The plaintiffs say Duke is misleading the public about its environmental record, and could face federal sanctions and a hit to its public image in Charlotte, where the utility is headquartered.

Alleged environmental damage by Duke could also pose challenges for the Obama administration, which has strong ties to the company.

The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) and the Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation (CRF) filed a notice of intent on Tuesday announcing that they plan to sue Duke for alleged violations of the Clean Water Act.

The plaintiffs claim Duke allowed carcinogenic chemicals from coal ash storage facilities to leak into Mountain Island Lake, Charlotte’s primary drinking water reservoir.

“Duke is discharging polluted water into the lake. The pollution includes arsenic, cobalt, boron, barium, strontium, manganese, zinc, and iron,” SELC and CRF claimed in a Tuesday news release.

Duke’s closeness with the Obama administration could be problematic for the president, who is already under pressure from environmentalist groups to kill the Keystone XL pipeline.

“The fact that the crony capitalists of Duke Energy, heavy donors to the Obama campaign, may be serious polluters ought to diminish the president’s credibility as a crusader for clean water and air,” said Matthew Vadum, a senior editor at the Capital Research Center.

Duke CEO Jim Rogers is a top Obama supporter. He served as “a public face and a private fund-raiser” for the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, according to the New York Times.

The company made up to $1 million in in-kind contributions to the effort in the form of office space. It also gave the convention a $10 million loan, and later forgave the debt.

Rogers himself donated $100,000 to the convention, more than $30,000 to the Democratic Party, and $5,000 to President Barack Obama directly, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

He was considered a top contender for Energy Secretary after the resignation of Steven Chu. Instead, the president nominated Ernest Moniz, whose energy initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been supported financially by Duke Energy.

The company’s extensive political connections have come under scrutiny since it received more than $200 million in stimulus subsidies for green energy projects.

Two of its subsidized projects received waivers from regulations in the National Environmental Policy Act, even though the company was at the time embroiled in a pair of lawsuits over air pollution at its coal power plants.

The most recent environmental allegations against the company claim that two “lagoons” used to store coal ash from the company’s Riverbend coal plant near Charlotte are unlined, and hence do not protect against seepage from the lagoons into the nearby Mountain Island Lake and Catawba River.

“If there was ever a place where it is irresponsible to store coal ash, this is it,” Frank Holleman, a senior attorney at the SELC, said in a statement. “Duke should remove its toxic ash to a lined landfill away from drinking water and remove pollutants from the groundwater.”

Duke said it is still reviewing the notice of intent, but defended its environmental record in North Carolina in a statement to the Washington Free Beacon.

“We agree Mountain Island Lake is a critical resource for our region, and Duke Energy has been monitoring water quality there since 1953,” spokeswoman Erin Culbert wrote. “We consistently find that water quality is good, fish are healthy and drinking water supplies are safe.”

“Arsenic levels in Mountain Island Lake are at the lowest amounts laboratory instruments can accurately measure just a short distance from the plant,” Culbert said.

Holleman said the company’s defense was “really misleading.”

Both he and Rick Gaskins, executive director of the CRF, cited a 2012 study by Duke University geochemist Avner Vengosh, which found that arsenic and other chemicals had accumulated in the Mountain Island Lake sediment.

Those chemicals can seep into the water periodically, but they are not constantly measurable in the water supply, Holleman and Gaskins said.

The notice of intent gives Duke Energy 60 days to respond. If it does not move to clean up the lagoons in question, SELC and CRF will move forward with the lawsuit.

Holleman said he hopes the legal pressure will spur Duke to act, but he also noted that there is a “reputational risk” for Duke in “allowing this ash to stay here forever,” given that the company is headquartered in Charlotte.

Officials from Charlotte-Mecklenburg County have previously expressed confidence in the soundness of Duke’s coal ash storage facilities.

Utility regulators in 2010 “met with Duke Energy to learn more about the coal ash basins at Riverbend. We are satisfied and confident that Duke is maintaining and inspecting the ash basins to protect public health and the water supply and remains in full compliance with existing state regulations.”

Sixteen Democratic Senators signed onto a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid calling for postponement of the medical device excise tax, which is part of the Affordable Care Act. The tax is scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2013.

The letter argues that the medical device industry has not received guidance about how to comply with the tax and that this is causing “significant uncertainty and confusion for businesses.” It stresses that the economy is in too delicate a situation to impose additional burdens on such an important sector.

