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President Obama said he's "humbled" to be lauded as this year's winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

If he truly has any humility, he should be embarrassed, too.

This is something like an athlete being named "player of the year" a few games into the season.

It seems Obama was given the award on the basis of hopes and dreams.

Extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples?

Vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons ... that has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations?

New climate in international politics?

Strengthening democracy and human rights?

Giving hope to the people of the world for a better future?

What is the Nobel Committee seeing that I've missed? These aren't accomplishments. They're goals that might or might not be realized someday.

Where, during Obama's brief tenure, have we seen improvements in democracy and human rights? Or progress toward nuclear disarmament? It's bizarre.

I'm not belittling Obama, who's been in office less than nine months. Even for him, that's too soon to expect World Peace.

Granted, no one else has pushed the world much closer to a state of perfection lately. Finding a worthy recipient for the Peace Prize on this war-torn planet every year is probably the hardest task for the Nobel Committee.

But this is giving what's arguably humanity's highest honor to a politician who's made a lot of idealistic speeches and who might, in time, prove to be a good president and positive world leader. Or not. It's too soon to say.

In a way it's flattering to the United States that the Nobel Committee believes the president of the United States can be such a powerful force for beneficial change in the world when plenty of analysts believe this country's global influence is declining.

Yet, the Nobel Committee has so utterly exaggerated Obama's impact to date that the validity of this award seems sadly diminished.

It would have been better to wait a couple of years to see if Obama actually gets done some of the triumphs the Nobel Committee already attributes to him ... although, frankly, it's probably impossible that anyone could.

Impeach Obama? Good grief.

This is the work of Floyd Brown, who boasts of initiating the drive to impeach President Clinton -- even before Bill met Monica.

Yeah, Brown was all over the Vince Foster "suicide."

Conservatives have reason to want to see a liberal president out of office -- but that's what elections are for.

Idiots like Brown give conservatives a bad name. Talk of impeachment deserves to be denounced. Barack Obama won a four-year term in 2008, and he'll win another in 2012 if Americans think something like this is the best that the opposition can come up with.

Say you're a teacher or an employee of a state agency who, after July 1, 2011, attests that you aren't obese.

Why would you do that? To qualify for a better deal under the State Employees Health Plan.

You -- and your covered dependents -- must have a Body Mass Index less than 40 kg/m2, or participate in a weight-management program, or have a physician-certified medical condition that prevents the attainment of the required BMI.

Health plan managers won't necessarily accept your BMI claim.

Subscribers may be "randomly selected to participate" in a "weight management verification test at their worksite," a health plan info sheet says. "Height and weight measurements will be collected to determine BMI status."

Randomly selected? Come on.

"Hey, chubby. Can you step on the scales, please? Let's just check out that BMI status, shall we?

"My, my. You have either miscalculated, or you had a VERY big breakfast this morning. I'm afraid we're going to have to make a hefty adjustment to your monthly insurance premiums."

Hopefully, no such embarrassing episodes will ensue from this new policy. But the approach still strikes me as degrading.

Are there ways for the state to encourage healthy lifestyles among its work force without checking up on employees' weight at work, with financial penalties assessed on those who are deemed too fat?

In November 2007, a Guilford County jury found Mary Elizabeth Roach guilty of felony child abuse inflicting serious bodily injury and first-degree murder.

Roach had been baby-sitting 3-year-old Hailey Rae Resch two years earlier when the child stopped breathing. Paramedics were unable to revive her.

 An autopsy by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner found an array of injuries: five subgaleal hematomas; bilateral ubdural neomembranes; contusions on the head, torso, and extremities; and bilateral retinal hemorrhages. Medical experts later testified that Hailey had experienced a subdural hematoma sometime in the weeks preceding her death.

Suspicion focused on Roach, who was indicted, prosecuted and convicted -- at which point her attorneys asked the judge, John O. Craig III, to set aside the verdict.

Craig did exactly that, citing insufficient evidence to substantiate the jury's verdict.

The unusual action stunned prosecutors, the victim's family and courtroom observers.

The state appealed.

Yesterday, a three-judge panel of the N.C. Court of Appeals backed Craig's decision in a unanimous ruling.

In an opinion written by Judge Ann Marie Calabria and joined by the two Bob Hunters, the court said there was no evidence presented at Roach's trial to indicate when Hailey sustained her injuries.

The fact that she was in Roach's care when she died did not prove she was in Roach's care when the injuries occurred.

"The evidence clearly shows that Hailey suffered a closed head injury," Calabria wrote. "Considering the evidence in the light most favorable to the State, the evidence is insufficient to establish that defendant was responsible for inflicting the injury ... the  jury could not determine whether the injury was inflicted while Hailey was under defendant’s exclusive care, or at some other earlier time."

