The Pitiless Gaze of a Would-Be Trump Judge in NC

Thomas Alvin Farr. Photo Alex Brandon, AP

Thomas Farr, a Raleigh attorney with a voter suppression history, has been nominated by Trump to be a Federal district judge. This particular judgeship has been vacant for 11 years because Sen. Dick Burr blocked two different Obama nominees because they were black.

Farr was lead counsel for the Sen. Jesse Helms reelection campaign in 1990 when he was being challenged by former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt, a black man.

According to former U.S. Attorney Gerald Hebert, who was a Department of Justice investigator in 1990, Farr was involved in a campaign plot during the Helms v. Gantt election to send 100,000 postcards to registered black voters alleging they were ineligible to vote and would be prosecuted if they tried. Gantt lost to Helms by a narrow margin (though Gantt carried Watauga County by a thousand votes).

Farr has denied that he knew anything about the voter intimidation scheme until after it happened, and that denial helped him win approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Farr is still awaiting approval by the full Senate. Both Dick Burr and Sen. Thom Tillis support him.

NewsandObserver reporter Thomas Goldsmith, who first broke the story of Farr's involvement in the intimidation back in 2009 (on the front page), is back today in The Weekly Independent, digging into Farr's attempt to mislead the Senate Judiciary Committee about his past.

"There's certainly a clear discrepancy between what Mr. Farr testified to under oath to the committee and what has and will be reported about his activities with Helms regarding voter suppression," said Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice.

What's another lifetime appointment to the Federal bench? Oh, just another termite being given access to the floor joists.

Mr. Keep-Our-State-Straight Is a Graduate of AppState

NC Senator Eldon Sharpe "Buck" Newton III made some headlines this week at a pro-HB2 rally in Raleigh that was characterized yesterday on the editorial pages of the Charlotte Observer as a hate-fest worthy of the darkest days of the 1950s.

Buck Newton wants to be Attorney General of North Carolina. Of such are nightmares made.

Buck Newton graduated from Appalachian State University with a political science degree and went immediately to work for Jesse Helms. Now he's working to rid North Carolina of difference and drive us down the hole that Jesse Helms started digging so many decades ago.

In response to Buck's "coming out" at the HB2 rally, this got posted on Facebook:

I knew Buck Newton when he was in college. He was always very opinionated, angry, looked down on others, always saw things in simple terms, always quick to jump to conclusions, always claimed things were "common sense". He was always very judgmental and used bully tactics on others to make his opinion appear correct. He was always full of confidence based on simple, black and white views of the world. Several of us thought he was an idiot because of his lack of ability to see and understand what was beneath the surface of issues. This bill/law sounds exactly like something college-kid Buck would do. Apparently, he has not grown much. There are many smart and wise people in North Carolina who see God's creation as it truly is - a very complicated marvel, so it is absolutely shocking that such a person of low understanding could rise to such power based on such a superficial foundation. Shocking. At one point in time, the earth being flat was "common sense", blacks being inferior was "common sense"... And, here we are... again.

Taylor Batten wrote in his Charlotte Observer editorial:

Supporters of House Bill 2 have dubbed it the Bathroom Bill, as if the legislation isn’t much broader than that, as if it doesn’t take North Carolina back to the days where discrimination is an accepted way of life. The rest of us have to decide if that is OK.

It ain't okay, and there's something bad wrong with Buck Newton.

NCGOP Jumps the Racist Shark

The North Carolina Republican Party has now successfully inhabited the racism of Southern Democrats, circa 1920. Congratulations, NCGOP, for finally and visibly embracing your true heritage. You ARE the racists of modern America.

Yes, the Jonathan Jordan mailer depicting grandmotherly challenger Sue Counts standing next to a very angry and threatening black man (photoshopped, naturally) was "Paid for by the North Carolina Republican Party."

Which means, O my brethren, that this same mailer is going out in every House district race (and Senate race?) that the Republicans feel slipping away from them ... just like the Dems-candidates-in-sombreroes mailers went out in 2010 all across the state.

It wounds my heart and sickens me deep in the marrow to see this blatant appeal to hatred and fear still so much alive in the North Carolina of 2014. Jesse Helms must be sitting up in his earth-bed, saying, "Wow, you guys! Way to go! We WILL set this state back a hundred years YET!"

North Carolina Republicans are going to richly deserve what they're about to get. They've earned the contempt of every forward-looking, constructive, good-will-sharing, and yes, Christian North Carolinian. Jonathan Jordan cannot hide behind the claim that he didn't know this bilge was going out for his benefit. He knew. He approved. He deserves what he's going to get.

They have destroyed themselves with this kind of filth. May they go down hard.

(And, no, I'm not about to put a picture of that disgusting mailer on this blog. It's all over Facebook and Twitter. Go find it for yourself.)

Jim Holshouser, Mountain Republican

Gov. Jim Holshouser, who died yesterday at age 78, was born in Boone and represented Watauga County in the General Assembly for three terms before becoming state GOP Chair and then governor in the election of 1972. I had been in Boone two years at that point, voted for his Democratic opponent Skipper Bowles in that election, but Holshouser was a good governor and a good mountain Republican of the sort that North Carolina used to have plenty of.

Hell, going back to the 1890s, moderate mountain Republicans formed a Fusion Party with former slaves to briefly take control of state government. That's what mountain Republicans used to be.

Gary Pearce summed up some of Gov. Holshouser's accomplishments, which would get him barred from the NC GOP today: "Big pay raises for teachers ... Statewide kindergartens ... Coastal Management Act ... Rural health centers ... Expansion of the state park system ... More African-Americans and women in government ... Help for black business enterprises...."

Actually, Pearce notes, citing Rob Christensen, the Jesse Helms Republicans threw Holshouser out of the party in 1976. The Helms Republicans booed Holshouser at the state GOP convention and denied him a seat as a delegate to the national convention.

This Republican bunch now in control in Raleigh, who are defecating on everything that represents moderation, fairness, and sympathy for the poor and weak, are certainly the Helms progeny, grown even more rancid than ole Jesse could even imagine.

Sen. Burr as Judge of Character

Sen. Dick Burr, who practically had to vault over the wheel-chair-confined former Senator Bob Dole in order to vote against ratification of a U.N. treaty that would give greater protections to the disabled world-wide (see below), is now riding his moral high horse in lecturing us that former Senator Jesse Helms, that tired old bigot and poisonous excuse for a human being, deserves to have a federal courthouse named for him.

This is Congresswoman Renee Ellmers' bright idea. Bless her heart.

Jesse Helms, who was no federalist by any stretch of the imagination. Jesse Helms, who routinely blocked the nominations of federal judges if he didn't approve of their race or their pedigree. Jesse Helms, who said more hateful things in his long, intolerant life than both my dogs have fleas. That Jesse Helms.