Oh, Hail!

We got hammered with a mighty hail storm this afternoon. It was only about nickel-sized, but there was a lot of it, driven hard by wind. It crushed our previouly healthy tomato plants (you'll see them on the patio) and punched a dozen holes in our sunroom skylights, allowing the rain to pour in. There wasn't anything I could do while it was happening, so I just shot some video. Here it is.

Hammer Watch: Rhino Times editor puts on his tinfoil hat

In his Under The Hammer column in this week's Rhinoceros Times (a Greensboro, NC weekly newspaper, article not online), editor John Hammer regurgitates as serious the intellectually bankrupt idea that "[P]eople who might cause problems for the Clintons have had a habit of dying in unusual circumstances."

Hammer proceeds to offer his "evidence." It requires his readers to suspend their good judgment and abandon all reason. Why Hammer perpetually expects his readers to be so naive, I don't know. It seems rather contemptuous of his audience, as if he must be thinking to himself, "My readers are dumb enough to buy this crap."

First on Hammer's list is the suicide of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster. Hammer writes "[W]hen a top White House official dies of a gunshot wound, you would expect there to be a full autopsy and there was not." Hammer is quite simply wrong about this. A full autopsy was performed. Doubt it? Read this exhaustive investigation into Foster's death. The investigation was conducted by Kenneth Starr, yes that Ken Starr. It concludes that Foster's death was a suicide. To believe otherwise, is to ignore the empirical evidence and assume that Clinton nemesis Starr was in on "it."

Next up, Hammer turns to the plane crash in which former Secretary of Commerce Ron Borwn died along with 34 other people. Hammer describes the crash as "bizarre," although he doesn't explain why the crash was bizarre. In truth, although Hammer incorrectly writes that the crash occurred on a "relatively clear day," the cause of the crash was an improperly executed instrument landing -- tragic, but not bizarre. Hammer reminds us that Brown had a wound in his head that looked like a gunshot wound. He fails to tell us that an examination of Brown's skull by military officials "revealed no bullet, no bone fragments, no metal fragments and, even more telling, no exit wound."

Finally, Hammer offers former White House intern Mary Mahoney who was murdered in a botched robbery. The perpetrator, who was also "accused in the shooting homicide of a security guard in 1993, the attempted murder of a police officer, and four armed robberies" confessed to Mahoney's murder, plead guilty and received a life sentence without the possibility of parole while not once attempting to mitigate his punishment by claiming to be a Clinton operative.

Hammer also incorrectly asserts that victim Mahoney was "going to go public with her story of sexual harassment at the White House." There is zero substantiation of this. Prior to the Monica Lewinsky scandal breaking, Newsweek writer Mike Isikoff hinted that a White House staffer with the initial "M" was about to talk about her affair with Clinton. The "M" was Monica, not Mahoney. Doubt it? Ask Hammer how he "knows" that Mahoney was about to go public.

Snopes has a thorough examination of the distortions, misdirection, fabrications and just plain wrong assertions that people must resort to in order to put forth, as Hammer did, these tinfoil hat conspiracy theories.

If you suspect that your readers are unwilling or incapable of critical thinking, you may think you have an audience for these kinds of conspiracies. Since that seems to be where Hammer is coming from, maybe next week he will write about People With Connections To The Bush Dynasty Who Met With Suspicious And Untimely Deaths.

From local blog post to national news: Ed Cone on Fox Business

Inspired by his blog post about poor airline service, Fox Business invites Ed Cone to discuss his experience on-air with Neal Cavuto.

Another N&R letter-writer gets his facts wrong and once again, the editors let it ride.

A letter to the editor in today's News & Record by Robert A. Hahn of Greensboro claims that gas prices are going up because Democrats took away subsidies for the oil industry. Specifically, Hahn writes:

"The Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007. At that time, the economy was doing pretty well. One of the first things that the Democratic Congress did was to “punish” big oil by reducing subsidies."

Not true. The House of Representatives approved an energy bill in 2007 that would have reduced subsidies, but those provisions were rejected by the senate and the final bill, with subsidies intact, was signed into law by President Bush.

