The war on weapons This country has a problem with the proliferation of guns — but it’s best demonstrated not by the tragedy in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, but by what happens in Robeson County almost every week, routinely without the obligatory outrage.
As the debate begins in Washington, D.C., on how to turn back the tide of gun deaths — which receded for decades before a recent rise — expect no more than a dog-and-pony show if the conversation stalls on AK...
Safety first This newspaper considered a comprehensive story about school safety in the Public Schools of Robeson County following the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
But we took a pass because we didn’t want to give any sick minds an idea.
We were pleased to report on a presentation by Stephen Gaskins, an assistant superintendent for the school system, to the Board of Education on Tuesday, during which he said safety enhan...
NAACP adrift The new president of the local chapter of the NAACP obviously didn’t pluck a page from Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” before appearing in front of the Robeson County Board of Commissioners this week.
Robert Davis, while lobbying the commissioners to hire a black assistant county manager, probably vanquished the already remote chance of that happening. We also doubt Davis and the organization made many friends, mor...
The state v. gaming The state of North Carolina and the video gaming industry are now in a struggle to see who can outflank the other in a staring contest that is being widely watched — and has ramifications on this state’s economy and law enforcement.
The video industry, which is far more nimble than a ponderous government, is currently idled by a state ban that took effect on Thursday, but industry officials are confident they will soon be back to work. They...
A job for another day President Obama and Congress this week didn’t succeed in steering this country away from the fiscal cliff. At best, they backed the bus away from it slightly, but the cliff is clearly down the road.
Without their action, it’s true that a half billion dollars would have been jerked out of this nation’s economy, causing sticker shock to tens of millions of working Americans when they opened their next paycheck. Taking that much out of the eco...
Clarity at UNC The Martin report, an examination of the alleged abuse at the University of North Carolina both athletically and academically, landed with a thud, not an explosion, when it was released on Dec. 20.
The report, which was led by Jim Martin, a former North Carolina governor, U.S. congressman and chemistry professor at Davidson College, found that there was “no athletic scandal” at UNC, but that there were “serious anomalies” in the Department ...
A vote of confidence The best word to characterize Dock Locklear’s six-plus years as supervisor of the Robeson County Elections Office might be uneventful.
And that would be hefty praise. An elections supervisor, like a football referee, is best unnoticed — and the soft-spoken Locklear managed that, for the most part anyway, pretty well.
Locklear this week announced he was retiring, effective at the end of the year. The local Board of Elections is tentatively...
Answering the call A 25-year-old woman died Sunday night in Robeson County, presumably from drowning, when her car plunged into a creek and rescuers could not reach her in time.
Following the death of Yessica Rodriguez, a resident of White Oak, this newspaper received information that the 911 communications center at the Robeson County Sheriff’s Office might have failed in its duty — a message we were not eager to receive, but it required us to ask some hard ...
The true measure The last few days haven’t favored the U.S. Constitution, that venerable 225-year-old document from which all that is great about this country has derived.
On Thursday, a Superior Court judge in Cumberland County commuted the sentences to life in prison of three death row inmates, including two who had killed police officers. The lives of Christina “Queen” Walters, Tilmon Golphin and Quintel Augustine will be spared — barring a successful ap...
A gift to consider It really is the season.
Not a day goes by once December arrives that this newspaper doesn’t learn of another local effort to ensure that needy children in Robeson County have something to unwrap on Christmas Day. It is clear that there is no correlation between wealth and generosity, because ours, an impoverished county, takes care of its own.
We are proud of our effort, The Empty Stocking Fund, which has raised more than $1 million sinc...
Hector MacLean The difficulty when extolling the virtues of Hector MacLean and his many gifts to Lumberton and Robeson County, beyond time and space, is this: Where do we begin?
We pick Interstate 95, acclaimed as this nation’s busiest highway, a north-south interstate that connects the Northeast with the southern tip of Florida, with Lumberton and Robeson County fortuitously located at about the halfway mark. As the story goes, plans were originally for ...
Tribal warfare There’s a reason that the Lumbee constitution mimics that of the United States, providing a checks-and-balance system through three branches — the executive, legislative and judicial. The checks-and-balance system is the best form of government mankind has yet imagined, enabling governance while providing safeguards that prevent any of the branches from grabbing and then clinging to too much power.
The current Lumbee tribal government, howe...
SRMC gets aggressive About one in four patients treated and then discharged at Southeastern Regional Medical Center is back at the hospital within a month, a high percentage, but one that should be kept in context, meaning factors beyond the hospital’s control, especially local demographics, must be part of the conversation.
The reality is that SRMC serves an unhealthy populace, one that suffers disproportionately with obesity, heart disease, diabetes and subst...
Let’s talk about sex We doubt there is a shorter path to poverty than to have a child as a teenager. But even that can be quickened with the addition of a second or perhaps a third child.
All the statistics testify to the same future: When teenage girls become pregnant, their odds of an education and a career are greatly diminished and their children join in suffering the consequences of impending and pervasive poverty. Don’t depend on Dad because he won’t be a...
Smoke screen The knife that the Clinton administration plunged into the heart of the tobacco industry in the late 1990s still gets an occasional twist, and this week it came from a federal judge.
U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ruled Tuesday that tobacco companies must pay for and publish corrective statements saying that they lied about the dangers of smoking. There was, believe it or not, a time long gone when tobacco companies not only denied that...
