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The Associated Press will land on the White House enemies list along with Fox News with more reporting like this:

"Fact Check: Health insurers profits 35th of 500."

"In the health care debate, Democrats and their allies have gone after insurance companies as rapacious profiteers making 'immoral' and 'obscene' returns while 'the bodies pile up,' the AP story, published in our print edition today, leads.

"But in pillorying insurers over profits, the critics are on shaky ground. Ledgers tell a different reality."

Maybe the White House and congressional leaders believe any profits are immoral and obscene. More likely, however, they know they can build support for the "public option" component of health-care reform by attacking companies in the private insurance market -- even if they have to distort the facts.

It's not a new strategy. The Bush White House cast blame for rising health-care costs at "trial lawyers." The Obama White House has its own targets. And it doesn't like media organizations that won't join in. Maybe AP correspondents will find it harder to get interviews with key administration officials after this.

Related: PolitiFact called President Obama on a false statement about insurance company profits back in July.

Pondering who should be awarded the No. 1 spot in this week's Tarheel Top Ten, this unlikely question would not go away:

Why not Duke?

With UNC, N.C. State and Wake Forest all having held, and lost, the top ranking, it seems possible that surging Duke really is the best college football team in the state of North Carolina.

Which just goes to show we're not Florida, Texas, California or even Virginia.

Tarheel Top Ten

1. Duke, 4-3 (No. 4 last week)

2. North Carolina, 4-3 (1)

3. Wake Forest, 4-4 (2)

4. Elon, 6-1 (3)

5. Appalachian State, 5-2 (5)

6. East Carolina, 4-3 (6)

7. N.C. State, 3-4 (7)

8. Gardner-Webb, 5-2 (8)

9. N.C. A&T, 5-3 (9)

10. UNC-Pembroke, 7-1 (10)

Big Four

Duke, 1-0

Wake, 1-0

UNC, 0-0

State, 0-2

I think I have a clearer picture of Gov. Perdue's statement that she will block release of 20 violent offenders who might have been let out of prison next week despite their "life" sentences issued in the 1970s.

She's not defying the courts' determination that a life sentence actually amounts to 40 years under 1970s laws.

Instead, she's arguing against further shortening of those sentences based on "reduction credits" under a 1983 policy implemented by the N.C. Department of Correction.

That policy was wrongly applied in two ways, the governor says:

It was not supposed to cover prisoners sentenced before 1983, yet they also were given credits.

And it was not supposed to apply to the most serious offenders, such as murderers and rapists -- like the 20 in question.

Perdue says she won't release these offenders "until these new legal issues have been resolved by the courts."

I asked yesterday what would make the courts even consider the cases of these 20 individuals. Here's the answer.

One case, that of Bobby E. Bowden, already has been remanded by the N.C. Court of Appeals to the trial court in Cumberland County "for a hearing to determine how many sentence reduction credits defendant is eligible to receive and how those credits are to be applied."

That determination, the governor believes, can be used to recalculate the sentence reduction credits for all 20.

Obviously, the governor hopes the trial court will agree with her that Bowden never should have been awarded any sentence reduction credits.

Of course, any party that doesn't get the answer it likes from the trial court can appeal to the Court of Appeals. This could be tied up for several years in the courts, and all the while the offenders will remain in prison under the governor's order.

But only until they complete their 40 years. So, probably beginning five years from now, some of them will be getting out anyway.

In fact, what hasn't been reported yet to my knowledge, is this: Some serious offenders already have gotten out, thanks to sentence reduction credits under the 1983 policy. They weren't released outright but were granted parole. And they became elgible for parole sooner than they would have without these credits.

Who are these offenders? How many have there been? I don't know. It will take an inquiry to the Department of Correction to find out.

There are some other points to make here.

One is that the state never raised this argument about improperly granted sentence reduction credits when  the Bowden case was chugging through the courts. Did  the AG's office even consider it, or was it seen as a slender straw and dismissed?

A second is that Perdue, indirectly, is casting blame for the present circumstances at her political mentor, Jim Hunt. It was his administration in 1983 that came up with these sentence-reduction policies that today put killers and rapists on the doorstep of freedom. Of course, Perdue hasn't mentioned Hunt. And Hunt probably would not have personally signed off on this sort of policy. But he was in charge then.

A third is that Perdue is still on her trade mission to Asia. As such, according to the state constitution, the lieutenant governor is acting governor. We haven't heard from Walter Dalton during this episode, but Perdue technically can't order anything done about the prisoners until she plants her feet back on Old North State soil. In fact, she has not issued an executive order but has said she will block the release. She'll be back Tuesday and can officially execute an order then.

