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Here's the Charlotte Observer's extensive coverage of the killings of two police officers Saturday night and the arrest of a suspect Sunday.

It includes links to online condolences for Jeffrey Shelton and Sean Clark.

The two officers reportedly were shot in the back of the head, their guns still holstered.

What a terrible, senseless tragedy -- and a reminder that there are people in our society who regard cops as targets just because they're cops.

So, if you see a police officer anywhere today, thank him or her for risking personal safety for public protection.

Daniel Carrington Tanner almost certainly would have received a longer prison sentence under the state's new felony death by vehicle law.

As Amy Dominello reported, Tanner pleaded guilty Monday to involuntary manslaughter and assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury.

His sentence on the first charge was 20 to 24 months in prison; on the second, 31 to 47 months. The terms will run consecutively: 51 to 71 months in all.

Tanner, 22 of High Point, was driving under the influence of alcohol on March 18, 2006 on U.S. 421 in Guilford County. His vehicle struck a car driven by Alex Christopher Stevenson, killing the 22-year-old Greensboro man. A passenger in Stevenson's car, Tori Finch of High Point, was injured.

You might have noticed above that the assault charge carried a longer sentence than the manslaughter conviction.

Tanner received "more time for assaulting Miss Finch than for killing Mr. Stevenson," Assistant Guilford DA Chris Parrish told me this morning. Parrish prosecuted the case.

Too late for this case, a new law passed last summer changes that puzzling oddity.

Felony death by vehicle is a Class E felony, the same as assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury. It carries the same sentence of 31 to 47 months. If it had been in effect at the time of Tanner's crime, he could have been charged with that offense and, if convicted, given a total of 62 to 94 months instead of 51 to 71 months -- an addition of 11 to 23 months.

Furthermore, the new law is perfectly clear in its requirements. It applies to a driver who 1) is intoxicated as defined by law; and 2) kills someone. The law defines intoxicated as having a blood-alcohol content of 0.08 or higher. It's open-and-shut.

Tanner originally was charged with second-degree murder. The fact is, juries in North Carolina have been reluctant to convict on that charge, which can be confusing. For one thing, Parrish said, it requires a jury to find that the defendant was "deliberately bent on mischief. Now, what the hell does that mean?"

The difficulty of convicting drunken-drivers on murder charges led the legislature to craft a new law. Prosecutors welcome it, both for its tougher penalties and for its simplicity.

It comes along in time to apply to the Tolly Carr case. Carr has been charged only with DWI to this point, but his blood test results have not come back yet. If they show a level of 0.08 or higher, I expect he will be charged with felony death by vehicle. Given the necessary two facts in that scenario -- intoxication under the legal standard, and the death of pedestrian Casey Ryan Bokhoven caused by Carr's driving -- it seems to me the defense would have very little room to maneuver. Maybe none.

The new law is a vast improvement. It allows consistency in the handling of these cases, treats them as serious felonies, and makes it easy for juries to focus on the essential facts and render the proper verdict.

My column today:

Not wanting to make the world wait for decades after our deaths, like Ernest Hemingway and Marlene Die­trich, I've decided to release my private correspondence with actress Kathleen Turner today.

It's clear from these letters that the Hollywood star and I are victims of "unsynchronized passion."

Our communication began this way:

May 21, 1991

Dear Kathleen,

I am thrilled at the news that you are coming to High Point for filming of the movie "House of Cards." I have long admired your work, especially your sizzling performance in "Body Heat," and always hoped to have an opportunity to meet you. I know we could be great friends, at least.

Please call me when you arrive in town. I'll take you to lunch at The Dog House -- I recommend the dogs "all the way" -- and give you a personal tour of the city. High Point is almost like Paris in the early summer. Sunsets over Oak Hollow are flush with romance. Do you fish? If motor sports excite you, we can visit Petty Enterprises in Level Cross.

Ardently anticipating your answer,

Doug Clark

May 30, 1991

Dear Mr. Clark,

Ms. Turner will not be granting interviews while she is in High Point.
Sincerely yours,

Jaclyn Winters
Publicist for Kathleen Turner

June 16, 1991

Dear Kathleen,

Should I address you as Kathy? I feel our relationship should be intimate and informal.
Thank you so much for your reply. I understand completely your reluctance to commit to a lunch date given the uncertainties of your schedule. Perhaps our first meeting should be arranged at more of a distance.

I have learned you are staying in a penthouse apartment on Market Square Tower while you are filming here in High Point. As it happens, my house affords me a perfect view of the tower. We're only a mile apart.

I propose this: If you have a westward vantage, look toward the sunset at exactly 8 p.m. Thursday. I will be standing on my roof dressed like Michael Douglas in "Romancing the Stone." Our eyes will meet and our spirits will connect. It will help if you have binoculars. Until then,

Affectionately yours,

Doug

June 22, 1991

Dear Mr. Clark,

Ms. Turner is not interested in meeting you or in hearing from you again. Please don't write anymore.

Sincerely,

Alice Silverstein
Personal Assistant to Kathleen Turner

June 26, 1991

Dearest Kathy,

The heartache cries out from every word of your letter. It grieves me, too. We're not free, I know, my darling. Perhaps what we both desire can never be -- unless we're willing to throw our fates to the wind and dare to fly. Will you take that chance with me, or will we forever wonder what might have been?

Waiting for your heart to speak,

D.

July 2, 1991

Mr. Clark,

This will serve as an official and final warning to cease all attempts to contact my client, Ms. Kathleen Turner. Failure to comply will force me to seek a restraining order from the District Court of Guilford County. I am not patient with harassment of my client and will not hesitate to use every legal means available to protect her from your unwanted communications. I hope I have made myself clear.

Sincerely,

Raymond T. Brownstone
Attorney-at-Law

"House of Cards" was a flop. Poor Kathleen. She was just so out of sync.

Contact Doug Clark at dgclark@news-record.com and 373-7039.

Margaret and I called Andrew about 6:30 this morning to wish him a happy 26th birthday.

It was 1:30 in the afternoon in Tanzania, lunchtime at the secondary school where he teaches. He was having a meal of fish, cabbage and ugali.

The students sang to him at morning assembly and gave him hand-made cards.

This is Andrew's third birth overseas, the last two in Africa. He was studying in Glasgow in the spring of 2002 but celebrated his 21st with relatives in Belfast. His cousin, Chris McKendry, took him out on the town.

"I drank some whiskey and beer and kissed a lot of Irish girls," Andrew recalled.

None of that today, but have a good one anyway, son.

The protests of Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan planned at Elon University today strike me as off the topic.

Monaghan was invited to speak as part of Elon's Legends of Business lecture series, not about his oppostion to abortion and same-sex marriage.

Are those forbidden opinions on college campuses these days?

Of course, anyone has the right to express disagreement. As long as demonstrators don't try to block Monaghan from speaking, they should be allowed to have at it.

But any notable visitor is likely to hold personal opinions that some people don't like. Should that trigger a protest, especially if it has nothing to do with the reason the visitor is there? What if a visiting football coach has unpopular political views? Would that be a good reason to protest the football game? Or would it be silly and rude?

It would make more sense to protest Monaghan's appearance if people just didn't like his pizza.

What does Dave Barry say? I am not making this up:

The regional government in Wallonia, Belgium, has approved a tax of 20 euros on outdoor barbecuing to curtail greenhouse gas emissions, according to news reports.

"The local authorities plan to monitor compliance with the new tax legislation from helicopters, whose thermal sensors will detect burning grills."

Well, maybe they can use the barbecue tax to buy carbon credits for those helicopters.

Gate City writes a nice tribute to High Point philanthropist David Hayworth, who just made an enormous gift to High Point University.

