Carolina Politics Online

I had to read this three times to make sure I was really reading what I thought I was reading.

A 65-year-old Rock Hill woman told police burglars broke into her home, cleaned her TV and watched VH1.

The woman left her home around 1:30 p.m. Tuesday and returned home at 4:15 p.m. to find that her Standard Street apartment had been entered by an unknown suspect, according to a Rock Hill police report.

She normally places tape on her door knob, but the tape had been removed. Also, she told police she sets up traps behind her door with bottles and powder, and the boxes had been moved, the report states. There was no forced entry.

She noticed her television was on VH1, a channel she doesn’t watch, and suspects the burglar cleaned her TV because the television had a layer of dust on it before she left, the report states.

The Herald

It’s strange enough that someone broke into her house, not to rob her, but just to watch tv after cleaning it for her.  But then to read on that she normally sets booby traps before she leaves?  What the hell?  Who does that??  Is it a common theme for people to illegally enter her home and clean it against her will?

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WASHINGTON — The Democratic Party is considering four cities to host the 2012 political convention expected to nominate President Barack Obama for a second term.

Three of the cities – Cleveland, St. Louis and Minneapolis – are in likely battleground states while a fourth – Charlotte, N.C. – is in the Republican-friendly South.

The Washington Post

Oh great.  That’s just what we need is one of those circuses coming here, although I’m sure the local businesses wouldn’t mind the economic boost.

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Charleston businesswoman Linda Ketner is trying for an independent bid for South Carolina’s Senate seat that is currently held by Senator Jim DeMint.  Ketner ran for Congress in 2008 against Henry Brown in the First Congressional District and gave him quite a scare.  Brown won by a small margin of 52-48, the closest Brown has ever come to being defeated.  I imagine her campaign is fueled by the angst many Democrats have over their less than polished nominee, Alvin Greene.

I envision two scenarios here.  One, Ketner and Greene end up splitting the Democratic vote and maybe Ketner attracts some more moderate independents who feel DeMint is too conservative, but have no confidence in Greene.  In that case DeMint wins just as easily as he would just facing Greene.  On the hand, something could happen to Greene’s candidacy between now and November.  The man is facing felony charges and there is talk of investigating where his $10,000 filing fee came from.  If for some reason Greene is found unable to legally be a candidate prior to the election then I can see the Democratic Party rallying around Linda Ketner, in which case Jim DeMint will have a much tougher race on his hands.

I am all for having as many candidates on the ballot as possible because the voters deserve more than just one or two choices.  Ketner is currently collecting the signatures required to get on the ballot.  You can visit her Web site at http://www.ketnerforsenate.com/ if interested in assisting.

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Unknown vandals unhappy about atheists’ billboard in Charlotte, N.C., spray-painted “Under God” on the ad, the city’s atheist association discovered Monday. The defaced message will remain in place until after July 4, the group reports, which is the soonest that workers can furnish a fresh billboard image.

The billboard reads, “One Nation Indivisible,” which is the phrase preceding the 1954 insertion of the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance, reports the Charlotte Observer’s Tim Funk. The billboard was erected on Billy Graham Parkway last week. (Graham is, of course, the state’s famous evangelical preacher.)

Similar North Carolina ads have gone up in Asheville, Greensboro, Wilmington, Raleigh, and Winston-Salem as a Fourth of July project by the area’s atheist association. The group has filed a police report and will replace the billboard.

Yahoo! News

I bet who ever vandalized this billboard was pretty upset when they saw anti-war protesters opposing George Bush defacing him on signs and other media.

Everybody has the right to free speech.  Just because someone doesn’t believe in God doesn’t mean they are subjected to having any less rights to their opinion than the majority who do believe.  Charlotte Atheists & Agnostics paid for the use of the billboard and they have just as much right to voice their opinion as anybody else.  These vandals have absolutely no respect for the First Amendment of our Constitution, yet I’ll bet the cowards consider themselves great American patriots.