This all has been a fascinating legal and political drama, and it has a few acts to play out yet. All in all, Perdue has shown stong leadership, and her legal advisors, including  Attorney General Roy Cooper and his staff, clearly have worked hard to find any hook upon which to hang a satisfactory outcome.

The best result is to serve public safety by keeping dangerous criminals behind bars -- by lawful means.

I'm sure there are many more inmates in state prisons who will commit more crimes when they're released. That fact does not give the governor license to order them held for longer than the sentences imposed by the courts.

As things stand at present -- with the court rulings issued and the sentence reduction credits calculated by the Department of Correction -- these 20 criminals are legally due to be released very soon, like it or not. The governor says she will not release them, and she has raised a legal question that she believes justifies their continued incarceration.

Whether she is right or wrong ... that is for the courts to say.  

This afternoon, Gov. Perdue issued a very bold statement saying she will not release the much-talked-about 20 violent criminals until "new legal issues have been resolved by the courts."

The new issues are her contention -- and, at this point, her contention alone -- that the N.C. Department of Correction back in the 1980s improperly awarded inmates time off their sentences for good conduct.

Maybe she's right about that. Maybe she's wrong. I don't know.

What seems clear to me is that she was determined, by hook or crook, to keep these offenders in prison -- despite the rulings of the state's highest courts.

It's also clear why:

A legitimate concern for public safety ...

... and politics.

To the first point, it's unfortunately very likely that at least one of the first batch of 20 killers and rapists released would commit violent crimes again. Maybe several of them. The longer they're locked up, the better for anyone who might become a victim.

To the second point, this is a godsend for a governor whose approval ratings have been in the 20s or 30s. Perdue is standing at the jailhouse door refusing to let the monsters out. Bravo!

This is the new SHEriff in town that Perdue boasted of when she was inaugurated in January.

But here's where things get murky. On that day, she swore an oath to support the constitution and the laws of North Carolina. Despite her bold statement today, she's got to be careful that she doesn't run afoul of that obligation.

The governor has to uphold the law, even when she doesn't agree with it. And when the Supreme Court of the state says, "This is what the law requires," the governor doesn't have much leeway.

Now, Perdue doesn't say she's defying the courts, although she was close to that earlier today when she laughed she might end up in jail (possibly on a contempt-of-court citation). This isn't a joking matter, and she's wise to steer away from that sort of talk.

In fact, now she's trying to put the ball back in the courts' court, so to speak. She insists she'll hold these inmates until a court rules on the good-conduct time accrued for each.

But that tactic raises questions.

By what mechanism and on what authority is Perdue kicking this to the courts? The governor can't tell the courts what to do. Who's going to compel the courts to take on the very time-consuming task of examining Department of Correction records from more than 20 years ago -- not just for 20 inmates but presumably for every prisoner who earned credits during the 1980s?

Lots of them, you'd have to assume, were released long ago with the help of good-conduct time. Are they going to be rounded up and hauled back into prison if someone says they were given good-conduct credit improperly?

Every time a prisoner nears completion of a sentence, is the governor going to ask the courts to sign off on his release? 

But what if the courts refuse the job of plowing through old records? What if they say, quite rightly, that's the responsibility of DOC?

Will these prisoners reside behind bars in a state of legal limbo? Can the governor, by fiat, compel them to serve real life sentences even though the law at the time of their sentencing defined life as something less than that?

Certainly, these prisoners can file their own suits against the state, as Bobby Bowden did in triggering this whole dilemma. That would force the courts to get involved. It would take years for the new cases to work through to conclusion.

Delay obviously suits the governor and no doubt the public as well. Who's going to sympathize with killers and rapists who by all standards of decency ought never to walk free again?

But the greater issue here concerns the rule of law.

The legislature enacts laws dealing with criminal matters.

The courts set sentences in accordance with law.

The executive is charged with seeing that sentences are carried out in compliance with the law and the orders of the courts.

The executive now says it erred, more than 20 years ago, in applying the law and carrying out the orders of the court. It erred by granting prisoners too much good-conduct credit.

How many prisoners, with what consequences, and what should be the remedy, it might be impossible to say.

Whether the governor can back up her declaration, or whether she may yet be found in contempt of court, are questions that must be answered.

One side can say it's better to err on the side of public safety and keep these offenders behind locked doors.

The other can say it's better to err on the side of law, because a governor who defies legitimate legal authority is a threat to everyone's liberty.

Gov. Perdue made some reckless comments today in a telephone interview with North Carolina reporters. Mark has audio.

She's in China on a trade mission but was asked about next week's release of violent criminals who have completed their "life sentences" as defined by laws in effect at the time of their original incarceration and confirmed by the N.C. Supreme Court.

