Month: October 2022

North State Journal: “The task — like Democrat Beto O’Rourke ‘s underdog campaign to unseat Abbott — is an uphill climb. But it is another way Republicans are putting plenty at stake on the Texas border, given that they are already refocusing the final sprint of the 2022 midterms on portraying the 1,200-mile boundary as…

NY Times: “A woman who has said Herschel Walker, the Republican Senate nominee in Georgia, paid for her abortion in 2009 told The New York Times that he urged her to terminate a second pregnancy two years later. They ended their relationship after she refused. In a series of interviews, the woman said Mr. Walker…

Bearing Drift: “Today marks the 23rd anniversary of the death of my friend, Matthew Shepard. Matt and I went to college together in North Carolina, but he transferred to the University of Wyoming.  In the pre-Facebook world of the 1990s, we passed through each other’s lives with the transience of youth. A few months after…

WaPo: “Founded to educate the enslaving elite of this Southern state, allied for generations with the cause of white supremacy, roiled by racial tensions in recent years over the fate of a Confederate monument and treatment of Black faculty members, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been thrust into an unlikely role…

Longleaf Politics: “Four years ago, I published a ranking of the 50 most powerful people in North Carolina politics. Gov. Roy Cooper came in at No. 6. Now, there were plenty of issues with that list, but Cooper’s position wasn’t one of them. At the time, Republican supermajorities in both chambers of the General Assembly had relegated…

AL.com: “U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville on Saturday said Democrats are in favor of “reparations” because they are “pro-crime.” Tuberville, R-Ala., made the comments while at a rally held by former President Donald Trump in Nevada. “They want reparations because they think the people who do the crime are owed that,” Tuberville said as the crowd…

AL.com: “After a week of inmates at Alabama prisons refusing to work during a strike for prison reform, most are back at work. Five of the 15 major Alabama Department of Corrections facilities are still experiencing total inmate worker stoppages, according to ADOC spokesperson Kelly Betts. Most facilities have seen the partial return of inmate…

Slate: “That foretold explosion arrived in Lynn’s own music most noisily with 1975’s “The Pill,” which had been held back by label MCA since she first recorded it in 1972, the year before Roe v. Wade but the same year that Eisenstadt v. Baird guaranteed the right to contraceptives to all American adults. It finds a married woman crowing delightedly about…

Politico: “Nearly everything O’Rourke is doing — the non-stop tours, the crowds, the viral indignation — is reminiscent of his previous runs (though, to the relief of many Democrats, he appeared to take a more aggressive posture against Abbott than he initially did Cruz). The former congressman from El Paso also finds himself, once again, compelled to persuade voters that…

The Atlantic: “In Moore v. Harper, the Court will finally resolve whether there is a doctrine of constitutional interpretation known as the “independent state legislature.” If the Court concludes that there is such a doctrine, it would confer on state legislatures plenary, exclusive, and judicially unreviewable power both to redraw congressional districts for federal elections and to appoint…