"David Hayworth once said in our presence that he made his money in High Point and with just one or two exceptions, he gave his money away in High Point," Gate writes. "The city was his home, where his family made their fortune, and where he was going to give it away. His name is on numerous facilities in the furniture city and he has funded so many non-capital projects. When there is a worthwhile cause in High Point, more often than not, David Hayworth is helping to fund it"

I can't help sadly noting the contrast to the late Randall Terry, who derived a fortune probably larger than the Hayworth family's from High Point interests -- primarily the International Home Furnishings Center and the High Point Enterprise -- and gave very little of it back to High Point, even in death.

The 2005 IRS 990-PF report for the R.B. Terry Charitable Foundation Inc. reports total net assets or fund balances at end of year of $72,795, 556. Yes, that's more than 72 million dollars.

The foundation gave away $5,210,000 as follows:

$2.5 million to Woodberry Forest School in Woodberry Forest, Va.;

$2.5 million to the N.C. Veterinary Medical Foundation Inc. in Raleigh;

$100,000 to Youth Unlimited in High Point;

$100,000 to Montpelier Foundation in Montpelier Station, Va.;

$10,000 to United Animal Coalition in Greensboro.

The Youth Unlimited contribution was the only new recipient in 2005. No High Point organizations received funds in 2004, the year Terry died, or in 2003.

Randall Terry lived in High Point nearly all his life but didn't like it. His name will not be remembered there for long.

Fortunately, the city has people like David Hayworth who believe in giving back.

The "North Carolina Racial Justice Act" was introduced Tuesday in the state House of Representatives with 32 sponsors, including Greensboro Democrats Alma Adams, Pricey Harrison and Earl Jones.

Its purpose is to ensure that "no person shall be subject to or given a sentence of death, or shall be executed pursuant to any judgment that was sought or obtained on the basis of race."

Absolutely. That should be covered by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which guarantees equal protection under the law, as well as Article I Section 19 of the N.C. Constitution, which says, "No person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws; nor shall any person be subjected to discrimination by the State because of race, color, religion, or national origin."

But the proposed bill goes beyond statements of principle. It says that a finding that race was used as "the basis" for seeking a death penalty can be made with "statistical evidence" showing that death sentences were sought more frequently "upon persons of one race than upon persons of another race, or as punishment for capital offenses against persons of one race than as punishment of capital offenses against persons of another race."

In other words, the bill would allow defense attorneys for a black man accused of killing a white man to introduce statistical evidence showing that the death penalty is sought disproportionately against black men accused of killing white men, as opposed to white men accused of killing black men. And this could lead a judge to order that the death penalty may not be sought in that case.

I don't know what a statistical analysis like that would show in North Carolina. A quick glance at the individuals who have been executed in this state since 1984 shows most have been white men.

The timing of this bill may be unfortunate for the sponsors, coming just a couple of days after the arrest of a black man in Charlotte for the murders of two white police officers. It is possible prosecutors will seek the death penalty. If this law were enacted in time to apply to the Charlotte case, would defense attorneys argue their client is the victim of "racial injustice"? Could they use a "statistical analysis" to prove it? How many lawmakers will want to answer those questions when voting on this bill?

It looks to me that at least some of the sponsors of this bill actually oppose capital punishment in all cases, so maybe they're just trying to gum up our already sticky death-penalty machinery. We really ought to quit playing games and do away with it.

And, yes, if I were a legislator I'd support life in prison without parole, rather than execution, even for cop killers. That's a better policy than trying to enforce racial quotas for the death penalty.

Three Yale students were arrested and jailed in New Haven, Conn., for burning an American flag.

Oh, my gosh. What about their constitutional rights? Freedom of expression? Legitimate political protest?

Not applicable.

These idiots trespassed onto private property, grabbed a flag that did not belong to them and set in on fire.

It was a "dumb thing to do," they admitted to police, according to the New Haven Register.

I'll say.

Burning the flag is offensive enough. Given that two of these three students are foreigners and officially guests of our country, it's insulting as well. The fact that the third is a naturalized citizen from Pakistan makes him appear to be ungrateful for the opportunities he's found here. And I'd say being able to attend Yale University is a darn good opportunity, unless there's a better institution of higher learning in Pakistan.

But if you're going to burn a flag, make sure it's your own flag or one you have permission to burn. And do it on your own property, or at least not on mine.

I take off for a few days and I get way behind on my Edwards news.

Most recent first: Today's Associated Press story that quotes Elizabeth Edwards complaining about the family's "rabid, rabid Republican" neighbor and his "slummy" property.

I can't blame Mrs. Edwards for being upset. Monty Johnson's family has owned its Orange County property for decades -- long before the Edwardses got there -- and STILL hasn't built a multimillion-dollar home there. It's obvious that some people just don't belong.

I'm not sure about this "rabid, rabid Republican" thing, though. I mean, are the Edwardes "rabid, rabid Democrats"? If so, I guess that's socially more acceptable.

Meanwhile, John Edwards apparently adds Fox News to his "axis of evil," joining Walmart. For the second time, he has said he won't participate in a debate co-hosted by the cable network because of its "conservative bias."

This is bad news for Fox if Edwards becomes president. It sure won't get any interviews.

I wonder if Edwards will refuse interviews with newspapers that won't endorse him, citing an "anti-Edwards bias."

Edwards also boycotts Walmart.

Then there was Edwards' proposal to let the IRS figure the taxes for 50 million Americans too dumb to do their own. Frankly, I don't think any Americans are dumb enough to trust the IRS to figure their taxes for them.

I can't believe I would root for Al Sharpton in a war of words, but when the opponent is Don Imus -- no contest.

Sharpton and Imus went at it on Sharpton's radio show this afternoon over Imus' inexcusably malicious remarks about Rutgers' women's basketball players, and Sharpton had all the ammunition.

On his own program this morning, Imus gave his remarks "context" -- meaning he bragged about what a great guy he is. Fine. But there should be consequences for the cruel statements he made about the young ladies at Rutgers. Sharpton laid it on him, appropriately, but Imus also needs to be off the air -- maybe not permanently if he truly makes amends, but for a long time.

I know talk shows build ratings on controversy, but aren't there boundaries of decency anymore? If there are, Imus crossed them.

Hey, when Al Sharpton can claim the moral high ground on you, you're really low.

Now North Carolina lottery tickets are available in vending machines, the Charlotte Observer reports today.

By law, lottery tickets may not be sold to anyone younger than 18. Do vending machines ask for ID? No, but clerks are supposed to keep an eye on the machines to make sure kids aren't playing. Yeah, right.

This move has one purpose: to sell more tickets. It's happening just as the state is clearing out video poker machines -- replacing one electronic bandit with another.

Is the Duke lacrosse rape case finally about to end? It looks like something's afoot, with at least two defendants returning to Raleigh today, according to an online report by The News & Observer.

After a long three months' investigation by the Attorney General's Office, it's time for a decision.

My prediction: All charges will be dropped.

There's no criminal case here. A fair, impartial judgment, which I believe AG Roy Cooper and his staff will deliver, should conclude that the accusations against Reade Seligmann, David Evans and Collin Finnerty are not credible.

Durham DA Mike Nifong charged ahead with no plausible evidence, and now he's in the dock before the N.C. Bar for alleged ethics violations. For whatever reason, he was making a mockery of due process and the pursuit of justice.

Cooper needs to put a stop to it, and I believe he will.

Update, 10:15 Wednesday: AP reports it is over. More details later. I'll be out of the office for a few hours but will offer some reactions this evening.

My column today:

For David Hayworth, the equation is simple: Money from High Point goes back to High Point.

"I feel a need to give back to where my money came from," he told me last week. ...

