It was only a matter of time before the FBI would snag home-grown terrorists who didn’t “fit the usual profile” of Al- Qaeda wannabes. The alleged terrorists have been described by the government as right-wing extremists. Last week, four North Georgia men, ages 65-73 (three from Toccoa, and one from Cleveland) were charged with plotting to acquire explosives and manufacture toxins in order to target government facilities. Let’s see, we have to fight them over there, so we don’t have to fight them in ... Toccoa?

A common thread in these FBI sting operations is that the conspirators always have the bad luck of inviting a government informant/ instigator into their group. One would think that somewhere along the line there would be masterminds who could properly vet their henchmen. There is no way of knowing how many aborted FBI manufactured terrorist plots there have been. If the FBI attempts to involve you in a crime – just who do you report that to?

The other day, I wandered up to Union Square to see what all the fuss was about.

There, along the sidewalk near the old Capitol, about four dozen folks — young and old — stood and sat. They waved signs. They chanted. At one point, they marched around the square.

About a dozen police, both from the Raleigh Police Department and the State Capitol Police, looked on for a while. When three of the protesters wouldn't get up from chairs lined up along the walkway, police arrested those three and five others who wouldn’t step aside.

RALEIGH -- This week, state legislators will begin looking anew at an old problem -- debt taken on by 51 North Carolina communities back in the 1970s in order to provide electricity to their residents.

The debt, taken on as the municipalities decided to buy into new power plants, rose because of cost overruns at the plants. Declining inflation also meant that electricity rates in other communities didn't rise as much as predicted.

The result is that electricity rates in those 51 communities are much higher than the rest of state. In some cases, rates are as much as 50 percent higher.

In 1938, with the U.S. still doggedly fighting to escape the Great Depression, FDR's administration declared the Southern region to be "America's Economic Problem Number 1." Although the country as a whole was struggling, the pain was most acutely felt in the South, which lagged by almost every economic measure: jobs, wage levels, family income and more.

Many of the reasons Roosevelt's experts gave for the South's dismal situation were specific to the era, like being "crushed" in the Civil War, the "vicious period" of Reconstruction and tariffs on cotton and tobacco. The way railroads were set up and subsidized in the late 1800s was still conferring a big advantage to Northern businesses.