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Bruce Davis hasn't gotten off to the best start as chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners. His plan to hold their annual retreat in Chapel Hill was criticized, and he had to reverse his position on the health board's actions regarding former director Ramesh Krishnaraj. I think part of Davis' problem has to do with his limited political experience and his route to the chairman's seat.

Let me say that I think Davis is a fine person who wants to represent his district well and do what he thinks is best for Guilford County. He may be capable of being a good chairman at some point. However, I don't think he should be chairman. In my opinion, that title should be reserved for one of the two commissioners elected at large.

Consider Davis' brief political history. When District 1 Commissioner Donnie Dunovant died in 2002, the Democratic Party was charged with nominating a replacement. Davis and Ben Collins were the only two candidates for the appointment. Neither had held any political office. Davis got the nod, then was elected to a full term that November without opposition. He holds his seat without even having run a contested public campaign. Then, after only two years in office, he was selected by fellow Democrats on the board of commissioners to serve as 2005 chairman.

The chairman has a tough job. He has to manage the board as best he can but also work with a variety of special interests and constituencies from throughout the county. It would help if he could begin with a broad base of public support, but Davis can't claim that because he was only elected by the people in District 1, and even then in a noncontested race. And District 1 represents only one-ninth of the county's population.

It would be far better if Paul Gibson were chairman. He was elected at-large and was the leading vote-getter (by far) of all Guilford County commissioners candidates. His strong vote on Nov. 2 would give him a countywide mandate to lead the board.

Besides that, the experience of running a successful countywide campaign would help in governing. Gibson knows people throughout the county because he had to campaign in every community. More importantly, he is accountable to all the voters of Guilford County.

This is nothing personal in regard to Davis. I just think that a commissioner who's elected to the board by all the voters of Guilford County can be a more effective chairman from the very first day than can a commissioner who represents just one district.

What do you think?

Our second editorial today (not posted but available on the extended entry here) commented on the odd case of a state trooper who was fired for NOT blowing the whistle on a fellow trooper accused of roughing up a suspect. Or at least that's one interpretation. You can read the N.C. Court of Appeals opinion here.

Our editorial board had a two-hour audience with Jesse Jackson yesterday. It was the first time I had met him, and having the chance to ask him questions was exciting. He was generous with his time, engaging, friendly and likable. His personal story and achievements are inspiring.

Still, I came away disappointed by Jackson's gloomy message.

A caller suggested we write an editorial denouncing the decision to cover sexual-performance drugs under Medicare. Most of our editorials focus on state and local subjects, so I'll use this forum to attack this topic:

Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page gives some perspective to Jesse Jackson's warning that President Bush plans to gut the Voting Rights Act. The part of the act he's talking about, which will expire in 2007 unless it's renewed, explains Page, is Section 5. It "prohibits 'retrogression': any change in district boundaries that would diminish a district's percentage of black voters."
Page astutely points out that, in reality, Republicans aren't about to do away with this provision because it works to their advantage. How?

Many High Pointers expected big things in a hurry when Nido Qubein took office Jan. 1 as president of High Point University. But this? Astounding!

This fund-raising accomplishment - $20 million pledged in 29 days - will do more than provide scholarships, add academic programs, fund faculty development and further build HPU's campus. It's an incredible boost to the university's prestige and to the esteem of its faculty and students. Congratulations to all.

We'll have editorial comments in tomorrow's edition.

The State Board of Elections is meeting again today with orders from a judge to find a legal (and would one hope sensible) resolution to the agriculture commissioner election, which should have been decided three months ago. We've printed the details over and over. The bottom line is that, beyond any reasonable doubt, the sitting commissioner, Democrat Britt Cobb, lost to Republican Steve Troxler.

My hope is that by the end of the day, Cobb is rooted out of his office, where he has been clinging with all the tenacity of kudzu.

Britt Cobb finally did the right thing and conceded the election. Congratulations to Steve Troxler, a Browns Summit farmer and the new commissioner of agriculture.

Troxler would have been installed as the legitimate winner sooner or later. Cobb simply decided not to drag out the process any longer. I commend him for that.

A lively discussion began Thursday at gatecity on a proposed amendment to the North Carolina constitution defining marriage as one man-one woman. I'm not going to discuss that in detail now (I probably will at some point). Instead, I'd like to make an observation and pose a question or two.

Here's a secret sports fans should know: There's some great college basketball played in the state of North Carolina that isn't the ACC variety.

Margaret and I attended the Cincinnati at UNC Charlotte game among 7,200 mostly green-clad 49ers fans in sold-out and rocking Halton Arena Saturday. The home team held off its arch-rival in a 91-90 thriller.

