Opinion (590)
COLUMN: America doesn't have real presidential debates, but it should
Written by Thomas L. Knapp
On Aug. 6, the Commission on Presidential Debates denied U.S. president Donald Trump's request to increase the number of debates between himself and Democratic nominee Joe Biden from three to four.
Excluding people based on their race, sex, or other characteristics doesn’t just keep those individuals from pursuing their dreams. And it doesn’t just violate moral principles of human dignity and equality. It does great harm to others.
Aug. 14, 2020 will mark the five-year anniversary of this column. It has outlasted a few editors, one newspaper, and three laptops. This column has won an award, has been shared internationally by some readers and has even generated one or two letters of fan mail.
OP-ED: Census too costly to ignore
Written by Stacey Carless & Patrick Woodie
To say that our state, our nation, and our world have changed dramatically in the past few months would be an understatement. At the NC Rural Center and the NC Counts Coalition, we know how much our work and the communities we serve have changed — and will change — because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
COLUMN: Executive orders and free-market health care
Written by Thomas L. Knapp
On July 24, U.S. president Donald Trump signed four executive orders with an eye toward altering the way prescription drugs are priced and purchased in the United States.
As the fall homestretch of the 2020 election approaches, you’re probably not spending much time considering the implications of county-commission races in North Carolina. But I am. I’m just that weird.
COLUMN: Newspaper editorial asking Cooper to get ‘heavy handed’ is irresponsible, shameful
Written by John Trump - Carolina Journal News Service
I’m tired.
Tired of the lecturing from Gov. Roy Cooper and his cohorts. Tired of waiting for his edicts. Tired of his pedantic lecturing.
"These are anarchists, these are not protesters," U.S. President Donald Trump said on July 20, defending his decision to unleash Department of Homeland Security hooligans on anti-police-violence demonstrators in Portland.
One morning in late March, I drove from my home in Southern Wake County to my office in North Raleigh to pick up some files so I could work from home. As I exited the Beltline onto Six Forks Road, I noticed a deer lying beneath the overpass, the apparent victim of a high-speed impact.
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I heard a radio spot this morning talking about "The New Normal." I was quite confused, as I had understood what we as a nation were going through was temporary.
Donald Trump is invading American cities with the “jack-booted government thugs” the NRA warned us about 25 years ago. He’s sending federal law enforcement from a mishmash of agencies dressed in combat fatigues to attack American citizens.
COLUMN: Political Parties: Inevitable and ugly, but not entirely useless
Written by Thomas L. Knapp
George Washington, America's first president, devoted part of his 1796 farewell address to warning against "[t]he alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension." He feared perpetual war for power between political parties both as "a frightful despotism" in and of itself, and as prelude to some future tyrant seeking "his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty."
National ID cards have been atop the command-and-control political wish list for decades. In the 1990s, Republican Congresses shot down efforts to move toward national identification cards. However, after 9/11, “everything changed” and politicians seized the chance to unleash far more snooping and create potentially hundreds of millions of dossiers on American citizens.
