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High Point City Councilman Latimer Alexander today on Facebook:

Monday, Feb. 13th at noon will be an exciting time. I will be filing for the NC Senate District 27. The primary is May 8th so between now and then I will need lots of help in putting out signs, meeting people all over Guilford County and telling my story.

I've been honored to serve for the last 10 years and will continue to serve the citizens of High Point on City Council. I believe I know have a unique knowledge set to continue not just to serve the citizens of High Point but all of Guilford County. I look forward to a spirited campaign where the issues and needs or our area will be discussed.

With Greensboro Councilwoman Trudy Wade also expected to file, this should be an interesting one to watch.

We have reported earlier that Alexander plans to run. He, like Wade, is a Republican in a heavily Republican district.

Both are known as hard-working and well-informed.

I expect Bill Burckley will be involved on Wade's campaign. I wonder what approach they'll take. Burckley is smart and shrewd and, well, colorful.

Look for my column in this Sunday's Ideas section for the revelation of the 2012 News & Record Town Square Community Columnists.

There were some hard choices from among a field of more than 120 -- in fact , many more qualified applicants than we had avaliable slots.

But we believe we've got a good group with a very wide range of backgrounds, interests and perspectives. Two of their columns will debut Sunday.

Stay tuned.

An ill-considered remark on Twitter gets another person in trouble.

This time it's a seasoned journalist, Roland Martin of CNN, TV One and "The Tim Joyner Morning Show."

He should know better.

But tweets are impulsive by nature, and the urge to be flip and spontaneous in a sentence is a recipe for embarrassment ... or worse.

Really, who knows, given how excruciatingly inconsistent both teams can be.

But if the good Carolina and Duke teams both show, Carolina should win by, oh, 10 points or so.

A side wager: No school or elected official gets booed at halftime.

When the City Council takes up a resolution tonight against a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in North Carolina, Trudy Wade almost certainly will be the lone dissenting voice.

But she’s got to be loving the fact that the issue has come up.

It helps her stake out her position on a cultural issue that seldom arises on a municipal level.

And to seal her credentials as a conservative running this year for state Senate.

She’ll probably make an impassioned speech about “family values.” Then she’ll later link to the video on her campaign website.

And the voters in her district will be pleased as punch.

The resolution passes. Wade can say she fought the good fight.

Everybody wins.

Wade couldn’t have scripted it any better, though she might have preferred the resolution came up closer to the May primary election.

One things is for sure now: There's no shortage of grocery stores in Greensboro.

Next up: Another local Aldi planned for New Garden Road.

The Trader Joe's issue, meanwhile, remains unresolved.

And the Bessemer Shopping Center still would kill for a store ... any store.

How does the song go? "Them that's got shall get. Them that's not shall lose."

What's up with all those empty seats in the ACC this season?

Virginia Tech plays Duke in Blacksburg and can't come close to filling the place.

Carolina plays at Wake and Deacons fans stay away in droves.

As Jeff Mills reported last week, some conference officials blame high-defintion TV. I blame boring, uncompetitive games and downright bad basketball.

The ACC is Carolina and Duke and maybe Florida State and a bunch of other schools.

OK, Virginia's pretty good, but overachieving. The rest of the league is mediocre to terrible.

Hokie fans probably didn't come to see Duke because they figured they had no chance to win.

Don't get me wrong, I love the ACC. And many other leagues are like this — or much worse — year in and year out.

But we're not used to this. We're been spoiled for so long with drama and grace.

Now we've got precious little of either.

This might be pretty darned good year for the tournament to be somewhere other than Greensboro.

Yet even the very best conferences are entitled to a down season every now and then. The again, after ACC football imploded last fall, we really, really  needed some good hoops.

Get well soon, ACC. You're just not yourself these days.

If you ask me, Mitt Romney got a bum deal on his comment about poor people.

I think he could have chosen his words more carefully (especially since he's been pegged as a rich guy who's out of touch with regular people).

But he did speak of fixing holes in "the safety net" for the poor. I'm happy to see a Republican at least acknowledge the need for a safety net.

Yet I hope that wouldn't be all. Job-training programs, day care assistance and other self-help boosts provided by, yes, the government actually can help.

Yet, to be fair to Romney, none of the candidates in recent years (aside from the now-disgraced John Edwards) have even paid lip service to the poor, including President Obama.

It's all about the middle class, who are an endangered demographic. But the poor seem largely forgotten. Or when they're mentioned, they're disparaged for being poor.

Finally, a shout-out to Newt "Food Stamp" Gingrich for immediately pouncing on Romney.

The Greensboro City Council will create a task force and a timeline for providing "a razor-sharp focus" on a proposed new performing arts center.

The task force will be guided by an executive committee that will hire a consultant "to develop an economic report and create a business plan."

It also will recruit a wide variety of stakeholders to take part, including Keith Holliday of the Carolina Theater, Matt Brown of the coliseum, Richard Whittington of Triad Stage and Tom Philion of the United Arts Council.

Other committees will be devoted to “Economic Impact and Feasibility,” “Development” (as in private fundraising) and public relations.

This is more like it.

Yes, there will be lots more moving parts and points of view.

Which means this initiative won't happen as fast as a top-down, seat-of-the-pants process.  But, in the end, it should have a much better shot at succeeding and earning public trust.

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