Applause for Gov. Perdue

Guv Bev is off to a bold start -- signing executive orders to remove political patronage from the road-building process, among other things -- and thereby setting up a massive confrontation with the grandees in the state's General Assembly (we're talking Democrats here) who kinda basically like their patronage and their money-raising powers and will likely not take kindly to the Guv messing in their sandbox. But she needs to mess with 'em.

And we've glad that on his way out the door, Mike Easley signed an executive order that e-mails sent by state employees are properly part of the public record and should be saved. The governor's office was being sued by a number of newspapers for deleting e-mails. It's sooo Mike Easley to wait until he's almost out of office to tacitly acknowledge that the newspapers were right about this issue all along.