Neither of us, by the way, is a Charlotte grad. Our older son, Andrew, is a student there and plays in the pep band. We enjoy Charlotte games because of that but also because Halton is a great basketball environment, parking is convenient and it's easy to get into and away from campus. And the Niners are usually pretty good.

Thanks to Taft Wireback's reporting Sunday, we learn that North Carolina's legislative leaders are more concerned about highway safety than keeping potential terrorists from obtaining driver's licenses here.

North Carolina has made it easy for illegal aliens to get a driver's license here, often with fake identification. Once they get the license, they have a veritable passport that opens many other doors in this country. Many of the 9/11 hijackers used driver's licenses to help them blend in while they prepared for the attacks.

But we shouldn't be so quick to make it tough for illegal aliens to get a driver's license, N.C. House Speaker Jim Black told Taft. If they go through the licensing procedure, Black explained, at least we'll know they can drive safely.

Heaven forbid a suicide car bomber might have an accident on the way to his target.

Well, I'm not. I'm so uncool that if I make it to lukewarm I get goose bumps.

I don't even have hopes of becoming cool (it's way too late), but some cities aspire to it, Greensboro among them (sadly, not High Point, where I live). Charlotte has hired a consultant to advise it on how to become cool.

Although I'm not cool, I am interested in what makes a city cool. Why is Asheville cool, but not

For some reason, the High Point Civitan Club asked me to speak at its annual "clergy appreciation" program Tuesday. The choice of speakers seemed a bit random, but I gave it a shot.

I have spoken to this group a couple of times before on newspaper subjects, and actually I was pleased to receive another invitation even though I'm now working in Greensboro rather than High Point. Part of the reason has to do with the News & Record's strong presence in the Furniture Capital.

Anyway, I was happy to deliver a few encouraging words to members of the clergy. They really have a tough job. Just to give an idea ...

"The General Assembly ... should consider proposals to do away with elections for some state offices, such as this one."

We wrote that Feb. 5 about the N.C. agriculture commissioner's race, which had just been settled by Britt Cobb's concession three months after the election.

A reader challenged us to offer some reasoning for that opinion and accused us of calling for eliminating elections for some offices just when Republicans, like new Ag boss Steve Troxler, start to unseat Democrats, like Cobb.

We are going to write that editorial soon, but I'd appreciate hearing from you first ...

Thursday's editorial barely scratched the surface of the complex and troubling battle being waged over out-of-precinct ballots in North Carolina. What's happening now resembles a chess match, with the opponents taking turns attacking and defending. Is it headed for a checkmate, or stalemate?

Here's a brief summary:

My friend Dave acquired quite a taste for Scotland when we visited three years ago. I'm talking about the national beverage.

I enjoy a wee nip myself from time to time, although Irish whiskey is a bit more to my liking. But Dave has become a true connoisseur.

The first thing to know is that ...

Once I was seduced by the assertions of those scholars who declared it was impossible that a fellow of humble origins from a provincial outpost, lacking higher education, could have written the plays and sonnets attributed to William Shakespeare.

The name of the "Stratford man" must have provided cover for someone of greater stature who could not afford to write openly, the argument went. Someone who learned the classics at an early age, who studied at the finest universities, who had access to royal courts, who traveled extensively.

Shakespeare, the son of a glovemaker in Stratford-upon-Avon, attended grammar school, left by the age of 16 and, except for marrying an older woman and fathering three children, entered a long period without leaving any record of employment or further education. How could that be?

Well, Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt tells how in his remarkable "Will in the World/How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare" (W.W. Norton & Company). I enjoyed this impressive, well-written book and highly recommend it to anyone interested in the Bard.

The idea that Howard Dean can help turn North Carolina blue in national elections is laughable. For that, Democrats needed to find a leader in the mold of Jim Hunt.

Actually, Hunt could have made a big impact in national politics if it weren't for that little stumble back in 1984 ...

To check the $3 box, or not to check it. What are we North Carolina taxpayers to do?

Redd Foxx once said something like, "Don't watch that stoplight, watch those cars. No one ever got run over by a stoplight."

Driving in High Point reminded me of that sage advice, until the city finally began to crack down on red-light runners.

The bad old days may be coming back, thanks to a court ruling that might kill the red-light camera program.

Credit goes to a city resident who filed a lawsuit because he didn't want to pay a $50 fine for running a red light, and a school system that wants free money.

My column today:

My brother-in-law is a staunch Democrat and the father of three charming young women, ages 21, 18 and 15. He was complaining not long ago that his middle daughter's boyfriend is — gasp — a Republican.
They live in a red county in this red state. I suggested he might want to send his girls to Massachusetts for a few years until they all find politically acceptable husbands. Their prospects here are getting worse.

