Let me see whether I have the facts straight. In May, President Barack Obama removed Gen. David D. McKiernan as the top US commander in Afghanistan and replaced him with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal - who, in September, issued a dire report warning that without as many as 40,000 more troops for the fight in Afghanistan, the mission will likely result in failure.

Last week a cast of characters lacking in character paraded in front of the State Board of Elections to tell what they knew about Easleygate. Some were forthcoming, while others suffered acute memory losses. The latter group included Gary Allen, who said he had no recollection as to the circumstances surround-.

When I moved to Greensboro almost five years ago looking for employment and professional advancement, I found a midsized city that encapsulated the contradictions of America: on one hand the promise of freedom embodied by four A&T students who broke the color barrier with their lunch counter sit-in and began the process of desegregating public accommodations;

Halloween just got scarier - much scarier. Flying deep under Washington's radar is an upcoming (December) global climate change conference in Copenhagen, the "United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change."

If you want proof that Congress is collegially corrupted and gratuitously gridlocked, look no further than Sen. Harry Reid's recent power play in which he used the McCarran-Ferguson Act as his weapon of mass distraction.

When I started college I thought that by the time I was done there would be job offers around every corner and that a stable job that could pay bills would be ready and waiting. It's amazing how much can change in six years and how far off base my eager, young mind was.

Across the country last weekend, there were antiwar demonstrations, modest in turnout, but hopefully a warning to Obama that war without end or reason in Afghanistan, plus 40,000 more troops to Kabul, is not why people voted for him.

On Oct. 16, Winston-Salem Assistant City Attorney Al Andrews filed a motion in Forsyth County Superior Court to release the final report of the Silk Plant Forest Citizens Review Committee's findings, which includes 32 appendices, more than 5,000 pages of text, investigative notes, audio and videotapes.

Despite atheists' attempts to keep our national motto ("In God We Trust") from being engraved on the walls of the new 580,000-squarefoot Capitol Visitor Center, the inscription was indelibly etched recently in large, bold and deep letters. And the Pledge of Allegiance soon will follow.

For two hours last Thursday, the nation was spellbound by the sight (and flight) of a homemade helium balloon drifting out of control. We were told that a six-year-old boy, Falcon Heene, had stowed away alone in the balloon's tiny compartment and was headed for certain death should his dad Richard's mylar contraption descend too suddenly from thousands of feet in the air.

Of the four US presidents who have been given a Nobel Prize - Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama - the one who's shown the cleanest pair of heels when it comes to escaping the world's guffaws for the absurdity of the award is Jimmy Carter.

I suppose we should not begrudge Barack Obama his Nobel Peace Prize, though it represents a radical break in tradition, since hes only had slightly less than nine months to discharge his imperial duties, most concretely through the agency of high explosives in the Hindukush whereas laureates like Henry Kissinger had been diligently slaughtering people across the world for years.

But more and more, these pillars of American life and liberty are being attacked and abandoned out of not only sheer bias but also ignorance of our founding fathers, the Revolutionary period and our Constitution.

Obama is by nature a booster - like the first stage of the missile lofting its payload into the upper atmosphere. A huge bang, a mighty whoosh and then a few miles up, a fizzle as the Obamabooster burns out and drops back to earth.

I'm sure my blood pressure has risen countless times over the past year watching the federal government overspend. I'm tired of seeing out-ofcontrol government overreaching into every area of our lives. And I especially hurt for Americans, many of whom are jobless, homeless and with little hope for the future or real help from the government.

John Patrick Shanley, the playwright who penned the Pulitzer Prize-winning Doubt: A Parable, once said: "Doubt requires more courage than conviction does, and more energy because conviction is a resting place and doubt is infinite. It is a passionate exercise."

On Sept. 28, 1781, Gen. George Washington led a combined force of 17,000 French and Continental troops upon Yorktown, Va. and encircled British Gen. Charles Cornwallis and his regiment of 9,000 British troops.

The ripest moment of absurdity last week was the spectacle of Pentagon officials berating the Washington Post for publishing the supposedly confidential assessment of the situation in Afghanistan, prepared by General Stanley McChrystal, America's Man in Charge of that doomed adventure.

The official primary election for Greensboro City Council takes place Oct. 6. The primary narrows the field to six candidates at large, and two candidates for each district, before the city heads into the final campaign stretch before Nov. 3. We urge you to exercise the responsibility of citizenship and vote.

The official primary election for Greensboro City Council takes place Oct. 6. The primary narrows the field to six candidates at large, and two candidates for each district, before the city heads into the final campaign stretch before Nov. 3. We urge you to exercise the responsibility of citizenship and vote.