U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan is going to celebrate the Fourth of July at Camp Lejeune.

Hagan, who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, will join Marines at the base for holiday festivities Saturday evening.

A release from Hagan's office notes that her father-in-law is a retired two-star Marine general.

Faith-based organizations are targeting U.S. Sens. Kay Hagan and Richard Burr during the Fourth of July weekend.

A group of national religious organizations including Faithful America and the PICO National Network and are hoping to influence the senators to vote for more affordable family health care by airing radio commercials during Congress' Independance Day recess.

Joe Harvard, of the First Presbyterian Church in Durham, speaks on the commercial airing in North Carolina. "This is not who we are as a nation," Harvard says. "America can do better."

The group is also airing commercials in Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana and Nebraska, targeting legislators in those states. They can be heard at the group's Web site.

NOBODY LIKES NOBODY: The popularity recession has settled in for most N.C. politicians. Gov. Beverly Perdue, with basement-dwelling approval ratings less than six months into her first term, travelled the state to rally support from unimpressed teachers and Democrats. The raspberries are bipartisan: both U.S. Senators Kay Hagan and Richard Burr's numbers are down. President Barack Obama is slipping, and his policies are less popular than the man.

SPARE A FEW THOUSAND DIMES? One state resident isn't worried about layoffs. Jeff Wilson of Kings Mountain took home $29 million, after taxes, when his father gave him a Powerball ticket that hit the jackpot. (Gotta figure Wilson is apologizing for having ignored any past fatherly advice). We get this question a lot, so before you ask, the lottery can't fix the state's budget problems because it raises only a small fraction of the state's education spending and state law mandates lottery profits go to four specific programs.

PLASTICS, PESTERING AND POTTY TIPPING: The legislature has been on an outlawing binge. It has banned plastic bags on the coast, bullying in schools and vandalizing portable toilets.

IN OTHER NEWS: The state got most of its deposit money back for a private jet officials decided not to buy after all. A new film production tax credit would lose money for the state at first. And Obama does still occasionally smoke, but that's not why he signed into law sweeping new regulatory authority over cigarettes.

MoveOn.org, the liberal advocacy group, is threatening to run ads against North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan if she does not support President Barack Obama’s health care plan.

Justin Ruben, executive director of MoveOn.org said the group was prepared to “run ads in North Carolina and DC asking that she advocate for the public option and support the president in truly solving the nation’s health care crisis,” Rob Christensen reports

“Given recent comments showing that Senator Hagan is not supporting the public health insurance option, MoveOn.org will be making clear that our 115,000 members in North Carolina -- many of whom volunteered for or donated to her campaign last year -- believe the public option is the heart of true health care reform,” Ruben said in a statement.

Hagan expressed reservations about a federally run insurance program that would harm the private insurance market. She told reporters in Charlotte Friday that she had not taken “a public option off the table.”

MoveOn.org was formed in 1998 to influence the national debate. It was a major opponent of U.S. involvement in Iraq. The group has raised millions of dollars for Democratic candidates.

Sen. Kay Hagan this morning told critics to "stay tuned" to the health care debate in Washington.

Hagan, a Democrat, talked to reporters after a visit to Charlotte's Shelter Health Services, a free clinic that provides medical services to residents of an adjacent shelter for homless women and children. Some in her own party have criticized her for appearing to take a so-called "public option" in health care reform off the table, the Charlotte Observer's Jim Morrill reports.

Many, including Democratic leaders such as Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada and Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, have put forward what's known as a "public option" provider, a federally run insurer. Hagan told the Greensboro News & Record this week that a federally run insurance program could cause companies to drop their private insurance plans and destabilize the insurance market.

"We haven’t taken a 'public option' off the table," she told reporters today. She said it depends on what that means. A member of a key Senate health committee, she said she’s working with colleagues to find a way to expand coverage, ensure quality of care and be fiscally accountable.