On a related note, a lot of people don’t even know that the phrase “under God” was not part of the original Pledge of Allegiance.  It was added to it over 60 years later as a symbol to combat the growing threat of Communism in the eastern world.

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Congressional candidate Jim Pratt won the Republication nomination in a recount in which he was certified as the winner over Nancy Harrelson by 111 votes.  Pratt will now face Congressman Jim Clyburn in the November election.  Harrelson ran against Clyburn in 2008  Clyburn handily defeated her, receiving 67.5% of the vote.  The district is a gerrymander special, carved out to specifically elect a black Democrat.  It encompasses the cities of Columbia, Florence, Sumter, and North Charleston.  The Cook Partisan Voting Index scores this seat as D+12 which puts it pretty handily in the Democrats’ column.  Although it’s not impossible for there to be an upset, especially with all the anti-incumbent angst this year, I don’t expect to see Mr. Clyburn leaving Washington.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. — Legislators will decide the fate of a bill requiring South Carolina voters to show a photo ID and also allowing them to cast a ballot early.

The bill could die Tuesday unless the House and Senate agree. House GOP leaders say showing a photo is an issue of voter integrity, but they don’t like pre-Election Day voting. A compromise between House and Senate Republicans allowed eight days of no-excuse early voting, but in only one location per county. It also limited other absentee voting.

The Sun News

I don’t really have an issue with early voting.  I’m not certain what the outcry is about allowing that, but as far as showing identification to vote, that is just plain common sense.  The best way to reduce fraud and protect electoral integrity is to have voters show an ID an prove that they are who they say they are.  Duh!  Why is this always so controversial?

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The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in South Carolina shows Haley, the winner of a GOP Primary runoff last Tuesday, with 52% support. Sheheen, a state senator, earns 40% of the vote. Three percent (3%) like some other candidate in the race, and five percent (5%) are still undecided.

Rasmussen Reports

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Like most Americans, I’m thankful that the Supreme Court recognized the right of Americans to possess a firearm in defense of themselves and their families.  It is statistically proven that cities which have implemented gun bans have seen their share of violent crimes increase and when the bans are done away with violent crimes decrease.  Case and point, Washington D.C.

What disturbs me about the ruling is that it was arrived at by a mere one vote majority, a vote of 5 to 4.  This should have been a unanimous ruling, but the four left wing members of the SCOTUS apparently feel that state and local government should be able to usurp your Constitutional rights.  One judge could have made that possible.  This should serve as a dangerous reminder to all Americans just how important the presidential election is.  It is the President who nominates these justices to the Supreme court and the lower appellate courts.

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In her letter to Napolitano, Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., called on Homeland Security to find out and report more on the extent of the problem. She cited several troubling developments that would point to Hezbollah creeping closer to and inside the United States, with the help of Mexican drug gangs.

“It is vital we know what is happening on our border, especially as crime and violence continue to rise there and as terrorist plots and threats are increasing inside the U.S.,” she wrote.

Myrick outlined a complex set of potential threats and evidence of their existence. She said “Iranian agents and members of Hezbollah” are thought to be learning Spanish in Hugo Chavez-run Venezuela before trying to obtain false documents to enter the United States as purported Mexicans. She said Hezbollah, known for its tunnel-digging skill, could be receiving drug money from cartel operations in exchange for help forging better tunnels across the U.S. border for trafficking.

She said gang members in prisons in the American southwest are starting to show up with tattoos in Farsi, implying a “Persian influence that can likely be traced back to Iran and its proxy army, Hezbollah.”

Fox News

This is the most important reason why our southern border needs to be secured and this is something that many people following 9-11  have speculated could happen.  With as porous as the southern border is, how hard would it be for a terrorist group to sneak across with a bomb or some other kind of weapon and smuggle it into one of the U.S.’s cities?  Hundreds if not thousands of people run across that border every single day.