This impasse between President Bush and congressional Democrats personifies where we are with the Iraq dilemma.

The anti-war side wants to declare defeat and start getting the hell out right away.

The pro-war side is willing to pay any price to avoid losing, but can't win.

Is there any possible outcome that won't be a disaster? If so, is there anyone with the wisdom to find it?

I was pretty darn sure Roy Cooper would drop charges in the Duke lacrosse case.

But I was worried that he'd hedge, like: "We aren't confident we could win a conviction based on the thin and ambiguous evidence at hand." That would leave a cloud of suspicion over Reade Seligmann, David Evans and Collin Finnerty.

So I was very pleased to hear Cooper speak in the strongest terms about Mike Nifong's unjustified prosecution of the three former lacrosse players.

After thoroughly investigating the case for 12 weeks, Cooper and his staff concluded with certainty: Seligmann, Evans and Finnerty are innocent. Moreover, there's no credible evidence that any crime occurred at all. The accusing witness' constantly changing stories don't match the facts. Charges dropped.

On top of that, Cooper said the case demonstrates the need for a new law allowing rogue prosecutors to be reined in.

Also in need of reining in were all the demonstrations, judgments and hysteria that roiled Durham and Duke. Those rich white boys thought they could get away with anything, and they were going to pay. Mike Nifong would see to it.

And get himself elected while he was at it.

Durham voters went for it, but Nifong's runaway prosecution couldn't stand up to legal scrutiny. To its eternal credit, the N.C. State Bar was the first to bring him to heel, accusing him of unethical behavior. But it took the Attorney General's Office to finally end this mockery of justice.

Cooper didn't mince words. He didn't express any doubts. He promised to release details of his investigation next week. It should make interesting reading.

This has been an acute embarrassment for all of North Carolina. How could a case that the entire nation could see unraveling before its eyes actually proceed to trial, stringing along three young men unlucky enough to be picked out of a rigged photo lineup?

Now it won't be, thanks to Cooper. He made the right call the right way.

Alma Adams has found the precise word to describe the state legislature's expression of regret for slavery: anemic.

"Apology without concrete acts to address and redress the disparities is anemic at best," the Greensboro representative said yesterday.

The apology passed unanimously in both the House and Senate. I would have voted for it, but with qualms. Rather than resolve the sins of the past, an apology only opens the door for recriminations.

In Adams' view, that means the state has to follow up: funding minority economic development programs, ending collective-bargaining restrictions for state employees, putting more money into education programs for poor children and beefing up civil rights enforcement, as Mark Binker reported.

Of course, there's a logical disconnect between slavery and some of those issues. Collective bargaining restrictions for state employees have nothing to do with slavery or racial discrimination. It's an issue that unions and their legislative supporters have begun to push lately.

There's also a challenge in directly associating other remedies to the problem you're trying to address. Would "funding minority economic development programs" cover all "minorities," including those whose ancestors were never slaves in this country? If so, what's it got to do with the issue of slavery? But if only slave descendents should be included, who's going to determine eligibility? It gets very complicated unless your goal is simply to increase government support for alll kinds of social programs. Trying to select certain beneficiaries based on race or who their ancestors were would create quite a muddle and guarantee unfairness.

History is full of injustices but remedies are elusive. If you believe this country was stolen from Native Americans, you also should believe that the only justice would be to give it back. The rest of us should return to Europe, Asia, Africa or whereever our ancestors came from. We could leave it to the Native Americans to sort out which tribes stole what lands from which other tribes before the Europeans arrived. Then, when we return to our lands of origin, we can press a case against the descendents of the people who forced our ancestors to leave way back when.

Absurdities, of course. Any effort to compensate people today for wrongs done to other people in the past, when there may not even be direct connections between those people and when the wrongs can't be quantified, is bound to be unworkable.

Yes, an apology is anemic. It can only be meaningful if it represents a determination that the sins of the past won't be repeated in the future, that our state will strive to guarantee equal protection under the law to all its citizens from this day forward. It would be nice to think that, if an apology accomplishes anything, it is to finally put the past behind and look to a better future. But that hope is pretty anemic, too.

By the way, I also applaud Attorney General Roy Cooper's decision not to charge the accuser in the Duke lacrosse rape case.

Yes, Cooper believes she made false accusations. But she may actually believe them, he added.

He didn't say, but the implication is that she has mental issues.

All the more reason to target Durham DA Mike Nifong, not the woman, as the culprit here. He should have recognized her as an unreliable witness. Lacking any other evidence of a crime, he should have concluded early on that no prosecution was warranted.

The accuser's name now has appeared in all the mainstream media for the first time. I don't necessarily disagree with the decision to identify her, but I'm sad for her and her family. A matter that could have been settled quietly instead was used to ignite an uproar, putting three young men through a hellish year and exposing a confused young woman and her family to public disgrace.

I hope she's getting therapy. She may need healing as much as the men she erroneously accused.

Mike Nifong could have said "I'm sorry" and perhaps salvaged a small portion of dignity.

Instead, he wrapped his apology to the former rape defendants in an attempt to give himself credit for turning over all his files on the case to Attorney General Roy Cooper. If he'd had anything to hide, he could have simply dismissed the case himself, his statement proclaimed.

What? Well, of course he should have dismissed the case himself. That's pretty much the whole point. He didn't have a case, and he shouldn't have prosecuted the three accused former lacrosse players.

If he hadn't turned everything over to Cooper, he'd be facing criminal charges of obstructing justice.

He also suggested that Cooper had the advantage of developing new information in the case -- as if that made a difference.

Nifong has this case for 10 months, Cooper for three. Nifong should have had enough information to make the right decision, but he failed to do so. Inexcusable.

In perhaps the most pitiful statement of all, Nifong said, "I certainly take issue with some of Cooper's comments."

Yeah, Cooper was very hard on Nifong. But Nifong is in no position to "take exception" to any single thing Cooper said.

Professionally, it's just about over for Nifong. His anemic apology is too little, too late.

Barack Obama attended a $1,000-a-plate breakfast fundraiser in Charlotte this morning, then moves on to campaign stops in Florence and Columbia, S.C., the Observer reports.

Encroaching into John Edwards' territory?

Yes and no.

Yes, in that Obama is the fresh, exciting Democratic candidate this time around.

In '04, that was Edwards' political territory. The young senator couldn't overtake his older colleague, John Kerry, but ended up as his running mate.

This time it's rookie senator Obama who's chasing the veteran Hillary Clinton. Edwards could be the odd man out.

But no in the sense that the Carolinas aren't necessarily Edwards territory.

True, he was born in South Carolina and lives in North Carolina. But he's probably at least as popular in Iowa and New Hampshire, where he's spent so much time over the years.

Make no mistake. It's bad news for Edwards if Obama is well-received in the Carolinas, but the more important political battlegrounds are elsewhere.

The question is whether Edwards can match Obama in those places, let alone Clinton.

Right now, it's a three-candidate race but Edwards is running third.

Two North Carolina Democratic congressmen endorse the use of military force in Sudan if necessary to stop civil war and genocide, The News & Observer reports.

Brad Miller and G.K. Butterfield are visiting (correction: are back from visiting) the Darfur region of the North African country.

What's happening there is tragic, but it's hard for me to believe that congressmen who want us to get our troops out of Iraq would call for sending them to Sudan, which is governed by a radical Islamist regime.

The humanitarian reasons for intervention may be compelling, but there were compelling humanitarian reasons to rid Iraq of the Saddam regime. It likely would require a similar regime change in Sudan to resolve the conflict there. And sending in our troops would open another battleground for fighting Islamic insurgents -- not to the level of warfare in Iraq, and maybe not even Afghanistan. But certainly like Somalia in 1993, and probably worse.

