His name is Newby, but he’s far from new — Justice Paul Newby was first elected to the North Carolina Supreme Court in 2004, and was subsequently re-elected to another eight-year term in 2012. As that term nears its end in 2020, he’s not only seeking re-election, but election as the court’s chief justice. 

One month and one day after a lawsuit was filed alleging partisan gerrymandering in North Carolina’s congressional districts, a three-judge panel has ordered current congressional maps to be redrawn in time for the 2020 election. 

Following a battle that involved hearings before both the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Board of Elections and the Cherokee Supreme Court, Teresa McCoy is now certified as a candidate for principal chief, but her status on the ballot is still not certain. 

Former Big Cove representative Teresa McCoy will regain her place on the ballot in the race for principal chief following an order from the Cherokee Supreme Court overturning the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Board of Elections’ decision to exclude her from the race. 

I did not go to college with Brett Kavanaugh, but I went to college at about the same time he did, and the portrait that has emerged of him over the past couple of weeks is one that I remember pretty clearly. There were plenty of beer-loving, weightlifting, cocky, entitled, belligerent frat boys on lots of college campuses in the early 1980s. 

You would find them preening at the local bars, singing too loudly, invading others’ space, splashing beer on people, daring anyone to complain about it. My friends and I, most of whom were also beer-loving and some of whom could be pretty obnoxious themselves if under the influence of 10 or 12 glasses of Schlitz Malt Liquor Bull, we really, really, REALLY hated those guys. You see, these guys were already all of those things before consuming their first beer. They just used beer like kerosene to inflame these qualities. 

By Hannah McLeod • Guest Columnist

The vote to approve Brett Kavanaugh for a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States, scheduled for Thursday, has been postponed until the Senate judiciary Committee can hear testimony by Kavanaugh and the woman who has accused him of sexual assault.

Nine months after arguments concluded in a dispute over the process used to impeach then-Principal Chief Patrick Lambert, the Cherokee Supreme Court issued a full, 22-page opinion on the matter. 

Time for spring-cleaning. 

The basement apartment in which I live could use a deep cleaning: dusting, washing, vacuuming. It’s tidy enough — chaos and I were never friends — but stacks of papers need sorting, bookcases beg to see their occupants removed and the shelves rubbed down with a mixture of Pine-Sol and water, and the dusty, spider-webbed eaves cry out for an invasion from the shop-vac and dust mop. 

A lawsuit seeking to overturn a Board of Elections decision to hold an Oct. 10 runoff election for Birdtown Tribal Council failed last week when the Cherokee Supreme Court delivered an opinion upholding the board’s decision.

Eminent figures have called for common sense, nonpartisan redistricting since even before Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry unwittingly lent his name to the unseemly practice of gerrymandering.