COVID-19 cases in North Carolina may actually be decreasing, even as media hysteria and local mask mandates rage on. Cases, based on the seven-day rolling average, says Jon Sanders, appear to be dropping, considering rates in North Carolina and neighboring states. Sanders is a senior fellow in regulatory studies and research editor at the John...
The N.C. Commission on Volunteerism and Community Service under the office of Gov. Roy Cooper has agreed to a settlement with the federal government after an investigation alleged falsified timecards and compliance documents for grants from the federal AmeriCorps program. AmeriCorps is a federal volunteer grant program established in 1993 to connect and fund students...
An eastern N.C.-based food truck owner is going to court to challenge a steep increase in the cost of doing business in Farmville. Mark Shirley, owner of the Ole Time Smokehouse food truck, filed a lawsuit today in Pitt County Superior Court. It challenges Farmville’s food truck rules as violating the N.C. Constitution. “We have...
ABC chairman A.D. Zander Guy Jr. has resigned as chairman of the N.C. Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission. ABC spokesman Jeff Strickland confirmed the resignation to Carolina Journal on Monday, Sept. 20. He offered no additional information. Gov. Roy Cooper, who appointed Guy as chairman in March 2017, will name a replacement. Guy’s resignation comes amid...
A split 2-1 state Superior Court panel has rejected North Carolina’s voter ID law, five months after holding a trial in the case. The court majority labeled the 2018 law racially discriminatory and unconstitutional. Judges Michael O’Foghludha and Vince Rozier, both Democrats, issued the majority opinion in the case. Judge Nathaniel Poovey, a Republican, dissented....
The N.C. prison system, comprising 55 facilities and employing roughly 16,000 staff, is one of the largest agencies in the state. That might surprise some, as prisons, from the real estate they occupy, to the critical role they play in governance, are not foremost in our minds when it comes to policy. In 2011, after...
John Locke Foundation CEO Amy Cooke says “we won’t comply” with President Biden’s plan to force private employers to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for workers. Cooke is publisher of Carolina Journal. “That one man – Joe Biden – wants to force free Americans to inject something into their bodies should be abhorrent to everyone,” Cooke said...
I arrived at the office at 9 a.m, my normal time to report to the Front Street offices of WNCN-TV, also known as NBC-17, the NBC affiliate at the time for the Raleigh-Durham media market. After graduating from Campbell University in 1995, I had been a working reporter for the new station, covering general news...
For five hours on Tuesdays, I had my mom all to myself. My older brother would go to his preschool near the airport in Columbus, Georgia, dad would go to Fort Benning for work, and she and I would return home to eat breakfast and watch Good Morning America. Those days were my favorite. There...
In a radio station newsroom, 8:45 a.m. typically represents a point of limbo. Newscasts for morning-drive programs are winding down, and anchor/reporters are starting work on new stories to compile and write for the rest of the day. As assignment editor for Raleigh’s AM 680 WPTF, I was placing and planning phone calls, shuffling Associated...
I was in Las Vegas, an assistant city editor for the afternoon daily newspaper, the Las Vegas Sun. I awoke that Tuesday morning to a clock radio, from which an announcer was talking about a plane flying into a building in New York City. He and another man were debating whether it was an accident....
