Be safe
This time of year, you hear the words teenager, excessive speed and alcohol mixed together in news stories all too much.
School is almost out. It’s party season, and all the lectures, all the peer support and every effort to ask, plead and demand that our sons and daughters make responsible choices are up against some pretty tough odds.
In a college town, teens grow up even faster. And with the university community in full-on party mode, there are plenty of examples around of behavior unbecoming.
Most kids will make the right choices, but a little extra help from all of us could make a very big difference.
Moving On
They called themselves the David Price Six, but the moniker is a little unfair, especially since the fourth district U.S. Congressman’s request that trespassing charges be dropped against them convinced Judge Alanzo Coleman to do just that.
It’s also not exactly accurate for the group to claim they sat in because Price refused to meet with them — he was in Washington at the time and, according to Price, they turned down his request to meet later. And Price, who along with Rep. Brad Miller of Raleigh has offered his own legislation to end the war, is hardly the obstacle to a conclusion of hostilities. You have to wonder why they chose Price instead of visiting some of the state’s wavering Democrats and highly pro-war Republicans.
Yes, there is a war on and people are dying and no one questions that these six young people were trying to underline the passionate opposition they and their supporters feel against the war.
But the tactics and quickness to adopt a label that harkens back to the Vietnam and Civil Rights era smacks of grandstanding.
We’d rather this war come to a conclusion — and soon — via principles not protest PR, but just as in Vietnam, the less we see of one, the more we’ll see of the other.
Unacceptable
Just when you thought the legislature was at least bi-partisan in apologizing for past racial injustices, House Republicans refused to vote for an apology for one of this state’s most heinous acts.
The 1898 Wilmington Race Riot has long been a stain on our past, but until recently it was seldom acknowledged.
But thanks to a recent study commission, we’ve learned more about the Democratic Party and the state’s largest two newspapers it conspired with to fan the flames of racial hatred. The result was a violent coup.
Finally, for that act and the decades of consequences that followed, the party and the papers have apologized.
Last week, the state House took up a measure to acknowledge the events, but since there was not mention on the roles of party and the press in the wording, the measure passed along partisan lines.
While some may see it as a principled stand, choosing partisanship ahead of conscience is a shallow and callous act.