Rob Christensen:Jesse Helms was perhaps the most influential North Carolina politician of the 20th century.

Sen. Elizabeth Dole learned of Jesse Helms' death Friday morning and called Dorothy, Helms' wife of 65 years.

Key dates in his life and political career.

Under the Dome:Elizabeth Dole may have taken Jesse Helms' seat in the U.S. Senate, but Richard Burr took his place.

Where does Jubal Kane end and Jesse Helms begin? That is a question readers will likely be asking about the yet-to-be-published novel by Carter Wrenn, a longtime political strategist for Helms and other Republicans.

Claude A. Allen, a Jesse Helms protege and President Bush's former domestic policy adviser, is scheduled to plead guilty Friday to one count of misdemeanor theft.

More than a million people in the United States have vascular dementia -- a term for a group of diseases related to reduced blood flow in the brain -- either by itself or along with other conditions including Alzheimer's disease. Former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms is one of them, his wife said.

Conservative leaders gathered from around the country Tuesday evening to salute former Sen. Jesse Helms, hailing him as a historic trailblazer and attributing much of their current political success to him.

Helms, as a prominent TV editorialist, repeatedly criticized what he called "the so-called" civil rights movement and portrayed the white South as a victim of a national smear campaign.

A book by former Sen. Jesse Helms offers a gentler conservative line. The memoir is scheduled for publication by Random House in September.

'The president of the United States -- whom I knew twenty years earlier as an honorable gentleman -- told me he had no knowledge of a burglary and was not party to any cover-up. The president of the United States gave me his word. I assumed he was tell

It is once again a time to give thanks. And Under the Dome is grateful for all of the politicians, spinmeisters, bureaucrats, operatives and just plain voters who have made this column possible since it became a regular feature in the 1930s.