I don't know why the N&R continues to allow letters that contain factual errors. This is not an isolated incident. These are not matters of opinion that writers should be free to express. These are empirical untruths. One would think the N&R would not publish such inaccuracies, but they seem to have no compunction for doing so.

Site Launch: CobleForCongress.com

[UPDATE: Some visitors may have still been seeing the old site this morning. That problem has been rectified and everybody should see the new site now.]

We launched Congressman Howard Coble's new campaign web site this morning. It was one of the most challenging and most engaging web site design projects I've done. It's a real professional joy when a project requires one to spread the creative wings.

This was the first project for which I shot and edited video (on the home page). Tom Lassiter's and Stewart Pittman's how-to session at ConvergeSouth was a great headstart.

We also incorporated a nifty news management system that allows people to self-subscribe to the campaign's email news announcements. On the back end, the system gives the campaign a one-stop method of sending news to supporters and/or the press and simultaneously publishing the announcement to the web site.

The interface makes good use of the Spry javascript framework, doing the kinds of things that I think good web sites do, like minimizing the need for page reloads to display user selections. I also included a great Google Maps mashup from GovTrack.us that allows people to explore Congressman Coble's district down to the street level. (I knew that I was in the thirteenth congressional district, but I didn't know that my neighbors across the street are in Howard's sixth.)

I thank Howard Coble and his friendly staff for the opportunity to work with them. And thanks to to Bill Knight for the referral.

An Honest Campaign Ad

In response to an on-air caller yesterday, WZTK's Britt Whitmire improvised this "honest campaign commercial" . It's hillarious. (Thanks for the audio file, Britt.)

To "Operation Chaos" morons, uh, I mean "operatives"

Despite my prediction that North Carolina Republicans would be too smart to follow Rush Limbaugh's advice to switch parties in order to vote for Hillary Clinton, some apparently did. I heard one "operative" bragging about doing so on the Brad and Britt show on WZTK (101.1 FM) yesterday.

How did that work out for you, moran? Did your preference for governor win the Republican primary? How about your party's congressional candidates? Did your prefered county commissioner candidate win? Are you glad you left the choosing of the Republican candidates to others so that you could, uh, waste your time and your vote? Mission accomplished?

You are a great American.

I voted

I voted at 10:00 this morning -- was the 179th voter at my precinct.

Obama 58%?

I spent a little time last night looking at North Carolina voter demographics, new registrations, early voting turnout and historical voting patterns. Then I ran some "what-if" scenarios, making assumptions about how the vote might break down tomorrow. I came up with Obama winning 52% to 62% of the vote, with 56% - 58% coming up most often.

TV pundits are speculating this morning that the Clinton's strong presence in the state today might portend an upset. The only way that happens is if Obama gets less than 33% of the white vote or less than 70% of the black vote.

Hillary Clinton: "I was against the Michigan primary before I was for it."

Okay, not a real quote, but it might as well be. More than just a change of position, Clinton broke a signed pledge.

In September of 2007, all of the Democratic presidential candidates signed a pledge promising "I shall not campaign or participate in any state which schedules a presidential election primary or caucus before Feb. 5, 2008, except for the states of Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina..." Here is the pledge. Here is Clinton's press release announcing that she will sign it (which she did).

When Michigan decided to move its primary to January 15th, all of the Democratic presidential candidates honored their signed pledge, kept their word, and had their names removed from the Michigan ballot-- every one of them, except for Hillary Clinton.

Now Clinton is insisting that her broken pledge be used to her political advantage by calling for the Michigan vote to count.

We don't need another candidate of political expediency. We don't need a candidate who will so easily go back on her word when keeping it has a political cost. That's the same ol' same ol' that frustrates Americans of both parties. It's time for something new, something better. Hillary Clinton is not it.

News & Record editors offer misleading look at Congressional 6th district Dem primary

The News & Record opinion editors offered their analysis of the Congressional 6th district Democratic primary yesterday. The winner will go on to face 12-term Republican incumbent Howard Coble. Vying for the chance are Teresa Sue Bratton, Jay Ovittore and Johnny Carter. The editors endorsed Bratton, but then did something very strange. They wrote that Carter "doesn’t offer voters much to distinguish himself from the crowd."

