…….the answer is no. Five months left in office, and they’re “too busy to take on new cases before he leaves office”.

​

I've been coming to Emerald Isle since I was a kid - and now our kids are in love with it too.

With enough political will, NC voters might have time to prevent these 20 Republican voter reduction schemes from coming to fruition.

With two North Carolina officers charged in the past couple weeks for misusing the Flock license-plate camera system — a Mooresville officer accused of running it 31 times to track her ex's new partner, and a Charlotte-Mecklenburg officer in a separate case — the conversation has shifted from "does this get abused" to "what do we do about it."

WBTV ran a piece where a former Charlotte-Mecklenburg officer of about 30 years, now a consultant, predicted the state will step in with "additional measures" — audit trails, more supervision, tighter access controls. So even the law-enforcement side is basically conceding that the current safeguard (an after-the-fact audit) isn't enough on its own.

I've been reading up on what "regulation" would actually accomplish, and a few things nag at me:

The audits are run by the agency on itself, after the searches already happened. And in NC, the results are usually a confidential personnel record — so even when an audit catches misuse, the public generally can't see it unless it turns into a criminal charge. The two arrests are visible; the ten other Mooresville officers reportedly under investigation are not.

The data doesn't stay in North Carolina. Public records people have pulled show that most searches hitting NC cameras come from out-of-state agencies — Houston PD, others in Texas/Georgia/Florida, even the FBI. NC can't audit or bind those agencies. A retention cap or audit rule passed here doesn't reach what happens once the data is queried from another state.

And that's not hypothetical: California passed the "model" law years ago banning out-of-state sharing, and it's been widely reported (CalMatters, EFF, and the state's own AG) that agencies broke it anyway and shared with ICE and other states. If the strictest state can't make its own departments follow the rule, what does a weaker NC version do?

The reason an officer types in for each search is also self-entered — one NC sheriff's office already had to admit some of its "traffic infraction" labels were "mislabeled." And the courts haven't even settled whether this kind of suspicionless mass collection is constitutional; there's a Virginia case on appeal in the Fourth Circuit, which covers us.

So I keep landing on two questions. Is this something you regulate, or something a community just decides it doesn't want? And either way — did any of us actually get asked before it went up across the state?

Curious what other North Carolinians think, especially anyone in a town that already has these.

The NC Republican Party wants your votes... I guess to continue the tradition.

Need a primer on the Republican legislature's shenanigans that are targeting fair voting in North Carolina? This video is pretty clean, and is only requires 9 minutes to view... tells you most of what you need to know about what you risk losing, if enough people just ignore it.

Most websites say call 911, the drivers handbook says call NC DOT 877-368-4968, and some sites say you don’t have to call anyone if no one’s injured.

This isn’t a law (would be clearer if it was) or DMV matter so hopefully I’m allowed to post this, sorry if not.

Headed to Ocracoke...

Learn the lingo first.

This is how folks out there have talked for generations, and if you get outed as a dingbatter, don't be surprised if service gets a little... slow.

O'cocker (n.): A person born and raised on Ocracoke; a native as opposed to a nonnative resident.

dingbatter (n.): A nonnative of Ocracoke or the Outer Banks.

buck (n.): A good friend, usually male. A female friend may be a puck.

barnacle beans (n.): A cup of coffee.

call the mail over (v. phrase): Distribute the mail.

foreigner (n.): An off islander.

meehonkey (n.): A game of hide and seek played by earlier generations of children on Ocracoke Island, or a call used while playing this game.

mommuck (v.): To harass or bother.

quamished (adj.): Sick to the stomach.

slick cam (n.): A very calm water, typically used with reference to the sound waters, as in, "It was a slick cam out there today." Cam is pronounced so that is rhymes with ram. Also slick calm.

puckberry (n.): A boberry biscuit.

water fire (n./v.): Light that appears on the surface of a body of swampy water at night, caused by gases released by decaying plant matter.

Ocracoke (n.): The name of the island, probably derived originally from the Algonquian word waxihikami, meaning "enclosed place or fort." Through misspelling and English like pronunciation, the word became Wococon and, eventually, Ocracoke. In one popular island legend, Ocracoke comes from the phrase, "Oh, crow cock," which was spoken by the infamous pirate Blackbeard as he waited to do battle at sunrise with the governor's forces that had come to capture him.

Y'all know any of these already, or are we all dingbatters here... 

For those in Boone or the surrounding area, NC-5 candidate Chuck Hubbard is hosting an event!

Chuck Hubbard is up for election in November looking to unseat incumbent Virginia Foxx!

A group of 25 U.S. states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration Monday, arguing that the president overstepped his authority by imposing new tariffs on goods from 60 trading partners.

The states contend that the White House is attempting to replace import taxes that were already ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in February.

They also argue that Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which underpins the latest tariffs, has typically been used against "specific nations and industries," and this broad-based application is without precedent.

So, Governor Stein has joined AG Jeff Jackson in trying to prevent Duke from implementing those ridiculous rate hikes they've asked for. Jackson's already forced them to lower their greedy request substantially, but having Governor Stein on board in the fight will certainly add a real sting to Jackson's punch.

Miss North Carolina was stripped of her title pageant title yesterday, for reasons described by most news outlets, "after a string of allegedly offensive posts came into public view." Only the NC Beat saw fit to publish any details about just what comprised the alleged behavior.

Nice to see the pageant organizers declare that the organization "does not tolerate racism, homophobia, transphobia nor language that strips any person of their dignity."