developments in North Carolina

Two interesting news items out of North Carolina today. One has national relevance and one is more local but both interest me.

First, Former U.S. Senator John Edwards launched his second bid for the White House today by calling on Americans "to be patriotic about more than war" and backing a grassroots effort to rebuild the country and its global reputation. He did this from the Ninth Ward of New Orleans for the symbolic impact.

Now Edwards just needs to shed the image of John Kerry and the implicit rampant liberalism that carries. It's political death in a national election to be seen to be that far to the left. I think some good marketing can put Edwards in the White House but as things stand right now, the election will be influenced more by the ineptitude of the Bush team than as it is by the Democratic Party.

Edwards was born in South Carolina and has lived most of his life in North Carolina so he's definitely a candidate with Southern roots. Given his strong push to develop international experience in the past 2 years it'll be interesting to see how his entry into the presidential race works out. His recent work on poverty should help him but going up against more well known names like Clinton and Obama will be daunting. Edwards lives about 10 miles from where I do so I'll be watching his campaign with considerable interest simply because he's so local.

The other local interest story concerns Durham County District Attorney Michael Nifong. He's been in the news quite a bit due to the Duke University Lacrosse Team rape investigation. It was pretty obvious here--Durham is just a few miles away--that the whole case reeked to high heaven within a few days of the "alleged incident". Now the miscarriage of justice is getting official notice.

The North Carolina State Bar has filed an ethics complaint against Duke lacrosse prosecutor Michael Nifong. The complaint accuses him of breaking four rules of professional conduct when speaking to the reporters about the high-profile case.

I hope he's disbarred. And some jail time would be nice also. It was quite plain from that first week that he was grandstanding for popular opinion and dragging the reputation and future of a group of kids did not matter to Nifong. Normally I don't care too much for Duke University (it's the big rival for the school I work at) but what Nifong did was just unconscionable--and he should pay dearly for his actions. That was politics at its worst.


This is an odd little gift my youngest nephew had in his Christmas Stocking. As you can see from the picture, it's a cartoonish styled reindeer.

The deer comes with jellybeans and you feed them into the deer via an opening between the head and body accessed by bending the head downwards. The jellybeans are then stored in the belly of the deer.





To get them out of storage there's a mechanical action that forces them out of the back of the reindeer. Since all the jellybeans are dark in color it leaves little to the imagination as to the symbolic meaning of the jellybean. Ewww!