Twenty years ago, Ray Warren—Republican judge, former state legislator, suburban dad—called a pair of press conferences to announce he was gay. In North Carolina, it was a political watershed. Originally published in Charlotte Magazine. RAY WARREN SAT IN THE LIVING ROOM chair and cracked open his laptop. Weeknights were lonely in Flat Rock, in that […]
“We’re At that Tipping Point”
Anita Earls has been the North Carolina GOP’s chief antagonist in the courtroom. Now she’s running for a seat on the state Supreme Court as a GOP threat to pack the court looms. Originally published in Talking Points Memo JUDICIAL RACES IN NORTH CAROLINA tend to be low-key affairs. But the crowd gathered at a […]
What Happens After the Progressive Revolution Comes to a City Like Durham?
On the challenges of governing a bright-blue city in the middle of a hot-red state. Originally published in The Nation. LAST DECEMBER, AFTER HE WAS SWORN IN as mayor of Durham, North Carolina, Steve Schewel laid down his vision for a city where elected officials work alongside residents to resist regressive state and federal policy. […]
Law and Disorder in North Carolina
Since Republicans gained control of the North Carolina legislature in 2011, judges have emerged as some of their staunchest adversaries. Now lawmakers want to curb state court powers. Originally published in The American Prospect. THIS FALL, IN A DISPUTE OVER GERRYMANDERING, federal judges stripped North Carolina lawmakers of the power to draw their own state district lines. […]
Rebel Towns
Call it municipal disobedience: communities facing environmental threats are defying laws they deem illegitimate. Originally published in The Nation. THE 600 RESIDENTS OF SUGAR HILL, New Hampshire, have done a laudable job of keeping the vulgarities of modern life at bay. There are no fast-food restaurants, no neon signs. Instead, the former iron-mining town has […]
Expletive Deleter
As head of the FCC, alumnus Kevin Martin has tackled issues as controversial as when to allow dirty words on television and how much to rein in cable companies. But even though he has embraced Republican orthodoxy when it comes to indecency and media consolidation, FCC watchers have been fascinated by the frequency with which […]
Putting Science in the Dock
In an effort to exclude dubious experts, judges have assumed unprecedented power—and tilted the system against injured consumers. Originally published in The Nation. ON A CHILLY MORNING IN NOVEMBER 2001, David Healy stood in a witness box in Kansas City, Kansas, and received a sobering lesson on the U.S. legal system. A professor of psychological medicine at Cardiff University […]
When Is a Corporation Like a Freed Slave?
In rural Pennsylvania, township supervisors battling sewage sludge and hog manure stumble up against one of the biggest mysteries in constitutional law. Originally published in Mother Jones. LICKING TOWNSHIP, PENNSYLVANIA, IS A ROLLING SWATH of soybean fields and pastures in Clarion County, two hours northeast of Pittsburgh, with 500 residents and quite a few more cattle. Drive […]
Age in Place… But Not Here
Originally published in the AARP Bulletin. BLANCHE BELL, TO HEAR HER FAMILY TELL IT, had the determination of a bulldog—from studying physics at the University of Michigan in the 1940s because it was the toughest major offered to presiding over a family of six. “She was only 4-foot-11, but she was larger than life,” says her son […]
Whose House Is It Anyway?
A city’s quest for renewal can mean the death of an old neighborhood. Originally published in AARP The Magazine. WILHELMINA DREY HAS LIVED HER ENTIRE 87 YEARS in a blue sea captain’s house near the banks of Connecticut’s Thames River. From the ground floor, her family ran a grocery where the neighborhood’s Italian women congregated Saturday mornings, […]
