This year we elected the very first African-American president and North Carolina voted a Democrat into the office for the first time since Jimmy Carter in 1976.

By the time this editorial hits the streets, the election will be over. For better or worse, the people have anointed a new leader in these final throes of the Bush regime. Now can we please move on? Its been a long eight years under President Bush. (Where were you before 9-11? Where were we?).

Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan took his lumps last week before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which seemingly placed much the blame for our economic mess onto his 82-year-old shoulders.

When the bottom drops out and the chips are down, when complicit parties and innocent bystanders alike go scurrying for cover, strange alliances are formed in the trenches for the sake of common interest. It happened in the 1960s, when the Black Panthers hooked up with the leftist intelligentsia in New York City.

Ralph Nader is a great American. Hes taken on the auto industry and the FDA. He started dozens of nonprofits, all designed to protect ordinary US citizens from their government and the corporations that increasingly influence it. Hes also run for president and not just once, but five times, throwing in his current campaign.

Heres the thing: The Masters of the Universe want a trillion or so bucks because, after treating the US economy and its citizens in the same manner as a successful pimp treats his bitches, they have finally broken the system. To hear President Bush put it, youd think the sky is falling.

Class used to be all about the breeding: If your father owned the fiefdom and you were the first born son it was understood that you would one day own the fiefdom, as the children of your fathers subjects would follow in their footsteps as laborers, tradesmen or village idiots.

It’s pure fantasy, of course, but like all good satire, there is a disturbing kernel of truth: We are stupid. Or, at least, everybody thinks we are. How else to explain the ascendancy of Alaska Gov.

In an election season with so many surprises, so much pageantry, all this spin, we look to the nation’s bookmakers to get a clear picture of what’s really going on. Last week, as the Republican National Convention came to a close, Americans were treated to some of the best political theater since Mike Dukakis drove a tank.

The last time the state General Assembly overrode a governor’s veto was… never. But they did it last week after Gov. Mike Easley vetoed a bill that would allow boaters to tow vessels up to 10 feet wide without permits on North Carolina roads and watercraft up to 9.

First off, we’d like to thank the hundred or so college presidents that signed off on the Amethyst Initiative — supporting a lowering of the drinking age from 21 to 18 — just in time for our back-to-school issue. Well played, ladies and gentlemen. We might as well weigh in with everybody else on this week’s editorial-page equivalent of the hula hoop.

Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers has a plan to end global warming in two easy steps. One: Give Rogers your money. Two: Lower your expectations.

Well, it’s news now. We said it wasn’t way back in December 2007, when this story first broke, when Rielle Hunter was just six months pregnant and John Edwards was still a player in the presidential race. There was no conclusive evidence that he was the father of Hunter’s child, we figured, and the whole thing had devolved into a he said/she said with no resolution in sight.

The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing are shaping up to be the kind of disaster that will leave us all shaking our heads in wonder, thinking: How could this have happened? It began seven years ago, with intense debate among the interna tional Olympic Committee and comparisons drawn to the 1936 games, hosted in Germany under Nazi rule.

Water, like many other things, runs downhill. And North Carolina acts as a sluice, with water running from the highlands out west to the flats east of Raleigh, filtering through every community large and small.

Bush the oil man has given his all-clear to plumb for that sweet, sweet stuff off our coasts, despite overwhelming evidence that this is a bad idea. We have capped wells in Alaska, yes, and there are millions of acres of unexplored coastal territory already under lease by the big oil companies.

Piedmont Triad International Airport is seen as a blessing to some, a cash cow to others, and plenty of neighbors see it simply as a nuisance. And now, according to the Business Travel Coalition, it is a dead man walking.

It's official: We will not have Jesse Helms to kick around anymore. The former senator from North Carolina passed on the Fourth of July, just like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Charles Kuralt and, for what it's worth, Barry White. He was 86.

recited on every news show about the record-breaking increase in oil prices. Either it has never climbed so fast in a week, or never so fast in a day, or never this high in general. It seems either something needs to be done or we need to just stop complaining.

Seriously, this gas thing is out of control. You're feeling it... we're feeling it... the whole nation is feeling it, and soon the petroleum-drenched chicken will come home to roost in the form of increased prices. On everything.