180 Comments

Right you are -- will add a correction that the lege is considering court packing in the special session.

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Is the 2R-to-1D makeup of the election boards specified by state law? Or is it one of those administrative regs implemented by whichever party happens to control the office?

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"Even better, the state law allows no judicial review."

I'd like to think that is illegal - as in Unconstitutional.

On the other hand, North Carolina is the state that addressed the very serious issue of climate change and rising ocean levels by making it illegal to talk about.

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i remember when he played for the Golden State Warriors! What a rebounding demon! Coach Don Nelson let him go when he was averaging over 20 rebounds a game. There wasn't another player on the team averaging even 10.

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First reports said shooter. It was later corrected. I accept the correction.

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A Macedonian teenager you are not.

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Yet another dream squelched.

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Speaking as a rural progressive in a large, low-population agricultural county that went progressive in pretty much all the races where we weren't gerrymandered by the neighboring (sometimes more urban, often more conservative) areas, in NC, I'd like to suggest that that's possibly a bit too simplistic. Races here ran from 52-46 dem to 53-43 dem, for statewide and national and county-internal races (we got pasted on the congressional race, though, and the data shows total district, not just the county; figure our part of the district voted about the same way, though).

I'll grant that it's largely true that rural areas and small towns (if they're also majority white) tend to go conservative. It's not always true, though. that matters because it speaks to strategy (it's not worth abandoning us; we're useful).

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a) I've seen these legislative calls up close and personal. since they actually have to work with each other, they're not wild about tossing out votes. when my state rep, Donna Howard, won by 16 votes on E-Day, it ended up going to the lege after 2 recounts reduced her lead to 12 and then 8. the lege ended up tossing out only 4 more votes and then redistricting happened so her seat is fairly safe at the moment. (fun fact: when a county has multiple state house/assembly seats contained within its boundaries, they usually let the currently elected ones draw the lines. not the most fun thing on the planet to know about people you like, but it's a thing.) throwing out nearly 8 thousand votes? I think the lege would find that a bit hard to swallow.

b) usually if a state elects its judges, an appointment to a vacant seat only lasts until the next general election. (it happens all the time at the district level because they create new judicial seats every session or so to maintain certain court to population ratios with population growth.) do they think their chances of retaining those two seats are so good in 2018 that they can get away with it?

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I need to take a break. I read that as lynch counter and thought, "Ha! Good one."

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Gov. Pat McCrory is the one with the bracing grimace for a smile. Have you ever seen some whose smile shouted, I'm straining on the pot, louder than McCrory's does? How did people vote for that face, er, personality?

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Which is the same thing he did in Atlantic City where he had two small or moderate, but profitable casinos, so he built a ginormous mega casino which sucked all the money out of the profitable ones but wasn't enough to turn a profit there and so promptly went broke. Some business genius.

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The Republicans have never forgiven the Dems for Watergate that is for investigating Watergate. In their view the investigation was the problem, not the break in, paranoia, or cover up.

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Republican's are turning out tobe worse than Ebola, H1N1 and all the Herpes combined.

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No, there isn't and the sooner Progressives figure that out and fight for power, the better.

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Anatomically & theologically impossible 😥😥😥

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