* North Carolina has its first Twitterversy: Can a Democratic operative Twitter under the name of the House Republican leader?

* Greensboro blogger Ed Cone notes an old video against filibustering Supreme Court nominees that may limit Sen. Richard Burr's options.

* N.C. Republican Party chair candidate Tom Fetzer declines to participate in an online questionnaire answered by his competitors.

* Federal prosecutors subpoena the state auditor's office to find out what it knows about how Mary Easley got her job at N.C. State University.

A conservative group blog is hitting its stride.

Started in mid January, ConservativeNC aims to be for conservatives in the state what BlueNC has been for liberals.

It grew out of a Facebook group started to revive conservativism in the wake of the Democratic sweep in the fall elections. 

Jeff Sykes, 38, one of four co-founders, said he originally planned to start a group blog for conservatives in the Piedmont. A former reporter and editor of several small Rockingham County newspapers, he was inspired by Ed Cone and other Triad bloggers.

"The goal is to give conservatives in the state a place they can go and find information about their colleagues from across the state," he said. "It's also a place where we can debate the current and future health of the conservative movement in North Carolina."

The site has a dozen regular writers and several hundred registered users. Lately it has been one of several good online sources for information about the race for chair of the N.C. Republican Party. 

* Tech-oriented Greensboro blogger Ed Cone says newspapers that oppose a bill to allow online legal notices are fighting the tide of history.

* Conservative blogger Joe Guarino says Gov. Beverly Perdue may turn out to be as good as "a conservative could hope for" for her stance on raising taxes.

* Web design tip: Make sure the home page of your Constituent Services section on your Senate Web site is not blank. (Maybe move Related Links?)

* U.S. Supreme Court ruling could make it harder for some minorities in South and Southwest North Carolina to win legislative races.

* Bill would create a study commission on licensing and regulating midwives. The state currently only allows nurse midwives with degrees.

* Greensboro blogger Ed Cone notices that U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan has finally upgraded her official Senate Web site, something he's been pushing for a while.

* A bill to ban cell phone use while driving appears dead after members of the Senate Commerce Committee appear particularly unenthused about it.

* House Health Committee is expected to consider a bill that would ban smoking in restaurants and public places in a meeting today.

Democratic bloggers are mulling their chances of unseating Sen. Richard Burr.

On the statistics-minded FiveThirtyEight.com, Nate Silver ranks the Winston-Salem Republican's seat as eighth most likely to switch parties:

Burr occupies North Carolina's buyer's remorse seat, which has changed parties five times in the past five elections; his tepid approval ratings suggest that he might not escape the curse. Still, Tarheel Democrats won't have the benefit of Barack Obama's coattails in 2010, nor are they likely to run into another campaign run as ineptly as Elizabeth Dole's.

But Triad uber-blogger Ed Cone is not so sure.

"People misunderestimate Burr at their own peril," he writes.

And Public Policy Polling's Tom Jensen thinks all the talk of state Treasurer Richard Moore running against Attorney General Roy Cooper for the Democratic nomination is bunk.

"I can't imagine Richard Moore is going to run for the US Senate unless the Democratic field is cleared of viable candidates except for him," he writes. "He already lost one statewide primary, another loss in one would definitely be the end of his political career."

Bob Barr was a spoiler in North Carolina after all.

Though the Libertarian presidential candidate made only token appearances in the state and received a miniscule number of votes in November, he still got more votes than the margin of difference.

Barr's 25,722 votes were more than one and a half times the 14,192 margin that made Barack Obama winner of the state over John McCain. Put another way, Barr had about 0.6 percent of the vote, while the margin was about 0.3 percent.

That puts Barr into elite company in North Carolina.

As previously noted, there have been five third-party candidates who earned enough votes to affect the race between the Republican and Democrat in North Carolina since 1908.

They are: George Wallace in 1968, Teddy Roosevelt in 1912, Ross Perot in 1992 and in 1996 and John Anderson in 1980. (Technically, Roosevelt did not earn more than the margin of Woodrow Wilson's win, but he came in second so we count him.)

However, Barr earned the smallest percentage of any of the other spoilers, and the number of write-in votes was close enough to the margin this year to almost qualify on its own.

Update: Greensboro blogger Ed Cone called it in mid-May.

Ed Cone notes that Sarah Palin lost the real America.

The Greensboro blogger points out that the Republican presidential ticket lost handily in Guilford County, where Palin famously said that she likes visiting the "pro-America" parts of the country.

"Fibber Kay" and "Status Quo Bev."

Two top Democratic candidates this year have been given nicknames by their political opponents in negative ads.

Senate candidate Kay Hagan has been tarred "Fibber Kay" by Sen. Elizabeth Dole, while gubernatorial candidate Beverly Perdue went from "Negative Bev" in press releases from Pat McCrory to "Status Quo Bev" in a series of ads by the Republican Governors Association. 

So far, Dole and McCrory have not been similarly nicknamed, although the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has used "Liddy Dole" in two ads.

(The line — "That's not the Liddy Dole I knew" — is meant to imply familiarity and to give voters who may have supported her in the past some psychological cover to oppose her.) 

UNC-Chapel Hill professor Leroy Towns says he can't recall similar nicknames being used in the past, except for "Slick Willie" Clinton in Arkansas.

Prolific blogger Ed Cone, for his part, says the practice "reeks of campaign consultants." 

Will the Libertarian Party help make North Carolina a swing state?

Earlier this month, Greensboro blogger Ed Cone speculated that a potential run by former Congressman Bob Barr could draw votes away from Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

"Given the blue tide we saw in NC last week, the prospect of a relatively strong Libertarian in the race can't be comforting to McCain, who got less than 75% of the primary vote here, while Ron Paul and No Preference combined for more than 10%," he wrote.

Now that the Libertarians are officially a party, its presidential nominee will be on the ballot.

Brian Irving, a spokesman for the state party, said the state party is more focused on helping gubernatorial nominee Mike Munger get 2 percent of the vote so that it can continue to remain a political party.

In the past two elections, the Libertarian candidate has been the strongest third-party candidate in North Carolina's presidential race, though nowhere near enough to influence a race. In 2004, Michael Badnarik got 11,731 votes, or 0.3 percent. In 2000, Harry Browne got 12,307, or 0.4 percent.

In 1996, Reform Party candidate Ross Perot got 168,059 votes or 6.7 percent, while Browne got 8,740 votes, or 0.3 percent, and Natural Law Party candidate John Hagelin got 2,771, or 0.1 percent.

In a tight race, Barr wouldn't need Perot-like numbers to make a difference, but he would need to do better than the usual three-tenths of one percent.

Ed Cone praises Beverly Perdue for taking down negative ads.

The Greensboro blogger writes that the decision was made "better late than never," but he also wonders about the Democratic gubernatorial candidate's motives.

I wonder what led to this decision. She says that people kept asking her to stop, so a cynical view would be that she's stopping because the negativity was hurting her with voters. Or maybe Moore's negative ads are hurting her, and this is a way of disarming him and claiming the high ground.

Or maybe she really did find it all distasteful and is happy to be done with it.