PlumbLine

While watching the World Series one night, it dawned on me that even if baseball has lost its status as America's pastime, it remains a useful metaphor.

Reaction to news that Barack Obama was to receive the Nobel Peace Prize might be unprecedented in that it united wide-eyed liberals and blood-red conservatives in disbelief.

A Rock Hill attorney once represented a mutual friend, now deceased, who while driving one evening fell asleep, hit another vehicle and demolished his car. Fortunately, he wasn't seriously injured. Nevertheless, he was incensed that the trooper had charged him with “driving too fast for conditions.”

Ebenezer Scrooge lives, in South Carolina!

During the 20 years I occupied the editor's chair, I handed out Herald Academic Achievement awards to top-performing seniors at most of the dozen or so high schools in our circulation area.

Winthrop University President Anthony DiGiorgio's recent letters to The Herald, in which he seeks to set Gov. Mark Sanford straight on higher-education funding, remind me of the dictum about teaching a pig to dance: All it does is upset the pig.

During her first day on the job last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presided over an event of some significance.

Upon signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Lyndon Johnson, the 36th president of the United States, a Democrat, reportedly said, "We have lost the South for a generation."

The year 2008 ended dismally enough without a parting apologia from the Bushes.

The late Jonathan Daniels, longtime editor of The News and Observer of Raleigh, N.C., used to say that the Tar Heel State was a vale of humility between two mountains of conceit. He was referring to North Carolina's proximity to Virginia and South Carolina, of course.