This is a clear and present danger and it just flies in the face of logic that the Congress and this administration are just sitting on their hands for political reasons.  We don’t need a comprehensive immigration reform bill passed in order to secure our border.  That is part of the Constitutional duty of both the President and the Congress.  Their game of political football may cost us the lives of innocent Americans.

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Not surprisingly, the North Carolina State Senate almost unanimously decided that you can’t be trusted on how to spend your money.  They have to make that decision for you because they’re better and more intelligent than you.  The Senate passed Senate Bill 38, the companion to House Bill 80, to ban the continuation of Internet sweepstakes in North Carolina by a vote of 47 to 1.  The only member of the Senate that stood up for individual freedom was Senator Julia Boseman (D-Wilmington).

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Raleigh – A vote of 63 to 45 in the House gave tentative approval Thursday to a measure that would dictate what children could have to drink in private child care facilities.

House Bill 1726

These dictates would include a prohibition against serving sugar-sweetened beverages to children of any age; a prohibition against serving whole milk to children two years of age or older; a prohibition against serving flavored milk to any child; an absolute daily limit of six ounces of juice for any child regardless of age or how long the child is cared for; and a prohibition against juice served in a bottle, regardless of age. Primary sponsors are Democratic Representatives Jennifer Weiss (D-Wake), Bob England (D-Rutherford), Marian McLawhorn (D-Pitt) and Doug Yongue (D-Scotland).

Lincoln Tribune

It’s the same mentality we saw last week with State Senator Marc Basnight regarding the Internet sweepstakes.  These self-appointed authoritarians think you are too stupid to properly take care of your family and therefore they will lay down rules on how to raise your children because they know better than you.  If this passes the Senate and gets signed by the governor somebody should sue because I think this is unconstitutional.

How long are you folks in North Carolina going to put up with this nanny state attitude from your state government?  These people are supposed to be preserving your liberty, not stepping on it.  Everyone that voted for this bill in the State House should be removed from office.

Every Democrat in the House voted for the bill with the exception of four who voted no, four who weren’t present, and the House Speaker Joe Hackney who didn’t vote.  The four no votes were State Representatives Kelly Alexander (Charlotte), Pryor Gibson (Wadesboro), Pricey Harrison (Greensboro), and Nick Mackey (Charlotte).  The four Democrats who weren’t present to vote were: Earline Parmon (Winston-Salem), Ronnie Sutton (Pembroke), Russell Tucker (Pink Hill), and Douglas Younge (Laurinburg).

Four Republicans also voted for this bill.  These authoritarians who think they can better raise your family than you can were: Larry Brown (Kernersville), Phillip Frye (Spruce Pine), Robert Grady (Jacksonville), and David Guice (Brevard)

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I love when the establishment loses and that’s one of the benefits that came out of this past Tuesday’s run off election in North Carolina’s 21st State Senate District.  Democratic voters in the 21st told the party establishment to piss off when they overwhelmingly supported political newcomer Dr. Eric Mansfield over former Cumberland County Democratic Party Chairwoman Lula Crenshaw.

Dr. Eric Mansfield captured the Democratic Party’s nomination for the 21st District with a convincing win this week, surprising party officials and defeating a partisan heavyweight.

Mansfield, who is 45, acknowledged that he didn’t know what he was doing when he started knocking on doors in the snow in January. One man whom Mansfield met on Seabrook Road gave him a candid assessment.

“He said, ‘You don’t know the neighborhood, you don’t know politics and you don’t know what you’re doing,’ ” Mansfield said.

The man was right, Mansfield said. He said the Cumberland County Senior Democrats club told him the same thing in January.

He took the message as a personal challenge.

“We had a lot of work to do, and we set out to do it,” he said. “We learned a lot.”

In Tuesday’s primary runoff, he defeated Lula Crenshaw, a former county party chairwoman, 62 percent to 38 percent, according to unofficial results.

