U.S. Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic candidate for president in 2004, will speak today at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The free public talk will be at 2:30 p.m. in Hill Hall, on campus roughly across East Franklin Street from the post office.

Kerry will deliver this year’s Weil Lecture on American Citizenship at UNC, presented by the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, a part of the College of Arts and Sciences.

In the 2004 election, the Massachusetts senator won more than 59 million votes, or 48.3 of the ballots cast, to then-President George W. Bush’s total of more than 62 million votes, or 50.8 percent.

Since then, Kerry has continued in the Senate, where he advocates for health insurance for low-income children, improvements to public education and protecting the environment.

Kerry chairs the Senate foreign relations committee, on which he has served for 19 years. He also chairs subcommittees of the finance committee and the commerce, science and transportation committee.

After graduating from Yale University, Kerry volunteered for the U.S. Navy and served two tours of duty in Vietnam. He won a Silver Star, a Bronze Star with Combat V and three Purple Hearts.

Kerry became convinced that the war was a mistake and spoke out against it upon returning to the United States, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the age of 27. He helped found Vietnam Veterans of America to fight for veterans’ benefits and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Kerry graduated from Boston College Law School in 1976 and became a prosecutor in Middlesex County, Mass. He was elected lieutenant governor in 1982 and to the U.S. Senate in 1984. Since then he has won re-election three times. He is now serving his fourth term.

UNC’s biennial Weil Lecture seeks to widen discussion of issues and concerns in the United States. Founded in 1915 by brothers Henry and Solomon Weil of Goldsboro, the lecture has been given by speakers including presidents Taft and Carter, U.S. Senators J. William Fulbright and Nancy Kassebaum, Eleanor Roosevelt and CBS and NPR correspondent Daniel Schorr.

Each succeeding Weil generation has continued a tradition of philanthropy and community involvement, leading in causes including women’s suffrage and civil rights and serving as UNC trustees. The Weil lecture is one of many contributions to the University by the Weil family.

PHILADELPHIA  – A jury in Philadelphia has convicted a powerful former state senator of all 137 corruption counts against him.

The jury in U.S. District Court found 65-year-old Vincent Fumo guilty Monday of defrauding the Senate, a nonprofit and a museum of more than $3.5 million. Other charges included destroying e-mail evidence.

The verdict comes after a five-month trial that featured more than 100 witnesses.

The judge denied a government request to revoke bail for the Philadelphia Democrat.

RALEIGH, N.C. – Democrats in North Carolina are expanding their search for a Senate challenger after one party prospect pulled his name from consideration.

North Carolina Rep. Heath Shuler said Tuesday he wanted to spend his time focusing on reviving the economy rather than campaigning statewide against Republican Sen. Richard Burr. Burr faces re-election next year.

Political consultant Morgan Jackson said Attorney General Roy Cooper, who is considering the job, probably won’t decide on a Senate run for a few more months.

Several others have been mentioned as prospects but have remained mum. Both Secretary of State Elaine Marshall and former State Treasurer Richard Moore said they have no plans but didn’t want to rule anything out.

Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) will not try to unseat first-term Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) in 2010, according to The Hill.

Former U.S. Sen. John Edwards may have to pay $170,000 in FEC fines for accepting excessive contributions during his 2004 presidential campaign.

WASHINGTON – Sen. Roland Burris is refusing to resign despite a suggestion from fellow Illinois senator Dick Durbin to do so. Burris also is refusing to say whether he’ll run for the seat in 2010.

Burris was appointed by disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was impeached and driven from office after he was accused of trying to sell the Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama.
 
Burris repeatedly changed his story about how he was appointed. He is facing calls for his resignation after he admitted trying to raise money for Blagojevich. Burris has said he did nothing improper. He refused to comment after his meeting with Durbin.

FRANKFORT, Ky.  – Republican U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning apologized Monday to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for saying he believes she could die within a year from pancreatic cancer.

At the same time, his planned bid for a third term in 2010 may have gotten tougher with one of Kentucky’s top Republicans saying he has not ruled out a possible run.
 
Bunning, a Hall-of-Fame major league pitcher, who has no medical background, said during a speech Saturday that Ginsburg has “bad cancer. The kind that you don’t get better from,” the Courier-Journal of Louisville reported. “Even though she was operated on, usually, nine months is the longest that anybody would live” with pancreatic cancer.

“I apologize if my comments offended Justice Ginsberg,” the two-term Kentucky junior senator said Monday in a statement, which misspelled Ginsburg’s name. “That certainly was not my intent.”

Bunning’s office later released a statement with the correct spelling.

Doctors diagnosed the 75-year-old justice and removed a small tumor this month. They said the cancer was caught early, when it is most curable. The American Cancer Society estimates that 20 percent to 24 percent of patients whose pancreatic cancer is caught early survive five years.

Ginsburg was in court Monday, 18 days after her surgery.