“The medical technology industry directly employs over 400,000 people in the United States and is responsible for a total of two million high-skilled manufacturing jobs,” they write. “As we work together to develop a long-term solution to help move our economy forward, reduce our debt, and reform our tax code, we urge you to support delaying enactment of this provision in a fiscally responsible manner.”

Sens. Al Franken (D., Minn.) and Kay Hagan (D., N.C.), who also voted for the tax, are among the Senate Democrats pushing for full repeal.  Franken argued in Minnesota’s Star-Tribune that the details of the tax are reaching the industry “unconscionably late.”

Franken and Hagan are facing potentially tough reelection fights in 2014. St. Jude Medical, the multi-billion dollar medical device developer headquartered in Minnesota, has already contributed at least $7,000 to Franken’s 2014 campaign.

St. Jude Medical is not the only important company in the medical device industry for Democrats. Jon Stryker, who gave $2 million to the pro-Obama Super PAC Priorities USA, is the heir to Stryker Corporation, one of the country’s largest medical supply companies.

Styrker is cutting 1,170 jobs in anticipation of the looming medical device excise tax. Stryker announced plans to close down two New York plants by the end of the year in an effort to face the new realities of the industry in 2013.

It would not be the first time the Stryker family received preferential treatment from the left. Democracy Alliance member Pat Stryker, Jon’s sister, used her clout as a major Colorado fundraiser to get a $400 million loan guarantee for Abound Solar, a green energy firm in which she was a principal investor.

The medical device excise tax has already been a target for Republican lawmakers who are calling for its full repeal. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) has pushed for the tax to be part of the fiscal cliff deal.

Additionally, 800 companies and medical groups, including St. Jude Medical, sent a letter last month to Senate leadership calling for a full repeal of the tax. The letter states that the $30 billion excise tax will increase health care costs across the county, stifle innovation, and eliminate thousands of high-paying jobs.

“Unfortunately, beginning in 2013, the health care law will impose over $30 billion in new excise taxes on medical technology companies that will stifle innovation and U.S. competitiveness,” it warns. “If this tax is not repealed, it will continue to force affected companies to consider cutting manufacturing operations, research and development, and employment levels to recoup the lost earnings due to the tax.”

CBS Charlotte reports Mecklenburg County Commissioner Bill James has called for a full investigation into the charges that employees at the county’s Department of Social Services abused a taxpayer-funded taxi program:

James gave WBTV several documents that he obtained from an anonymous source that he believes works in DSS. He says the documents show trips, both to and from citizens’ homes, paid for with taxpayer money.

James said what upset him the most, when he read an email from August, showing a client used a DSS-paid taxi for at trip to Wendy’s.

“I don’t know why we would be taking people to Wendy’s or Burger King or McDonald’s on the government dime,” he said.

The House needed exactly 72 votes to override the veto late on Monday night and Democrat Becky Carney (who voted against the original bill) was lobbying fellow Democrats to vote no. But when the time came to cast her vote, Carney hit the wrong button. Her “yes” vote gave opponents exactly 72 votes. Oops.

Just after the vote, Carney’s voice could be heard on her microphone, saying “Oh my gosh. I pushed green.”

Even more bizarrely, House rules prohibit changing your vote if doing so would affect the outcome. …

Carney apologized profusely and blamed the error on late-night fatigue, saying, “I feel rotten, and I feel tired.”

Democratic U.S. Rep. Larry Kissell, whose rural North Carolina district has become even more Republican, is bucking his party again in two high-profile congressional votes.

Last week, Kissell was one of 17 Democrats who voted with Republicans to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in criminal contempt of Congress. And next week, he plans to vote with them again to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law. …

Kissell also said he doesn’t plan to endorse Obama for re-election and isn’t sure he’ll attend his party’s national convention in Charlotte.

Gov. Bev Perdue’s staff drafted a pair of false letters last week in an effort to start the flow of money for two major toll road projects that transportation officials say won’t be ready for state funding until 2014, according to documents obtained by The (Raleigh) News & Observer.

The documents indicate that Perdue herself was involved in the issue, which concerns a budget debate over $63 million in start-up money for the Garden Parkway, a highway project near Charlotte, and a planned bridge to the northern Outer Banks known as the Mid-Currituck Bridge. …

“Funds are needed in this budget cycle” for the bridge and the parkway, according to a key line in both erroneous letters. That sentence had been inserted into letters [Department of Transportation COO Jim] Trogdon drafted with the intent to send the opposite message – that DOT didn’t need the money.

