John Frank, one of our politics and government reporters, posted to the Dome blog a remark by Gov. Perdue at the Cary Rotary Club to the effect that they ought to suspend congressional elections for a couple of years so the lawmakers can focus on the economy and not getting re-elected.

This got picked up by the Drudge Report, one of the most popular web sites on the planet not involving porn.

Right now there's a big headline on Drudge: "Dem Guv Calls for Suspending Elections" below a pic of  our Dem Guv greeting President Obama at the airport recently. 

Which doesn't precisely convey the levity in her remarks, but we'll run our site and let Matt Drudge run his. 

Anyway, John's little Dome post got about 90,000 page views in 90 minutes by being linked off  Drudge. It is up to 228,000 as of around 8 p.m. - DB

I will say that as a former Rotarian, usually the meetings involve singing things like "Oh, Susanna" and not the kinds of things that get you on Drudge. This may be the first viral Rotary Club story.

 A year after Gov. Beverly Perdue took office, the state's probation system still struggles to fill jobs.  There are more vacant probation officer positions now than when the News & Observer wrote a series describing the problems in North Carolina's probation system.  Vacant positions are a huge problem because other officers have to pick up offenders assigned to the vacant position, adding more work to already burdened officers.

There's been progress: a new computer program automatically informs probation officers when their probationers screw up, and morale seems better. After the story ran on  Sunday, the governor said she was concerned that the department couldn't fill the jobs. 

N.C. Transportation Secretary Gene Conti sat down with The N&O's editorial board yesterday to answer questions about how things are going, given that his department in the past has come under fire fairly frequently. When Gov. Beverly Perdue took over the reins of the state, she decided to turn the transportation process on its head, changing the Board of Transportation from a decision-making body to an advisory body. Conti pretty much holds all the power now.

How's that reform going and how hard is it to change the culture there? For starters, Conti said that his department will have a goal of accomplishing 80 percent to 90 percent of what it says it will do, as opposed to the 50 percent success record it has now.

Here are two audio clips of Conti answering those questions:

With more news about furloughs today (Under the Dome, Page 3B), I went back and pulled what Gov. Beverly Perdue had to say about them during her discussion with the editorial board last week. State Treasurer Janet Cowell has cautioned lawmakers that forced furloughs for state workers might affect the state's bond rating. House Speaker Joe Hackney wants furloughs on the budget-hole-filling table, but Perdue says other states have found that furloughs cause more trouble than they're worth.

Maybe it's because we're faced with the devastating loss of 27 more newsroom colleagues that I found Gov. Beverly Perdue's discussion of retraining efforts for white-collar workers one of the more interesting things she talked about in a meeting with the ed board last week. She said it's really the first time the country has been faced with trying to retrain high-finance and high-tech workers for other fields (not that we're high-tech or high-income here at ye ol' N&O, you understand).

Take a listen.

See video of Gov. Perdue speaking by video to a conference of the N.C. Open Government Coalition in Charlotte. Video courtesy of News 14 Carolina.

Hear part four of Gov. Beverly Perdue's State of the State speech.

Hear part three of Gov. Beverly Perdue's State of the State speech.

Hear part two of Gov. Beverly Perdue's State of the State speech.

Hear Gov. Beverly Perdue's State of the State address delivered Monday, March 9, 2009.