here were, according to officials with the Department of Social Services, 1,059 Robeson County children ages 1 to 13 who opened Christmas presents on Sunday morning because of the benevolence of hundreds — perhaps thousands — of Robesonians who opened their hearts first and then their wallets and purses. That is 86 more children than benefited during 2010 — but, and here is the only bit of disappointing news, 824 fewer than were deemed eligib...
Hands off hands-free There is growing evidence that motorists who are talking on cell phones are a road hazard, with some studies concluding that their threat is similar to — or even greater than — that of a drunken driver.
But a recommendation this week by the five-member National Transportation Safety Board to ban all cell phone use by the driver of a vehicle goes too far as it didn’t distinguish between hands-free and hand-held phones.
The board appears to...
Farewell to Iraq The News & Observer, Raleigh
There are none who long for peace so much as those whose duty is to fight the nation’s wars — wars that we trust our leaders to engage in only as matters of grave necessity, with vital national interests at stake. The costs — in blood, resources, moral standing — are too high to fight on less compelling grounds.
It perhaps never will be possible to make the eight-year war in Iraq somehow fit the definition of ...
The Racial Justice Act ought to be a good thing. Its intent, to take the black, white and red out of the courtroom and achieve the ideal of a color-blind judicial system, is noble, if fleeting, and that pursuit should never end.
Unfortunately, the act has become a game, one that is played by death-row inmates who — here’s an irony — have little more than time on their hands. Consequently, the Racial Justice Act finds itself a chamber over f...
Time to use mailbox, not inbox How many of you want your holiday greetings to arrive in the form of thick paper cards delivered by the United States Postal Service? Now, how many prefer your cheery wishes to arrive in your e-mail inbox, always available via a click or two, assuming you remember where theyre stored? Let’s have a vote on that loaded question.
Some communications are still best made on paper. Mainstream etiquette requires that sympathy letters after a death...
School daze The Republican-led General Assembly, even while slashing everywhere else, last year decided, without a compelling explanation, that five extra days of school would fix some of the problems that plague our public schools.
Many local systems, including the Public Schools of Robeson County, asked for and received an exemption for the current school year, but word is that they won’t be so easily granted for the 2012-13 school year — and that mo...
Eve’s gift s the trial begins of one of two men accused in the 2008 murder of the student body president of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, there are indications that Eve Carson’s death made this state a safer place.
Carson’s death produced outrage, because of the senselessness of it — she was robbed of money, and then savagely killed instead of being released — but also because the two men accused, Laurence Alvin Lovette, then 17 yea...
Making sausage There are compelling reasons why politicians, when redrawing district lines, should not bunch and start over.
— Constituents don’t look kindly on being moved out of the district that the person they voted for — or even against — represents.
— Redistricting is confusing to voters, who often end up at the wrong poll sites on Election Day, which we know happened more than once during the recent municipal election in Lumberton.
— And finall...
he county Board of Commissioners on Monday night will approve a new set of district lines from which they will be elected, and until the introduction of a wild-card last week, there wasn’t a lot of mystery concerning what to expect.
The commissioners will act as politicians and approve district lines that ensure their own re-election, but also satisfy the U.S. Department of Justice, which will make sure that all races are fairy — not equall...
hirty-five new laws, most of them criminal, took effect in North Carolina yesterday, which we suppose is a good thing although we prefer fewer criminals to more laws.
Several of the new laws had us wondering what took so long, for example:
n The Unborn Victims of Violence Act, also called Ethen’s law, affords protection to an unborn child who dies along with his murdered pregnant mother. North Carolina joins about three dozen other states...
Worthy fight et’s begin with this stipulation: There could have been confusion during the recent Fairmont municipal election, but that occurrence does not mean there was a malicious and deliberate attempt by election officials or Mayor Charles Kemp to depress the vote or manipulate an outcome.
Kemp, whose integrity has been publicly challenged by Terry Evans, an unsuccessful candidate for election who has asked for a do-over, defends himself in an op-ed...
Book smart Are you in need of one more thing to be thankful for this holiday season?
If you can read today’s Our View, that should qualify — more so if you were born and raised in Robeson County, which continues to have one of the state’s highest illiteracy rates, with about one in five adults unable to read and write. It’s a shameful reality, one with far-reaching consequences.
The inability to read and write is a heavy anvil to carry around on life’s...
Win-win opportunity The Cherokee Nation each year makes hundreds of millions of dollars to distribute to its members through gambling, but that’s not enough. The tribe wants to expand its gaming options to include live dealers, and also wants exclusive rights to gambling in North Carolina extending eastward to Interstate 95.
The Lumbee Tribe, the largest in the state, doesn’t make a single cent a year off of gambling and, predictably, is opposing the Cherokee’...
If Robeson County could figure out a way to steer juvenile criminals away from graduating to adult criminals and toward the classroom or an honest living, then we could take a big bite from our crippling crime rate.
Teen Court, as you might know now from reading staff writer’s Teddy Kulmala’s story in Saturday’s The Robesonian, is poised to begin the enormous task of making inroads in those positive directions.
You probably know what Teen...
Unhappy Valley Of all the possible exits for Joe Paterno as the head football coach at Penn State University, the one that came about last week could never have been envisioned.
Paterno, the architect of perhaps the most-envied college football program in the country for the last half century, was fired, not because of what he had done — how could that have happened? — but because of what he left undone: Paterno, 84 years old, steps offstage sullied beyon...
