Sheriff Sledgehammer

Since Jim Black checked into an extended-stay facility in Lewisburg, PA the metaphors surrounding Joe Sinsheimer have been flying thick and thin. Guest number 50655-056 at the USP Lewisburg probably has a few choice metaphors of his own given that he once called a reporter "A sorry sack of s**t", a metaphor that was not forgotten by the NC Capital Press Corps.

Under the Dome wrote a piece called A new sheriff in town? noting that

Gary Pearce and Carter Wrenn agree that Joe Sinsheimer has become a force to be reckoned with in Raleigh.

Pearce called him Joe Sledgehammer saying that:

He’s honest. He’s not beholden to anybody. And he’s a hell of a good political researcher. He knows how to get information, and he gets it right.

Stronger ethics laws are great. But what North Carolina really needs to clean up politics may just be more Sledgehammers.

while Wrenn in a rare moment allowed that:

I’ve got to – for once – agree with Gary. The most feared name in Democratic politics today is Joe Sinsheimer.

Meanwhile the Wilmington Star goes even heavier on the Western (and Southern) references writing about The kudzu of corruption:

Now the unforgiving Joe Sinsheimer (as Butch asked Sundance, "Who is that guy?") has asked the State Board of Elections to investigate whether video poker philanthropists also slipped $30,000 to Black by passing it through a national Democratic committee.

Back at the Jones Street Ranch Alma Adams had made wild claims that Sheriff Joe might be a white racist. Barry Saunders at the News & Observer had fun with that one, writing Don't cry 'racism' if it's not

The biggest fish caught in Sinsheimer's net to date was Jim "nothing but my hair and name is" Black, a fact that undermines Adams' charge.
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Perhaps then, someone would point out early that, "Representative Adams, Black is just his name."

Cash Michaels, writing in an article first published in The Carolinian and subsequently in the Wilmington Journal: Black Caucus Says Critic Racially Motivated, says:

As to his commitment to civil rights, “and specifically African American participation in the political process,” Sinsheimer says it goes back over twenty years.
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“While at Duke, I wrote a senior honors’ thesis on the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee’s (SNCC) Mississippi Freedom Summer Project and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party’s challenge to the all-white “regular” Democratic Mississippi delegation,”
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"I spent the few years putting together a collection of oral history interviews with the participants in the Mississippi Freedom movement. Those interviews are now part of a special collection at the Duke University library.”
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While doing his oral history work in Mississippi, Sinsheimer got to interview Bob Moses, the African-American Mississippi Field Secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Director of SNCC’s Mississippi Project from 1961-1966.
“Bob Moses has had a more profound impact on my thinking than anyone other than my own parents,” Sinsheimer says.
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“In 1989, ..... after one semester, I dropped out of the school [UVA], to help elect Doug Wilder the first African-American governor in the South since Reconstruction,” Sinsheimer says. “The Wilder campaign was one of the highlights of my professional career.”

Sinsheimer was vindicated on July 27th when he received the William C. Lassiter First Amendment Award from the North Carolina Press Association.

The William C. Lassiter First Amendment Award is given to a non-member of the NCPA who has devoted time and effort in defense of freedom of the press, the promotion of open government and the public's right to know.

When Mark S. Swanger, Chairman, Haywood County Board of Commissioners, received his Lassiter Award in 2005 he said:

The First Amendment is not a suggestion. We must institutionalize open and honest government in a way that not only obeys the letter of our constitution and open meetings laws, but their spirit as well.

Open and transparent government is not just good public policy; it can also be good politics. I believe voters are more inclined to have patience with an official they trust. They are more likely to accept a decision contrary to their view if they know the process was righteous. And they are more likely to vote for candidates they view as trustworthy. It is also likely that media coverage of a controversy is less damaging if the public official is believed to promote open government.

Three days later Jim Black arrived at the Wake County Jail from where he was transported via Franklin County Jail to the United States Penitentiary (USP) in Lewisburg, PA. USP Lewisburg located in central Pennsylvania, 200 miles north of Washington, DC and 170 miles west of Philadelphia. It is a high security facility housing male inmates. An adjacent satellite prison camp houses minimum security male offenders. Jim Black's number is 50655-056 but don't show up unannounced. Prison rules require that visitors names be on a short list provided by the inmate and approved by the prison. There are 10 Fun Things To Do In Lewisburg. Finding the Penitentiary on a map is not one of them. The town hardly acknowledge its existence though it covers a large area just a few miles to the north.

Meanwhile Thomas Wright is playing possum and Don Beason is providing Ryan Teague Beckwith with enough material to write a book. We do need more sledgehammers. To DQ, Gordon, Betsy, Jerimee, James Anglico, lcloud and everybody else out there hammering away: keep at it!