Daily Archives: January 9, 2012

Last Wednesday, House Republicans failed to garner enough votes to override Governor Perdue’s veto on the Racial Justice Act(RJA). The 2009 law, which allows North Carolina death row inmates to challenge their death sentences on the grounds of racial bias, was repealed by the General Assembly, but the governor vetoed that repeal. RJA Supporters haveContinue Reading

Economic freedom might help some people get rich, but what benefit does it create for society as a whole? Jenna Ashley Robinson of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy offered answers to that question during a presentation today to the John Locke Foundation’s Shaftesbury Society. In the video clip below, Robinson discusses the importanceContinue Reading

One of the concerns with how the Supreme Court may decide the Obamacare case is that the high court could declare the individual mandate unconstitutional but then — although the Democrats in their hurry to pass the increasingly unpopular bill left out a severability clause — would set about inferring what Congress would have passedContinue Reading

Lawrence Kudlow‘s latest column urges Republicans to back off their efforts to downplay the economic recovery. Yes, Kudlow says, seasonal quirks and a lower-than-expected labor participation rate inflate job numbers in President Obama’s favor. But that’s not the point. In the 12 months through December 2011, the economy produced 1.64 million new jobs, while inContinue Reading

Ok, the title of my blog post does a disservice to the sophisticated study of teacher quality produced by researchers from Harvard and Columbia universities. A December 2011 National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) study by Raj Chetty, John N. Friedman, and Jonah E. Rockoff, “The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers: Teacher Value-Added and Student OutcomesContinue Reading

Michael Reagan revokes his endorsement of Vernon Robinson, a Republican candidate in North Carolina’s 8th Congressional District (Dome) N.C. Rep. Susi Hamilton, D-New Hanover, says she is “100 percent” committed to running for a second term in House District 18 (WWAY-TV) Associated Press report says that GOP maneuver on veto override is risky in anContinue Reading

Recent John Locke Foundation Headliner Timothy P. Carney explains in a Washington Examiner “Beltway Confidential” blog entry one of the consequences of government growth: more wealth for the well-connected. Increasing government power gives more influence to the politically connected, which is often whoever can hire up the most ex-Senators and cabinet members-turned lobbyists. That’s neverContinue Reading

Readers of Thomas Sowell’s Housing Boom and Bust are likely to cringe when they read the opening of this Bloomberg Businessweek article: Lawmakers began 2011 with sweeping ambitions to shrink the U.S. government’s involvement in mortgage finance. They ended the year enacting policies that increase it. An 11th-hour extension of the payroll tax cut, signedContinue Reading