Wilmjax News

(10/23/07 — LUMBERTON) - A Lumberton City Council member is locked up in Kentucky, charged with rape.

John Cantey, Jr. is being held in Louisville. He’s the manager of a rap group and was in a town near Louisville for a concert.

The Jefferson Town Police chief says an 19-year-old woman went to Cantey’s hotel room after a concert Friday night.

She later told police she has been raped. Cantey is scheduled to be in court November 1st.

Article here.

There are several new developments in the Thomas Wright saga. The Wake County district attorney says the investigation into the state representative’s campaign finances could go on for two more weeks.

DA Colon Willoughby originally said the investigation would be finished by october first. But he says he’s now asked the SBI to look into several additional matters before filing its final report.

The DA launched a criminal investigation in May, when a hearing in Raleigh uncovered several disturbing allegations against Wright. Among them: hiding politically sensitive campaign contributions, co-mingling campaign and personal finances and a fraudulent real estate deal.

At the same time, the house ethic committee began an investigation of its own. But House Speaker Joe Hackney says he is suspending that investigation until the SBI is finished.

And that’s not sitting well with some.

Former political consultant Joe Sinsheimer, who filed the original complaint against Wright, released this statement: “Representative Wright should have been expelled from the House months ago, but the speaker and his democratic colleagues apparently lack both the political will and the moral courage to do the right thing.”

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RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — State Treasurer Richard Moore wants to see North Carolina’s Democratic Party rename its annual Vance-Aycock Dinner because of the message of white supremacy preached by one of its namesakes.

This year’s dinner is scheduled for Saturday in Asheville.

Gov. Charles Aycock is known for his education reforms, but his speeches supporting white supremacy have received more scrutiny following recent research into the race riots.

Moore says Aycock focused his campaign on efforts to disenfranchise black voters, and his victory fostered Jim Crow laws throughout the South.

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RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A state auditor says the SBI should look into payments that Rep. Thomas Wright received for meetings involving a state agency.

An audit released Monday shows that the New Hanover County Democrat was paid 19 times for subsistence and travel to Raleigh for meetings involving the state Department of Health and Human Services.

But the audit found that Wright should have already been in Raleigh for legislative sessions in eight of those cases. The audit said Wright received reimbursement from both DHHS and the Legislature.

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RALEIGH, NC — Sen. Elizabeth Dole was in Raleigh Thursday to meet with local sheriffs to hear their concerns when it comes to immigrants and crime.

“These are the people who are on the front lines and the sheriff’s are doing a great job,” Dole said.
 
She also highlighted a controversial program that involves training local police officers to do double duty as Immigration Agents.
 
Local sheriffs say they have dozens of people in jail who may be in the country illegally.
    
But because they don’t have access to the Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement database, they can’t tell for sure.
 
“It’s not a secret folks we got a problem with illegals that are committing crimes,” said Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell.
 
Sen. Dole voted down this summer’s attempt to overhaul the national immigration system.
   
But she’s now on a state tour touting the 287-G program as a tool to help crack down on illegal immigrants.

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CARTHAGE — The fraud and embezzlement case against Taylortown Mayor Ulysses Barrett Jr. is expected to be continued today, according to officials with the Moore County District Attorney’s Office.

“I don’t know what the next date assigned to it will be, but it will be continued,” said Chris Willis, an assistant district attorney.

Barrett was scheduled to appear today on three misdemeanor charges: benefiting from a public contract, holding the title of mayor and manager simultaneously, and a fraud charge. Barrett was charged with these crimes in February by the State Bureau of Investigation. If he is found guilty of the fraud charge, he could lose the ability to hold office in North Carolina.

Barrett’s lawyer, Bruce Cunningham, is selecting a jury in a capital murder case that is expected to last two months.

Article here.

COLUMBIA –U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham said Tuesday he will introduce legislation to replace all paper Social Security cards with plastic biometric cards that can’t be duplicated, so employers can be certain of the legal status of their workers.

The S.C. Republican said Congress must address the out-of-control illegal immigration problem, and last month’s defeat of comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate means the problem must be tackled piecemeal.

“The root cause, the basic problem with immigration is employment,” Graham said.

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State senators at last acknowledged and expressed “profound regret” for the 1898 Wilmington race riot, voting unanimously Wednesday for a new resolution that bypasses the embattled lawmaker who originally proposed the step.Rep. Thomas Wright, D-New Hanover, helped lead a commission that spent six years researching the poorly remembered white supremacist attack and filed several bills at the start of this year’s session to act on the panel’s recommendations.

Virtually all were derailed when a complaint about his campaign finances grew into a criminal probe and legislative ethics inquiry. Only one bill relating to the race riot reparations passed the full House, only to spend nearly three months languishing in a Senate committee.

Read more of this disgusting, lying, brainwashing article.

When the head of the FBI testifies under oath that the attorney general has not told the truth, and when that attorney general’s credibility was already a pathetic joke, the United States needs a new attorney general.

FBI Director Robert Mueller is merely the latest high official to call into question the truthfulness of Alberto Gonzales.

Gonzales himself has given so many slippery, evasive and contradictory answers to so many questions that it’s almost impossible to know what his story is. His performance before a congressional committee on Tuesday was an embarrassment.

If President Bush doesn’t fire Gonzales now, he not only will miss an opportunity to salvage the reputation of the Justice Department; he will miss an opportunity to veer away from a potentially dangerous constitutional collision between Congress and the administration.
 
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(07/15/07 — SACRAMENTO, CA) - Elizabeth Edwards (wife of former North Carolina senator, John Edwards) reiterated her support for gay marriage in a speech Saturday, saying the idea that it threatens heterosexual marriage is “complete nonsense.”

“I think that we have undue fear of gay marriage,” she said.

Edwards was scheduled to address a prominent gay rights group in San Francisco Saturday night. Earlier in the day, she said she would discuss a Sacramento man who died after his friends say he was attacked by people who mistakenly thought he was gay.

Read more.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s former Chief of Staff, will serve no prison time for lying and obstructing justice.

President Bush’s decision to commute Libby’s two-and-a-half year sentence has set off a wave of criticism.

Libby is and will remain a free man, after his two-and-a-half year prison term was commuted by President Bush. But Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff remains a convicted felon and will still have to pay a $250,000 fine.

 More here.