The Citizens United Political Victory Fund, a longtime far-right Washington, D.C., PAC, today endorsed North Carolina's own Wizard of Unreality for Congress. That would be N.C. Sen. David Rouzer, who is running in the GOP primary for the 7th Congressional District, which covers much of the southeastern part of the state, including Wilmington. Current 7th District congressman Mike McIntyre, who narrowly beat Rouzer in 2012, is retiring.

Martin Luther King Jr. has been dead for nearly 46 years; since then, his public image has gradually been watered down from the political warrior he was to a more saintly, almost cuddly, "peace and love" character. I understand that it was probably inevitable that King's vital role as the 20th century's most effective fighter for racial and economic justice would be toned down once we entered a more conservative era beginning in the 1980s. Yet someone still has to ask...

What in God's name was Pat McCrory doing giving the first speech at the annual MLK Jr. prayer breakfast?

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Here is a shout-out to former CL news editor Will Moredock. These days the South Carolina native, now living in Charleston, is combining his love for history and justice into a new crusade that S.C. has needed for some time. Moredock has launched a social media and email campaign to have the large statue of former S.C. governor and U.S. senator "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman removed from the statehouse in Columbia. On Tuesday, a full-page ad in The State newspaper (shown below), purchased by Moredock, initiated the Down With Tillman campaign, along with media interviews in S.C.

Tillman has long been the subject of great controversy. A prototype of the classic Southern racist demagogue, he led a group of post-Civil War vigilantes that killed more than a hundred blacks who had the audacity to hold political meetings. After being elected governor in 1890, he announced that he would personally lead a lynch mob if it was going to kill "a negro that ravishes a white woman," and stated that he would rather his daughters be killed by a wild animal than to know that "she had been robbed of the jewel of her womanhood by a black fiend." The murder of black men was an ongoing theme of Tillman's political career, including his years in the U.S. Senate from 1895 to 1918, during which he was censured for physically attacking a fellow senator on the floor of the Senate. Here are more choice quotes from Tillman's statue-inspiring career (Be warned: They're not for the faint of heart):

Roy Williams has enough problems without someone questioning his players' literacy. The UNC-CH basketball coach lashed out today at a report aired yesterday on CNN about college athletes' reading skills. The report claims that many students in college football and basketball programs could not read beyond an eighth grade level, and showed an enormous scholastic gap between college athletes and other students at the same schools.
Former UNC learning specialist Mary Willingham told CNN her research showed that 60 percent of UNC athletes admitted between 2004 and 2012 were reading at an elementary or middle school level, and that about 10 percent of them couldn't read, period. She specifically mentioned a former UNC basketball player who she said was illiterate.

As we previewed in this blog, renowned journalist Bill Moyers and his cohorts at Moyers & Co. produced a first-rate documentary, "State of Conflict: North Carolina," about our state's political upheavals, and billionaire Art Pope's influence. Normally, UNC-TV broadcasts and promotes Moyers' shows, and for good reason: he's popular, and the shows are of high quality.

So of course one would assume that since this popular journalist had produced a documentary about the state where UNC-TV is located, for Pete's sake, North Carolina's PBS outlet would show the documentary on two or three of its channels, particularly its primary one, broadcast locally on Ch. 58 (Charlotte cable 13). That assumption, however, would have been wrong, as it ignored a fundamental fact about UNC-TV: the formerly very independent outlet for public affairs journalism is now under the heavy thumb of the Tea Party pinheads in the General Assembly.

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• We're mad too, Bill.

Ken Langone, the Catholic billionaire who founded Home Depot, is unhappy about some of Pope Francis' recent comments regarding "unfettered capitalism," income inequality and the idolatry of money. Langone, a major GOP donor, is raising money for the restoration of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. Recently he met with Cardinal Timothy Dolan to tell the church leader of his "concerns," according to a story at CNBC. Langone told the cardinal that if the pope continues making comments about a "culture of prosperity" that perpetuates indifference to the poor, it could make super-rich Catholics (such as himself) quit giving to charity. Turning the pope's statement on its head, Langone said Francis' opinions could leave some wealthy Catholics "incapable of feeling compassion for the poor."

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This week Gov. McCrory released a video claiming credit for a drop in North Carolina's unemployment rate to 8 percent, down from June's 8.8 percent, citing "difficult decisions" that "had to be made" to bring prosperity to the state. Ironically, at about the same time GuvPat was wrapping up his message to North Carolina citizens, the money and politics blogger for an influential conservative think tank was essentially saying that McCrory is full of it. James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute looked into our wise leaders' decision to reduce unemployment insurance this year, and found that it did nothing to curb the unemployment rate.

Editor's note: CL copy editor Emiene Wright contributed to this post.

On Sunday, Sen. Bob Rucho, a Republican from Mecklenburg County, penned a tweet that has since caused a firestorm of controversy (sic throughout):

"Justice Robert's pen & Obamacare has done more damage to the USA then the swords of the Nazis,Soviets & terrorists combined."

In other words, the Affordable Care Act will kill as many Americans as the most oppressive political regimes of the last 100 years.

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Chris Fitzsimon at NC Policy Watch points out some very obvious and frankly disturbing conflicts of interest around Gov. McCrory and the new private nonprofit that is supposed to replace the Commerce Department's economic development, i.e., business recruitment efforts. McCrory named his old friend and former Charlotte city councilman and GOP mayoral nominee John Lassiter to the nonprofit's board.

• James Willamor (Flickr Creative Commons)
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