A liberal group is asking state Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler to answer questions about his department's behavior during a raid last month on a Butterball turkey farm in Hoke County.
Butterball officials were tipped off about the raid by a veterinarian, Dr. Sarah Mason, with the state Department of Agriculture, according to reports on WTVD and WRAL.
"It is absolutely inappropriate for any public official to tamper with a law enforcement investigation, much less tip off an offender about an upcoming raid," Gerrick Brenner, executive director of Progress North Carolina, said in a statement. "Commissioner Troxler has some serious questions to answer about his agency's attitude towards the rule of law."
The raid had been spurred by hidden camera videos taken by an animal rights group called Mercy for Animals, whose activists had worked undercover at the farm for three weeks. The Hoke County District Attorney's office had contacted the agriculture department prior to the raid to inquire whether they wanted to assist with the inspection of the turkeys.
Officials charged that the director of animal health programs contacted a veterinarian Butterball employed "and informed them she had heard there was an investigation" into the Butterball farm in Hoke County. The search warrant seized phone records between the Department of Agriculture and Butterball from five days before the raid until late last week, according to ABC News.
N.C. Dems back health law
A group of Democratic state legislators are backing a brief filed Thursday in the U.S. Supreme Court supporting the federal health care law. The 34 North Carolina backers include House Minority Whips Alice Borsden of Alamance County and Tricia Cotham of Mecklenburg County, as well as Rosa Gill of Wake County and Larry D. Hall of Durham. Minority Leader Joe Hackney was not among the signers.
Those who signed joined more than 500 other state lawmakers from all 50 states and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
They maintain that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is constitutional, and they are working in their states to get it implemented.
Republicans have opposed the insurance exchange, which would require a state-regulated marketplace for people without insurance and small businesses. Last year, the Republican leaders in the N.C. General Assembly filed a friend-of-the-court brief challenging the constitutionality of the law.
Marriage ban support down
North Carolina's support for the state's proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages appears to be eroding slightly, according to a new poll.
Support for the amendment has declined from 61 percent in October to 56 percent this month, according to a survey by Public Polling, a Democratic-leaning firm based in Raleigh. The firm has found that support for the amendment has been ticking down slightly every month.
The pollster suggested that the small decline may reflect greater public awareness that the constitutional amendment would ban not only gay marriages, but also civil unions. The pollster has found that 57 percent of North Carolinians, while opposing gay marriage, favor some form of legal recognition for gay couples, such as civil unions.
The poll found that 56 percent would vote for the constitutional amendment, 34 percent against it, and 10 percent weren't sure. Only 32 percent thought same-sex marriages should be legal, 57 percent thought they should be illegal, and 12 percent weren't sure.
But asked to best describe their opinion on gay marriage, 25 percent thought that gay couples should be able to marry legally, 32 percent thought they should be allowed to form civil unions but not marry, and 40 percent said there should be no legal recognition.
A referendum on the amendment is scheduled to be held on the May 8th primary. The survey of 780 North Carolina voters was conducted Jan. 5 to Sunday, and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