In the May primary, he led a five-candidate field that included a former five-term city councilman.

The Fayetteville Observer

Dr. Mansfield is an Ears, Nose, and Throat Specialist with a practice in Fayetteville.  He served honorably in the 82nd Airborne Division of the United State Army and he is an active member in his church and community.  As a doctor he supports greater free market competition in health care, tort reform, and Medicaid cost and fraud controls, in order to bring down medical costs so that heath care services will be more affordable to people in the state.  He also recognizes the need for improvement in the education system and the tax structure for small businesses.  He was endorsed by the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce.

While Mansfield will face a Republican opponent in the general election, the 21st is heavily Democratic and it’s highly unlikely Mansfield will be defeated.  I think he’ll make a great state senator for Cumberland County.

Standing up for what is right from kassaye kassaye on Vimeo.

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DURHAM — City Council members voted 6-1 Monday night to suspend any city-funded travel by Durham officials to Arizona, reserving the right to approve exceptions proposed by their top aides.

The vote came in protest of recent moves by Arizona’s government to crack down on illegal immigrants, and answered a request from Durham’s Human Relations Commission.

The vote Monday, though, came on a compromise resolution sponsored by Mayor Bill Bell.

Bell’s draft left open the possibility that council members might OK trips suggested by City Manager Tom Bonfield, City Attorney Patrick Baker or City Clerk Ann Gray.

It also embraced language submitted by Councilman Eugene Brown that called on federal officials to get on with a comprehensive reform of U.S. immigration laws.

It should, members agreed, simultaneously tighten border controls, establish “a path to earned legalization, citizenship and social integration” for immigrants already here and help other countries secure the economic development they need to “reduce the flow of immigrants in the first place.”

Bell said he thought the travel limits would have little effect on city operations or on Arizona’s economy.

The Herald-Sun

Which is exactly what I was thinking as I was reading through this.  How much business does the City of Durham, North Carolina actually do with the State of Arizona?  I’m guessing, not a whole lot.  Yeah, I’ll bet the State of Arizona is just throwing a temper tantrum over this.

On a serious note, I understand some of the concerns people have with Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, but people around this country like the city council in Durham and the city council in Los Angeles instituting these so-called  boycotts really need to grow up.  Arizona has a serious problem with illegal immigration and nobody in Durham, North Carolina can possibly relate to the issues they are dealing with.  If the Federal government had done its job, Arizona wouldn’t have been pushed into doing this.  They ought to take a lesson from Atticus Finch.  “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

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CONCORD – Eighth District political campaigns may be taking a breather for the moment, but they have a lot of intra-party healing to do before November.

For incumbent Larry Kissell, he is running on his record from his first term in Congress, which includes a no-vote on the health care reform law.

Meanwhile, GOP candidate Harold Johnson has his work cut out for him, trying to win Tim D’Annunzio’s supporters to back him against Kissell.

That may be easier said than done.

Independent Tribune

Boy, you can say that again.  That was one of the most brutal primaries I’ve ever seen.  Seriously, Hollywood could not have written something so absurd.  The cast of characters in this whole ordeal may as well have been straight out of a Monty Python flick.

Honestly, I don’t think Johnson will have as hard of a time getting D’Annunzio supporters to go with him in November as some may suspect.  If conservatives really want the Democrats out of the majority that badly, they’re going to vote for him even if they do so grinding their teeth.  This could be a good opening for Thomas Hill, though, the Libertarian candidate.  If he could get the resources, he might be able to gather up some of the disaffected D’Annunzio supporters to back him.

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The unions really didn’t do their homework on this one.

Concord Democrat Wendell Fant announced today that he won’t run as a 3rd party challenger to Democratic U.S. Rep. Larry Kissell.

Fant said he decided to “put my family ahead of my own political ambitions.”