Critics, she said, "need to stay tuned." "People are so centered on the word 'public'," she said. "And it really depends on what’s (involved) in that."

Neither of North Carolina’s senators are in high standing with voters these days.

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican, has a favorable rating of 39 percent and unfavorable rating of 31 percent, with 30 percent having no opinion, according to the InsiderAdvantage Poll conducted by Majority Opinion Research in Atlanta, reports Rob Christensen.

Sen. Kay Hagan, a Democrat, has a favorable rating of 39 percent and unfavorable rating of 39 percent with 22 percent having no opinion, according to the same poll.

Such low ratings for both senators is rare. Tom Jensen, a pollster with Public Policy Polling, said that of 13 states where they did polling, North Carolina and Ohio were the only ones where both senators had an approval rating of under 40 percent.

This is likely more of a problem for Burr, who faces re-election next year. Hagan doesn’t have to face voters until 2014.

The InsiderAdvantage Poll was of 894 registered voters in North Carolina. It was conducted June 22 and had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

N.C. Court of Appeals Judge Jim Wynn has been the subject of a federal background check, a sign that he may be nominated for the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond.

The FBI has been conducting a background investigation of Wynn, questioning people around the court houses in Raleigh, Rob Christensen reports.

"I’ve been interviewed by the FBI who didn’t tell me for what," said federal Magistrate Judge William W. Webb. "I know the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington has been calling people about him."

Wynn was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1999 and 2001 for the 4th Circuit but he was never confirmed by the Senate, largely because of opposition by then Sen. Jesse Helms.

President Barack Obama has not indicated who he would nominate. But Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan is pushing hard for another North Carolinian on the 4th Circuit and there has considerable speculation that Wynn is one of the candidates she is pushing.

He is also being championed by Congressman G.K. Butterfield, his former law partner, who is a close Obama ally.

WASHINGTON – The Food and Drug Administration now has authority to regulate tobacco products, under a new law signed this afternoon by President Barack Obama during a Rose Garden ceremony.

With children on stage and sprinkled among audience members, and with the new playground for the presidential daughters in the distance, Obama said the new law will curtail the “constant, insidious” advertising that tobacco companies target to kids, reports Barb Barrett.

He pointed out that nearly 90 percent of smokers start before the age of 18.

“I know; I was one of those teenagers,” Obama said. “I know how hard it is to break the habit once you’ve started.”

Among those at the White House this afternoon was U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield, a Democrat from Wilson, where auctioneers used to rattle off leaf prices after harvest each fall. He represents one of the heaviest tobacco farming districts in the nation.

“This has been a very difficult issue for me,” Butterfield said later. “But when I take a step back and look at it objectively, there’s no question we need to reduce smoking….We need to be realistic about the issue.”

Read more after the jump.

   Comments (0)

The speculation is based not only on gossip but the fact that Wynn has twice before nominated for the 4th Circuit only to have his nomination stalled by then Republican Sen. Jesse Helms, Rob Christensen reports.

Some of the key players, have been avoiding reporter’s calls.

Former NC. Chief Justice Burley Mitchell headed a four-member committee that screened potential candidates for Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan, would not say who the panel recommended.

But he heaped praise on Wynn, noting that he had known Wynn as a fellow judge and attorney for several decades.

"Nobody in the state is better qualified for the 4th Circuit in North Carolina in my view than Jim Wynn," Mitchell said.

More after the jump.

   Comments (0)

The Washington Post sent a reporter to an eastern N.C. tobacco field over the weekend for its story about Sen. Kay Hagan, the only Democrat in the Senate to oppose FDA regulation of tobacco.

"To call Hagan merely a defender of the "golden leaf" industry would be an understatement," the Post wrote. "She is among tobacco's fiercest backers."

The reporter spent time with farmer Pender Sharp, who raises 500 acres of leaf and was among the farmers who lobbied in Washington before last week’s vote.

Hagan, though, was on a personal trip and unavailable to comment for the story.