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The slum lords of Facebook
The Victorian era gave birth to a very unpleasant custom called slumming. Parties of swells in London and New York would descend on impoverished neighborhoods as a form of entertainment. In addition to breaking up the tedium of their posh lives, the adventure made them feel superior. A much updated version of slumming has been taking place in Manhattan, where Facebook is arranging its initial public offering. This time, though, it’s the sup...
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Obama’s low blow on Romney
Mitt Romney went into the wrong line of work. If only he had been a lecturer in constitutional law, he wouldn’t have a business record vulnerable to distortion by a desperate incumbent president. Barack Obama’s hands, in contrast, are clean. He taught at the University of Chicago Law School and didn’t make the mistake of attempting to start, acquire or turn around companies. He has no business failures because he has no business successes —...
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The lawlessness of the Occupiers
The “Occupy” movement, which the Obama administration and much of the media have embraced, has implications that reach far beyond the passing sensation it has created. The unwillingness of authorities to put a stop to their organized disruptions of other people’s lives, their trespassing, vandalism and violence is a de facto suspension, if not repeal, of the 14th Amendment’s requirement that the government provide “equal protection of the l...
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When Americans tire of lies
While, in William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” Mark Antony said that the evil men do lives beyond their deaths, we now also see how quickly mean spirits can be exposed in the wake of the wickedness they have committed. The result is “Hell to tell the captain,” as they used to say down South. In jangled visions of entitlement, former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and those of President Barack Obama’s Secr...
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Gay marriage is not inevitable
President Barack Obama insists that he didn’t announce his support for gay marriage out of political considerations. He’s right. He did it out of self-regard. How it must have eaten away at him to be the first African-American president, yet not associate himself with what has been deemed the foremost civil-rights issue of the age. To be a progressive in favor of all things “forward,” but retrograde on marriage. To know that his stance was ...
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A better path to education
On the HBO series “Girls,” Hannah asks her boss at a publishing house for a salary. The 24-year-old has been working as an unpaid intern for over a year, and her parents will no longer support her. When the boss responds in the negative — “I am really going to miss your energy,” he coldly says — Hannah notes that another young woman hired as an intern is now getting paid. “Joy Lin knows Photoshop,” he says. Education and the tech skills e...
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North Carolina’s double-edged sword
More than a third of voters turned out for North Carolina’s primary elections, far higher than the normal turnout in a presidential year and almost as high as the record turnout for the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama slugfest in 2008. But this year’s primary electorate was quite different from the one that turned out four years ago. It overwhelmingly placed a marriage amendment in the state Constitution, winnowed several crowded congressional...
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The no-named terrorists of the Left
The Cleveland Five are a sad-sack collection of wannabe terrorists if there ever was one. The amateurish young men who plotted to destroy a bridge outside Cleveland last week give the impression of needing the attention of a guidance counselor as much as a federal prosecutor. But there’s no mistaking the seriousness of their attempted act. They allegedly planted what they thought were live bricks of C-4 underneath a well-traveled bridge con...
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Republic relies on less partisanship
A CNN journalist recently conducted a study examining how responsive our state legislators are to their constituents. The reporter sent an email to the official account of every North Carolina legislator. He clearly stated the purpose of his research and asked the legislator to acknowledge if they read the correspondence. They could even respond with a blank email. Simple right? Out of 120 legislators, only 37 responded. That’s a 30 percent...
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Prevent children from starting fires
The goal for this year’s Arson Awareness Week, which began on May 6 and will end on Saturday, is to focus the public’s attention on the prevention and reduction of fire setting by juveniles. According to the USFA’s National Fire Incident Reporting System data and the National Fire Protection Association, an average of 56,300 fires are started by children playing with fire each year. There were 110 civilian deaths, 880 civilian injuries an...
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We must protect beaches, tourism
We in Southeastern North Carolina are blessed to claim some of the nation’s most spectacular coastline as home. The beautiful beaches of our coast are indeed treasured natural resources, and the communities of the coast are inextricably tied to tourism and coastal recreation, the economic lifeblood of the Cape Fear region. While we are grateful for the natural beauty and economic opportunity the coast provides, it is important that we make ...
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Romney must choose a century
You have to wonder why some gay advocates — like a few believers in birth control, global warming and evolution — remain loyal Republicans even as the right wing drags their party back to the beginning of the 20th century, if not the 19th. While governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney planted himself mostly in the future. The likely Republican presidential pick has since renounced his modern views to appease the party’s powerful social conserv...
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Obama abandons freedom fighter
It’s hard to know which is worse: one’s grief over Chen Guangcheng’s fate or the fury over the Obama administration’s abandonment of him to that fate. Chen was already an internationally known human rights activist when he remarkably showed up at the U.S. embassy in Beijing last week seeking refuge. A blind, self-taught lawyer from Shandong province, Chen had been held prisoner for 19 months for the crime of publicizing Chinese atrocities b...
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During election, follow the money
May Day, Murdoch and the murder of Milly Dowler. What do they have to do with the 2012 U.S. general election? This year’s election will undoubtedly be the most expensive in U.S. history, with some projections topping $5 billion. Not only has the amount of spending increased, but its nature has as well, following the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which allows unlimited spending by corporations, unions and so-called super PA...
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Julia’s long life of dependence
In the competition for the creepiest campaign material of 2012, we may already have a winner. It is “The Life of Julia,” the Obama re-election team’s cartoon chronicle of a fictional woman who is dependent on government every step of her life. The phrase “cradle to grave welfare state” originated with Clement Attlee’s socialist government in post-World War II Britain. Back then, it was meant as a boastful description of a new age of governm...
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