A group called N.C. Families First successfully petitioned election boards throughout the 8th District in support of Fant’s candidacy. Backed by the State Employees Association of North Carolina and the Service Employees International Union, the group opposes Kissell because of his votes against some major Democratic legislation, particularly health care.

Fant’s decision means the group will not appear on 8th District ballots this fall.

Charlotte Observer

Looks like Kissell caught a break.  N.C. Families First (yeah, right) is just a shadow puppet for the unions.  The far left has been up in arms over Kissell’s more moderate positions.  Apparently, they don’t understand that he represents a Republican leaning district and no Democrat could win that seat espousing the radical leftist views the unions would have them do.

On an interesting note, I think I know Wendell Fant.  I think he used to work in my office a few years ago.  At least I assume it’s the same guy.  How many Wendell Fants can there possibly be?

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I’ve installed a plugin that will allow nested comments now.  This means if you want to reply to a comment somebody made under one of our posts there will now be a reply link you can click on and your comment box will appear under there’s, slightly indented.  This way it’s easier to keep track of who is replying to you.  You should also get an option to notify you by email if you want to know when someone replies to your comment.

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Yes, we’re tweeting now.  I’ve finally gotten around to it.  If you want to follow us on Twitter you find us at http://twitter.com/CarolinaPolitic

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This is a test post to test the Twitter uplink

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Do you remember a month ago when I warned you about a piece of legislation called the Disclose Act?  Well, it passed the U.S.  House about an hour and a half ago.  Just to recap the dangers this bill presents:

The point of the legislation would be to force corporations sponsoring a political ad to disclose their identity, even to the extreme of the CEO having to appear at the end of the ad in a disclaimer.  However, it’s the more ominous language in the bill that has raised the eyebrows of those in the blogosphere and questioning if this legislation could unconstitutionally impact us as well.  The issue is with the language.

Under the bill, the F.E.C. would have the authority to require disclosures regarding the funding of “coordinated communications,” defined in the bill as “a publicly distributed or disseminated communication that refers to a clearly identified candidate for Federal office” and is publicly distributed or disseminated within four months prior to an election. In other words, political ads. And this bill would specifically target those paid for by someone or some entity other than the candidates.

The bill specifically exempts certain forms of media from being considered “coordinated communications” and regulated by it, but blogs aren’t specifically listed.

OpenCongress

And that is what is sounding the alarm.  Here is the language of the bill stating who exceptions apply to.

‘(4) EXCEPTION- The term ‘covered communication’ does not include—

‘(A) a communication appearing in a news story, commentary, or editorial distributed through the facilities of any broadcasting station, newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication, unless such facilities are owned or controlled by any political party, political committee, or candidate;

There is no mention of blogs in the list of communication and there is no language specifically exempting the communication of a private individual like myself and others who write Web sites like this.

It’s uncertain if this bill will make it through the Senate. After all, as the saying goes the Senate is the place where legislation goes to die. If they do pass it then we have an open door to Stalinism right here in the United States.  Think it’s out of the question that the Federal government couldn’t abuse this law to shut down Web sites like this one and others that they feel are a threat to their power just like they do in countries like Iran, China, and Singapore?  Think again.

The following Congressmen from North and South Carolina voted for this bill today:

• Bob Etheridge (D-NC-02)
• David Price (D-NC-04)
• Larry Kissell (D-NC-08)
• Heath Shuler (D-NC-11)
• Brad Miller (D-NC-13)
• John Spratt (D-SC-05)
• Jim Clyburn (D-SC-06)

The following members voted against the act to preserve freedom of speech:

• G.K. Butterfield (D-NC-01)
• Walter Jones (R-NC-03)
• Virginia Foxx (R-NC-05)
• Howard Coble (R-NC-06)
• Mike McIntyre (D-NC-07)
• Sue Myrick (R-NC-09)
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC-10)
• Mel Watt (D-NC-12)
• Joe Wilson (R-SC-02)
• Bob Inglis (R-SC-04)

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