Triad Today

Voter suppression has been an ugly part of the American fabric for our entire history. Slavery, of course, was the ultimate method of suppressing votes, but it was just one example among many. Long-standing misogynistic societal norms, for example, kept women in the home and away from the polls for more than 300 years after […]

Last December, Drew McKissick, chairman of the South Carolina GOP, told the Washington Examiner that he would not rule out cancelling that state’s 2020 Republican primary if President Trump should face a serious challenge from a member of his own party. Last week he made good on that promise. As radical as that seems, keep […]

Each year, over 1.5 million shelter animals are euthanized nationwide, and North Carolina is, unfortunately, among the leading states who contribute to that statistic. In fact, according to a recent report by the NC Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, public animal shelters in our state euthanized over 71,000 cats and dogs in 2018 alone. […]

I admit it. I was taken with Kamala Harris even before she announced her run for the presidency. I wrote a column in which I praised her prosecutorial record, and predicted she would be the first woman to sit in the Oval Office. She still might, but not in 2020. During the first round of […]

There are all sorts of qualifications that candidates must meet in order to run for office, such as minimum age and residency. It’s just too bad we can’t also require them to show proof of accountability. This past week, for example, it was reported that the budget stalemate between Governor Cooper and the GOP-controlled legislature […]

During last week’s Triad Today program, I uttered the “C” word. I don’t just mean any “C” word, I mean the dreaded “C” word. The one word that makes 2nd Amendment activists’ blood boil. It happened while our Roundtable panel was discussing what can be done to prevent mass shootings like the ones in El […]

Spurred by anti-Trump sentiment, the Republican’s so-called “War on Women”, and the #MeToo Movement, women turned out in droves last year to vote in the mid-term elections. The result was an historic number of women winning local, state, and federal offices. Then, during Trump’s subsequent State of the Union address, the House chamber was replete […]

During this 50th anniversary month of the Apollo moon landing, I watched a number of NASA-related movies, and while most of them were top-notch productions, it occurred to me that hardly any of the actors actually looked or sounded anything like the real-life astronauts they were portraying. Tom Hanks, for example, neither looked nor sounded like […]

A couple of weeks ago in this column I advocated against setting off fireworks. This week I may be ignoring my own advice by stating the following: Transgender athletes need a reality check, and the transgender community needs to be more tolerant of others. Let’s begin with the reality check. An increasing number of males […]

My Republican father went to his grave in 2010, still blaming me for the outcome of the 1992 election. “It’s your fault that Bill Clinton got elected,” he would say. Dad was referring to my support for Ross Perot, a self-made Texas billionaire who ran as an independent candidate for president against Clinton, the Democrat, […]