As of this month, Roe v. Wade, making abortion a constitutional right, is 38 years old and still standing. No state may enact a criminal law protecting unborn children from death through abortion without having it swatted down by federal judges under the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 mandate. On the other hand, the idea and […]
Who will stop them? That is a question asked many times in history by defenders of religion, family, property, and tradition in the face of various fanatical revolutionaries. Despite the question, the guillotine kept snapping heads in 18th century France until the revolutionaries exhausted themselves, in part by killing each other off, leading to military […]
The first commercial cell phone was the Motorola DynaTAC8000x. Introduced in 1983, it had a retail price of $3,995. It was 10 inches high, not counting its rubber-duck antenna, and weighed almost two pounds. Today Radio Shack will sell you an LG 420G cell phone for $20. Probably more reliable than Motorola’s original, the 420G […]
Before the 1986 election, the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) was five members, all elected at large. Candidates were sometimes concentrated from affluent areas, and incumbents seeking re-election enjoyed the normal advantages. Nonetheless, this arrangement did allow voters to participate in selecting the entire Board or, as sometimes was the case, in “throwing the […]
“Pay no attention to what he says, rather watch what he does.” This guidance about President Barack Obama has been attributed to Washington Post columnist and Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer in a private speech he gave in June 2009 to the Center for the American Experiment. A detailed summary of the speech was distributed […]
It’s hard to imagine a better motto for any government, institution, or person than the one North Carolina has had since 1893: esse quam videri. From Cicero’s “On Friendship,” the phrase is translated from Latin as “to be rather than to seem.” How many elected officials in Raleigh and elsewhere live up to this standard […]
