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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.

Gov. Perdue's blog posts from Asia are worth reading.

She's visiting Japan and China on an economic development mission.

Her observations should help North Carolinians better understand global connections that hit home.

This isn't political puffery. It's valuable communication that we never got from a certain former governor.

Oh, and by the way, this means that a guy named Walter Dalton is our acting governor with all the powers invested in the office while Perdue is gone.

I wonder what he's up to. His blog isn't nearly as current as Perdue's.  

The Libertarian and Green parties lose at the N.C. Court of Appeals today in their challenge of state ballot-access laws.

But it was a split decision, with Judge Ann Marie Calabria dissenting from her colleagues, Chief Judge John Martin and Judge Sanford Steelman.

Calabria believes third parties face an unconstitutionally high  barrier to ballot access.

With a split decision at the COA, the plaintiffs gain an automatic right of appeal to the state Supreme Court.

Those plaintiffs include former local Libertarians Rusty Sheridan and Jennifer Schulz. Sheridan, as a UNCG grad student, once ran against Democrat Kay Hagan in a state Senate race. Schulz, who was Jennifer Medlock at the time, once challenged Republican Howard Coble in a congressional election.

I can't say about the constitutional argument but I think the right thing for the legislature to do politically is to open the ballot a little. There are more than 6,000 registererd Libertarians in North Carolina, and they ought to have a place on the ballot without having to gather something like 70,000 signatures across the state or, if they do that, to win 2 percent of the vote in every gubernatorial or presidential election to retain their ballot status.

The fact is, North Carolina Democrats and Republicans agree on this point: They don't want to share the ballot with any third party. No doubt, it's an insecurity thing.

Something else to worry about on your drive home from work:

Rolling gunfights.

I hope the drivers weren't also texting.

"Shootn at gry Dodge Stratus ... they r shootn back ... hard 2 hit a movn target ... hope no 1 was n tht house ..."

The White House offensive against Fox News has really cowed the right-wing network ...

... not.

On the contrary, Fox loves it and stands to gain public support.

For top White House officials like David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel to try to enlist other news organizations in their anti-Fox campaign just underscores the conservative contention that the Obama administration aims to manipulate the media.

It's also a strategy likely to backfire, as this piece by Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawick demonstrates.

With all the challenges the White House faces, from unemployment to Osama bin Laden, is Fox News really Public Enemy No. 1?

I don't watch Fox News and can't offer an opinion about the quality of its programming. But I'm sure not impressed when government uses its bully pulpit in an obvious attempt to influence any news organization's approach to journalism.

I don't think the Obama administration has been given a very tough time at all by the media as a whole. I guess the White House still isn't satisfied and would like to stifle critical coverage.

Here's a news flash: It ain't going to happen. 

An ugly loss at Clemson costs Wake Forest its No. 1 ranking in our Tarheel Top Ten this week.

Taking the day off pays for North Carolina, which inherits the top spot.

Also idle were Elon, Duke, UNC-Pembroke and N.C. A&T, although the Aggies get a win anyway, thanks to Delaware State's forfeit.

Tarheel Top Ten

1. Carolina, 4-2 (No. 2 last week)

2. Wake, 4-3 (1)

3. Elon, 5-1 (3)

4. Duke, 3-3 (4)

5. Appalachian State, 4-2 (6)

6. East Carolina, 4-3 (7)

7. N.C. State, 3-4 (5)

8. Gardner-Webb, 4-2 (8)

9. N.C. A&T, 4-3 (9)

10. UNC-Pembroke, 6-1 (10)

Big Four

Duke, 1-0

Wake, 1-0

Carolina, 0-0

State, 0-2

I get the angst and anger over this.

It stinks to see droves of violent criminals, who were sentenced to "life" in prison, let out after 30 years or so -- at ages ranging from 48 to 68.

These people are rapists (of little girls, in some cases) and murderers. Even multiple murderers.

But it's important to understand how it happened.

“I’m appalled that the state of North Carolina is being forced to release prisoners who have committed the most heinous of crimes, without any review of their cases,” Gov. Bev Perdue said in a statement that refers to a recent decision of the N.C. Supreme Court.

But it isn't the court that's forced this to happen.

It was lenient state laws written in 1974 and 1981, an era when the state wasn't as serious about dealing strongly with violent crime.