The ruling does not say Roach is innocent. It doesn't direct blame at anyone else. It says, based on the lack of evidence showing Roach's guilt, that the jury should not have convicted her.

Craig made a gutsy decision to overturn a jury's verdict. The safe thing for him to do would have been to let the jury speak, then pronounce sentence, especially given the high visibility of this case in High Point, where it took place.

For a judge to recognize that a jury made a mistake, and to correct the error, shows a commitment to justice over expediency. In a sense, the appeal put Craig on trial. He was vindicated by yesterday's ruling.

UNCG students heard encouraging words from six local judges yesterday evening during a panel discussion hosted by the African American Studies Program.

The topic was supposed to be "gender and the law," but the discussion turned out to be a little more general than that.

One question was posed about obstacles women face in legal careers. But the composition of the panel -- five female judges and one male -- demonstrated that gender discrimination in the courthouse is pretty much a thing of the past.

As Judge Patrice Hinnant pointed out, 11 of Guilford County's 14 District Court judges are women.

She recently was appointed by Gov. Bev Perdue to fill the term of retired Superior Court Judge Henry Frye Jr. Women are still a minority on the Superior Court bench, in Guilford County and across the state, but their numbers are increasing there, too.

Hinnant related that when she attended law school, some male students would tease her by asking whether she was there to get a law degree or a husband. "I'm still waiting," she said.

Judge Michelle Fletcher noted that she's been mistaken for a clerk -- but it's fair to point out she's only in her 30s and the error probably has as much to do with age as gender.

To a question about domestic violence cases, Judge Sherry Alloway said the biggest impact has been on children. There's been an explosion in DSS cases, she said, often involving a mother and boyfriend, when the issue is the child's welfare. The mother should seek a protective order to keep an abusive boyfriend away from her, for the sake of the children, but won't. That raises questions about her fitness to retain custody.

Asked to advise students thinking about legal careers, the judges appealed to idealism.

"It helps to have as your north star service to people," Hinnant said. "If you want to make money, the money will come, but that's not the most important thing ... You really need to devote yourself to the law."

"Treating the practice of law like a business, if that's your mind-set, I think you should do something else," Judge Lindsay Davis said.

"You have to bring a sense of integrity and honesty and fidelity," Judge Sue Burch said. "It's often said the law is a noble profession, and I believe that."

Judge Avery Crump recalled sitting in courtrooms as a high school student in Statesville, just observing the law at work. She encouraged students to do the same, or seek internship opportunities to learn about the profession.

Attorney Thomas Johnson moderated the panel. He said he had similar experiences as a youngster in Washington, N.C., where he watched the best local trial lawyers in action.

He remembered the theatrical aspects of it -- seeing some lawyers cry as they made their arguments. Some even rolled on the floor.

"It was almost like church," he said. "That's when I knew they loved it."

The students should have gotten a sense that these judges love their jobs and the law.

As this news release from Gov. Bev Perdue's office indicates, North Carolina has submitted an ambitious application for more than $5 billion in federal high-speed rail grants.

With its Virginia counterpart, the N.C. Department of Transportation has worked for many years on plans to upgrade the rail corridor from Charlotte to Washington, D.C., for high-speed passenger service.

Not super high speed bullet trains as in Japan, Europe or proposed for California. More like a top speed of 110.

California voters last year approved a nearly $10 billion expenditure to build a high-speed rail line from San Diego to Sacramento, a fact the LA Times says should put the state at the top of the list for federal funds.

It also helps explain why California is going bust.

They do have a cool Web site for their high-speed rail project.

Whether that helps remains to be seen.

America 2050, a national urban planning initiative, issued a report last month ranking various rail corridors for high-speed potential. It placed a priority on those where the feds could get the most bang for their buck, which is important to demonstrate to Americans that this whole idea of investing in passenger rail is feasible.

Here's the Sept. 17 press release.

Coming out on top, not surprisingly, are Northeast routes, with New York-Washington No. 1.

Los Angeles-San Francisco is No. 5.

Charlotte-Washington is No. 17. If the feds think along the same lines, that's not a good position for initial funding.

High-speed rail would be a boon for transportation in this country, but it has to be fast and convenient enough to change travel habits.

And the biggest challenge: it has to be affordable to get on line.

North Carolina is asking for more federal funding than it's likely to get for quite some time.

Then you have to wonder how much North Carolina taxpayers would be willing to kick in.

The train's at the station. Who's getting on board?

We visited the Polk County History Museum Saturday. It was relocated from Tryon to Columbus earlier this year.