As in Iraq, we couldn't count on much help from European allies. They're so afraid of terrorism that they would avoid provoking more anger among their large and volatile Muslim populations. And make no mistake -- Western military intervention in Sudan would anger the Muslim world all over again, no matter what humanitarian reasons justified the action.

Mark reports N.C. House Speaker Joe Hackney's remarks about the proposed constitutional amendment limiting the power of eminent domain.

The House bill has 96 sponsors (out of 120 members), but it's questionable at this point whether it will be allowed to come up for a vote.

Hackney's "concerns" might lead one to believe it won't.

Caution about amending the constitution is appropriate. But that doesn't mean one powerful legislator's caution should block fair consideration.

After all, if the legislature approves the measure, it would go before the voters of North Carolina in a statewide referendum. There would be months to fully debate its merits. Then the people decide. Democracy in action.

So I hope Hackney won't simply kill the proposal. That would be autocracy in action, which was the state of affairs in the bad old days of Jim Black.

Does Al Gore has a stake in this?

People are betting that Manhattan will be submerged by 2012? Its highest natural point is 265 feet above sea level!

Someone's making money from global warming hysteria.

When Leonard Pitts wrote his first column about the Duke lacrosse rape case a year ago, he was so perfectly clear that I didn't have the slightest trouble getting his meaning.

Pitts does outrage well.

The Duke lacrosse players sounded "echoes of white privilege, white entitlement and white brutality," Pitts wrote.

Durham DA Mike Nifong had "initially dragged his feet because the accuser was black and the accused were white kids at an elite school in the South."

If three black athletes had raped a white woman, "You'd have to call out the National Guard."

Today, Pitts' second column about the Duke lacrosse rape case is printed on our Second Opinion page.

Except it's not a rape case, or any case anymore. The charges have been dropped, dismissed as totally lacking in merit by N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper.

Pitts seems to be confused by that. At least, that's how it appears to me because I can't make sense of what he's writing.

He compares it to the Tawanna Brawley case of many years ago, when a black teenage girl accused several prominent white men of raping her -- a case that made Al Sharpton famous for trumpeting the allegations. They were totally false, but, writes Pitts today, "the incident's actuality is entirely separate from, and some might say, secondary to, the fact that many people believe it happened. It is emotionally true if not really true."

This happens, reasons Pitts, because people often "slap a favorite narrative atop an incident" -- making it conform, I suppose, to one's view of the sort of things that are likely to happen in life.

The Duke affair cautions us about that, Pitts notes. We must assess the things we know to determine whether our conclusions represent "truth, or just its emotional equivalent."

This is heavy stuff, way over my head. Instead of simply saying that he and a lot of others jumped to the wrong conclusions and even asserted prejudicial judgments without the facts to back them up, he's manufactured some sort of psychological excuse. One isn't really wrong if there's an "emotional truth" to be found. As in: We all know about "white privilege, white entitlement and white brutality," so it's fair game to assume that these Duke kids were guilty.

To me, it's a shameless cop-out. Pitts wouldn't let Don Imus get away with saying, "Hey, I was just expressing an 'emotional truth' about those Rutgers women." That would be BS, pure and simple. Pitts' amateur psychology sounds like BS to me. The same sort of BS as saying those guys wouldn't have gotten off if they'd been black and their victim white.

Pitts is taking the coward's way out on this. There's no "emotional truth" that flatly contradicts reality. He was wrong, and so were a lot of others. It's that simple.

State legislators are talking about raising their pay.

Heavens, it's so low that some of them have to take bribes to make ends meet.

If that's the problem, I don't think making taxpayers correct it is the right answer.

Some legislators also have abused the campaign finance system. One proposed solution is public campaign funding -- again making the taxpayers pay.

How about, instead of raising pay, shortening legislative sessions? Lawmakers spend a lot of time debating essentially useless bills.

Speaking of which, as long as they're in the mood to issue apologies, should representatives apologize for tolerating corruption under former Speaker Jim Black?

The country's worst weather this morning may be in Boston.

Cold, heavy wind, driving rain. What a day for a marathon.

It's going to be like last November's High Point Holiday Parade.

The conditions should inspire strong performances from the 20,000 or so Boston runners.

In weather like that, if you stop you die.

Rob Perry, a freshman from High Point, was heading toward a 10 a.m. class at Virginia Tech today.

"I was about to walk across the drill field. All these people came sprinting across the field toward the dorms. Cop cars were flying all over the place. Then I heard the loudspeakers telling people to get in their dorms and stay away from the windows."

By then, the utterly unthinkable already had happened. In two separate incidents at opposite ends of the campus, two hours apart, a gunman killed at least 30 people and wounded many more.

As soon as I heard the news after a morning meeting, I called Rob's dad, my best friend, Dave. He'd already talked with his son. Rob was OK. Thank God.

I can't imagine the anguish of other friends and family members who heard the worst possible news.

For students like Rob, the full extent of the horror hasn't set in. They don't know yet who's been killed.

The lockdown is over. Students are milling around, said Rob by cell phone a few minutes ago. TV crews are on campus. He hasn't left his dorm yet. He's having the surreal experience of watching news reports that are being broadcast from outside his own dorm.

Some students are going home, Rob said. He's staying, but to me he sounded very uncertain about the days ahead.

"I don't know when it's going to get back to normal."

After this? How could it ever?

I don't know how this could have happened, or how the university and its students, faculty and administrators can deal with it.

My column today:

Here's Nicholas Kristof's recommendation for college students' study abroad experience:

Drop them by parachute over Mongolia, Bolivia or the Congo with $10 in their pocket and see if they can find their way out. Give them extra credit if they survive malaria.

Kristof, a Pulitzer prize-winning columnist for The New York Times who's pretty much been there and done that, probably was kidding in his comments to UNC-Chapel Hill's Phillips Ambassadors last Wednesday.

The thing is, some of the 22 students selected for the new Asian studies program just might be able to pass his test. ...

Monday's mass murders at Virginia Tech have raised calls for stricter gun controls. Obviously, there should have been some way to stop Cho Seung-Hui from arming himself. Maybe on mental health grounds? But do we really want to deny sane, law-abiding people the right to possess firearms for protection or sport? No.

Some anti-depressants have been linked to violent behavior. Was that a factor? Should we be talking about banning anti-depressants rather than guns?

If someone has been prescribed these medications, should he be entered into a database that would make him ineligible for purchasing a firearm?

With all the grim news this week, thank goodness for the comic interlude provided by John Edwards' grooming bills.

AP reports the presidential candidate's campaign account has covered $400 haircuts by a Beverly Hills stylist and a $225 bill at the Pink Sapphire in Manchester, N.H., "a unique boutique for the mind, body and face."

At 53, Edwards probably does have to work at maintaining his youthful good looks. At the same time, preserving his image as a regular guy may be getting harder.

Unless all the good ol' boys up in Manchester hang out at the Pink Sapphire.

Richard Leakey was an informative and witty speaker at Guilford College last night.

Known primarily as a paleoanthropologist, he's also a champion for conservation and wildlife preservation in his native Kenya. His book, "Wildlife Wars," is a gripping account of his experience as head of the country's wildlife service when he battled poachers for the lives of elephants. Disrupting the worldwide ivory trade keyed the elephants' recovery in Africa.

Leakey spoke a good bit about those times and his tough approach, including his "shoot-to-kill" orders to rangers in their battles against poachers. The enemies also included corrupt officials in government, who were partners in the ivory trade.

Leakey still takes a hard line toward protection of animals, under threat from the growth of human populations. Keep them separate, Leakey argues, even by fencing the wildlife parks if necessary.

