Breaking News } Flash Flood Watch for Johnston county.

Martinez:  To continue to isolate families from hard medical-cost choices only shifts costs to our kids by spending public funds this generation doesn’t have.

Comment:  Ted Nugent and Rep. Allen West go way, way too far.

Martinez:  We’re about to endure another election cycle of class warfare rhetoric from Democrats and no new taxes pledges from Republicans. And for every day candidates talk past each other, another $4 billion of new debt will be passed down to our children.

Come June, the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, will be on life support, and that’s assuming there’s any life left to it once the Supreme Court rules. And that means the election could hinge on who has the better replacement.

Martinez:  The reality is, public educators seem to accept reform only when it’s mandated by law or has dollar bills attached to it.

It must be Christmas in North Carolina, because the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has given the state a big gift.

Martinez:  A few years ago I declared victory for the United States in the war in Iraq since no one else would. Out of the same sense of duty, I’m compelled to announce that the U.S. has lost the war on terror. We’ve lost, not because of any actions by al-Qaida or the Taliban, but because of self-inflicted wounds.

Martinez:  My recovery is coming along nicely after a prolonged case of the Doomsday Deficit Blues. The cure came when I discovered that two often-repeated assertions about the nation's financial picture are flat-out wrong.

Martinez:  It's beyond me how any person or organization can oppose the establishment of a charter school designed to reduce the achievement gap, or a charter that focuses its curriculum on science, math and engineering. But some local heavy-hitters do.

Martinez:  Imagine if the feds told the Roman Catholic Church that women must be ordained as priests because not doing so violates anti-discrimination laws.

Martinez:  Maybe Gov. Beverly Perdue really believes North Carolina needs a better-educated populace if she thinks we're dense enough to buy the line that her decision not to run for re-election was "selfless."

Martinez:  For months, my wife and I have been having an argument. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court settled it. By a 9-0 margin the justices ruled she was right.

Martinez:  After reading a provocative, yet-to-be-published study about race and achievement by a Duke economics professor, an economics grad student and a colleague in sociology, I was left pondering this question: Are affirmative action admission policies at our nation's universities inadvertently narrowing the employment pool for engineering, economics and natural sciences?

Martinez:  Now that the Wake County Board of Education has kept its commitment to go forward with the new parental choice student assignment plan, the new board majority must move on to a much more pressing challenge that the diversity-in-assignment debate has overshadowed - the lagging performance of Wake County's poor, black and Hispanic kids.

Martinez:  I'm a drill-baby-drill kind of guy. I would have no problem living next to an oil well, and it doesn't concern me that my grandchildren spend their summers on Huntington Beach, Calif., where three oil derricks are within sight of the shore.

Martinez:  With gas prices over $3 a gallon, federal tax credits of up to $7,500 and - finally - some relatively affordable vehicles in the marketplace that don't look like moon rovers, 2011 was poised to be a breakout year for the electric vehicle (EV).

Martinez:  A childhood illness prevented my father from finishing high school. Yet he went on to become a successful businessman who, at one point in his career, oversaw the Southwestern region of stores for a Houston-based electronic parts wholesaler.