Our courts are supposed to rule on the basis of law, and that's what they did in this case.

What the Supreme Court did last week was simply to affirm, without comment, a unanimous ruling of the N.C. Court of Appeals issued Nov. 4, 2008.

Ironically, the author of the COA opinion, Doug McCullough, lost his bid for re-election that same day. If you hated the decision, you could find satisfaction in that. But McCullough was a former federal prosecutor, and he was joined by two other conservative judges.

This wasn't a bleeding-heart liberal activist decision. On the contrary, it was upholding a plainly written law that was in force at the time these killers and rapists were convicted of their crimes. That law, enacted in 1974, said: "A sentence of life imprisonment shall be considered as a sentence of imprisonment for a term of 80 years in the state's prisons."

OK, you say, they should serve 80 years then. Let them out when they're 100 or older.

Trouble is, in 1981 the legislature struck again. This time it passed the Fair Sentencing Act, which contained a retroactive provision having the effect of cutting sentences in half. For all practical purposes, these criminals began serving "life" sentences of only 40 years.

The Fair Sentencing Act also allowed prisoners the opportunity to reduce their sentences further by gaining credit for good conduct, working, earning a high school or college diploma and maybe writing a letter to their mothers once a week. Under those rules, sentences could be whittled down to the point that these vicious killers and rapists are about to be released.

These laws were changed after violent crime rates skyrocketed and legislators figured out that revolving-door prisons weren't making the state a safer place. Now a life sentence means the offender will spend the rest of his life behind bars -- no parole, no 40 years or even 80 years, no good-conduct time.

But offenders sentenced under laws in force back then can't be punished under laws enacted later.

North Carolina forced this on itself. Lenient attitudes about crime in an earlier era have brought about troubling consequences today. 

Maybe medical examiner Dr. Gordon Arnold of High Point saw the police video, which enabled him to write in his report that Courtland Smith "made a suggestive move toward his pocket which the police interpreted as a move to get a gun."

This happened Aug. 23 on I-85 in Randolph County.

Smith, a 21-year-old UNC-Chapel Hill student, was intoxicated and driving recklessly. He told Guilford County 911 he was "trying to kill myself" and had a gun.

He was shot and killed by Archdale police after pulling over.

Did he have a gun? Authorities won't say. It probably doesn't matter as long as police had reason to believe he had a gun and saw him make a "suggestive move toward his pocket." You don't wait for the suspect to shoot first.

The police video -- not released to the public yet -- may shed light on the question.

Arnold must have seen it. How else could he have drawn the conclusion that Smith made a "suggestive move"?

Or, as Smith's fraternity complained yesterday, was Arnold making an "editorial statement" not normally included in a medical report?

Michael Lamont Medley Jr., 19, already had a criminal record going back three years.

Any juvenile record he might have had before turning 16 is not available to the public.

He served time earlier this year at the Western Youth Institute in Morganton.

He apparently was not rehabilitated because yesterday he broke into a Walnut Street apartment occupied by 80-year-old Charles Haithcock -- who fatally shot Medley with a handgun.

Police and the DA's office will confer, but it's hard to imagine any likelihood that this won't be viewed as a clear case of self-defense by Mr. Haithcock.

You can't feel good about any situation where a young man loses his life, but who knows what might have happened to Mr. Haithcock had he not been armed and able to protect himself?

Unlucky for Medley, but he put himself on a destructive path.

No increase in Social Security benefits next year? Right, the falling cost-of-living index doesn't allow a raise for seniors.

But President Obama is asking Congress to come up with an extra $250 for each of 49 million SS beneficiaries. That would about to about a 2 percent bump for the average recipient.

With a few other giveaways, his "Economic Recovery Payments" would help 57 million Americans at a cost of $13 billion.

These are the people "hardest hit by this recession," the president said in a statement.

Are they? I thought the people hardest hit were those who lost their jobs or saw their work hours cut and paychecks sharply reduced.

I understand many seniors have taken big losses in their private retirement funds. But working families with kids are struggling to make ends meet with less income -- and their taxes will pay for this boost. Or maybe their children's taxes, because this will add another $13 billion to the deficit.

The White House statement notes: "The President is committed to ensuring that the $13 billion cost of the proposal does not reduce the solvency of Social Security or other social insurance programs."

What about the solvency of the government as a whole? This just makes the debt clock spin that much faster.