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I do. I want to rule the world. I mean “rule” like Joseph Stalin or Genghis Khan with an iron fist. I would love to make all the decisions and have all that power and control. Would I do good or evil? Would I start out kind and gentle then turn into an oppressor?

Twenty-five years ago, when a powerful state senator quietly and suddenly advanced a bill that would have allowed the leaders of Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina to transform the giant and successful health insurance nonprofit into a for-profit company, advocates, consumers, average citizens, and ultimately, the full General Assembly, took a stand.

A decade ago the legislature took a shredder to teacher pay — eliminating salary boosts for longevity and getting advanced degrees. They front-loaded pay scales so teachers with the most experience got the smallest pay increases. Along with it, legislators abolished tenure and eliminated caps on class size and increased teaching workloads.

Generation Z is not the first cohort to face recessions, burdensome debt and a tough time finding a good job. Every generation has gone through this and some much more. The Greatest Generation entered the workforce still bearing the anguish of World War II.

Having repeatedly failed to remove former President Donald Trump from the political chessboard for the upcoming 2024 presidential election, his detractors are now counting on a former porn star to do the heavy lifting.

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Having repeatedly failed to remove former President Donald Trump from the political chessboard for the upcoming 2024 presidential election, his detractors are now counting on a former porn star to do the heavy lifting.

It’s been two years since Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey joined other Republican governors in cutting unemployment benefits. Ivey and her cohort of conservatives insisted that businesses were having trouble finding enough workers because the extra financial support — $300 a month that congressional Democrats had pushed through in a COVID relief bill — was making folks lazy.

On my occasional visits to our nation’s capital I usually make a pilgrimage to our Vietnam Memorial, to panel 7W Line 109. There as I look at the engraved “John Winborne” I remember, reflect and grieve. Johnny Winborne is the only man I knew personally who died in Vietnam. It was a terrible …

A few weeks ago, three members of the North Carolina Senate — Amy Scott Galey of Alamance County, Lisa Barnes of Nash County, and Michael Lee of New Hanover County — filed a state Parents’ Bill of Rights to ensure that local schools respect parental authority to direct the education, development, and medical treatment of their children. This legislation, Senate Bill 49, is well-crafted and deserves support.

It's been two decades since, on March 19, 2003, United States forces invaded Iraq. President George W. Bush ordered the invasion to neutralize what he said was the threat of weapons of mass destruction posed by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Except it turned out Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction. U.S. forces searched and searched and searched, and never found them. In all, 4,586 American servicemen and women died in the war, and 32,455 were wounded.

It’s time to file income tax returns for 2022, so it’s a good time to think about taxes for the current year. And the Inflation Reduction Act provided funding for 87,000 additional IRS employees, so people should brace for the possibility of more tax audits. The important thing is to careful…

We were willing to give Pasquotank County commissioners the benefit of the doubt after they voted the first time against honoring retired U.S. Army Major General Hawthorne “Peet” Proctor, deciding in the face of overwhelming opposition not to name the new Newland Park after him.

For more than a decade we’ve studied the problem exhaustively, we’ve talked about it almost incessantly, we’ve engaged the latest curriculum du jour, and have spent more than $50 million, yet we still can’t solve the mystery of our children’s reading proficiency. Our patience is wearing thin. Now the finger-pointing has begun. We want to know who to blame.

There’s a good reason why you can’t place a bet on WWE professional wrestling, even in Las Vegas. It’s because everybody smart enough to come in out of the rain understands that the matches are make-believe — not merely fixed, but scripted. That’s also why sports pages don’t report the results.