I don't want a new Supreme Court judge who speaks anything other than their own sincere beliefs. Yet with her recent defense of her membership in the Belizian Grove, Sonia Sotomayor has shown herself as intellectually dishonest. "The Belizian Grove is a constellation of influential women” is how their mission statement begins. There is no […]
Author: Rob Close
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Keep your promise
Hillary Clinton has been making quite a stink over the Florida and Michigan primaries, for which she has made some weak and illogical arguments. However, there’s one often-neglected element to this puzzle that solves it for me instantly. In September of last year, Mrs. Clinton signed a pledge along with fellow Democrats that they would […]
Innocent until photographed?
Publishing arrest data has become common in this city; the Asheville Daily Planet has considered it page 2 news since their inception. Now we have the Asheville Housing Authority newsletter and the Asheville Police Department’s Web site going so far as to share pictures of people, whether caught with pot in the projects or arrested […]
Chose your (sidewalk) battle carefully
There’s been some debate lately about highway blogging: It seems to crowd our sidewalks while distracting our drivers, and for this travesty, uncertain laws against these acts have been selectively enforced. “If demonstrators aren’t impeding foot or vehicle traffic or endangering anyone, then they are supposed to be left alone,” said Chief Hogan. Here are […]
Give ETJ the vote!
Now that this election is behind us, I see one quick, clear duty for this new City Council to clean up, and it’s one that ought [to] help increase voter turnout. The residents of Asheville’s extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ) deserve the right to vote in our city elections. The main practical difference for residents of the […]
Claim your sovereignty, Asheville
The issue of citizen oversight of our Asheville Police Department has been brought up a lot recently, but our leaders have thus far failed to enact anything with meaning. Our city established a Citizens/Police Advisory Committee (CPAC) years ago, but advice is completely different from genuine oversight. And if you can point to one thing […]
The black box fix
The Asheville Downtown Association’s Spare Change for Real Change project aims to redirect donations away from panhandlers and toward local organizations working on behalf of the homeless. The ADA has recently placed small black boxes around downtown that people can put money into instead of giving it to a panhandler. I’m all for helping the […]
Creating a false dichotomy
City Council has decided that Asheville needs partisan elections, since we voters are too dumb to know the differences between our candidates without them. This line of reasoning follows the disingenuous, disgraceful and illogical demagogy dividing this country today. The primary fallacy is that of a false dichotomy. Since coming up with 2,000-plus signatures is […]