"Letting them out is not the answer I am going to be able to live with," she said, then joked -- or not? -- that she may end up going to jail over this.

As I wrote last week, I understand the angst and anger about this. It stinks. This is the fallout from liberal attitudes about crime enacted into law decades ago by the state legislature.

But it shouldn't have caught state authorities by surprise. The key court ruling in this matter, a unanimous decision by the N.C. Court of Appeals, was issued nearly a year ago. It looks like it was ignored by the Perdue administration until it was confirmed by the Supreme Court this month, when officials should have been preparing to deal with it all along. Now they're scrambling to find some legal mechanism to keep the inmates behind bars.

And if they don't? Will the governor, whose oath of office says she will support the constitution and laws of North Carolina, really disobey the law as interpreted by the state's Supreme Court? I would hope she'll consider very seriously the consequences of such an action. Going to jail would not be the end of it.

Recklessness is not a mark of good leadership.

Basketball star Stephen Curry left Davidson a year early for the NBA, but with warm feelings all around.

The Golden State Warriors rookie just mailed 2,000 postcards to students, faculty, fans and alumni saying, "Thanks, Davidson," the Charlotte Observer reports.

Scott Fowler writes:

"'I started thinking about this while I was taking a summer school class at Davidson,' Curry said in a phone interview Wednesday from Oakland, Calif., after completing a practice with his new team, the Golden State Warriors. 'It hit me that I wasn't going to be able to say goodbye to everyone I wanted to, and that they might have a hard time keeping up with me now that I'm on the West Coast. I want people to know that even though I'm here, I'm still deeply tied into Charlotte and Davidson. I still bleed Carolina blood.'"

The card includes a message from Curry, stating he intends to remain an active part of the Davidson community and complete work toward his degree.

It closes with a Bible citation: Phil. 4:13.

Curry is a marvel on the basketball court. I couldn't help rooting for him during Davidson's great NCAA tournament run in 2008, and I joined a large crowd to see him play against UNCG in the Greensboro Coliseum last season. It's too bad he wasn't a Tar Heel, but no one's perfect. I wish him much success with his new team, which is lucky to have him.

The big political news in North Carolina this week is that Kenneth Lewis announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate.

No, not Kenneth Lewis the embattled CEO of Bank of America.

The would-be senator is a 47-year-old lawyer who lives in Chapel Hill.

No doubt he's a very smart guy, having earned an undergraduate degree from Duke and a law degree from Harvard. And he might make a fine senator.

But I've got a problem with people who aim to start their career in politics at the level of U.S. Senate.

Look, I'd like to manage a baseball team. How about the Yankees?

Lewis' bid brings to mind the last smart, 40something Chapel Hill lawyer who ran for -- and won -- one of our U.S. Senate seats.

John Edwards didn't turn out to be the kind of person some voters thought when they elected him.

The mistake was understandable because he was glib and persuasive but had no record in public office to examine. Would he be faithful to his constituents, or pursue his own ambitions? Would be put North Carolina's interests first, or his? Those are questions you can answer by looking at a candidate's experience in lesser positions ... if he has any.

Being an effective lawyer isn't the same thing. Practicing law doesn't make you accountable to the public.

Kay Hagan was a state senator for 10 years before her election to the U.S. Senate last year. Richard Burr, whom Lewis wants to unseat, served six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives before his election to the Senate in 2004.

Sure, it's fair to challenge Burr's record. But a challenger ought to present a record of his own.

Lewis won't be alone in seeking the Democratic Party nomination to oppose the Republican Burr. Elaine Marshall appears to be in the race. She's been elected four times as North Carolina's secretary of state, and she served one term in the state Senate. Those credentials give her a big advantage over Lewis, in my view.

Of course, voters make their choices for all sorts of reasons. If experience mattered most, John McCain would be president and Barack Obama still would be a rookie senator from Illinois.

But to my way of thinking, electing someone who's never held a public office to a position as important as U.S. senator is taking a very big chance. Kenneth Lewis would have a tough job of convincing me otherwise.

The one man charged in several New Irving Park burglaries, Kinyan Cortez Bynum, was on probation at the time ... for previous burglaries.

He must have been a pretty obvious suspect.

He's only 21, but he has a record in the (adult) criminal justice system going back to 2005.

He's done prison time, although many of the charges brought against him in the past were "consolidated for judgment," meaning he ended up with lighter sentences than he could have.

If he's convicted of the recent charges, harsher punishment will be due.

It's easy to figure out that one way to keep the crime rate down is to keep criminals locked up.

Addendum: A couple of weeks prior to the latest burglary charges, Bynum was charged with probation violations and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, according to info on the Guilford County jail report Web site.