Our favorite display was a moonshine still donated by Chester Hudson.

Chester's brother, Ray, is married to my wife's sister.

Ray, Chester and a dozen other Hudson siblings grew up on a farm in the Pea Ridge section of Polk County.

It was said in Polk County that as long as boys were born, corn grew and water flowed, there would be liquor made on Pea Ridge.

Ray recalls, when he was a small child, the sacks of sugar stacked up to the windowsills in his house. It didn't seem strange to him.

"I just thought we drank a low of sweet tea," he said.

Some folks were drinking something a mite stronger.

I reckon it's a good thing the still is just an artifact in a museum now, the Hudson family's contribution to Polk County lore. 

Wake Forest takes a turn at the head of our Tarheel Top Ten this week following a hard-fought victory over previous No. 1 N.C. State.

The Deacs further take a commanding lead in the Big Four standings.

The other two Big Four teams fell to visitors from Virginia Saturday.

Gardner-Webb answers with a win against VMI.

Elon and App also uphold Old North State pride with successful offensives into South Carolina.

UNC-Pembroke breaks into our rankings, replacing one-week wonder Mars Hill.

Top Ten

1. Wake Forest, 3-2 (No. 3 last week)

2. N.C. State, 3-2 (1)

3. North Carolina, 3-2 (2)

4. East Carolina, 3-2 (4)

5. Elon, 4-1 (5)

6. Appalachian State, 2-2 (6)

7. Duke, 2-3 (7)

8. Gardner-Webb, 3-1 (8)

9. N.C. A&T, 3-2 (9)

10. UNC-Pembroke, 5-1 (NR)

Big Four

Wake, 1-0

Carolina, 0-0

Duke, 0-0

State, 0-1

Bev Perdue continues to distinguish herself as the anti-Easley governor.

Yesterday she issued an executive order that bars executive branch employees from accepting gifts and favors from contractors working or seeking to work with employees' agencies.

The order "encourages and invites" the UNC and community college systems and council of state agencies to participate. The governor can't force them to comply, but they should accept her invitation.

These are restrictions that should have been applied long ago. But, with very poor examples at the top, gifts and favors have been a much too common way of doing business in state government.

The governor can change that, and this one is working on it.

I don't know what's more ridiculous:

* The assertion that nonpartisan elections are prejudicial against black voters; or

* The calculation that 64.6 percent is a minority.

Credit the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice for both absurdities.

In our editorial today about nonpartisan municipal elections, we referred to the strange case of Kinston, one of only five North Carolina cities and towns that still elect local councils in partisan voting.

In a referendum last November, voters in Kinston overwhelmingly said they wanted to change to a nonpartisan system.

In August, DOJ rejected the switch under the authority of the Voting Rights Act.

Here's the letter explaining the ruling, written by Acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King.

It cites a history of racial polarization in Kinston voting.

That's unfortunate. But it becomes clear from the context that when whites vote for white candidates, that's racial polarization. When blacks vote for black candidates, that's expected and in fact desirable.

Some white Democrats, however, show enough party loyalty to vote for Democratic candidates, white or black. That's what DOJ intends to preserve in Kinston.

"Without party loyalty available to counter-balance the consistent trend of racial bloc voting, blacks will face greater difficulty winning general elections," King writes. "Our analysis of election returns indicates that cross-over voting is greater in partisan general elections than in the closed primaries. Thus, statistical analysis supports the conclusion that given a change to a non-partisan elections, black preferred candidates will receive fewer white cross-over votes."

She concludes that the party "cue" is necessary to ensure approved outcomes -- which apparently is not only the election of more black candidates, but Democrats.

It gets stranger. As King notes in her letter, 64.6 percent of registered voters in Kinston are black.

Why in the world does a group that accounts for nearly two-thirds of the electorate deserve this extraordinary federal protection? Apparently because a large number of black residents choose not to vote.

King writes: "Although black persons comprise a majority of the city's registered voters, in three of the past four general municipal elections, African Americans comprised a minority of the electorate on election day; in the fourth , they may have been a slight majority. For that reason, they are viewed as a minority for analytical purposes."

So, for "analytical purposes," a sizeable majority is conveniently redefined as a minority.

King mentions no impediments to voting, no discrimination barring black residents from the polls. Rather, because of an apparent lack of interest in muncipal elections by many black voters, DOJ must step in to help -- specifically by preventing a switch to nonpartisan elections. Sorry, Kinston, you must keep party labels so that voters know which candidates deserve to win.

Where will DOJ apply this strategy next -- to school board and judicial elections?

Why don't the federal civil rights lawyers simply eliminate elections in Kinston and dictate who should serve on the town council just to be sure of the proper outcome?