In the five years since the terrorists attacked us on 9/11, it has seemed that President Bush could get away with virtually anything, from falsely connecting the attack on 9/11 to our pre-emptive war on Iraq to completely ignoring the Constitution (which he took an oath to defend) in various and egregious ways, including warrantless wiretapping and the seemingly endless detainment of so-called “enemy combatants” in Guantanamo Bay.

By Marshall Frank

They’re at it again. Once again, the world is held hostage as Christians pray for their lives and nations shutter at the prospect of chaos everywhere, all at the whim of the religion of peace.

The media coverage the last three weeks about goings-on inside the Haywood County School System involve very complicated spending matters. The controversy about flood rebuilding decisions, FEMA reimbursements and accusations about motives, however, come down to a very important matter for parents and taxpayers in Haywood County — are the school board and the administration making wise spending decisions?

As the front page of this week’s paper illustrates, it’s election season. Trouble is, it’s just not feeling much like it yet. U.S. Rep. Charles Taylor, R-Brevard, and Heath Shuler, this Democratic challenger from Waynesville, are still mostly preaching to their respective choirs at local party events.

The month-long celebration of Canton’s centennial Labor Day festival, which had much to offer, wasn’t really about organized labor. Now that the feel-good readings, concerts and historical affairs have passed, though, it’s a good time consider the history of organized labor in this country, ponder its pending demise and try to figure out how workers will fare in the future as U.S. industry undergoes a tidal wave of changing responsibilities.

Just in the past couple of months, I have been forced to confront a prejudice I didn’t really know I had. For years, as it turns out, I have secretly harbored a suspicion that most people who claim to suffer from debilitating back pain are either hypochondriacs — who complain about everything from chronic migraine headaches to an unbearable sensitivity of the eyelashes — or simply freeloaders looking to get out of work and/or draw disability, the sort of people who show up to court hearings in wheelchairs and neck braces and are seen the next day playing racquetball or doing workout routines on the uneven parallel bars.

People are saying the new Ghost Town will be a shot in the arm for Maggie Valley. That’s probably an understatement, but the new development and its cash infusion into this tourist town will also provide an important opportunity to talk about the future of Western North Carolina, especially as it pertains to the number of visitors and the changing tourism industry.

Too often people tend to write off efforts by the most hard-core social activists as excessive or simply impossible to achieve. These people and their movements are out of the mainstream, many say, their ideas worthy yet impractical, or that their time has not come.

The scandals around N.C. House Speaker Jim Black, D-Mecklenburg, multiply like mushrooms on the forest floor. Yet a casual reader of the news might be inclined to think that Mr. Black was a politician in some other state.

Citizens in Jackson County’s Tuckasegee community should consider themselves lucky. The problem, however, is that luck doesn’t always hold.

It appears very likely now that a proposal to construct a rock quarry in this rural community is not going to fly. Jackson County enacted a high-impact industry ordinance in May 2002 that placed relatively tight regulations on quarries and mines. According to that law, the proposed rock crusher would have to be 1,320 linear feet from the nearest home.