Shackles, bonds and hurricanes
- My colleague Jonathan Jones wrote this story on a bill that would mean juvenile offenders would not have to be in shackles when they are brought to court. The proposed law, which is awaiting the governor's signature, was inspired by a Guilford County case.
- During a news conference Monday, Easley repeated that he didn't much like idea of using non-taxpayer-approved debt in the budget. Click here to listen to him talk about borrowing no more than $1.5 billion over five years - and only $250 million of that through Certificate's of participation.
- Meanwhile, reporter Sonja Elmquist from our Greensboro office is up visiting with me this week and penned this story on hurricanes, also pegged to Gov. Easley's news conference yesterday.
As she rightly points out, Easley sounded a lot more up-tight about this topic during a conference call in May.
"Common sense tells you there is a limit to how much people can do," Easley said at the time, outlining the strain that duty on Iraq was putting on forces that respond to disaster here at home.
But with U.S. Homeland Security Sec. Michael Chertoff standing next to him Monday, Easley was a bit more placid. He repeated that North Carolina is prepared to handle a Category 3 storm and assured the assembled scruff media that North Carolina could get the help it needed should a bigger storm come.
"We feel pretty good about the conversation we had today," Easley said.
Of course, he wasn't completely relaxed.
"If you talk about a pandemic that hits every state, then yes, we're in trouble with the guard right now," Easley said, quickly turning the conversation back to the topic at hand. "
I've spliced together to Easley clips in this take if you want to listen to the governor talk about how prepared we are for storms.
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