The last time the state General Assembly overrode a governor’s veto was… never. But they did it last week after Gov. Mike Easley vetoed a bill that would allow boaters to tow vessels up to 10 feet wide without permits on North Carolina roads and watercraft up to 9.

First off, we’d like to thank the hundred or so college presidents that signed off on the Amethyst Initiative — supporting a lowering of the drinking age from 21 to 18 — just in time for our back-to-school issue. Well played, ladies and gentlemen. We might as well weigh in with everybody else on this week’s editorial-page equivalent of the hula hoop.

Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers has a plan to end global warming in two easy steps. One: Give Rogers your money. Two: Lower your expectations.

Well, it’s news now. We said it wasn’t way back in December 2007, when this story first broke, when Rielle Hunter was just six months pregnant and John Edwards was still a player in the presidential race. There was no conclusive evidence that he was the father of Hunter’s child, we figured, and the whole thing had devolved into a he said/she said with no resolution in sight.

The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing are shaping up to be the kind of disaster that will leave us all shaking our heads in wonder, thinking: How could this have happened? It began seven years ago, with intense debate among the interna tional Olympic Committee and comparisons drawn to the 1936 games, hosted in Germany under Nazi rule.

Water, like many other things, runs downhill. And North Carolina acts as a sluice, with water running from the highlands out west to the flats east of Raleigh, filtering through every community large and small.

Bush the oil man has given his all-clear to plumb for that sweet, sweet stuff off our coasts, despite overwhelming evidence that this is a bad idea. We have capped wells in Alaska, yes, and there are millions of acres of unexplored coastal territory already under lease by the big oil companies.

Piedmont Triad International Airport is seen as a blessing to some, a cash cow to others, and plenty of neighbors see it simply as a nuisance. And now, according to the Business Travel Coalition, it is a dead man walking.

It's official: We will not have Jesse Helms to kick around anymore. The former senator from North Carolina passed on the Fourth of July, just like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Charles Kuralt and, for what it's worth, Barry White. He was 86.

Seriously, this gas thing is out of control. You're feeling it... we're feeling it... the whole nation is feeling it, and soon the petroleum-drenched chicken will come home to roost in the form of increased prices. On everything.