Two high-level Perdue staff members had added the new language, according to officials from DOT and Perdue’s office.

In an interview with CNN.com, a North Carolina Democrat predicted trouble for Mitt Romney because of polygamy — a practice the candidate’s church hasn’t practiced in more than a century.

Rep. Alma Adams, who serves as chairwoman of the Legislative Black Caucus in the North Carolina General Assembly, said Romney will struggle for support among social conservatives in the state who voted to support a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage last week.

“If they look at that awful ballot amendment, and they compare that with his faith, I don’t think people will be OK with it,” Adams said. “From what I understand about the Mormon faith you can have multiple wives. That’s sort of a contradiction. There are questions about who Romney is and what he believes in terms of that particular issue.”

Romney said in a 2007 interview that he couldn’t “imagine anything more awful than polygamy.”

The Democratic executive’s ex-girlfriend Rebecca Burgin told the Daily Caller that she met Parmley when he was her American Government professor at Oklahoma City Community College. According to Burgin, they dated for three years.

She explained that she felt obligated to come forward, saying “When Jay and I met, I was 20 and he was 32. To me, it seems to be a pattern, potentially. … The unnerving thing to me is that it looks like he uses his position of authority to prey on younger adults.”

“And after Jay and I broke up, the biggest concern that I had was, ‘what if this happened to somebody else? Would he do this to someone else?’ … My biggest concern is for anybody else that has had a relationship with him that he did not tell,” she told the Daily Caller.

Parmley has been in the news since the Daily Caller reported April 13 on allegations brought by former North Carolina Democratic Party communications staffer Adriadn Ortega. The former staffer accused Parmley in December of making unwanted sexual advances.

Burgin does not know how or when Parmley contracted HIV, only that after almost three years of dating, including 14 months of long-distance while Parmley worked in Mississippi for the DNC under Howard Dean, he became “debilitating[ly] sick.” About a month later, Burgin told the Daily Caller that Parmley told her that he had tested positive for HIV. Burgin’s test was positive as well.

In the states where Parmley lived throughout their relationship, failure to notify a sexual partner of positive HIV status is a crime, ranging from a misdemeanor to a felony.

According to the story, Burgin had her lawyer contact Parmley’s attorney, Jim Frasier, currently one of 100 delegates to the Democratic National Committee.

Burgin told the Daily Caller that “Frasier came back and said, ‘what we will provide for her is that she can remain on the DNC’s health insurance and the DNC would pay for it’ for—I think that they said—as long as Jay’s employed there.” She was already covered under Parmley’s DNC insurance plan.

After considering the offer, Burgin says she turned it down. She then considered the possibility that the offer could be insurance fraud. She explained, “I was not with him anymore, and if insurance companies found out, couldn’t they just immediately drop me? What if Blue Cross and Blue Shield comes in and does an audit and sees I am no longer with him, and don’t live in the same household as him? Then they’d go, ‘well, this doesn’t work,’ and I’d lose my health insurance.”

Liberal media outlet TalkingPointsMemo has also reported Burgin’s story.

Parmley resigned last Sunday, writing in his resignation letter, “Even though I have not done anything wrong, it is clear to me that I need to move on.”

The state once epitomized Obama’s electoral strengths, but now, with unemployment high and enthusiasm low, the president faces an uphill battle.

According to Politico:

It’s not merely that fewer than 45 percent of state voters approve of the job performance of the president who’s set to land there Tuesday, or that the state’s unemployment rate is pushing double digits. Or that both houses of the state Legislature flipped from blue to red in 2010.

Or even that a former top state Democratic official recently resigned amid accusations he sexually harassed a male staffer.

Obama’s Achilles Tarheel is the general lack of enthusiasm, especially among younger voters, that threatens to reverse his historic win in 2008, depriving him of a key part of his own map and imperiling his party’s tenuous foothold in the upper South.

The Raleigh News & Observer reports:

Jay Parmley, who served a year at the helm of the party, denied harassing any employee and blamed right-wing blogs for “spreading a false and misleading story” about the incident.

“Even though I have not done anything wrong, it is clear to me that I need to move on,” Parmley wrote in his resignation letter.

Party Chairman David Parker accepted his resignation but avoided any comment on the case and suggested Parmley didn’t deserve to be fired for cause. He blamed politics.