Ted Nugent: More guns equal less crime

Ted Nugent says gun-control laws amount to "cruel indecency and forced victimization."

In a decidedly politically incorrect column in The Washington Times ahead of Friday's opening of the NRA convention in Charlotte, the rock star and well-known gun-rights supporter says that "the inescapable truth — as FBI crime reports and numerous law enforcement and academic studies conclude — is that more guns clearly equal less crime."

He continues:

Where there are more guns per capita, violent crime goes down, particularly crimes of assault, such as rape, burglary and robbery. This is good. This is what the NRA stands for. Anti-gunners, not so much.

Nugent criticizes "gun-free zones," calling them "guaranteed slaughter zones, where the most innocent lives are lost every time."

The choice is clear, he says:

Gun control as forced by the Chuck Schumers and Michael Bloombergs of the world is complicit in every violent crime committed. Conversely, gun control a la Ted Nugent is putting the second shot through the same hole as the first shot, where innocent lives are saved and recidivistic maggots come to a screeching halt, felled by the lovely ballet of good over evil we call the "Double Tap Center Mass Boogie." Learn it, know it, love it, shoot it. Good guys should live, bad guys, not so much.

• Read Nugent's entire column here.

Nugent is scheduled to speak to CNN at 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. Friday about the opening of the NRA convention in Charlotte.

Update: From Ted's blog:

Correspondent Carol Costello interviews Ted on what to expect from his highly anticipated appearance at this year’s convention in Charlotte. Ted also discusses recent legislation and more.Tune in at 6 am EDT, and again at 8 am EDT and watch Ted stick to his guns!

"The Nuge" will lead a seminar at the convention at 12:30 p.m. Sunday titled "We the People." He'll sign autographs and books afterward in the Charlotte Convention Center.

Underwater video shows oil gushing like a geyser

Video released by BP shows oil spewing from a broken pipe 5,000 feet below the surface of the water. The oil looks like steam rushing from a geyser.

The video released Wednesday gives a glimpse of the leaking well. The stream occasionally can be seen becoming lighter as natural gas mixes into the gusher.

Natural gas has been flowing from the well since the beginning. BP's Doug Suttles says the rate natural gas has been flowing out hasn't changed in the 21 days since the Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico.

Watch the video

More underwater video from the spill:

CMS budget: Get ready to pay for AP, IB exams

Superintendent Peter Gorman has released the revised 2010-11 budget plan he'll present to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board tonight. It's much like the versions that have been discussed in previous meetings, but backs off from some unpopular school-hours changes and requires students to start paying for Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate exams.

See the new plan. 

(Note: It's a large document, so download may be slow.)

Can the county control CMS spending?

Money for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools makes up the biggest single chunk of the county's operating budget -- more than $300 million this year -- and commissioners have said they want to make sure the money is leading to gains in the district.

But just how much can county leaders control how the school district uses its money?

Assistant Professor Kara Millonzi of the School of Government at UNC Chapel Hill offers an answer to that question and others in a new blog post about local school budgets. You can read the full post by clicking here.

State law, she writes, allows counties to divvy up operating money given to school systems by purpose or function. But county commissioners, acting on their own discretion, cannot appropriate money by line-item for school operating expenses.

That being said, Millonzi said commissioners aren't barred from requesting that a school board not use county money for certain items. "However, any agreement reached by the two boards that is not reflected in the county’s appropriations is not legally binding," she writes.

The Coates' Canons: NC Local Government Law Blog, offers lots of insight from School of Government professors on a variety of topics. Other recent entries discuss whether government employment contracts are open record (which cites a case involving the Observer) and analysis of a suit filed against the city of Kannapolis challenging an Internet Sweepstakes Tax. -- April Bethea

Dramatic photos of burning oil rig

McClatchy obtained images of the offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon as it burned in the Gulf of Mexico April 21, 2010, including this one taken shortly before it sank.

Click here to view other photos.

Click here for more photos from Gulf Coast.

Check out this link for more updates from McClatchy.

The latest:

Emergency workers along the Gulf Coast today raced to defend sensitive shorelines from the massive oil spill, authorities said they'd stopped one of the leaks at the deep-water well.

It won't reduce the amount of oil flowing from BP's sunken rig, but it will allow the oil company to focus efforts on attacking the two remaining leaks, said Coast Guard Petty Officer David Mosley.

- Doug Miller

Read the complaint against the Times Square bombing suspect

On Tuesday, Faisal Shahzad (above) was charged with conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction and several related crimes connected to the failed Times Square car bombing.

• Read the criminal complaint against Shahzad.
• Details on the charges, from the U.S. attorney's office.
• Related story.
  

Tiger Woods' alleged mistress says Charlotte hotel canceled her reservation

Joslyn James (above right), the porn star who says she was Tiger Woods' mistress, says she had made a reservation to stay at the Ritz-Carlton in uptown Charlotte last week. But, in a letter from her attorney, she says that when she landed at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport, she learned that her hotel reservation had been canceled.

James, 32, whose real name is Veronica Siwik-Daniels, was in town performing at the Uptown Cabaret men's club while Woods was playing in the Quail Hollow Championship.

James' attorney, Gloria Allred (above left), claims in a letter e-mailed Monday to the Ritz-Carlton that "after a long and tiring journey from Los Angeles, Ms. James was shocked to learn when she arrived at the airport in Charlotte that her reservations had been cancelled. ... While this was disturbing, even more troublesome appeared to be the reason for the cancellation."

Allred says the hotel canceled the reservation because James "was a high profile guest and they were concerned about media attention." The real reason for the cancellation, Allred suggests, is that Woods may have been staying at the hotel at the same time.

"Was Joslyn James cancelled at the Ritz-Carlton, because Tiger Woods was staying there or was expected to arrive?" she writes.

The letter to the hotel was posted by the Web site TMZ.com. You can download a PDF copy of the letter here.

TMZ.com reported that an unnamed representative from the Ritz-Carlton said the hotel was "reviewing the matters raised in the letter."