"How do you keep an elephant inside a fence? For most elephants, it's easy because they don't like electricity." He added that smart elephants might drop a tree limb on the fence and short it out. "Those have to be dealt with." In the old days, dealing with troublesome elephants meant shooting; now it means relocation.

Is it wise to turn Africa's parks, where animals roam freely, into big zoos? Leakey says the parks are so big you'd only see the fence when you entered or left. Having been in Tanzania's Serengeti National Park, which is as big as Connecticut, I'd say he's right about that. But that's a lot of fencing. Even then, the migratory patterns of some of the animals, like wildebeest, still take them out of the Serengeti. Elephants also roam far and wide, and when they get out of the parks they sometimes trample farms or even whole villages. One elephant herd can destroy a village's food supply, in areas where people barely get by even in good times. So the only solution is to keep people and elephants apart.

Leakey warned about climate change in Africa. There's less and less rain in many parts of the continent, and this is going to produce refugees that the West must help. But he also said Africa has great resources and potential. Many good things are happening in Kenya with improvements in health and education, he said -- points that were made by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in his recent reports from the East African country.

Leakey graciously took questions but was pretty sharp in answering a woman who said she's going on a dig at Olduvai Gorge, the site where Leakey's parents, Louis and Mary, made their most famous discoveries. The woman said she's heard the gorge is threatened by erosion caused by runoff from the melting glacier on Mount Kilimanjaro.

I thought there was something wrong with that question. I've been to Olduvai Gorge, and you can't even see Mount Kili from there. Leakey confirmed it.

He asked the woman what group she was digging with. Earthwatch, she said.

"I'm afraid they have slightly misled you," he said. The glacier on Africa's highest peak indeed is fast disappearing after 10,000 years but it's too far off to affect Olduvai Gorge. The real problem there, he said, is too many people going on digs, walking all over the place and putting fossils in their pockets. Ouch!

Leakey talked a little anthropology and said the fossil record showing stages of man's development (he avoided the "E" word, perhaps expecting a fundamentalist crowd here in North Carolina) is now very strong.

But not for leaders of Kenya's Pentecostal churches, who tried to have fossils removed from the national museum because they were "dangerous," Leakey recounted.

"They're dangerous? They've been dead for millions of years. They're not going to harm anyone," Leakey said he told a bishop.

The fossils are still on display.

The High Point City Council is likely to approve the application of a third taxi company to operate in the city -- over the objections of its competitors, the High Point Enterprise reports today.

The council gave a tentative OK Monday for Golden Leo Enterprises to run up to 15 cabs. The permit could be granted today.

"A new cab business in town is going to make a hard time for everybody," First Class Cab owner Tony Hafez told the council Monday, the Enterprise reports. "We don't have room for a new cab business. It's going to put some people out of business."

I recall Red Bird Cab offering the same complaint when First Class Cab entered the market.

But it's not the City Council's responsibility to guarantee success for any business by limiting competition. If the newcomer operates a better cab service than the existing companies, it might succeed at their expense. But the public would benefit.

As long as a cab company demonstrates that it can provide safe and reliable service, it should be granted a permit. Customers will decide who succeeds and who fails.

Joe's advance warns that it could be quite a scene downtown tomorrow. Maybe not the day to take the kids to Center City Park

I hope everyone will keep it peaceful, but police will have to be ready for trouble.

Charles Gant, a Greensboro member of Gathering of Eagles, tells Joe he won't resort to violence "unless someone defaces an American flag. If that happens, I'm going to tackle them and they'll have to arrest me."

Good grief. Let's hope not.

Maybe Gant is aware of what happened at an anti-war demonstration in Portland March 18, where a protester pulled down his pants and defecated on a burning American flag -- eliciting cheers from some of the crowd, the Portland Tribune reported.

Disgusting. But not even that would justify attacking the offender.

The fact is that anyone who defaces the flag isn't going to win anyone over to his way of thinking.

Nor is anyone who responds with violence.

I hope everyone keeps it peaceful, and decent, tomorrow.

Tolly Carr has been charged with felony death by vehicle, Eric Townsend reports.

I've written previously that this would be the charge if the former WXII news anchorman's blood-alcohol level showed 0.08 or higher -- the standard for impairment. That apparently is the case.

The state's DWI laws, as revised last year, make this a very, very easy conviction for prosecutors. The law is so simple and straightforward that a jury should have no trouble returning a verdict.

I did not predict that Carr also would be charged with felony serious injury by vehicle, but that makes sense. Authorities want to hold him criminally responsible for injuries to his passenger.

The charges are Class E and Class F felonies, respectively. The first carries a sentence ranging from 31 to 47 months in prison; the second 20 to 24 months.

If he's convicted on both counts and is given consecutive sentences, it would add up to 51 to 71 months in prison: A minimum of just over four years and a maximum of nearly six years.

Or he could get concurrent sentences, meaning only the 31 to 47 months would apply. I'd guess that's less likely.

People who said Carr would get off easy because of his celebrity were premature. The Forsyth County DA was just waiting for all the facts to come in.

It looks to me like this case will have a very certain outcome.

Nate reported today on the latest hostile exchange between a couple of Guilford County commissioners.

As usual, this was totally unnecessary.

"It all started late in the meeting when Democrat Carolyn Coleman, who is black, noted that about 2 percent of the county's paramedics were African Americans," Nate wrote. "She called the low numbers a 'shame and a disgrace for a county that says it believes in diversity.' "

For some reason, Republican Billy Yow, who is white, felt the need to offer an explantion suggesting that paramedic training is too difficult for blacks, adding: "I think that if we have to go substandard to pacify you and your wishes, I think that we're doing a grave disservice to the county as a whole."

Sheez.

Think about it for just a moment, Billy. Is paramedic training a whole lot tougher than, say, military training? How many African Americans are serving with distinction in our armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan?

So Yow's comments were ill-informed and insulting.

At the same time, I have to question the way this issue was presented in the first place. Why is it a "shame and a disgrace" that African Americans are under-represented in Guilford County's paramedic service? I could think of only one reason: That qualified African Americans are being purposely excluded.

Is that the case? Coleman should present evidence before drawing conclusions.

In fact, if Yow had simply asked Coleman, respectfully, if she could support her statement, and expressed sincere concern about getting honest information, the conversation may have taken a constructive turn. Wouldn't that have been refreshing?

It was a lovely thing for Korean Christians in the area to gather in prayer Sunday for the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings, as Jonathan Jones reported.

Because the killer, Cho Seung-Hui, was a native of South Korea, many Korean immigrants and Korean Americans may feel additional shock and sorrow.

Those feelings are understandable, but there is no national responsibility here.

The murderer happened to be Korean. There's no indication that his nationality was a factor in what he did.

On behalf of his government, South Korea's president, Roh Moo-Hyun, has expressed a "deep sense of grief" over a tragedy. "We feel a deep bitterness," he said.

The Rev. Sang Kwak of Greensboro's Korean United Methodist Church was right to say, "I am not shamed as a Korean American, I do not have guilty feelings as a Korean American. It is not a Korean immigrant problem, but a wake-up call for our society."

Concerns that this terrible event will provoke anger at Korean Americans should be proven unfounded. It had nothing to do with them. We should all mourn together as Americans, and not look to cast blame where it doesn't belong.

A bill introduced in the N.C. House of Representatives April 10 gained more relevancy after last week's murders at Virginia Tech.

Titled the School Violence Prevention Act, it aims to eliminate "bullying and harassing behaviors."

Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-Hui was reported to have been bullied in high school.

Did cruelty Cho experienced as a teenager lead to his shooting rampage years later? That's a bit of a stretch. It would make sense if he'd directed his anger at his high school classmates. Surely, Cho had not been bullied at Tech.

Nevertheless, bullying can have profound and long-lasting effects on victims. Most are never going to explode in violence, but none should have to endure constant harassment.

One question about this bill, though, is whether it's necessary. Teachers and principals already should be alert to instances of bullying at school and should deal with it strictly. Yet, some may not be as alert and responsive as they should.

The bill seems at least partly motivated by a desire to stamp out harassment based on various stated characterists, including race, religion, national origin, physical appearance, disability, gender identity and sexual orientation.

More generally, and I think more significantly, the bill's definitions of bullying and harassing behavior include this: It "has the effect of substantially interfering with or impairing a student's educational performance, opportunities, or benefits."

So, the class jerks who create an environment where no one can learn may be guilty of bullying or harassing behavior. I agree.

I'd guess that would be the most common application if this bill were enacted. Bullying, or taunting, on the basis of all the characteristics listed is all too common, I'm sure. But not as common as disruptive and intimidating behavior by little hoodlums.

Notably, the bill would not make bullying a criminal offense. Nor would it preclude enforcement of laws that might be violated -- communicating threats, for instance. It does require school systems to adopt anti-bullying policies following the guidelines set forth in the bill.

It would give parents whose kids are bullied or harassed at school the authority to insist that administrators put a stop to it.

All kinds of problems can fester and maybe ignite into serious trouble unless they're dealt with early. Schools should provide a safe learning environment for all kids. Anyone who steals that away through bullying, threats, intimidation, harassment, taunting or other disruptive behavior should be removed.

On balance, I think this bill is a worthwhile effort to improve the climate for students who go to school for the right reasons.

How far can his decisive role in the Duke lacrosse rape case take Roy Cooper?

As far as Washington, D.C., last night.

North Carolina's attorney general and his wife, Kristin, attended the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner as the guest of CBS news anchor Katie Couric, The News & Observer reported.

Couric interviewed Cooper after attending his April 11 news conference, where he exonerated David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann, the former Duke athletes falsely accused of raping a stripper at a March 2006 party.

Obviously, Cooper impressed Couric -- as he impressed a lot of people for his review of this explosive case after taking over for Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong in January.

That ought to translate to political advancement for Cooper, twice elected as AG. Once considered a possible 2008 candidate for governor, the Democrat instead announced last year he'll seek a third term in his current office.

Too bad. If he were running for governor, he might have enough momentum to pass Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue and state Treasurer Richard Moore for the Democratic nomination.

Cooper's advantages are clear. As AG, he's been strongly pro-consumer and pro-environment. He's cracked down on meth labs. And in the Duke case he undertook a fair and thorough evaluation of the facts, came to a firm conclusion and stated his position in no uncertain terms. He did exactly the right thing. It's refreshing, but rare, to be able to say all that about an elected leader.

Perdue and Moore? She's a capable lieutenant governor with good political skills, but the last lieutenant governor elected governor was Jim Hunt in 1976. The job doesn't really amount to much. It's not a decision-maker position. Moore, meanwhile, has drawn a lot of unwelcome publicity for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign cash from people he's chosen to invest the state's pension funds. It's not illegal but it doesn't look good.

But running for governor isn't Cooper's only possible path. It's not too late to get into the U.S. Senate race against Republican Elizabeth Dole. The only Democrat to express interest so far is Congressman Brad Miller. If the war in Iraq continues to go badly -- practically a foregone conclusion -- Dole will be vulnerable, but Miller still may be too liberal to win a statewide election. Cooper would be a better bet.

This is all speculation on my part, but if Cooper found anything to like in Washington last night, maybe he'll think about finding a job there. Adding the Duke case to his resume can only help.

Lex reports that Salem Presbytery postponed a vote on a resolution confessing accountability for the events of Nov. 3, 1979.

As a member of Salem Presbytery, postponement forever would suit me.

I've written before that this is not a matter that the presbytery should be debating. Technically, Presbyterian Church USA churches are not even part of the same denomination now as existed in 1979. Yet, this resolution asks Presbyterian churches, their ministers, their governing bodies and their congregations to acknowledge "their part in initiating, instigating, implementing, and/or failing to prevent the tragic events of November 3, 1979."

What part was that? While Presbyterians do believe that we live in a fallen world, this idea of collective accountability for every terrible thing that happens just doesn't make sense. Should we also acknowledge our part in instigating or failing to prevent the tragic events at Virginia Tech last week? Or, for that matter, the hundreds upon hundreds of murders that have been committed in Greensboro since Nov. 3, 1979?

It seems to me that some people are trying to use the Presbyterian church to put pressure on Greensboro leaders to issue an apology. I don't appreciate it.

Sweet Norah Jones was definitely a crowd-pleaser at War Memorial Auditorium tonight.

Jones is a captivating singer, and she was in good voice throughout her 90-minute performance. Backed by a versatile and proficient band, she showed a fine hand at piano and keyboard, and dabbled at playing guitar.

"I'm new at this," she admitted, noting she hasn't learned any "hot licks" yet but promised she will.

Jones opened with "Come Away With Me," the title track of her hit debut CD and covered a lot of favorites. But she and the band added a new sound to just about every song. The arrangements and instrumentation were strong, making the show more energetic than you'd expect from listening to Jones' soft and mellow recordings.

Although not exactly chatty, she was talkative enough to reveal a friendly nature and an offbeat sense of humor. I didn't quite get her story about her cook being stabbed today, but I got the impression that it involved more hilarity than harm.

Here's just a bit of Norah Jones trivia gleaned from the show:

She can't whistle.

Her favorite album ever is "Red-Headed Stranger" by Willie Nelson.

She wrote a funny song in 1999 about her "teensie-weensie" New York apartment.

The most important fact of the evening, however, was that my wife, for whom this was an overdue Valentine's present, really enjoyed it.

It was better than a dozen red roses.

After last week's terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech, the headline above makes no sense.

The 32 killings by a deranged gunman shocked the nation. Millions are mourning with the victims' families. Media coverage has been intense. Painful questions are asked: What drove Seung-Hui Cho to such an outburst of violence? Why weren't the warning signs taken more seriously? How was he allowed to purchase firearms? What does it say about our society when horrible things like this happen?

So, where is it that a death toll of similar proportions elicits so much less public grief, anger and reflection?

Greensboro, where 30 homicides were committed during 2006. And 32 the year before. ...

A twisted and angry column about the Duke lacrosse rape case by Solomon Burnette in the N.C. Central University student newspaper, Campus Echo, drew a disclaimer Tuesday by Chancellor James Ammons:

"We are aware of the fact that Mr. Burnette has a right to express his opinion, but we also know that the freedom of speech comes with the responsibility to be fair and accountable. We also believe that the facts do matter in this case and every legal case and violence is not the answer."

Here's the column, published in the April 18 edition (opinion section):

"On March 13, 2006, some forty affluent white men solicited the presence of two black women on (former) plantation property for the explicit purposes of racially denigrating, disrespecting, and exploiting them.

" 'Tell your Granddaddy thanks for making my cotton shirt,' they were reported to have said.

"The women were, according to all accounts, called 'nigger' and told to penetrate themselves with broomsticks (see Abner Louima). One of these women said that she was raped by three of these inebriated white men. People in power and those without disbelieved her. This is sickening.

"I am not surprised at the outcome of the case. As a son of Africa, I know that American law is not worth the paper it is written upon. We all saw L.A. Gestapo beat Rodney King only to be acquitted. We were dismayed when the assassins of Amadou Diallo, who laced his area with a forty-one shot spectrum, were also acquitted. These injustices reflect the current disequilibrium in the American justice system.

"We black people (while we may be able to bribe judges like white people) cannot expect justice from the American legal system, period.

"Why are black people so apt to view this situation through a legal system created to perpetuate our repression?

"The 'facts' of the case should not matter to us because even if we are unsure of sexual assault, these supremacists have admitted to sexually, racially and politically denigrating these women. Strippers or not, this must be addressed.

"History has shown us that the (in)justice system cannot and will not address these issues because it is built upon them. So upon whose shoulders should the responsibility of retributive correction fall?

"White people still murder us with impunity. White people still beat us with impunity. White people still rape us and get away with it.

"The only deterrent to these legally, socially and economically validated supremacist actions is the fear of physical retribution.

"Black men, stand up. Black women, stand up. Black children, stand up. We have been at war here with these same white people for 500 years.

"The time to fight, whether intellectually, artistically or physically, has always been now."

Burnette is not an 18- or 19-year-old kid. The News & Observer reports: "Burnette, 27, is a senior history major and the son of former City Council member Brenda Burnette. In 2000 and 2001, he served a 13-month prison sentence after pleading no contest to charges of robbing two Duke students at gunpoint and then violating the terms of his probation."

So he's got his own troubling history with the law and with Duke students. His call for reprisals now raises a question of whether he may pose a serious threat.

But it's important not to characterize the Campus Echo or the NCCU student body by the statements of this one bitter individual. The same edition includes this encouraging article by Echo Editor-in-Cheif Rony Camille:

I dropped in on a reception at the High Point Chamber of Commerce this evening for Dave Phillips, soon to be leaving for his post as U.S. ambassador to Estonia.

He'll succeed Greensboro's Aldona Wos in Tallinn. Looks like there's a solid bridge from Guilford County to the little Baltic country, a former (unwilling) Soviet republic.

Phillips, a businessman and former North Carolina commerce secretary for Gov. Jim Hunt, is excited. It sounds like the Estonians are his kind of people.

Sometimes called E-stonia for its high-tech savvy, the nation is pro-American, democratic, well-educated and entrepreneurial. It's part of the emerging new Europe -- central Europe -- facing westward and casting off all things Russian. The United States might find some of its best and most reliable European partners in young, vital, emerging democracies like Estonia in the years to come.

Phillips will get along very well there.

What a shocking -- yes, shocking -- report on ABC News tonight:

"Democrats in Congress appear to be taking full advantage of the 'pay to play' system they said led to a 'climate of corruption' under Republicans, an ABC News investigation has found."

There may be "climate change" at the North Pole, South Pole and points in between, but you can count on the same ethically hazy weather in Washington no matter who's running Congress.

Whatever the politicians say before the election, their victory cry afterward is always, "Now it's our turn to cash in."

Addendum, April 26: In a similar vein, a Charlotte Observer editorial today asks whether anything much has changed in the N.C. House of Representatives under new Speaker Joe Hackney. Good question.

Nick and Doris Nicholson have a right to be upset that their son's killer is working 50 hours a week at a Wake County convenience store.

The public should be concerned -- even though it has no "legal right" to know.

The News & Observer reported the story yesterday.

Hayes shot four people to death at a crossroads near the Forsyth-Davidson county line in 1988, but was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to Dorothea Dix hospital in Raleigh.

As a psychiatric patient, he is afford complete privacy protection except when he requests legal hearings to determine his status. When it is determined he no longer needs treatment, he can be released. But he hasn't asked for such a hearing in years.

Nevertheless, hospital administrators apparently have determined it's safe for him to be out in the community, and his lawyer, as quoted by the N&O, has made a positive diagnosis: "He has been a sane man living in an insane asylum for years and years and years."

Really? When Hayes did challenge his confinement, the courts came to a different conclusion. The N.C. Court of Appeals in July 2000 ruled that Hayes "failed to meet his burden of proof that he is no longer mentally ill." Furthermore, the appeals court supported the trial court's finding that Hayes showed a "high likelihood of post-release relapse into multi-substance abuse, which all experts agreed was a trigger for his 1988 psychosis."

While that ruling is nearly seven years old, it has not be superseded by any new decision. Therefore, Hayes is still considered to be mentally ill and potentially dangerous -- and that's how he should be treated until he's ruled otherwise.

Given that he still lives at Dorothea Dix, he can be monitored on a daily basis for signs of trouble. His work record is good, according to the N&O story. Nevertheless, he may have more freedom than prudence would dictate given the terrible violence he unleashed less than 20 years ago.

Update, April 27: WXII reported last night that Hayes no longer works at the convenience store, but couldn't find out why. Any guesses? How about media attention?

The WXII Web site also has audio of Bill O'Neill's much-too-chummy interview with Hayes.

Just about everybody gets A's at UNC-Chapel Hill these days, so the Faculty Council is voting today on a proposed Achievement Index that will distinguish between the mediocre A students and the really deserving ones, The N&O reports. Naturally, this is drawing opposition -- I'm guessing from the mediocre A students. But, instead of complicating the grading system, why don't professors just grade a little more realistically? In my day, getting a B was pretty good. Are students so much smarter now or do they expect a better return on the same investment?

If Howard Coble still supports getting our troops out of Iraq soon, shouldn't he have voted for the Democrats' war-funding bill containing a timeline for withdrawal?

My dog Murphy loves our morning runs ... except when it rains. I practically have to drag her. Sadly, she hasn't figured out that running slower = more time in the rain = getting wetter. But then, I suppose Murphy might be thinking, "He hasn't figured out that not running on a rainy day = not getting wet at all."

Will his son's arrest for having a loaded handgun in carry-on luggage at the Little Rock airport hurt former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's chances of winning the Republican presidential nomination? No, any publicity is good for a guy who stands nowhere in the polls. But if the elder Huckabee, who also has a concealed-carry permit, makes a similar mistake he may be seen as a little too gun-happy, even for a Republican.

Why is everyone so excited about George Clooney being in the area when Renee Zellweger is, too? I mean, the gal's pretty cute, and she's got an Oscar, too

Roy Cooper has filed his "Summary of Conclusions" in the Duke lacrosse rape case with the Durham County Superior Court.

The 21-page report is clear and compelling in explaining why the N.C. Attorney General's Office declared that "there was no credible evidence to support the allegation that the crimes occurred."

It provides a detailed timeline of events spanning the infamous late-night party March 13-14, 2006, that resulted in an accusation by an "exotic dancer" that David Evans, Reade Seligmann and Collinn Finnerty sexually assaulted her in a bathroom.

It also reveals that 25 photographs and two videos, verified as accurate, added to other evidence disproving the version of events told by the accusing witness.

She comes across as an extremely troubled woman -- clinging to her impossible account even as recently as an April 4 interview with investigators, even when confronted with evidence refuting her version of reality.

In that April 4 meeting, the report says, "the accusing witness demonstrated unsteady gait, slurred speech and other mannerisms that were consistent with behaviors observed by numerous witnesses who were at the party the night in question and confirmed through a video taken that night. The special prosecutors confirmed that the accusing witness had taken Ambien, methadone, Paxil and amitriptyline, for which she had prescriptions, prior to meeting with the special prosecutors that day."

In addition to her previously reported shifting stories, in a March 29 interview with special prosecutors she offered seven new statements about the night of the "attack." The report notes, "Verified and credible photographic, documentary and testimonial evidence contradicts each of these seven statements."

Whenever confronted with hard evidence contradicting her, the report says, she would insist that "Duke paid someone to alter the photos," or someone else altered the photos. She "routinely denied" making statements attributed to her in initial police and medical reports. At other times, "her proposed testimony about critical events changed whenever it was demonstrated that what she was saying could not be accurate."

The report covers the "questionable" photo identification process. It includes the fact that on the first two occasions she was shown David Evans' picture, she passed; she only identified him on the third occasion. She picked out a fourth player from the all-lacrosse team lineup, but it turned out he did not attend the party at all. Lucky him.

Very significantly, Cooper's report also reveals that when Durham DA Mike Nifong's chief investigator met with the accusing witness on Dec. 21, 2006, he showed her the same photo lineup she had seen on April 4, 2006, when she made the identifications of Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann (and the fourth, wasn't-there player), going over the three defendants by name. Cooper's report indicates this was a highly improper procedure:

"Showing the accusing witness these photographs which were the subject of a pending motion to suppress, along with her use of the proper names of those charged, provided the defense additional grounds to argue that the out of court and in court identifications should be suppressed, which would effectively have ended the case."

Fortunately, the case did not end with a dismissal on a technicality, which would have angered people who still believed the accusing witness. The better outcome was achieved when Cooper pronounced the defendants innocent of all charges and in fact stated that no crimes occurred -- as this report makes abundantly clear.

Michael Decker was forthright in taking responsibility for his "corruption" durng his sentencing in federal court yesterday.

The former Forsyth County representative, whose district once included parts of Guilford County, was given four years in prison for accepting bribes to change political parties from Republican to Democratic in 2003 and help former Democratic N.C. House Speaker Jim Black stay in power.

I concur with U.S. District Judge James Dever's assessment that the Black & Decker conspiracy amounted to an "epic betrayal." In the 2002 legislative elections, the voters of North Carolina elected a Republican majority in the N.C. House of Representatives. Through this conspiracy, based on bribery, that outcome was altered. Democracy was sold out.

Dever said: "The citizens of North Carolina have learned that one veteran legislator sold his office to another veteran legislator for cash and other benefits."

Decker admitted that, said he'd received fair punishment, and vowed to become a better man. I wish him well.

He also has assisted prosecutors in the investigation of Black, who's due to be sentenced in May.

I disagree with Decker on one point he made, that this was a case of individual, not systematic, corruption.

The conspiracy might have been planned and executed only by two legislators, but many other legislators -- the Democrats and some Republicans who were able to run the House through a power-sharing arrangement as a result of Decker's switch -- surely knew at some level what had taken place. Yet they happily went along because it worked out to their advantage. To this day, those politicians have not expressed shame or remorse for the fact that power changed hands in the state House -- the institution they are entrusted to run for the benefit of the people -- as a result of a corrupt bargain.

That demonstrates to me that power matters more in Raleigh than honesty or faithfulness to the voters. That may not amount to criminal corruption, but it is a corruption of principle.

Congratulations to the organizers of the Sid Lenger 10 Miler, run in High Point this morning. The event went off smoothly, drew lots of participants and I hope raised a lot of money for Youth Unlimited and the High Point Greenway. The race course included several miles on the Greenway. The weather couldn't have been more pleasant.

A couple of extras made this a special race:

the participation of 1972 Olympic marathon gold medalist (silver medal in 1976) Frank Shorter;

and the gift for every 10-mile runner of "Carolina Preserves" by Greensboro artist William Mangum. What a gorgeous book.

I enjoyed meeting Shorter, a real hero of mine when I was a high school runner. Yeah, he's got a few years on me but he's still faster.

I don't run many races these days. This was my first in quite a few years and my first 10-mile since way way back in 1973. I was a high school senior then and covered the distance in 55 minutes. Now I'm just a senior, and it took me an hour and 27 minutes to finish. Man, the clock really tells the story of time, in more ways than one.

This was the inaugural event held in memory of Sid Lenger, a High Point designer and runner who died of brain cancer in 2003. His friends did him proud. I'm already looking forward to next year's, when my goal will be not to get any slower.

I hope you read our editorial today advancing One Guilford: A Leadership Symposium.

Sponsored by the News & Record, it will be hosted by High Point University, Wednesday morning May 16.

It's an invitation event, but we're offering sign-up opportunities here.

Keynote speaker is Howard Putnam, former CEO of Southwest and Braniff Airlines.

Panelists are: Becky Smothers, mayor of High Point; Don Cameron, president of GTCC; Mona Edwards, chief of staff for the Center for Creative Leadership; Jeff Miller, CEO of High Point Regional Health System; David Noer, Holt professor of Leadership and Business Administration at Elon University; and Al Barnett, Jr., financial adviser for Scott & Stringfellow, Inc. Closing remarks by John Alexander, president, Center for Creative Leadership.

We expect One Guilford to be an exciting event that advances the discussion about our future together.

I heard part of the Jimmy Carter interview on Speaking Of Faith today -- enough to pick out a point of serious disagreement.

The former president expressed his opinion that the country is more divided now than at any time in his life.

Carter has made clear on many occasions that he abhors the policies of the current president, and especially the war in Iraq. He's entitled. But those strong feelings may have colored his historical perspective because whatever national disharmony exists today pales in comparison to the bitter social strife we experienced just a few decades ago.

Or has Carter already forgotten the period from, say, 1963 to 1974?

Call it the Vietnam War era for an all-encompassing title. It saw the JFK, MLK and RFK assassinations, a bloody struggle for civil rights, race riots, acts of terrorism by groups like the Ku Klux Klan, Black Panthers and the Weathermen, the Kent State shootings and protests against the war on a scale that makes today's The World Can't Wait antics look like a Sunday school picnic. Cities burned, universities were shut down and the Democratic Party practically imploded at its 1968 national convention in Chicago. And then there was Watergate, which ended Richard Nixon's presidency.

Carter, of all people, should recall how wounded Americans felt after all that because he campaigned in 1976 as a healer who would bring us back together, restoring decency and virtue to our country. The voters believed him. While he made a good effort to deliver on those promises, he wasn't able to effectively manage economic and foreign challenges and was denied a second term.

Carter is a student of history, so I don't understand why he overlooks the turmoil that so widely divided this country during the 1960s and '70s. Today's troubles don't measure up, or down, to that.

A very powerful story in yesterday's Charlotte Observer begins with these paragraphs:

Since April 1, Timber Ridge apartments has been the epicenter of a city's grief after two police officers were slain in the east Charlotte complex.

Saturday, 27 days later, community and spiritual leaders gathered at the apartments and said they hope the tragedy will become a rallying point for people who want to change Charlotte for the better.

The spot outside Building 7211 where Charlotte-Mecklenburg police Officers Sean Clark and Jeff Shelton were shot on March 31 has become an ever-growing and now permanent memorial.

A cross-shaped brick planter marks the spot, which has been adorned with memorials, flowers and a wooden cross with the names of the officers on it.

Hundreds of Timber Ridge residents joined law enforcement officers and the families of Clark and Shelton to dedicate the memorial Saturday.

To commemorate the city's inaugural Jeff Shelton and Sean Clark Day, two brass bands played in the afternoon sun.

There were children marching behind a police honor guard, encouraging people to stop violence and "cross over" for justice, peace and academic achievement.

Many community activists demand "justice." Usually that means they want fair treatment of their constituents by the police and courts.

In this case, "justice" might be construed to mean severe punishment for the man accused of murdering the two police officers. But that's a separate issue.

I think it's important to talk about justice in the context of peace and academic achievement. For the troubled Timber Ridge community, where police answered calls with numbing regularity, peace requires putting a stop to the violence, drug dealing and property crimes that terrify decent residents but bring the community into frequent contact with police and the judicial system. And academic achievement only happens when young people set their minds on improving themselves and finding success through brainpower, not through the power of guns or drugs.

It's heartening that this is a community initiative supported by hundreds of residents. That's where a turnaround has to begin. If the community creates an atmosphere where academic achievement is expected of young people, where a peaceful environment is expected, and if this attitude takes hold and prevails, justice will naturally follow.