Opinion Roundup: Fate of Confederate monuments, Constitution Party wins ballot access, school segregation and more

Thursday, Aug. 23, 2018 -- A round up of opinion, commentary and analysis on: Judge rules Constitution Party candidates can appear on ballot, special session being considered to revisit ballot questions, three Confederate monuments to remain on the North Carolina Capitol grounds, police response to Silent Sam protest will be reviewed, Charlotte’s bid to undo school segregation, FBI joins Wake County to tackle fake school threats and more.

ALEX DEROSIER: Judge: Constitution Party candidates can appear on ballot (AP reports) — — A federal judge ruled Wednesday for the new Constitution Party of North Carolina, blocking a new state law so three of its chosen candidates can run for legislative and county seats in November after all.

N.C. Constitution Party Wins Ballot Access Lawsuit (Ballot Access News reports) -- On August 22, U.S. District Court Judge Louise Flanagan, a Bush Jr. appointee, issued a 17-page order in Poindexter v Strach, e.d., 5:18cv-366. The order puts three Constitution Party nominees on the ballot, for legislature and county office.

TRAVIS FAIN: Notice of appeal filed in amendments case, but special session possible (WRAL-TV reports) — General Assembly leadership filed a notice of appeal Wednesday in an ongoing court fight over the wording of November ballot questions. Speaker of the House Tim Moore and Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger asked to take that fight to the state Court of Appeals, where they'd try to overturn a three-judge panel's decision to forbid the state from putting a pair of constitutional amendments on the ballot as planned.

Special session being considered to revisit ballot questions (AP reports) — North Carolina Republican legislators are weighing whether to reconvene the General Assembly to rewrite two ballot questions that would alter the state constitution now that a court blocked them from being voted on this fall.

LYNN BONNER: Impeach Supreme Court justices? NC hasn’t done it since the start of the Jim Crow era (Charlotte Observer reports) — State GOP Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse put Democrats on the Supreme Court on notice last week that they could face impeachment if they decide against Republican leaders in a lawsuit over constitutional amendments.  It’s not often party leaders talk about impeaching justices, but it has happened before. Republican Chief Justice David Furches and Associate Justice Robert M. Douglas were impeached in 1901.

MARTHA WAGGONER & GARY ROBERTSON: North Carolina will keep 3 Confederate monuments at Capitol (AP reports) — Three Confederate monuments will remain on the North Carolina Capitol grounds, but with newly added context about slavery and civil rights.

ADEEL HASSAN: 3 Confederate Statues Will Remain at N.C. Capitol (New York Times reports) --Less than two days after protesters at UNC toppled a statue of a Confederate soldier, the state’s historical commission rejected a request to remove three Confederate monuments from the grounds of the State Capitol. Instead, the commission voted 10-1 to add information providing more context about slavery and the civil rights movement to the displays. The commission also urged the addition of a monument honoring the contributions of African-Americans to the state.

MARTHA WAGGONER & GARY ROBERTSON: Confederate monuments to get slavery, civil rights context (AP reports) —The commission voted to reinterpret the three monuments with adjacent signs about "the consequences of slavery" and the "subsequent oppressive subjugation of African American people." It urged construction of a memorial to black citizens, which has been discussed for years, as soon as possible. The group of academics, amateur historians and preservationists also acknowledged that the monuments erected decades after the Civil War near the old 1840 Capitol are imbalanced toward the Civil War and the Confederacy.

CARLI BROSSEAU: Where's Silent Sam? Nobody's saying (Greensboro News & Record reports) — Officials at UNC-Chapel Hill won’t say where they put Silent Sam. Monday night, after a couple of false starts, a backhoe loader lifted the statue from the mud and guided it into a flatbed dump truck. A worker slammed the truck bed’s heavy metal doors shut, and the truck drove away from the flash of news cameras and the glare of the heavy-duty construction spotlight that was illuminating the empty pedestal.

