Mary is a candidate for Commissioner of Labor in the North Carolina primary May 6th. She is the daughter of Palmer and Sidney Fant and grew up in Grayson County. Mary has impeccable credentials and numerous endorsements including mine.

• News and Observer
• Campaign website

Update: The results from the North Carolina Board of Elections are as follows.

George often reminded me of connections between family and friends. My parents were political animals. Mom was a wobbly; Dad was a New Deal Democrat. Mom put on a fantastic table.  I remember one she did as a fund raiser for Patrick Lucey in 1970. Patrick won. Dad was a story teller and held court in the local pubs. Between them they contributed to the emergence of the Democratic Party in Adams County, Wisconsin.

Mary Fant Donnan, top vote getter in the first primary for North Carolina State Labor Commissioner, faces a runoff on June 24th but you can vote now at a One Stop Voting place - http://www.sboe.state.nc.us/content.aspx?id=23

Mary has been endorsed by the Charlotte Observer and LSNet.

Mary is the daughter of Palmer and Sidney Fant of Elk Creek, Virginia.

We're eight years into the 21st century. I was going to wait until advanced old age to compare this century with the 20th century, thus annoying the bejeebbers out of my poor grandkids, but I have some free time this afternoon, and I'm not the most patient woman in the world. In this new millennium we have made several great advances--several laudable improvements in the human condition--but darned if I could think of one. Let's start off with the big changes; the really salient and vexing issues.

In the New Millennium, we have fewer crackers in a box. Last century, to save on packaging, there were boxes full of crackers. I'm old enough to remember these. I swear to God: you opened the box and reached about half an inch down and took hold of a cracker. Now, to save on crackers, and to fool consumers and fill landfills quicker, a box a foot tall might contain 15 crackers. Soon it will contain 6 1/2 crackers, and we will be expected to believe that this is due to "product settling during shipment." Price: $4.99 plus tax.

Citing budget cuts by the Grayson County Board of Supervisors, the Grayson County Department of Parks and Recreation is shutting down the public pool in Independence on Wednesdays and Saturdays throughout the summer season, beginning next week. This is unprecedented in the Grayson pool's 25-year history.  Keith Weatherman, Director, said a lack of funding has made it impossible to keep the pool open on its normal schedule. I did not even inquire about the traditional "night swims" which the pool has held for the past several years.  If day swims are getting the axe, night swims are budgetary luxuries.

Explaining subtlety is an admission of failure. My blog on Jimmy Carter contained nine references, eight of which were examples of newspeak. One, AlJazeera, was an appeal to understanding and a rejection of categorical imperatives. The fault lies not in Jimmy Carter, but in the way we talk about and understand the "War on Terror".

I am going to make it easy this time, Osama bin Laden is the quintessential example of a "terrorist". The call to kill civilians in the fatwas of 1996 and 1999 fit the definition of terrorism. And so what does that imply?

In the current mindset, the solution is simple - kill him. And if you can't do that,  kill everyone who espouses him, kill everyone who shelters him, and if all else fails kill everything he says.

Polls open at 6:30 AM Tuesday. All means of registration have ended for this election.

A Washington DC group whose leaders have ties to the former Clinton administration and several of whom have made contributions to the Hillary Clinton campaign have been making bizarre calls to black North Carolina voters. At best a mistake, at worst a crime intended to suppress targeted voters from showing up on Tuesday.

If you run into irregularities, stay at the polling place and inform poll watchers of your concerns.

I found the NY Times review of Philip Bobbitt’s TERROR AND CONSENT more than just a little interesting. Bobbitt seems to offer a fresh look at the war on terror and international relations that challenges dogma on both the right and the left much in the same way that Thomas Friedman’s THE WORLD IS FLAT reframed the discussion of trade and economics.

While the Administration through its mouthpieces David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker make relative security in Iraq a function of the "surge", recent events suggest levels of violence are more dependent on the actions of one man than 40,000 US troops.

That man is Muqtada al-Sadr. al-Sadr had reason to celebrate the fall of Saddam. His grandfather was executed by the Saddam regime and his father and two of his family were murdered in 1999. al-Sadr's stronghold, popularly referred to as Sadr City, is home to perhaps two million Shia discriminated against by the Bathists and not faring all that well under Maliki. Plausibly as a matter of self defense, the Sadr organization formed several large militias, some in other localities including Basra. In desperate straights, the al-Sadr organization provides health, education and social services to an equally desperate population.