Hardly. On his website, Carter offers some unique propositions, especially for a Democrat. Among them:

• He asserts that a plan is under way to dissolve the sovereignty of the United States and says "Our elected Global elitists will seal this program with a new money called the 'Amero'."
• He proposes a year-round school schedule to allow children to "graduate" by 9th grade.
• He would, "Remove all illegal non-citizens from this country."
• He says we should "Accept no visitors from known terrorist countries"
• He claims that the Pledge of Allegiance has been legislated out of our schools.
• He says that for a church to keep its tax-exempt status, "THE CHURCH MUST NOT CRITICIZE GOVERNMENT AGENCIES OR BUREAUS, THE WHITE HOUSE,NEW WORLD ORDER, CONGRESS, FEDERAL RESERVE, SUPREME COURT, ANY PENDING BILLS OR LEGISLATION, WELL KNOWN PUBLIC FIGURES OR INSTITUTIONS, ORDER OF SKULL AND BONES, OTHER SECRET SOCIETIES, FAITH GROUPS, CULTS OR RELIGIONS, NEW AGE MOVEMENT, UNITED NATIONS OR GLOBALIST GROUPS."
  

Carter also says he would, "Require the U.S. Arab Community to publicly denounce terrorism of any form or else remove their tax-exempt status. It is time to evolve." I wasn't aware that the U.S. Arab community had tax-exempt status, but saying so, and doing it with the implication that Arabs are less evolved, is something that certainly sets Johnny Carter apart from his opponents.

Another thing unique to Carter: According to the NC State Board of Elections, Carter has never voted in an election in this state. The N&R apparently avoided reporting this too, even though it was brought to their attention on at least two occasions.

Why would the N&R avoid giving readers an accurate and complete picture of Carter? I cannot be sure. Comments on the editorial's shortcomings have gone unanswered. I have a theory, though. If the N&R wants Bratton to win the primary, they benefit her by endorsing her then leaving readers to think that, if not her, there are two alternatives. If they had offered an honest assessment of Carter, they would have revealed him as not viable in a Democratic primary, casting the contest as a two-person race, which would make a win harder for Bratton. Either that or they got very lazy on this one. Hard to know.

Why "Operation Chaos" dies in North Carolina

Rush Limbaugh has been encouraging his Republican listeners to vote for Hillary Clinton in their state's primaries. The race for the Republican nomination for governor will keep that from happening in North Carolina.

Our state has a "modified closed primary" which means that voters registered to a party must vote in that party's primary. Unaffiliated voters may choose which party's primary in which to vote. Like other states with closed primaries, Republicans would have to switch their party registrations in order to vote for Hillary Clinton in North Carolina, presumably to later switch back before the general election. North Carolina Republicans won't find that idea appealing because of what they would have to give up--a chance to nominate a candidate for governor with a good chance of winning.

There are four candidates running for the nomination, each has appeal, although it appears as if it will come down to Fred Smith or Pat McCrory. With the Democratic incumbent governor Mike Easley not running for re-election, this will be the best chance in years for Republicans to have a shot at the governorship. North Carolina Republicans are not going to ignore a serious good chance to nominate their best gubernatorial candidate in order to participate in pointless tomfoolery.

There's one more reason why the governor's race will keep Republicans in their primary. It seems possible, if not likely, that none of the Republican candidates will get above the requisite 40% to win the nomination in the first go-round. That would mean a runoff election and in North Carolina, if you vote in one party's primary, you cannot vote in another party's runoff election. North Carolina Republicans just have too much at stake to waste their vote at a time when it really will matter.

24 is larger than 900? N&R writer gets her facts wrong.

In a counterpoint column in the News & Record today, writer Jo Lynn of Greensboro suggests that if city counselor Mike Barber wants to consider re-opening the White Street Landfill, he should think instead about opening a landfill in his district. Lynn says that she even knows of a perfect site in Barber's district, one that she describes as "actually larger than the White Street site."