“It is great to see her back at the Supreme Court today and I hope she recovers quickly,” the 77-year-old Bunning said. “My thoughts and prayers are with her and her family.”
 
Meanwhile, Republican Kentucky state Senate President David Williams would not rule out a possible run in the primary. Williams has met with the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the GOP campaign arm in Washington, according to a person familiar with the situation who requested anonymity because the meeting was private.

Williams wouldn’t confirm whether he had such a meeting.

“I’m just saying that I haven’t made any decision,” Williams said. “I’ve always been for Jim Bunning, he’s always been for me. But that, you know, we’ll just see what the rest of the year brings.”

Republican officials have said they are not recruiting candidates to run against Bunning, who has had lackluster fundraising so far, but has said he intends to seek re-election.
 
In January, Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, fueled speculation about Bunning’s retirement when he told reporters in Washington that Bunning had not yet announced his intentions. Bunning said later he’d spelled out his intentions to McConnell at a meeting in December and that McConnell must have had a “lapse of memory.”      

Bunning barely defeated Democrat Daniel Mongiardo with 51 percent in 2004, a year that favored Republicans.

Ginsburg was appointed in 1993 by President Bill Clinton and is the only woman on the high court. There was no immediate comment Monday from the court on Bunning’s remarks.

If Ginsburg or another justice leaves, it would fall to President Barack Obama to pick a successor, who must be confirmed by the Senate. Anyone he might select to replace her probably would be as liberal as she, keeping in place the 5-4 conservative tilt of the court.

TMZ reports that Senator Burr left the top down on his VW Thing during a snowstorm.

Winston-Salem Journal Editorial
If you follow the goings-on in Raleigh – and you really should, considering that one of the first places the honorables tend to look for extra money is in your wallet – you know that the economic crunch could take as much as a $2 billion bite out of the state’s $21.5 billion budget.

Friends, that’s real money and will no doubt dominate the session that the General Assembly opened yesterday.

But before the teeth-gnashing, hand-wringing or mass burials of heads in the sand can begin, let’s look at the state budget crisis as an opportunity.

“It’s time to do some spring cleaning on the state budget,” said John Hood, the president and chairman of the conservative John Locke Foundation and notable government watchdog.

“It’s been many years since we’ve done that. If 2009 is not the year to do it, then there will never be one.”

In other words, because legislators have been handed a $2 billion lemon, perhaps they ought to get busy squeezing. And if that’s what they choose to do, state Sen. Linda Garrou, a Forsyth County Democrat, will occupy a prime seat at the lemonade stand.

“Many eyes will be turned toward Senator Garrou,” Hood said. “She has played a significant role in the Senate’s appropriations process before and now will be the senior statesman on that committee.”

No dummy.

Garrou, a Democrat from Winston-Salem, is smart. Doofuses don’t get to serve as one of the Senate’s three main budget writers, as Garrou did last year. No, those who can’t do the job are usually shuttled off to toothless committees and vote the way they’re told once the heavy lifting is done.

(Sens. Charlie Dannelly, D-Mecklenburg, and Charles Albertson, D-Duplin, were the other two Senate budget writers. They replaced Sens. Kay Hagan and Walter Dalton, Democrats who were busy running for U.S. Senate and lieutenant governor, respectively.).

With Hagan in Washington and Dalton doing whatever it is that lieutenant governors do, Garrou likely will wind up wielding a lot of power once again.

“I’d be surprised if Senator (Marc) Basnight didn’t name some other co-chairs, but certainly she will be the one with the experience,” said Ran Coble, another keen observer of the Legislature and the executive director of the N.C. Center for Public Policy Research. “It’s the toughest budget since the Depression and, for sure, a tough assignment for whomever the budget writers are.”

Because state law doesn’t allow the General Assembly to run up budget deficits like Big Brother in Washington, there are usually just two things to consider when the economy slows and revenue projections fall short: tax increases and spending cuts.

“The debate is going to be where to save money and where to cut costs,” Hood said. “That will consume most of their time this year.”

True, but there is a third option this year: Rummaging through Uncle Sam’s change drawer.
State officials remain hopeful that the state will get a sizable chunk of the $816 billion economic-stimulus package being debated in D.C.

Opportunity or excuse?

If the federal economic-stimulus passes as expected, the reaction by such powerful legislators as Garrou will be telling.

They can either use it as an excuse to shirk an opportunity for real change or view it as a one-time budgetary Band-Aid to help them while they think longer term.

If recent statements by new Gov. Bev Perdue are any indication, the beleaguered taxpayers might see real change after all.

Perdue has been invoking the name of O. Max Gardner, the Depression-era governor who led the radical
charge to give the state responsibility for schools, roads and prisons.

“Governor Perdue has seen the analogy,” Hood said. “Senators in a position to have some influence on the outcome should see it, too.”

With a potential $2 billion shortfall in the wings, let’s hope so.