The Guilford County Board of Elections wants to participate in a pilot program that would change where and when most of us vote.

Here's the proposed bill authorizing this experiment.

Does it make sense to do away with voting in precincts?

The Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation (PART) continues to talk about a commuter rail line. Estimated cost: $716 million.

That's one way to plan for the future. John Hood of the John Locke Foundation offers some other ideas in his column today.

I met with 20 or so terrific young people at Andrews today. They're seniors in the Communities in Schools program, and they're all planning to go to college.

They sure don't reflect the image of Andrews that has developed from so many well-publicized problems at the High Point high school ...

The Bigger but not Better Atlantic Coast Conference is having trouble putting together its basketball schedule for the next three years.

Doesn't surprise me. It's a football conference. Basketball is just something to occupy the chilly weeks after bowl games and before spring practice.

The erroneous schedule briefly released Thursday was depressing because it failed to match some of the Big Four rivals in home-and-home games each season. I don't know if that will be corrected, but in my world, Carolina, Duke, Wake and State would fast break out of the ACC ...

The "scrolls" are more like chips, and the exhibitors are pushing a point of view.

You know what? "The Dead Sea Scrolls to the Bible in America" exhibit is well worth seeing anyway.

Maybe that's why more than 20,000 people have seen it at Providence Place in High Point since it opened Jan. 17 ...

High Point-area readers who missed Eric Dyer's profile of Laura Wiley in Sunday's N&R (on the Greensboro front), should take a few minutes to read it here.

The new state representative from High Point is hard at work already ...

"Edwards won't stand aside for Kerry in 2008," the headline in today's N&R said. It refers to former senator John Edwards' statement that he'll decide whether to launch a second bid for president regardless of what his former running mate, John Kerry, does.

No surprise there. Edwards' presidential ambitions were not quenched by his 2004 experience.

But, what a minute. Didn't Edwards just sign on as a "professor" at UNC-Chapel Hill? ...

My column today:

Two ambitious public works projects were launched on the very same day - July 4, 1828 - less than 50 miles apart.
Joel Achenbach deftly describes the scenes in "The Grand Idea: George Washington's Potomac and the Race to the West."
For one ceremony, held at Little Falls, Md., President John Quincy Adams was enlisted to break ground. His shovel bounced off a root. He tried again, with the same result. Finally, plunging the spade downward with all his might, he dug the first cut in what would become the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.
The president's difficulty should have been seen as an omen.

Our recent editorial nod for appointing N.C. Council of State officers instead of electing them hasn't exactly been applauded by readers.

OK. We didn't expect the idea to be popular. I just wish critics would address our arguments in favor of this constitutional change rather than accuse us of partisan motives as you saw in letters today and previously. Or as a reader wrote in an unpublished letter:

It's not hard to hit up liquor drinkers for cash. On a few occasions over the years, I've volunteered to man the Christmas kettle for the Salvation Army, and the best location ever was outside an ABC store (no longer allowed, unfortunately). One of the owners of the paper where I worked came by and forked over a big bill - the only time I ever saw him spend any money. But, when you're buying a bottle of hootch, you can't say you don't have a dollar for the poor.

So Gov. Easley's proposal to raise the sales tax on liquor from 6 to 7 percent carries persuasive power.

What I don't understand, though, is why the state claims a monopoly on the sale of liquor in the first place ...

A condo or apartment overlooking the ballpark? A development like this could make me a resident of downtown Greensboro someday.

Today's news reports indicate some improvement in Pope John Paul II's condition. I hope he can be made comfortable.

I'm not Catholic, but I regard this pope as one of the leading figures of the late 20th century. His fierce support for the Solidarity movement in Poland helped propel the tide of freedom throughout central and eastern Europe and hastened the fall of the Iron Curtain.

He's a man of courage and moral authority, perhaps like no other of his generation.

I take my dog for a run most mornings, and Murphy usually comes home a little lighter than when we started. Is this a breach of social etiquette?

I'm planning to attend the community forum on character education sponsored by the News & Record Tuesday. It will be held at Penn-Griffin Middle School, 825 E. Washington Drive in High Point, from 7 to 8:30 p.m.

Most likely, I'll also be writing something on the subject later in the week. I hope to gain some insights at the forum, but if you can't make it, your comments are welcome here.

By the way, the refurbished auditorium at Penn-Griffin is worth a visit by itself. Come see the school (then William Penn High School) where jazz great John Coltrane graduated in 1943.

I almost missed last week's Associated Press report on the National Study of Youth and Religion.
Maybe it just didn't seem much like news: