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With the exception of one or two letters that came in before Christmas and needed trimming or other changes by their authors, we're taking a break on letters, pro and con, that respond to N.C. A&T professor Reza Salami's complaints that a Guilford sheriff deputy's patrol car contained a sign proclaiming Jesus as "your Savior."

It has been a robust discussion, although it was disheartening to see some people veer from the issue of the sign's appropriateness to attacks on Salami.

The reason we suspend publication of letters in a case such as this is the discussion runs its course, and no new views or ideas surface.

Expect a second wave of letters, however. The professor has a court date later this month, thus there will be fresh developments on which readers can comment..

You should see some of the letters we didn't publish.

As sour a pill as it may have been for Hillary Clinton to swallow, Barack Obama's stunning victory in the Iowa Caucuses says a lot of good things about Obama and about America.

Obama won in a state that is 90-plus percent white. That means he effectively tailored a campaign message that transcends race -- that he spoke to concerns that cut across racial lines. He is clearly a different breed of candidate from Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton; for Obama race was an issue, but not THE issue.

He also beat Clinton among female voters.

His victory also means that many Iowans looked past race in their choice of a candidate.

And it may signal a genuine hunger among voters for a significant change in Washington.

By contrast, Hillary's contradictory message of being experienced yet a new voice -- an inside outsider, if you will -- is a tough line to toe.

Ironically, Obama's toughest sell could be among some black voters, many of whom are torn between him and Clinton. And some of whom are reluctant to vote for Obama because they fear he can't win. (South Carolina seems a prime example of that problem for him.)

But those voters underestimate their formidable power. And they underestimate Obama's broad appeal.

This came in the e-mail today from a frequent correspondent, Tony Moschetti. He obviously didn't take very kindly to our support of tougher helmet laws in North Carolina for motorcyclists.

Dear Mr Johnson:

Your editorial concerning the new helmet law is typical liberal advocacy of more expansive and intrusive government. Riding without a helmet, or with a helmet that doesn't satisfy the idiot bureaucrats (or their liberal shils) who pollute our landscape endangers no one but the rider. So our out of control nanny state is going to protect us because we are too stupid to protect ourselves. Of course, if we choose not to purchase the new, likely quite expensive helmets, we are subjected to significant fines, though we are a potential hazard to no one else! Once again this nothing more than corrupt government finding new ways to extort even more of our money.

These same bureaucrats, while stopping all road work during the holiday season, and taking down the barrels, kept in place the heavy fines for speeding in the "non-construction, construction zones." Was there any possible purpose there other than to rip off holiday travelers through the heavy fines for endangering the safety of construction workers, even though there were no construction workers during this period. I'll bet you also thought that was a great idea! I'm hoping the new owners will put this liberal rag in mothballs and expand the Rhinocerous Times!

This week's column.

It probably won't be easy for three University of North Carolina football players to live down being allegedly kidnapped, held at knifepoint and sexually assaulted by two women they met at a Chapel Hill nightclub in mid-December.

After all, these were guys ... football players no less.

But here one of them was, whispering desperately by cell phone for the police to rescue him and his teammates.

The players were celebrating a birthday. They met the women and a male companion at the club, according to a police report, left with them and wound up at the players' apartment in the wee hours of a Sunday morning.

Some of the events that followed aren't appropriate for a family newspaper. So, suffice it to say that they got along well for a while. And then didn't.

The two women and their male companion held the men against their will, the players say, and, to add injury to the insult, robbed them.

Fortunately, police arrived to find two of the players wearing boxer shorts and bound with duct tape.

You could hear the giggles from one end of I-40 to the other.

But this wasn't some twisted Farrelly Brothers comedy. This was real.

"The Great Debaters," a fact-based new film directed by, and starring Denzel Washington, is not a great movie.

But it is a good, solidly acted production that is well worth your time, if only for its ability to make collegiate debating a lot more compelling than your typical Hollywood car chase or computer-counterfeited chop-socky brawl.

It recalls "Akeelah and the Bee" in its earnestness. It contains some of the best elements of a good sports movie. And it revels in the power of words and critical thinking.

The story recalls the real-life glory of a debating team at a tiny black Texas school, Wiley College, that becomes so good it begins to challenge white colleges.

There are flaws, among them a thin romantic subplot and a white racist sheriff who is written too broadly to be taken seriously.

But on the whole, a good cast and pretty good script go a long way

Not only do two superb actors in Washington and Forrest Whitaker share screen time, but so does an excellent young actor named (and I'm not kidding) Denzel Whitaker.

The new version of the old-fashioned chain letter, the bogus, myth-spreading e-mail, is a tough critter to crush.

Only days after Ryan Seals' story about a false e-mail warning of gang-initiation rites that involve shootings at local intesections and this editorial about the prank yesterday, I got the same e-mail again today.

At least this one was slightly less bogus than an earlier version I received. At least it didn't include capital letters in red at the top procaimed that "THIS IS REAL."

How could Hillary Clinton so throughly confound the polls by edging Barack Obama in New Hampshire?

Remember, nearly every poll had her losing, some by double digits and by all indications, even she believed them.

Some possible answers:

New Hampshire voters seemed to be torn on their choice from day one, and some may have changed thier minds at the last minute.

The Republican Lazarus in this election, John McCain, drew some of the independents that may otherwise have supported Obama.

Clinton's message resonated more strongly with female voters in Hampshire than it did in Iowa, where Obama captured more female votes.

However, I'm not buying the "Teary Moment Theory." It was overblown and overexposed.

I do buy the theory that black candidates tend to underperform in elections versus their showings in polls.

It seems some white voters who say they will support an African American candidate to pollsters say something different when they actually cast their ballots.

It happened to Harvey Gantt in North Carolina.

The Pew Research Center observed in a February 2007 artiicle on Obama and polls:

"Problems with pre-election polls in several high-profile biracial elections in the 1980s and early 1990s raised the question of whether covert racism remained an impediment to black candidates. White candidates in most of these races generally did better on Election Day than they were doing in the polls, while their black opponents tended to end up with about the same level of support as the polls indicated they had.

"This phenomenon was first noticed in the 1982 race for governor of California, where Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, a black Democrat, narrowly lost to Republican George Deukmejian, despite polls showing him with a lead ranging from 9 to 22 points. The next year, African American Democrat Harold Washington barely won his race for mayor of Chicago against Republican Bernard Epton. Pre-election polls taken within the last two weeks of the campaign showed Washington with a 14-point lead.

"Three highly visible races in 1989 and 1990 also followed this pattern, though in two instances at least one late poll signaled a close race. Virginia Democrat and African American Douglas Wilder edged white Republican Marshall Coleman by less than one percentage point to become the nation's first elected black governor. But two of three polls conducted just days before the election showed Wilder leading by double-digits; a third poll had him 4 points ahead.

"Even an exit poll conducted on Election Day showed Wilder winning by 10 points, while accurately tallying the vote in the other two statewide races. Unlike most exit polls that use an anonymous written ballot to collect voters' responses, this one had interviewers asking voters face-to-face how they voted, a situation that might increase the pressure to provide a socially desirable response."

In his 1990 loss against Jesse Helms for U.S. Senate, two of three polls in North Carolina had Gantt in the lead.

A little while ago, I reminisced in a column about my days as a campus activist, specifcally the "chairman" of the Black Student Movement at Carolina.

Little did I suspect that visual evidence survives on what I looked like then -- until a schoolmate today passed along this link to a UNC alumni site.

I'm the guy with the beard,the monstrous Afro and the "Think Black Ink" T-shirt.

It saddened me to hear of the death of Roy Carroll Sr. He was only 64.

I hadn't seen the man I'll forever know as "Mr. Carroll" for decades. (In hindsight, I wish I would have least given him a call.) But I spoke of him often with his son, Roy Carroll II, the builder and developer who is renovating the old downtown Wachovia tower as Center Pointe.

Roy Sr. was my first boss, the manager of a supermarket called Bi-Rite, then Bestway, on Phillips Avenue.

He was a good man to work for, firm but friendly, with an easy smile and a calming manner, 24-7.I bagged groceries for him in my first stab at a paying job. I was in high school.

In those days we took the groceries out of the cart, bagged them, placed them back into the cart, rolled them to your car and loaded them. I made nearly as much in tips on a good Saturday as I made in salary. All you had to be was nice. People were so appreciative.

That was more years ago than I care to remember but I never forgot him. And I'm grateful for the lessons he taught by example.

He eventually left the supermarket to go into construction. The Carroll Cos. were born. He co-owned the company with Roy II until he retired.

The family business is part of his legacy, as is the shiny new tower taking on a second life in downtown Greensboro.

I didn't connect him to his son at first but I should have known right away. The resemblance is unmistakable. Especially the smile.

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I continue to be impressed by the efforts of a group of parents at Grimsley High School who are trying to address the root causes of recent disciplinary problems at the school. They call themselves Grimsley CARES.

Here is how they describe their mission in a letter:

Many of you are anxious to get involved with the process of helping Grimsley High School reach its undeniable potential to provide all students with the ability to excel in and out of the classroom. Many of us are feeling that the climate at Grimsley High School must change. Cathy Daniels-Lee and I have joined hands and hearts to create a Grimsley High School Community that CARES.

There are many aspects of our current school climate that need our support: a better understanding of all students’ needs; supporting our teachers' efforts and helping to improve faculty morale; ensuring a safe campus for all; looking at current discipline procedures and exploring if they are balanced and fair and how discipline procedures can be improved; looking at ways to nurture and educate our students outside of the typical classroom setting; igniting a feeling of school pride campus-wide; and becoming more community-oriented off-campus.

We are
GHS Community C.A.R.E.S.- Committed to Actively Reach Every Student,

Valerie Stern, Cathy Daniels-Lee

I imagine we've all had the reflexive to "throw 'em out" or "lock 'em up" in cases like the ugly fights at Grimsley in December between students from rival neighborhoods. That's understandable.

There is no place for that kind of behavior on campus. Those students have to be disciplined, by rule and by law.

But there is more going on beneath the surface.The issues and problems are still there. The fights are only symptoms.

Griimsley CARES wil meet its share of skeptics and cynics. But it's encouraging to see a school community behave like a community.

In the scheme of things, Robert L. Johnson's recent comments about presidential hopeful Barack Obama should create only a blip on the political radar screen.

But they are so drenched in irony and hyprocrisy that they beg a reaction.

Johnson, the billionaire owner of the Charlotte Bobcats and the founder and former CEO of Black Entertainment Television, attacked Obama at a recent campaign rally for Hillary Clinton.

In defending comments Clinton had made about Obama's references to Lyndon Johnson's and Martlin Luther King's respective roles in the civil rights struggle, Robert Johnson added: "And to me as as an African American, I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think that Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood -- and I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in the book -- when they have been involved."

Johnson's slightly veiled reference was interpreted by many to mean Obama's involvement in drugs as a young man, a fact he touches on in his autobiography. And a point other Clinton surrogates have raised.

Later, Johnson added: "That kind of campaign behavior does not resonate with me, for a guy who says, 'I want to be reasonable, likable, Sidney Poitier "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner." And I'm thnking, I'm thinking to myself, 'This ain't a movie, Sidney, this is real life.' "

In a furious attempt to backtrack on his words. Johnson released a statement hours later that "clarified" what he'd said: "My comments today were referring to Barack Obama's time spent as a community organizer, and nothing else. Any other suggestion is simply irresponsible and incorrect."

Yeah, right.

So, this thing Johnson would only refer to coyly, as "doing something in the neighborhood" was organizing? That makes no sense.

Where to begin on Johnson's wafer-thin credibility?

The criticism that continues to this day over his notorious stewardship of BET, during which he scrapped news and public affairs content in favor of music videos and often tasteless and exploitative programs?

His protestations that it was unfair to expect his channel to be positive and uplifting -- that the bottom line for him was the bottom line?

His firing even of his wife from BET (but she did receive a multi-million-dollar divorce settlement).

The fact is, Johnson seems an odd choice to speak for the Clintons in the black community, where his clout is less than stellar.

BET seems slowly to be improving its content, but some viewers remain unimpressed.

Protesters recently picketed the home of BET's current head, former Greensboro resident Debra Lee.

And the National Association of Black Journalists gave it a "Thumbs Down Award" at last summer's convention.

"It is sad that such a powerful platform as BET has not been used as forcefully to educate and enlighten as well as amuse and entertain," said NABJ President Bryan Monroe. "We hope that its new leadership now recognizes the responsibility that comes along with the power of a major cable network."

Robert Johnson has been too many glass houses to throw stones.

This week's column is an expanded version of an earlier post.

It saddened me to hear of the death last week of Roy Carroll Sr. He was only 64.

I hadn't seen the man I'll forever know as "Mr. Carroll" for decades.

But I spoke of him often with his son, Roy Carroll II, the builder and developer who is renovating the old downtown Wachovia tower as Center Pointe.

Roy Sr. was my first boss, the manager of a supermarket called Bi-Rite, then Bestway, on Phillips Avenue.

He was a good man to work for, firm but friendly, with an easy smile and a calming manner — the kind of boss you wanted to please, not because he would be angry if you didn't, but because he would be disappointed.

I bagged groceries for Mr. Carroll in my first stab at a paying job. I was 16, a rising junior in high school.

He expected us to work hard while we were on the clock. He also respected that even a teenager had a life away from work. It was never a problem getting time off for a school activity.
I learned when and when not to double-bag, to pack meats separately in plastic and always to gently tuck loaves of bread near the top of the sack
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I learned to size up a customer and determine how much weight he or she could carry. If the patron was an elderly woman, I'd keep the bags extra light, just in case she didn't have help unloading them at home.

I learned the value of a smile and a kind word to customers.

In those days we took the groceries out of the cart, bagged them, placed them back into the cart, rolled them to the customer's car and loaded them.

I made nearly as much in tips on a good Saturday as I made in salary.

All you had to be was nice.

Not that I was always a model employee. Sometimes they'd call when they were shorthanded on my nights off.

Sometimes I'd pretend not to be at home.

That was more years ago than I care to remember but I never forgot Mr. Carroll. And I'm grateful for the lessons he taught us by example.

A lot has changed on Phillips Avenue since those days. The space that once was Bestway has been shuttered and closed, replaced for a while by a teen club that was deemed a nuisance to the neighbors and eventually shut down. It's now empty again, boarded up and draped in graffiti.
It seems so tiny in comparison to today's megamarkets that can swallow you whole in endless aisles of stuff and more stuff and where a human cashier is a luxury, not a given.

I could walk home from Bestway. Now there is no supermarket in that part of town.

As for Mr. Carroll, he eventually left the supermarket to go into construction. The Carroll Cos. were born. He co-owned the company with Roy II until he retired.

The family business is part of his legacy, as is the shiny new tower taking on a second life in downtown Greensboro.

What is most interesting about Mr. Carroll was the relatively brief time I worked with him. I can't say we were ever that close.

I had no idea of who his family was or where they lived. I just knew him as a good and decent man who treated us fairly and respectfully.

That's the way it is sometimes with people whose paths we cross, sometimes only for a short while. They can still make an impression, and teach us lessons we carry with us.
I guess that's why I feel good when a former student remembers me and has something nice to say about what he or she learned while in my class.

And why I need to be more mindful of the impression I might be making on some young person, for better or worse

Mr. Carroll was my first boss in my first job. And decades later, I appreciate him giving me that chance.

I didn't connect him to his son at first, but I should have known right away.
The resemblance was unmistakable. Especially the smile.

Richard Prince reports that BET founder and Charlotte Bobcats owner Robert L. Johnson has abandoned his spin attempts and apologized to Barack Obama.

That would seem to give credence to my impression that Johnson's initial explanation that the veiled comments he made at a Hillary Clinton rally were referring to Obama's community organizing -- not his admitted drug use as a youth -- was as flimsy and contrived as it seemed.

Raise your hand if you found the going a lot rougher this morning than you expected.

I certainly did, nearly spinning out of control in my car on Summit Avenue, en route to an 8 a.m. class at N.C. A&T, then taking a tumble on a campus sidewalk after class (I hurt nothing but my pride.)

Ironically, the roads were much more treacherous this morning than the two more heralded weather "events" last week.

Truth be told, there was more of a cause for A&T to delay classes this morning than last week.

Meanwhile, the weather has played havoc with the school system.

The thing about patchy ice is that you're lulled into a sense of security and then you're suddenly hanging on for dear life.

This note came in the e-mail recently from former City Council candidate Joel Landau:

Hi Allen,

Joel Landau

My response to Joel was that I understand the rationale for not flushing "No. 1." Yet, as motivated as I am to conserve, I simply can't bring myself not to pull the handle. I have not investigated the health hazards of such a practice. There may be none.
But it seems so unclean and anti-hygienic.

This week's column:

Mike Barber shuffled cliches like a Vegas dealer.

"Making sausage."

"Winning ugly."

And so on.

The city councilman was describing the new council's approach to doing business. And even if the analogies weren't fresh, the council's style and tenor definitely are.

It began in late December, with an emergency meeting to deal with a yuletide flourish of crime in the city. The council asked hard questions. And it acted almost immediately, directing City Manager Mitchell Johnson to find $500,000 in his budget to fund additional police hours.
That wasn't all. Barber pushed through a proposal for 49 job cuts in the city work force, also in December. The plan calls for 49 city jobs to be eliminated by July 1, through retirements or attrition.

Two weeks ago the council finally saw the much-discussed "black book" that figures so prominently in the still-festering controversy surrounding the forced resignation of former police Chief David Wray.

And just last week, the council agreed that simply looking at the photos wasn't enough. It would hear from the attorney of one of the former officers connected to the book for a fuller explanation on why the book was created and how it was used.

Depending on whom you believe, the book, which contains photographs of 19 African American officers, was used legitimately to conduct an investigation of a citizen's complaint against an officer. Or it was used maliciously and irresponsibly to target black officers.

The council will meet privately with the attorney, Seth Cohen, to hear his account on how the book was used and to see additional material that Cohen contends is pertinent to the case.

Also changing is the council's relationship with Johnson.

Caroline Kennedy has endorsed Barack Obama for president and, in an even more significant development, Ted Kennedy will follow suit today.

This, from today's New York Times:

Both the Clintons and their allies had pressed Mr. Kennedy for weeks to remain neutral in the Democratic race, but Mr. Kennedy had become increasingly disenchanted with the tone of the Clinton campaign, aides said. He and former President Bill Clinton had a heated telephone exchange earlier this month over what Mr. Kennedy considered misleading statements by Mr. Clinton about Mr. Obama, as well as his injection of race into the campaign.

Mr. Kennedy, a major figure in party politics for more than 40 years, intends to campaign aggressively for Mr. Obama, beginning with an appearance and rally with him in Washington on Monday. He will be introduced by Ms. Kennedy.

Click here to read the whole article.

The Clintons tried to take the Democratic Party to a familiar place -- preaching the politics of equality while not practicing it when push came to shove.

Hence, Bill Clinton's not-so-subtle attempts to "remind" voters, time and again, that Barack Obama is a black man. Every knows Obama is black, of course, but Clinton wanted to makes the distinction a more prominent issue -- to make Obama The Black Candidate rather than a candidate who happened to be black.

It didn't work and may mark a turning point in the campaign.

Significantly, Obama polled well among African American and white voters in South Carolina.

Only weeks ago, he was trailing Hillary Clinton among voters in both demographics.

Meanwhile, I'm reading the book Shelby Steele's book, "A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Barack Obama and Why He Can't Win."

More on that later ...

I take smug satisfaction that I discovered the superb HBO series "The Wire" before lots of people I know.

But I'm glad that more people are taking note of the series, which is as relentlessly real and rich and challenging as anything on the tube (including "The Sopranos."

The series is set in Baltimore and chronicles the lives of cops, criminals, politicians and, this season, journalists. It is violent and profane, but also smart and touching.Rarely have I seen so many fully drawn characters in a TV drama. You get to know the cops and the drug dealers equally well, and you find things to like and loathe about nearly all of them.

How different is this series? One of its most intriguing characters is a scarfaced anti-hero, Omar, who robs drug dealers and has a stricter code of honor than most cops in the show. Did I also mention that he happens to be gay?

"The Wire" can be hard to follow, because there are so many characters and plot threads. But stick with it. You'll catch up eventually and you'll be glad you did.

Now Greensboro has a new fire chief and a city attorney to hire.

Chief Johnny Teeters has announced that he is retiring effective Dec. 15.

The job may not be as controversial or hot-button as, say, the police chief's position, but it is comparably important.

As Feb. 1 approaches, our attention inevitably turns to the downtown International Civil Rights Center and Museum, a void on Greensboro's urban landscape that desperately needs to be filled.

People will find all kinds of reasons not to support the project. These are a few I've heard::

1. Its books are questionable.
2. Skip and Earl.
3. African American-run projects inevitably mismanage money.
4.. They built the Empire State Building in 13 months (actually, one year and 45 days). Why has this little building taken so long? (courtesy of City Councilman Mike Barber.)
5. The voters said no in two bond referendums. They clearly don't want the museum.
6. Skip and Earl.
7. It won't generate the type of interest its supporters allege.
8. Why hasn't the black community stepped up to support it in greater numbers?
9. The project is too ambitious; they need to scale it back, even put it somewhere else.
10. Skip and Earl.

My responses:
1. The books are viewable at the Community Foundation.
2. Skip Alston and Earl Jones can be politically polarizing. Some supporters of the museum had hoped that they would step gracefully aside. They won't. That said, letting dislike for these two men stand in the way of such an important historic jewel is petty.
3. I won't dignify that one with a response. But I've gotten this one from several callers.
4. Yes, Mike's right. They built the Empire State Building in 13 months. But the Empire State Building was not hurting for money nor did it involve the renovation of a building sitting atop an underground stream.
Further, the Empire State Building involved 3,400 construction workers, five of whom died during the project.
And it had its own problems. It was nicknamed the Empty State Building for its inablity to attract tenants and did not turn a profit until 1950.
5. The voters said no to the bonds, they didn't say no to the museum. In addition, some project wind up on the ballot multiple times before they are approved by voters.
There's more, but you get the idea.
6. See No. 2
7. That remains to be seen. I expect it would do well once it open, especially given its affiliation with Smithsonian.
8. That's a valid point. The museum belongs to the whole community but the black community could step up to support it in a more forceful way.
9. The museum deserves to be done right. That doesn't mean a phase of it couldn't open before total completion, to begin generating revenue, as some folks have suggested.
10. See No. 2

We need to get this thing done. There is no excuse.

Of course, Skip doesn't help when he says things like this, quoted at JR's blog.