Aren’t these wonderful depositions this week from former Gov. Mike Easley’s public interference officers? Nice to see at least one of them (Renee Hoffman) is confessing and confirming what Debbie Crane said long ago about deleting emails. That’s a fine, shiny badge you got there, Deb.

Right now I’m reminiscing about the wonderful times I had with Cari Boyce. What a pro’s pro she was. I just took a stroll down memory lane through my email program — all those unanswered questions, still afloat somewhere deep in cyberspace. All those unreturned phone calls, but that was just fine. We were able to do our stories without the cooperation of the Easley communications office, and thanks to their non-input, they came out looking just peachy, didn’t they? Really knew what they were doing!

Yeah, me, Don Carrington and Cari go way back. I think she learned how to stifle annoying inquiries about public servants from her boss when he was Attorney General — either that, or she taught him a thing or two!

Ha ha…I’ll never forget that time in 2000 when Don — when I still wrote for the now-defunct Triad World and Cari’s last name was Hepp — asked her for Department of Justice records about a public service ad campaign featuring Attorney General Easley. Cari wrote to Don saying that the conservatism of the Locke Foundation meant that his stories were for ?political ends,? and the Department of Justice therefore had ?no reason for this office to assist you in your efforts.? You should have seen his face when he wrote back, “You seemed to have arbitrarily decided to violate the law on public information based on your opinion. Your department has both a moral and legal obligation to provide public information.”

About a month later she told me something similar when working on a related story. “It seems clear to me that your interests lie in preparing stories for political ends,” she said. Of course, that is a perfectly legitimate reason to withhold documents that belong to the public — can we all agree?

So I share with you this long history so you can have complete confidence that in her deposition — when Cari answered “no” to the question, “Did you ever advise or instruct anyone to delete e-mail from their state account?” — you can take her word to the bank. And when she couldn’t remember whether Gov. Easley gave her specific instruction about how to respond to specific records request, she wasn’t faking it.

As I wrote about seven months ago, Don and I got intimately familiar with how Easley and his flacks operated. Had anyone paid attention, few would be surprised at what we are learning now.

Meanwhile, Progress Energy must certainly be proud of the top-notch professional they have in place over there as vice president for corporate communications. Something goes wrong with Utilities Commission hearings or a government relations snag, and you can sure count on Cari for advice about clamming up or hiding the ugliness.

Like I said, she’s a pro.