Bzzzzzzz! Wrong. Lynn goes on to describe her proposed site as being 24.52 acres in size. The White Street landfill is, in fact, approximately 900 acres.

I've bemoaned the N&R's unwillingness to fact check reader contributions in the past. I'm doing it again. Whatever good arguments there may be for not re-opening the landfill, or opening another one, this is not one of them. It really holds our community back when we have discussions on public policy that start from places of misinformation. While I understand and agree with the N&R's desire not to squelch opinion, assertions of facts should be checked and commentary rejected if it claims something that is demonstrably false by empirical measurement.

While it would be far better for the N&R to exercise their fact-checking in advance, it's not too late in this case. Hopefully, in a subsequent edition, the N&R will offer a correction noting that this article contained an error. Doing so would not only correct the public record and better inform readers, it would send a message to future writers that they must get their facts straight or be publicly corrected.

Clinton, Obama invited to meet with Greensboro bloggers

I sent an invitation to the media coordinators of the Obama and Clinton campaigns last week inviting each to do an interview with Greensboro bloggers ahead of North Carolina's May 6th primary. I told them of Greensboro's national recognition as one of the most active local blogging communities and of our civic engagement through the city council candidates forum, fund-raisers and public records requests. I invited them to take a look at the Greensboro page of We101.com to see for themselves the diversity, independence and seriousness of Greensboro bloggers.

I haven't received a reply from either campaign yet.

Hammer Watch: Rhino Times reports bogus terrorism plot

Have you heard about the FBI foiling a plot by terrorists to shoot up movie theaters across the country? Neither have I. But there it is in this week's Rhinoceros Times (not online) in publisher John Hammer's "Under the Hammer."

In his column, Hammer writes that "Those who claim to know" tell of a plot in which terrorists were planning to go into "a number of movie theaters in shopping malls in different parts of the country at the same time of the day after Thanksgiving..." According to Hammer, "The terrorists would be armed with automatic weapons and, when the lights went down, they would simply stand up and spray the packed theater with bullets."

Scary, huh? Thank goodness "The FBI caught the terrorists before the plan could be carried out," as Hammer reports. Still, Hammer wants us to "Imagine if it had been successful." Before doing that though, imagine if any of this were true. It doesn't appear to be. I pay pretty close attention to the news and never heard of this plot or arrests. Almighty Google comes up empty, except for some similar urban myths. It looks like Hammer pulled this one out of his hat.

This is not the first time Hammer has put forth a "story" based on vague "sources." It should be the last. This sort of blatant fabrication is simply embarrassing and a gross disservice to Rhino readers. If Hammer had any allegiance to the truth, he would publish a correction in the next issue.

David Crawford: School board candidate, plagarist

Guilford County School Board candidate Erik Huey blogged today excerpts from School Board Candidate David Crawford's MySpace page.

Crawford's blurb begins with "David Crawford for School Board at Large Crawford on the Issues..." and proceeds to copy from Cobb County (Georgia) School Board Candidate John Crooks' web site. Except for the removal of references to Cobb County-specific information, Crawford copies Crooks word-for-word and without attribution. Guilford County students get Fs for plagiarism. What was Crawford thinking?

A screen shot of the plagiarized portion of Crawford's MySpace page:


A screen-shot of a portion of John Crooks web site:

City fails to fulfill public records request

After nearly five months, the City of Greensboro has failed to adequately respond to the public records request made by Sam Spagnola, Joe Guarino and me. Our only remaining option is to sue. I'll be signing the suit today and we will file it on Monday.

You may recall that in February, City Councilor Mike Barber arranged a meeting with him, then-City Attorney Linda Miles, City Communications Director Pat Boswell and me to try to break the log jam and get the records released. Several promises were made at that meeting. They weren't kept. Among them were:

- A promise by Miles to inform us by February 29th of the records the city intends to release and the legal reasons for withholding information it does not intend to release. No response came by February 29th. The City did send us a letter on March 7th that offered reasons why it will not release the RMA report or the so-called black book and confirming the availability of minutes from City Council closed sessions. There was no explanation of the City's intentions regarding the rest of our request.

