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Saturday, September 14, 2024

Twice this past summer, Donald Trump's golf club in Bedminster, N.J. has featured speeches from a rioter convicted of participating in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, who has a well-documented history of extreme antisemitic and racist rants. read more


Friday, September 13, 2024

Issac Bailey: The law is clear. It's up to the State Board of Elections to decide on late changes to the ballot. That's why I agree with Justice Allison Riggs in her dissent: "Today, any public aspersions cast on the impartiality, independence, and dignity of our state courts are well-earned." read more


An 11-year-old boy who alerted his principal after another student brought a bullet to class is in trouble at the school. read more


When free speech is treated as the highest good, it gives rise to shock-jock politics.


Wednesday, September 11, 2024

Before former President Donald Trump could appear in Tucson a second time, his campaign had to make a deposit of $145,222.70 upfront. The required deposit came about because Trump failed to pay an $81,837 bill from a campaign event he held at the Tucson Convention Center in 2016. read more


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More: The law is clear. It's up to the State Board of Elections to decide on late changes to the ballot. That's why I agree with Justice Allison Riggs in her dissent: "Today, any public aspersions cast on the impartiality, independence, and dignity of our state courts are well-earned."

By removing Kennedy's name at this late hour, Republicans hope potential Kennedy voters will become Trump voters. The Republicans on the court cared not one iota it would create so much uncertainty 130,000 North Carolinians who requested mail-in ballots don't know when they'll be able to vote, county state officials are scrambling to beat a federal deadline for sending out absentee ballots, and it will cost maybe a $1 million to sort the whole mess out. There were nearly 3 million ballots " with a combined 2,348 styles " printed before court intervention. They are now null and void, must be scrapped for no good reason.

There is no sugarcoating this. At least some NC Supreme Court should justices are purely political actors disguised in black robes.

Four years ago, President Joe Biden lost to Trump by less than 2 percentage points in North Carolina. Since then, the U.S. Supreme Court uprooted the half-century long precedent that was Roe v. Wade, and the GOP nominated extremist N.C. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson as its standard bearer. The Roe decision has been a potent get-out-the-vote engine for Democrats across the country, while the Robinson pick has made the state GOP a laughingstock. Did the party really have to nominate someone who dabbles in anti-blackness, antisemitism, and is a hypocrite abortion, among many other unsavory things?

According to the latest WRAL poll, voters have noticed those Republican choices. Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, has a 14-point lead over Robinson. Stein has been boosted not just by a Democratic base that's been energized since Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, but also by conservatives who still believe in democracy and are willing to extremism even if it's found on own their side of the aisle.

The GOP had already gerrymandered its way to a supermajority in Raleigh, even though North Carolina has more registered Democrats than Republicans. This time, though, they won't be able to hide the damage their power grab has left in its wake. Voters will notice, because voters of all backgrounds and ideologies are being directly affected.

In November, that diverse mix of voters can tell the GOP, in no uncertain terms, the foolishness has to end.

More: Foremost among these is the fetish for free speech as the sole end of political life. Loath to actually govern, lest it encroach on donor-class prerogatives, the institutional right has long substituted procedural claims " why can't I ask questions! " for substantive ones about the good life. Free speech and inquiry are valuable. But treated as the highest good, these ideals give rise to a pure shock-jock politics.

Second, and there is no delicate way to put this, the right suffers from a talent shortage. For all the rhetoric about free inquiry, the same donor class severely disciplines the mainstream right's media and academic operators. To go beyond certain hawkish, free-market lines is verboten.

This leaves conservative institutions dominated by doctrinaire hacks who can churn predictable opinion pieces, but can't report or write at anywhere close to the level expected of left-of-centre counterparts. There are many applicants to be the next Fox or Newsmax loudmouth, but few young rightists aspire to the excellence and enterprise daily showcased by the New York Times or the New York Review (for all their shortcomings). Being a successful loudmouth is much easier: all you need is to bellow about how "they" want us to eat bugs and take poison vaccines.

The third and final cause is what might be called the young right's epistemic snap. Thoroughly alienated from the American mainstream, they feel compelled to believe that everything they've been taught is a big lie " even the relative decency of the Allied effort against the Nazis.

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