My column today:

There’s no place like the furniture market in High Point. And, if Dorothy from Kansas could visit, I’m sure she’d agree.

Wait. She is visiting, sort of, in the “Trip to Ahhs” visual presentation by artist Mike Farrell on the top floor of the Suites at Market Square.

This is one of the coolest, cleverest exhibits most of you will never get to see.

That’s because the furniture market isn’t open to the public. It’s an industry trade show bringing tens of thousands of visitors to the Triad, who disappear into 12 million square feet of showroom space in downtown High Point twice a year.

But, as Farrell proves at the fall market, which opened Saturday and concludes Thursday, change is possible.

Market Square hired him to create an artistic expression in 4,000 square feet of showroom space where, ordinarily, tenants would pay to exhibit their products. It’s almost revolutionary, but it’s a marvelous idea that advances the market’s transformation to something more than a business event. It should be a celebration of creative energy that revs up what’s been a too-stodgy industry. High Point can be the motor.

Here’s what Farrell says in an introductory statement posted with his exhibit:

“If you think of High Point as just a place to come for home furnishings, I’ll let you in on a secret ... there is real talent here. Smart, edgy, whacky, ingenious, artsy, bohemian wizards are here — and they are all around you.”

And this is a guy who grew up in the Los Angeles area and lives part-time in New York and Buenos Aires.

His whacky genius re-imagines the “Wizard of Oz” on the classic movie’s 70th anniversary. “After the events of the last few years the Oz story feels strangely current,” Farrell comments.

He sees last year’s election of Barack Obama as a parallel to the film’s shift from black and white to color when Dorothy lands in Oz. He depicts the change in black-and-white images from the civil rights movement opposite a multicolored White House. He plays on the movie’s “green” themes — the wicked witch’s skin tone and the Emerald City’s shine — connecting them to modern environmental sensitivities. For materials, he recycles old shoes, Styrofoam cups, you name it. Even toast.

Well, he had help with the toast. High Point Central High School art teacher Kathy Parker and students rendered the Seven Wonders of the World — the Pyramids, Great Wall, Stonehenge, etc. — on toasted Wonder Bread.

“They were sick of toast by the time we finished,” Parker said of her students. But the people I watched viewing the display Saturday were enchanted.

“Isn’t it fun?” said Brian Bunch, assistant general manager for Merchandise Mart Properties, which operates Market Square.
It’s all about “creating more energy, vibe and buzz,” Bunch added. Or, borrowing from Nido Qubein at High Point University, a “wow factor.” Bunch hopes Farrell will create something new every market, to keep folks coming back.

That’s a smart approach for Market Square, and for the market as a whole.

It’s not just about one artistic display. It’s about ideas. It’s about inspiring retailers to jazz up their stores, to take chances. It’s about making the market more fun, with entertainment, food, drink and even art with a wow factor.

Visiting the market is an experience. You see people from all over the world, many of them dressed to kill, browsing through brilliantly designed showrooms brimming with beautiful products — and not just furniture. All kinds of accessories, from pottery to rugs to oil paintings, are featured.

Take, for example, Global Views in the International Home Furnishings Center, which colored a showroom  orange — furniture, vases, lamps; bowls full of oranges, jars of carrots and cheese puffs. It simply glowed and was pulling in people like a lighted jack-o’-lantern draws trick-or-treaters.

Or Baffour African Art at Showplace, where I met owner Baffour Kwame Awuah, who imports gorgeous ebony carvings and other pieces handcrafted in his native Ghana and throughout Africa.

The market offers an almost endless art gallery inside its many walls — and some of the showroom buildings themselves are architectural masterpieces. It holds a world of creativity.

All that talent gathered in High Point twice a year — and between markets, too — amounts to a tremendous asset, vibrant with energy, vision and excitement.

If only more people outside the industry could see High Point’s closely guarded secret. They’d think they were on a “Trip to Ahhs.”

Thanks for reading. You can call me at 373-7039, email me at dgclark@news-record.com, or post a comment here.

Anybody watching the Yankees-Angels game?

A couple of umpires aren't.

It's hard to remember so many blown calls in the span of a couple of innings -- two by a single umpire.

He was looking straight on as the Angels' catcher tagged two Yankee baserunners who were both standing off third base.

The ump called one out and totally ignored the other tag.

This was an inning after he called a Yankees runner out for leaving the bag too soon after a fly ball to center. Replays showed the runner didn't leave too soon -- and also that the ump wasn't even looking at the runner.

That was kind of a make-up call because the second-base ump moments earlier had failed to call the same runner out on a pickoff there, when the tag clearly caught him off the base.

Crazy. Maybe they should replace these umps with guys watching replays in a TV booth.