Gov. Beverly Perdue met with the N&O this morning.

As the session with the editorial board drew to a close, executive editor John Drescher said "I've got an important question for you..."

"...Who's going to win the ball game," Perdue completed.

Drescher: I know you're a big college basketball fan. What's your assessment of this NCAA tournament and how the teams from North Carolina are going to do?

Perdue: Well I just sent you my picks. Bob and I had an argument last night because he picked, I forget, one team and I did pick Louisville. ... I really hope that Carolina wins. Everybody knows that I'm a big Carolina fan. ... It would be wonderful to see Wake or Duke do well. ... I hope that Tyler and Ty do well.

Drescher: Now you have a lot of sources we don't have. What do you know about Ty's toe?

Perdue: I would go bandage it myself if I thought it would help.

Perdue said her husband will be in Greensboro for some NCAA games. She said she may not be able to attend because of another commitment.

"If you see me there don't think I'm shirking my responsibilities as governor," she said.

* N&O editor John Drescher remembers another side of former Gov. Bob Scott — the politician who refused to answer a difficult question from a reporter.

* Greensboro News-Record columnist Doug Clark wonders why the public campaign finance system should spend $200,000 to elect a powerless schools superintendent.

* WUNC radio reporter Laura Leslie mourns the end of NBC-17's "At Issue" weekly political news show, praises hard work of anchor Kim Genardo.

* Blogger Dr. Frank argues that the legislature's balanced budget requirement may be too restrictive during a recession since suggested cuts aren't even close.

John Drescher responded to Gov. Mike Easley's comments.

In an interview with an N&O reporter, the newspaper's executive editor objected to Easley's characterization of the probation problem as being that too many convicted criminals receive probation instead of prison time, Ben Niolet reports.

"Gov. Easley might be the only person in North Carolina who thinks our probation system is working well and that the state is monitoring probationers as it should," Drescher said. "The correction secretary himself has acknowledged the state needs to do a better job."

Easley also blamed an ongoing lawsuit over e-mails for the N&O and Charlotte Observer's treatment of his administration. Drescher said the paper is doing its job by publishing tough stories.

"Our job is to dig, and we're going to keep digging," he said. "We'll do that in a professional way."

Drescher said the parties in the lawsuit are in discussions.

"We believe we've made a reasonable request that all state government e-mail be considered a public record," Drescher said.

John Drescher says both Senate candidates took cheap shots.

In his weekly column, the N&O editor said that U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole's "godless" ad was the "national cheap shot of the year," but he added that Democrat Kay Hagan was also graceless in her acceptance speech:

In what had to be the tackiest victory speech ever, Hagan took three swipes at Dole in less than 13 minutes. She said:

* She'd given her ruby-red shoes away (so Dole could click her heels and go home to Kansas).

* When she entered the race, the press and politicians were ready to hand Dole the keys to her office for another six years. "But it's not her office," she said twice.

* "It's certainly nice to have a husband who can vote for me" — a reference to Dole's husband, Bob Dole, who is from Kansas.

A Hagan spokeswoman said the comments weren't attacks on Dole.

"If those weren't digs, I am Jesse Helms," he writes.  

Dishonest and incompetent bureaucrats across North Carolina breathe a little easier today.

Pat Stith, a Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter who has exposed government corruption for 37 years at the News & Observer, will retire next month, Mandy Locke reports.

Stith's work sprang a man from prison and put five others behind bars. His revelations prompted rewrites of the state's workers' compensation laws, pointed out the environmental dangers caused by the pork industry and, most recently, revealed more than $400 million wasted by the state's mental health reforms.

"For almost 40 years, Pat Stith has been the soul of this paper," said Executive Editor John Drescher, who has known Stith for 27 years. "He represents the best of what we are: tough, fair, honest, vigilant and hardworking."

Stith, who had been pondering retirement for some time, accepted a voluntary buyout recently offered to full-time newsroom employees.

He will be greatly missed by his colleagues and readers. Just not by those bureaucrats. 

Gov. Mike Easley says he’ll ask his press staff to start treating the John Locke Foundation’s Carolina Journal like any other news media outlet from now on.

Easley said Wednesday that he has told his senior staff and spokespeople to cooperate better with the state’s news media to get information to the public.

And Easley said he’d prod them to give equal access to the Journal, which routinely gigs him, reports Matthew Eisley.

In a meeting Easley convened at the Executive Mansion with the head of the N.C. Press Association and the top editors of The News & Observer, The Charlotte Observer, and the Carolina Journal, Journal Editor Richard Wagner asked the governor why his press office won’t respond to the publication’s information requests.

“It’s been reported that we were at the top of the do-not-call list,” Wagner said.

Perhaps coincidentally, the conservative Journal regularly publishes investigations critical of Easley, a Democrat, and other people in his administration.

Easley said his press office’s policy is not to respond to information requests from the Journal or other nonprofit advocacy groups, including its liberal counterpoint, N.C. Policy Watch.

Read more after the jump.

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Gov. Mike Easley had some notable lunch dates in 2004.

According to the governor's daily schedules from that year, Easley dined with such notables as then Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake, Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik and former Sen. Lauch Faircloth.

With one exception, the lunches were held on Wednesdays at the Governor's Mansion. (Easley held a lunch with his top staffers on a Tuesday before the holidays.)

The schedules are for planning purposes only, so some of the lunches may have been canceled. They were obtained by Dome after a public records request.

Still, they show an interesting cross-section of North Carolina's power players in business, government and political advocacy.

After the jump, a complete list of the 2004 lunches.

Hat Tip: Andy Curliss

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