As Chronicle regurgitates on-line searches, it misses key local stories. Senate to consider anti-hate resolution tonight. Potti denied patent .

The Chronicle seems to be drifting more and more away from campus news.

For example, there was a major story on the competition between North Carolina school districts for federal stimulus funds. Huh?

And the rise of Bikram Yoga in Durham. And Hurricane Earl's doing no damage to Duke's Beauport marine lab.

Even today's editorial bears upon a faculty evaluation system at Texas A and M that is unlikely to see the light of day there, much less here. This is lazy journalism, for there is nothing in the editorial indicating the paper spoke to anyone at Duke; rather it is regurgitation of an article from elsewhere.

Here's what the newspaper missed for Wednesday's edition:

-- a preview of tonight's Senate meeting that could strip the Duke Republican Club of student fee funding but leave the club free to operate. Tuesday was a day full of politics and parliamentary procedures; with the DSG having failed to notify the Republicans five days in advance, ten senators had to be rounded up to move the proposal forward.

Students in attendance are expected to use Open Forum to read into the record portions of homophobia, racist, sexist and anti-Semitic e-mails from GOP club leaders. The Chronicle has quoted only three words so far.

Fact Checker is still waiting for President Brodhead -- not to take sides in the issue involving Justin Robinette -- but to declare that Duke has zero tolerance for hate, for words like fag and Nagger repeated time and time again, for slurs like S-O-D, for unwanted sexal innuendo time after time.

Hello, hello, Allen Building!!

The student judiciary considers a request for action against the campus Republicans on Sunday.

-- The federal government's patent office slapped down Dr Anil Potti (and presumably Duke along with him) and rejected his application for a patent based upon his "discovery" of how DNA and RNA can be used to treat cancers.

On a second application for a different cancer, Potti got a tentative rejection. In all the star of Duke medicine and the university have four patents pending, with no ruling yet on two. If granted, the patents would yield big dollars, for example every cancer patient tested would be charged a royalty.

The final rejection came in two stages: first, tentatively, after a patent examiner said she could not figure out how Potti's science fell together. And second, finally, when Potti and his fellow researchers failed to provide back up data.

Wonder why they would do that? Fail to provide back up data.

By the way Potti's name was buried on one application. Even though he was principal investigator, Dr Joseph Nevins name was in the spotlight.

Stay tuned, fellow Dukies, stay tuned.