of Iraq. I suspected there have been improvement over there for the simple reason that the media barely mentions it anymore. When the news was grim and there was day to day chaos you couldn’t turn on the television without hearing about it. Now, you have to actually take the time to look for news on Iraq. When the bad news dries up, the media disappears.

A federal judge may have provided a glimpse last week of how the court is leaning in a lawsuit that could change the way state legislative districts are drawn.A group of Republicans asked the federal court to halt the 2008 elections as part of the lawsuit it brought against state elections officials in November.

The lawsuit says the current district lines are unconstitutional because they were based on incorrect census data. As a result, several counties have been wrongly combined to form voting districts, the lawsuit says.

The court has not ruled on the merits of the suit, but a three-judge panel ruled in January that it would not halt the 2008 elections.

The News & Observer

There is a very simple way to eliminate this problem, not just in North Carolina, but all across the country.  Take away the power to draw districts from the state legislatures and put it in the control of an independent commission.  The districts should be drawn without prejudice in regards to political affiliation.  As far as I am concerned, draw a grid across the state, make any adjustments needed for population distribution, and be done with it.  The voters aren’t choosing their representatives; the representatives are choosing their voters.

A rally will be at 11 a.m. Wednesday at the coliseum.

Doors for the event will open at 11 a.m., and the event will begin at about 1 p.m. It will be open to the public – but because seating is limited, you will need a ticket, which will be available on a first come, first serve basis.

People wishing to attend the event can pick up a ticket here at the Guilford County Democratic Headquarters in Greensboro from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. today or tomorrow – or until tickets run out. There will also be tickets available from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. today and tomorrow at the Atrium at the UNC-Greensboro. One person may only pick up two tickets.

The News-Record

RALEIGH — Kay Hagan’s chief rival in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate has accused the state senator of using her status as a powerful and politically connected committee chairwoman to intimidate his potential supporters.

“There is an inside machine that is working very hard to lock down the money in the state,” said Jim Neal, a Chapel Hill investment banker and Greensboro native. On the stump and in phone calls to potential donors, Neal has told audiences that potential supporters were being “muscled” by political operatives friendly to Hagan.

The News-Record

You mean a politician is using her political connections to actually try and get elected? Get out! Don’t be such a wimp, Neal. If you can’t handle the election game how do you expect to tackle the U.S. Senate?

Pat McCrory found some small evidence that he can gain enough support outside Charlotte to win the Republican primary for governor.

Phyllis Stout of Carrboro approached the Charlotte mayor as he sat on a bench outside the Chapel Hill public library on a blustery weekday afternoon.

“I love your message, I love what you’re saying,” Stout, a real estate agent, told McCrory.

It turns out Stout used to work in Charlotte and came to the library with her mother. But the chance meeting helped affirm to McCrory his confidence in his campaign after attending a Republican women’s event that attracted about 30 people.

The Herald-Sun

McCrory has the potential to break the “Charlotte curse.”  He’s got a veteran campaign staff working for him and a strong message of real change in Raleigh.

“I’m going to change this culture where all the public servants are facing inward within the beltline of Raleigh, with their backsides to the public,” he told Republicans in Greensboro last week. “The culture in which they’ve lost touch with people and they start believing that they’re not the public servants anymore.” 

That’s about as good as you can put it.