Word: carolina
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...Helms only really came into his own when he was elected to the Senate in 1972. As North Carolina's first Republican Senator since reconstruction, he was never a shoe-in, but from early on he found a slim majority that would respond to his brand of right-wing politics. He opposed Henry Kissinger's nomination as Secretary of State by Richard Nixon because he thought Kissinger was too soft on communism. He attacked foreign aid as wasteful and ill-considered and he was a central player in the culture wars of the '80s and '90s as the champion...
...Helms was born in 1921 in the small town of Monroe, North Carolina, where his father was police chief and once a year the residents left flowers on the graves of Confederate war dead. Helms dropped out of Wake Forest College and later served as a recruiter for the Navy, which he joined in 1942. After the war he moved into journalism as an editor for local papers but found his true home as an outspoken editorialist on WRAL, a Raleigh-Durham radio and television station. For more than 20 years, long before Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage, Helms prospered...
...Despite his fearsome national and international reputation, Helms was also known for acts of personal thoughtfulness. When he retired in 2002, North Carolina's junior senator, a Democrat with whom he had often tangled, was among those paying him tribute: "The people of North Carolina will never forget the work and the kindness and the personal attention that he has given to them," he said. John Edwards knew that from experience. Before Edwards ever entered politics, Helms heard about the death of his teen-age son, Wade, in a car accident and went to the floor of the Senate...
...open to a light touch. Madeleine Albright famously convinced him of the wisdom of paying America's U.N. arrears and of supporting the Chemical Weapons Convention. And Bono managed to help change his mind about aid to Africa. Helms remained vigorously protectionist to the end, however, and protected North Carolina's tobacco interests throughout his career with equal vigor. But with more than a few lone dissenting votes in the Senate over 30 years, including his opposition to popular nominations and education bills, he'll be remembered mainly as the man who personified the hard right, no matter how unpopular...
Characteristically, Buffett had done his homework: he'd found out in advance, for example, that my wife was born in Salisbury, North Carolina. But after a minimum of small talk to put us at ease, it was down to more serious matters. When I mentioned how difficult I'd recently found it to do the right thing by lowering the fees I charged my fund's shareholders, Buffett nodded sympathetically and observed, "People will always try to stop you doing the right thing if it is unconventional." When I asked if it would get any easier, he replied with...