The American Beverage Institute will run full-page ads against liquor taxes.

The ads, which will run Sunday in the Charlotte Observer and the News & Observer, advertise a Web site, NoDrinkTax.com.

"Want to send more tax revenue out of state?" says one ad, above a picture of a Welcome to South Carolina sign. "North Carolina's liquor prices are already 30 percent higher than South Carolina's. Now politicians want to raise them even more to help fund their bloated budget."

The other ad says state legislators want taxpayers "shaken, not stirred."

The state budget includes a 1.5 percent increase on the liquor tax, the only one of several proposed "sin taxes" on alcohol and tobacco that were proposed that has not been cut.

The American Beverage Institute is run by a lobbyist or the restaurant, alcohol and tobacco industries.

Newspaper publishers oppose a bill to allow meeting notices be posted online.

Rep. Paul Stam, an Apex Republican, sponsored the legislation to allow certain cities and counties to stop buying classified ads to announce public hearings. 

An earlier version of the bill would have exempted all local governments, but Stam scaled it back to just towns in Wake and Mecklenburg counties after it met resistance.

Stam said the bill would give government a break on its expenses.

"Let's look for the things that would save counties and cities money while we're cutting the heart out of their budgets," he said.

Publishers and editors at the N&O and the Charlotte Observer lobbied against it, saying many people don't have Internet access. (N&O)

Welcome to North Carolina, D.C. Reporter.

We're glad that your national publication found our state worthy of coverage, especially with all that stuff going on in your usual haunts: New York, California and Iowa.

In the past, some of your colleagues have made dumb mistakes when writing about North Carolina, so here are a few tips:

THE OBSERVERS: A lot of our newspapers have similar names: The Charlotte Observer, the Raleigh News & Observer and the Fayetteville Observer. Try to keep them straight.

RALEIGH, DURHAM: Yes, the hyphen at the airport is confusing. But there is no such place as Raleigh-Durham. They're separate cities. (Winston-Salem is one city, though.)

TAR HEEL: That's two words. It's the name of UNC-Chapel Hill (called Carolina or North Carolina in sports) team and one name for residents of the state.

NORTH, SOUTH: We're not South Carolina, and we hate being confused with it. For starters, Charleston is in South Carolina; Charlotte, in North Carolina.

BARBECUE: That's a noun, not a verb. It's made with pork. There's two kinds: Eastern style has a vinegar sauce; Lexington style, a tomato-based sauce.

That should cover the basics. Now get to reporting!

Federal authorities are looking into a former land deal by Gov. Mike Easley, according to the company that marketed the property.

Easley purchased a lot in the Cannonsgate development for $549,880 at the end of 2005, according to property records. It was assessed at a tax value of $1.2 million a year later, though it would sell for less today.

Separate reports in 2006 by the Charlotte Observer and the Carolina Journal, a publication of the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, compared the Easley sale with others nearby and concluded that he got a good deal.

The project was developed and marketed by brothers Randy and William Allen, whom Easley appointed to the state Wildlife Resources Commission. Another Easley appointee, transportation board member Lanny Wilson, helped finance the project with a $12.5 million loan.

All three were major campaign contributors to Easley. (N&O) 

Jack Betts was bullish on Garrett Perdue in 2007.

In an Oct. 7 piece, the Charlotte Observer columnist said the son of Gov. Beverly Perdue did well when introducing her at the formal kickoff of her campaign.

"The younger Perdue has presence, poise, timing and wit that Bev Perdue ought to put to good use on the campaign trail between now and next spring, when she hopes to become the Democratic Party's nominee in the May 6 primary election," he wrote.

He wrote that Garrett Perdue was "a first-rate speaker" who "might just have a glowing political future."

Previously: Perdue hired as federal lobbyist, spotted at legislature and state political event, members of Congress haven't heard from him.

Legislative guru Gerry Cohen has his own memory of former Gov. Bob Scott.