JANE STANCILL, LYNN BONNER & PAUL SPECHT: Police response to Silent Sam protest will be reviewed, UNC board chairman says (Charlotte Observer reports) — The UNC Board of Governors will hire an outside firm to look into university and police actions at the protest where Silent Sam was toppled. Harry Smith, who became chairman last month, described the firm’s assignment as “an exhaustive and complete review” of what occurred Monday to “encompass any instructions that were given or not given.”

Return Silent Sam to ‘its rightful place,’ Confederate group says (Durham-Herald Sun reports) — The North Carolina division of Sons of Confederate Veterans is demanding leaders at UNC-Chapel Hill return the Silent Sam statue to the pedestal where it has perched for more than a century. Frank Powell, a spokesman for the group, sent a letter to UNC Chancellor Carol Folt on Tuesday demanding “it be put back in its rightful place.”

Mob rule at Silent Sam? No, it was something far different (Charlotte Observer) — The UNC protesters who brought down Silent Sam should have quietly worked with the powers-that-be, those powers argued this week. Anything else was “mob rule” leading to “violent riots.” “Only a civil society that adheres to the rule of law can heal these (racial) wounds,” Senate leader Phil Berger admonished. What if historic figures through American history had taken Berger’s advice? What if Rosa Parks had adhered to the rule of law and given up her seat on the bus that day in Montgomery? How much slower would change have come?

ANDREW CARTER: ‘Proud to be a student here.’ Without Silent Sam, will UNC have a fresh start? (Durham-Herald Sun reports) — On the day after Silent Sam fell, there was still a small hole in the dirt where his head collided with the earth, and his empty pedestal attracted a steady stream of people who came to see a new kind of history. On Tuesday, the pedestal stood by itself, adorned in the late afternoon with posters with names written on them in bold black letters. The names on those posters recognized some African-American students who’d broken color barriers at UNC: the first black student to enroll in the university’s medical school and the first three to enroll as undergraduates.

BRIAN MURPHY: These Republicans co-wrote a bill to protect Mueller. Now they won’t push for it. (Durham-Herald Sun reports) — Republicans who co-authored an effort to bar President Donald Trump from firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller now say they don’t see the need right now for their initiative. The bill is authored by Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Lindsey Graham. Part of its problem has been that the bill does not have the support of 60 senators, which it would need to advance, according to a Tillis spokesman.

JON HAWLEY: Jones: Trump facing impeachment 'possibility' (Elizabeth City Daily Advance reports) — The prospect of President Donald Trump facing impeachment at some future date is a “possibility,” U.S. House Rep. Walter Jones said in Elizabeth City Wednesday in the wake of allegations that Trump directed one of his former attorneys to violate U.S. campaign finance law. Jones, R-N.C., did not personally call for Trump to be impeached, but said the comments by Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, during his guilty plea to campaign finance violations on Tuesday need further scrutiny — and that Trump might face impeachment down the road.

School district suspends pole-dancing teacher (AP reports) — A middle school teacher who moonlights as a pole-dance instructor has been suspended by a North Carolina school district. A spokeswoman for Hoke County's public schools didn't specify why Kandice Mason was suspended with pay pending the outcome of an investigation. Mason tells WTVD-TV that school officials saw a video of her pole dancing that she posted to her private Facebook account. She says school officials cited a policy that says employees are role models who are "responsible for their public conduct even when they are not performing their job duties."

ANN DOSS HELMS: Charlotte’s boldest bid to undo school segregation is about to become reality (Charlotte Observer reports) — As the last school year drew to a close, yellow school buses made a two-mile shuttle along Charlotte’s Randolph Road, taking some Billingsville Elementary students to Cotswold Elementary and some Cotswold students to Billingsville. The children were checking out their new schools and new classmates. It was a warmup for Monday, when the boldest part of a student assignment plan that riveted the community for two years becomes reality. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, a national symbol of successful desegregation in the 1970s, has since become an icon of resegregation.

CLAUDIA RUPICH: FBI joins Wake County to tackle fake school threats (WRAL reports) — Thousands of students will head back to school all over the viewing area on Monday, and safety and security is on the minds of many as more and more schools deal with threats, many of which are often a hoax. Wake County schools will team up with the FBI to reduce the number of those fake threats. Their message is simple message -- fake bomb threats are serious, and they have a huge impact on everyone.

