The named plaintiffs in the consolidated redistricting suits argued before the North Carolina Supreme Court on January 7 are former legislator Margaret Dickson and the North Carolina NAACP. Defendants named are Republican Senator Robert Rucho and the State of North Carolina. The case could have been styled NAACP v. Art Pope. Absent Pope, the […]

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  Let us pause now to pay our respects to Bunny Mellon. She died in mid-March on her Virginia horse-country estate. But no tears, please. Bunny — nobody called her by her given name Rachel — lived a long and rich life. Very long. Very rich. One hundred and three at her death, Bunny Mellon […]

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  No matter how hard lawmakers try to close their eyes, click their heels, and hope for the best, they can’t make highway funding magically appear. But that doesn’t stop them fiddling and flailing as they burn through the Highway Trust Fund. The Highway Trust Fund was created in 1956 to provide the nation’s surface transportation system with a […]

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  Those who want to see a people’s democracy, let them come here and see this,” Fidel Castro told the UN General Assembly in 1960, after his Marxist insurgency overthrew Fulgencio Batista’s government in Cuba. The United States had long made forcefully clear that it preferred dictatorial banana republics (Nicaragua), coffee republics (Guatemala), or, in […]

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  Not long Ken Cuccinelli narrowly lost Virginia governor’s race last year by running one of the most hapless campaigns in modern memory (he tried to made sodomy a campaign issue—really!), the former attorney general has a new scheme to get Virginians with weapons permits to pay him protection money. Declaring that gun-toting Virginian’s risked […]

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