Steve Ford

My friends are sick of me talking and writing about the lottery. And when one of my fellow front-pagers recently won a thousand bucks on a $20 ticket, I confess to thinking, "awwww, maybe it's not so terrible." But the truth is, the lottery IS so terrible, as Steve Ford, the editorial page editor at the N&O. wrote today.

To pirate a line from "All the King's Men," North Carolina's state lottery was conceived in sin and born of corruption. We may never learn all the gory details surrounding its passage, but to say that its supporters in the General Assembly finagled it through by hook and by crook pretty much conveys the spirit of the thing.

My open feud with the News and Observer's editorial pages goes back a couple of years when the paper gave George Bush the benefit of the doubt regarding the his war in Iraq. The N&O wasn't exactly a cheerleader, and in his personal columns, Steve Ford often wondered about the long-term consequences of military action. But neither was the paper a strong and vocal critic of Bush's disastrous foreign policy.

Today's lead editorial is more of the same. The paper calls George Bush out on his stunning hypocrisy, but still holds on to the delusion of hope that something called "success" can emerge from the ashes of Iraq.

Steve Ford, editorial page editor at the News and Observer, comes through loud and clear today on the Outlying Landing Field controversy. He's the first person I've read who gets right down to the real nitty-gritty behind this fiasco. His column discusses the relative merits of different proposed sites, including one in Craven County. But in passing, he hits on the Big Unspoken Truth about the Navy and the Navy pilots that are driving the OLF train off the cliff.

Not to slide too far down the conspiratorial slope, but is there also a worry that picking Craven County for the OLF would create pressure to move the whole Super Hornet operation to Cherry Point? Do Norfolk-area Navy folks not want to get stuck down in Marine Corps country?

Here's to the editorial writers at the N&O today. They've come out loud and clear in condemning the sham that the US Navy calls a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement. I for one am happy to give them all the credit in the world for this strong editorial.

The U.S. Navy justified its decision to build a practice landing field for jet fighters close to a North Carolina haven for large migratory birds on the basis of an environmental study found deficient by the federal courts. So, the courts told the Navy to take another look. But its supplemental study turns out to be little more than a warmed-over rationale for why a site near the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge is just fine. That conclusion remains unconvincing.

Just when I was thinking the N&O might be rediscovering its populist roots, this spectacularly lame editorial has me grinding my teeth again. Here's the money quote:

Tension between constitutionally protected civil liberties and national security needs also has come to a head in the debate over reauthorization of the Patriot Act.

Certainly the ongoing threat of a terror plot justifies increased intelligence gathering. Even so, heightened security-mindedness can be abused with resulting harm to personal liberties, and for that reason it's been healthy for Congress to respond to concerns raised by privacy advocates.