The Sunday editions:

N&R endorses Miller, tentatively:

Rep. Brad Miller, Democratic incumbent in the 13th Congressional District, doesn’t come across as the most scintillating candidate.

In contrast, Republican challenger Vernon Robinson arguably is the political equivalent of a spectacular car wreck — from his fiery rhetoric to ugly ads that blast Miller on issues including illegal immigration, the war against terrorism and gay rights. Try as you might, you can’t look away…. If Robinson toned down his rhetoric and revealed the nuances in his views more often, he’d deserve more serious consideration. But that’s not his style, and the substance Miller has shown in Congress should send him back to Washington for another term…..

….Local broker Glenn Capel signs on with a very interesting racial discrimination lawsuit against Merrill Lynch. Interesting in the fact that the lawsuit was filed against a company with a black CEO, interesting in the fact that Capel listed as one of his “sheroes”Bennett College president Johnetta Cole, who “declined to talk about her relationship with Capel because of the lawsuit, saying through a spokesperson that Merrill Lynch is one of the college’s biggest supporters.”

…GCS ponders a report that will help the system complete its mission of the arts vs. social justice in its lead editorial on the Charlie Babcock estate:

The Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation’s plan for dividing the $24 million from the Charles Babcock Jr. estate is sure to catch criticism from all the arts agencies that didn’t get a share, but the plan’s not a bad one at all.

Now, one of the beneficiaries, The Winston-Salem Foundation, will have to work hard to ensure that some of its share of the money keeps going to quality arts organizations that need it the most. And all local arts organizations should take this as a lesson to work all the harder at fundraising, because the days of patrons who give the lion’s share to keep arts agencies afloat are all but gone in Forsyth County……

So arts leaders were understandably troubled when they learned last year that Babcock had left his estate to the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation. It is one of the large Reynolds family foundations, but its emphasis is on economic and social justice. Some questioned whether that was really Charlie Babcock’s intent, and noted that the kind but private man suffered from schizophrenia and was declared incompetent in 1984, the year after he left his estate to the foundation in a handwritten will.

…Less than a week after the city throws down $674,000 to help fix up the Waughtown section of Winston-Salem, a local nonprofit wants to open a soup kitchen. But it’s not really a soup litchen:

Proponents of the soup kitchen say that plans are only tentative, and that there is plenty of time for residents and business owners to have their say. The proponents have even begun to call the project a “feeding program,” rather than a soup kitchen, to try to dispel opposition.