- A promise by Miles to comply with our request for communications to and from City Legal relating to Project Homestead and older than three years (as the law allows) by February 29th. To date, those have not been produced.

While some of our request has been adequately fulfilled, much of what has been provided has been problematic. What initially appeared to be a substantial volume of documents turned out to be padded with previously released official press releases, news clippings and blog posts, including volumes 1 - 27 of Jerry Bledsoe's series in the Rhino Times, "Cops in Black and White."

The copies of the minutes from City Council closed sessions we received were also deficient. In addition to the copies being of such poor quality that parts were illegible, they were from a period that was only partially responsive to our request. They were also heavily redacted and done so in a way that indicates an improper understanding of what can be kept secret. For example, "The City Manager xxxxx reiterated the need for confidentiality..." and "Xxxxx provided talking points for council..." are not proper redactions. The protections afforded by state personnel records laws do not exist to conceal any action or statement by a city employee that they wish to keep secret. To redact the names or statements of city employees or city councilors simply to keep their official actions secret exhibits a gross misunderstanding of the law and a disturbing contempt for open government.

It's a weird thing to sue a city one loves, but I guess one can think of it as tough love. Our city is off the track in understanding open government and it appears as if they won't change until a judge tells them to.

"I was born a poor black child" -- N&R letter-writer channels Steve Martin

In the 1979 rags-to-riches-to-rags film The Jerk, a very white Steve Martin begins his story with "I was born a poor black child." It was a funny set-up for the running gag of Martin's character, Navin R. Johnson, believing himself to be just like the black family he grew up with. Not so funny is the claim by a N&R letter-writer that she is a minority, even though she is not.

Shirley deLong of Jamestown in her letter, published today, describes herself as "Being a minority and growing up in the South..."

Ms. deLong is white.

I dig me some Rhino Times, but...

This week's Rhino included a front page headline "Unsubstantiated Allegations Make News." Although about another matter, the headline could have been regarding editor John Hammer's editorial in which he wrote:

"To get the support of the Simkins PAC, City Council candidates reportedly had to promise not to vote to fire Mitch Johnson." [emphasis added]

and

"What reportedly put Mitch Johnson over the hump was an agreement to keep Lt. James Hinson on the police force, which meant getting rid of Wray." [emphasis added]

Reportedly? Where? When? John is too experienced not to know the kind of journalistic prestidigitation he's trying to pull off here. A journalist writing to a higher standard doesn't say something has been reported unless it has been reported. A journalist who can't confirm something but wants to stoke people's suspicions will use "reportedly" in the manner John does. It is manipulative and a sign that John thinks that some of his audience is too unthinking to notice.

That Hammer does not cite a source is not the only indication that his claims can't be substantiated, they are also countered by people with first-hand knowledge of the events in question. Trudy Wade says she wasn't asked by the Simkins PAC to promise not to fire Johnson. Zack Matheny says he wasn't asked to make such a promise. On the promotion of Johnson to city manager, Hammer's "reporting" is refuted by Robbie Perkins and Sandy Carmany, two people who were on City Council at the time of that decision.

Oral Polygraph Results

One of the things I found puzzling about the response to our request for the results of the polygraph administered to Greensboro City Council members was being told, as I was, that there are no written results. Because the whole endeavor seemed incredibly silly to me to begin with, I just figured the silliness included giving someone who might have lied to a polygraph examiner the opportunity to lie about the results of the polygraph. As if we might hear, "I took the polygraph, and I was found to be deceptive..." Right.

As I was looking through the documents I received yesterday, I found a summary of a polygraph examination administered to Randal Brady by a contractor for RMA. Its layout seemed formulaic -- as if these kinds of summaries are standard practice. It raised two questions in my mind:

1. Where are the other polygraph summaries conducted as part of RMA's investigation into the administration of the police department under David Wray?

2. Is it possible that such written summaries were provided for the council polygraphs and the person who has them is unaware of our records request and/or is it possible that the examiner retained such written records and they can yet be retrieved by the city?