As a sophomore at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1970, Cohen got a call from a reporter from the Charlotte Observer. 

As he recalls, Scott had made a campaign promise that his office door would always be open. The reporter offered Cohen and a few other people with no political connections $25 each to try to get an appointment with the governor.

"I drove over from Chapel Hill to see if I could meet with the governor," Cohen wrote in an e-mail to Dome. " I got ushered in to see Ben Roney, who I think was chief of staff. Roney offered to set up an appointment, but said the next availabe time for me to meet with the Governor would be three or four months in the future."

Cohen said he declined, but the door was open.

Doug Rader has criticized drilling before.

As noted previously, one of the co-chairs of a legislative task force studying offshore drilling editorialized against it last year.

But he's also been quoted opposing it over the years:

* "Although it is questionable whether any drilling at all is compatible with North Carolina's sensitive coastal resources, there is absolutely no way any oil or gas activity should ever be permitted in this unique and valuable region of the Atlantic." — Wilmington Morning Star, June 16, 1998.

* About Chevron's decision to put off drilling: "That's a very important development, especially at a time when so many other threats stand at the gates of North Carolina's coast. ... That's among the worst places in the world to drill for oil." — News & Observer, Feb. 4, 1999.

* About the U.S. Supreme Court taking a case involving offhosre drilling: "We welcome a final resolution of the outer continental shelf drilling mess off the North Carolina coast. ... The Supreme Court hearing of this case provides an opportunity to correct mistakes of past administrations, which allowed leases where they never should have been." — Charlotte Observer, Nov. 16, 1999. 

It seems that "chunked" is in common use.

Here are a few examples culled from North Carolina newspapers in recent years of the verb "to chunk" being used instead of "to chuck" (as used by former Gov. Mike Easley and President George W. Bush):

* Food correspondent Debbie Moose, in a March 23, 2008, article about Duke mayonnaise: "And she chunked another jar of Big D into our cart."

* Charlotte Observer sports writer Ron Green Jr. writing about Padraig Harrington at the British Open on July 23, 2007: "When Harrington chunked his 229-yard third shot into the water, visions of Van de Velde danced in every head."

* Winston-Salem Journal writer Lenox Rawlings writing about football on Jan. 9, 2006: "The Carolina Panthers, striving for legendary status as the NFL's ultimate playoff road team, read that conventional scouting report and chunked it into the Hudson River yesterday."

* Durham Herald-Sun columnist Jason Hawkins discussing a fishing trip on Aug. 3, 2003: "He said, something was wrong with the cantaloupe, and he chunked his half overboard."

The word seems to be mostly used in the context of golf, but other sports writers use it a lot as well. That could be because sports writers use a more colloquial voice or possibly because more of them are Southerners.

An order by Gov. Mike Easley to preserve e-mail was a surprise.

The Raleigh News & Observer, the Charlotte Observer and eight other news organizations had sued the former governor in April after it became clear that some employees in his administration were deleting e-mails to keep them from becoming public.

Negotiations over the still-active lawsuit had ceased.

As late as December, the former governor said he would not give news organizations what they sought and that he thought the two newspapers were writing stories critical of his administration because of a lawsuit.

But Friday he signed an executive order agreeing in principle with many of the principles put forward by the newspapers. 

Gov. Beverly Perdue, who is now the defendant in the lawsuit, said she is reviewing the executive order before she decides whether to modify or accept it. (N&O)

Update: Post now includes a copy of the order.

Gov. Beverly Perdue should get an invitation soon.

Although the new governor said at her inaugural ball that the time for partying would soon end, she will get an invitation soon from the McClatchy Co. to the annual Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, D.C.

Founded in 1885, it is the oldest and most prestigious journalism group in the nation's capital, and the annual white-tie dinner has featured speeches by every U.S. president since then except Grover Cleveland.

The newspaper chain, which owns the Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News & Observer, has also sent invitations to Bono, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and nine other notables.