news-record.com

Jim Melvin, president of the Joseph M. Bryan Foundation, took the opportunity at the end of an annual meeting Monday to direct leaders' attention away from an ongoing Greensboro police issue to what he considers more important matters.

"We've got to quit nitpicking about memos and all that kind of crap," Melvin told about 100 people, to applause. "If we don't, ladies and gentlemen, we're not going to get anywhere."

Melvin was referring to the leaking to the media of a key police memo last week. Melvin said business, community and education leaders need to focus on other challenges, such as the city's stagnant tax base, the search for a Guilford County Schools superintendent and the planning of the Wyndham Championship. Melvin said the August golf tournament was at "a pinnacle point of whether it goes forward or backward."

"Let's not be pulled down by the naysayers," he said. "The best thing we can do with the naysayers is give them positive-sayers."

A burr in Burr's saddle

By the 13th time he was asked Monday, the talk about the possibility of Richard Burr serving as a running mate for likely GOP presidential nominee John McCain was beginning to annoy the Winston-Salem Republican. So Scoop piled on.

Walking from his lunchtime speech to former Gov. Jim Hunt's Institute on Emerging Issues conference, Burr allowed as how he wouldn't say "no" to the man he believed would be the next president.

Burr has been singled out as a potential vice presidential running mate by multiple pols and pundits, including McCain during a 2006 interview.

But don't get carried away.

"One, it's premature for the question to be asked because he hasn't won the nomination," Burr said. "Two, any responsible candidate is going to wait to see who they run against before they go through a thought process on vice presidential candidates. Three, I don't expect to get a call."

Burr wouldn't be the first in his family tree to be a veep. He is a distant cousin of Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson's vice president.

Coble goes Hollywood

Congressman Howard Coble, a Greensboro Republican, was invited to Los Angeles to help present a Lifetime Achievement Grammy award to bluegrass musician Earl Scruggs. The recording academy held a ceremony Saturday night.

In true Coble fashion, he was less interested in talking about any A-listers he might have rubbed shoulders with than the "highlight" of his trip: "Being able to visit with my fellow North Carolinian Earl Scruggs."

Coble is ranking member on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, a key committee for folks in movies and television who are concerned about copyright and the like. Some of those met with him during a fundraising breakfast he held Monday before leaving town.

Staff writers Mark Binker and Morgan Josey Glover contributed.

Sound off daily at blog.news-record.com/scoopblog