TX Observer: “In November 2012, Austin voters were asked to approve a proposition that promised to expand health care for the poor. They approved a ballot measure creating a pool of $35 million in tax money each year for the nonprofit Central Health, an agency charged by the state with funding indigent health care and…

North State Journal: “States and the federal government carried out 11 executions this year, the fewest since 1988, as support for the death penalty has continued to decline.  That’s according to an annual report on the death penalty released in mid-December. Three of the death sentences were carried out in January days before President Donald…

NC Policy Watch: “Rev. William Barber has tested positive for COVID-19. Barber, the former president of the North Carolina NAACP and current president of Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, announced his diagnosis in a statement early Thursday in which he praised vaccines and boosters and encouraged people to get them to…

TX Observer: “O’Rourke, who rose to fame with a near-successful bid to topple Senator Ted Cruz four years ago, looks headed for another defeat. Polls show him trailing by as much as 15 points against Texas’ Republican incumbent Governor Greg Abbott, who thrashed his two prior Democratic opponents and sits on a $55 million warchest. Unlike in…

AR Times: “A report from the Department of Finance and Administration on medical marijuana sales in the state in 2021: The state’s 37 dispensaries sold a total of 40,347 pounds of medical marijuana in 2021. Patients spent $264.9 million to obtain those 40,347 pounds. The Releaf Center (Bentonville) was the top selling dispensary for the year at…

WaPo: “Lower vaccination rates and fewer mask and vaccine mandates have created a much different environment for the omicron variant to spread in the South, leaving experts unsure whether outbreaks will end up deadlier than in the North. Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi are among the states experiencing the sharpest increases in covid-19 hospitalizations since…

WaPo: “The decades-long incumbent-protection scheme known as redistricting is finished in Virginia, at least for now. Good riddance. Its death sentence was pronounced by the state’s Supreme Court, which last week approved new voting maps for Congress and the state legislature with little regard to safeguarding existing seats for politicians who, in many cases, have held them…

WaPo: “Caught in a racial uproar, people make all sorts of promises to make amends. Whatever they do tends to be heavy on symbolism and light on lasting change. The cycle is so predictable that even the most generous of souls grows weary of this performative reconciliation, which becomes more about making a problem go…

WaPo: “At the height of the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, veteran journalist Ted Koppel was working out on the treadmill when he came across an episode of “The Andy Griffith Show” — it caught his attention because of something he heard earlier that day while listening to WMAL, a Virginia-based conservative talk radio station. A listener had called…

Political Wire: “Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said that a Republican-led House after the 2022 elections likely will consider impeaching President Biden on “multiple grounds,” the Washington Times reports. Said Cruz: “The Democrats weaponized impeachment. They used it for partisan purposes to go after Trump because they disagreed with him. One of the real disadvantages of doing that…