By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Now is the perfect time to go on a media diet of one of our U.S. senators, Lindsey Graham.
Graham’s sycophantic bad karma isn’t needed these days. For the next six months, I’m taking a vacation from Graham and his increasingly irrelevant rhetoric.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | For the presidential candidates, staffers, reporters and hangers-on starting to descend like locusts into South Carolina for its national debate and the Feb. 29 presidential primary, remember what native son James L. Pettigru wrote just after the state seceded in December 1860:
“South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.”
In a lot of ways, that one sentence still rings true.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | With all of the confusion after the Iowa Democratic presidential caucuses and creeping nastiness seeming to shape the party’s New Hampshire primary, look for South Carolina to come to the rescue to former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said something a couple of weeks back that’s been circling through my brain:
“Look, I have this firm belief that if America hasn’t broken your heart, you don’t love her enough.”
My heart is breaking as our nation is being torn apart in ways never imagined by founding fathers and leaders of the country for 200 years.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | There’s a backlog of untested rape kits in South Carolina because there’s more evidence coming in than authorized labs have the capacity to process.
One estimate is there are 1,800 evidence parcels that are waiting to be processed before cases can move forward. As of Dec. 31, the State Law Enforcement Division’s forensics lab had 1,333 untested rape kits waiting for processing, according to spokesman Tommy Crosby. Another 148 are being processed now.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | The math is easy. With about about $2 billion in new or surplus tax revenues for the state’s coming fiscal year, there’s more than enough money for the General Assembly to do something it should have long done: Make 4-year-old kindergarten available for all of South Carolina’s poor children.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Looking back at the past decade, it’s pretty easy to see what the S.C. General Assembly didn’t do — fix education, fix the tax structure, fix health care and on and on.
But state lawmakers did get some things done in what may become known as the legislature’s Decade of the Nibble. That’s because each area they focused on was more of what a posh restaurant would call an “amuse bouche” than an entree.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | The harsh crescendo of Washington bullheadedness seems to be trickling down into politics across South Carolina.
The impeachment of President Donald Trump may be exacerbating divides in the electorate while also motivating partisans to do more in new ways. Others say the whole thing is a nothingburger.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | The 2020 legislative season will be upon us before we know it. If it is typical, campaign-year bluster will fill rooms as lawmakers clamor for the spotlight to get pet projects passed. Hot-button, controversial issues will suck oxygen out of the Statehouse and waste valuable time.
Let’s pray for an atypical legislative year — one in which officials get real things accomplished. Rather than waste time on meaningless bills, legislators need to get these five things right, once and for all …
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | OK, boomlets. Stand down. The older folks aren’t all that bad.
Millennials and iGen kids who now gleefully deprecate and mock baby boomers these days need to face the reality that the very lifestyle that keeps them connected, in tune, entertained, online and hip to what’s happening is due to … wait for it … baby boomers.
We Can Do Better, South Carolina! (2019) by editor and publisher Andy Brack offers incisive commentaries on the American South, politics, the common good and interesting South Carolina leaders. Available exclusively for Kindle for $7.99. A paperback version will be ready soon. Learn more.
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