The Xpress Files

Spend 14 years in the newspaper business, as Xpress has, and the paper starts to pile up. Over time, our reporters have collected mountains of memos, reams of reports, and enough official studies to keep a paper shredder humming 24/7. And don’t even get us started about the megabytes of e-mail correspondence clogging our hard […]

Secrecy nation

Many critics have argued that secrecy, at the federal level, has skyrocketed during the Bush administration. But what, exactly, does that mean? And how can citizens gauge the degree of secrecy their government practices? One relatively new measuring stick designed to answer both questions is OpenTheGovernment.org, a broad, Web-based coalition of public-interest and professional organizations […]

Who’s in charge here?

Asheville resident Craig Sloan was just drifting off to sleep last Aug. 19 when helicopters with their lights off began buzzing low overhead, and he heard what sounded like gunfire and percussion grenades. For a moment, Sloan wondered whether prisoners had broken out of the nearby Buncombe County Jail. Stepping outside, he looked toward City/County […]