MOLLY OSBORNE: ‘We can’t do this alone’: Takeaways from the NC Chamber Conference on Education (EdNC reports) — Last week, the NC Chamber conference on education brought together business and nonprofit leaders, philanthropists, elected officials, community college leaders, and educators to discuss how each of these stakeholders can work together to increase educational attainment for all North Carolinians and meet the state’s workforce needs in the future. Rebecca Tippett, founding director of Carolina Demography, offered a sobering presentation on the talent pipeline in North Carolina today. Tippett pointed out that much of the increase in North Carolina’s education attainment over the past few decades has come from importing talent rather than growing our own talent.

Opioids in NC (Greensboro News & Record) — Does anyone really care that we have tens of thousands of people dying each year from overdoses of opioids? Does anyone have a prescription for addressing this? Is there an antidote from society? Isn’t anyone going to try to stop the sources of addictions that are causing people to involuntarily commit suicide? Are we too scornful of the abusers not to address another kind of abuse: power?

'Think Orange' (Winston-Salem Journal) — Last week, Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines announced a colorful new campaign to combat hunger: “Think Orange.” It will utilize a $115,500 grant from the National League of Cities and the Food Research and Action Center to help those who face challenges getting food. Winston-Salem was one of six cities in the nation selected to receive such a grant.

RICHARD CRAVER: Got ACA health insurance with Blue Cross Blue Shield? Your rates will go up or down depending upon your address (Greensboro News & Record reports) — People who buy individual federal health-insurance plans through Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina will see different rates and discounts for 2019, depending on where they live in the state. Overall, rates will drop by an average of 4.1 percent for the plans in the state, but the rate changes will vary from a drop of more than 20 percent in Raleigh to an increase of more than 9 percent in parts of the Triad, Blue Cross said Wednesday.

LIZ SCHLEMMER: Lead In Faucets At Guilford County Schools Points To Potential Risk Elsewhere (WUNC reports) — Guilford County Schools is working to protect its students' drinking water after the county identified three school faucets with elevated lead content. The school system is conducting an inventory of all of the faucets in the district this week to identify similar faucets before its traditional schools start up next week. However, there is no guarantee that similar faucets are not in other schools in the state. Exposure to lead can cause a variety health problems ranging in severity, and children are especially vulnerable.

One of the largest land mammals in the world has a new $9.9M home in the NC mountains (Charlotte Observer reports) — North Carolina is home to one of the largest land mammals in the world — elk. Now they have even more room to roam, with the opening of a $9.9 million, 2,030-acre habitat in the mountains of western North Carolina. Elk were extinct in North Carolina for nearly 200 years because of overhunting until a recovery program reintroduced the giant deer in the mountains.

JENNY DRABBLE: Sam "The Dot Man" McMillan, renowned self-taught folk artist, dies at age 92 (Winston-Salem Journal reports) — Sam “The Dot Man” McMillan, known for his colorful and eclectic dotted artwork, died Wednesday in Winston-Salem at the age of 92, his family said. The self-taught folk artist and native of Fairmont was known for painting anything he could find — clothes, toys, appliances, furniture, bicycles, bookends, shoes — in bright colors with his signature splash of polka-dots. “Uncle Sam was a character. He loved his artwork, and, of course he loved his dots,” his nephew, David Julius Ford, said. “He meant a lot to the Winston-Salem community and to the art world.”

MARK PRICE: Another vessel will join thousands of shipwrecks in NC’s ‘Graveyard of the Atlantic’ (Charlotte Observer reports) — North Carolina is about to add another shipwreck to its notorious “Graveyard of the Atlantic.” Early next month, the tugboat Fort Fisher will set sail one last time to a spot two and a half miles off the coast, where water will be pumped into its holds. The 62-year-old vessel will founder and sink, falling straight to the bottom of the Atlantic. There, it will become part of an artificial reef system that has given the state a reputation as an international destination for divers. Historians believe there are about 2,000 shipwrecks off the N.C. coast, an “unusually large number” that has led to its being dubbed “the Graveyard of the Atlantic."