Free Republic

GULFPORT — First it was Congress and next it will be the state Legislature, Brad White, chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party, said Wednesday after Tuesday’s GOP sweep in midterm U.S. House races. “We’ve been working hard on candidate recruitment for state legislative races next year,” White said. “Politics is a team sport, and what team you’re on matters. That’s my intention — to take over the Legislature.” Though Mississippi, like most of the Deep South, has become firmly a “red state” in presidential elections and Republicans now hold a majority of statewide and congressional offices, its Democratic roots still...

So much of the national media's attention is focused Wednesday, shockingly, on Washington, where they live and work and where Republicans captured a half-dozen new Senate seats and five dozen new House seats. But out where most regular Americans live and work, voters also made historic changes -- to the long-lasting benefit of Republicans. This is especially important in years ending in '00 because these newly elected governors and state legislators will (with the exception of California) be the ones redrawing legislative and congressional district lines that will stand for the next decade until the 2020 census. And occupying the...

Republicans are on their way to controlling nearly 300 seats in New Hampshire's House of Representatives, according to preliminary vote counts. The latest tally shows 296 seats firmly in Republican hands, with three seats yet to be decided. GOP sources say two of those will likely go their way and leave Democrats with 102 seats. In the Senate, the final split is 19-5, according to figures at the Secretary of State's office. That represents a pickup of nine seats for the Republicans, who were the minority in a 14-10 Senate for the past four years. [SNIP] Secretary of State William...

Local TV station calling it for Paul Lepage

Georgia Republicans on Tuesday finished the job they started in 2002: consolidating control of state government by sweeping every major statewide office. For the first time since Reconstruction the state is poised to have no statewide-elected Democrats. The huge night for state Republicans follows a GOP wave that swept across the country and tilted the U.S. House of Representatives into GOP control and left Democrats with a narrow margin in the U.S. Senate. With most of the votes in Georgia counted Tuesday night, the Republicans held leads in races for U.S. senator, governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, insurance commissioner, secretary...

...What reapportionment says about the future is perhaps less interesting than what it says about the present. Red states are gaining population relative to blue states because of the divergence in policy. Jobs, and thus people, flock to red states because they are generally easier places to do business. If the states are, as Justice Brandeis posited, laboratories of democracy, then places such as New York, which will have lost sixteen electoral votes since 1960, and Massachusetts, which will have gone from fourteen to nine seats in those five decades, must be considered failed experiments....

Most Livable State in the U.S.A. Is... ...New Hampshire. This is the fifth consecutive year the Granite State has topped this list published by CQ Press. New Hampshire ranks No. 1 because it excels in numerous important quality-of-life measures, including low crime, low poverty, high income levels and a well-educated population. Coming in right behind New Hampshire are Utah, Wyoming, Minnesota and Iowa. The least livable state is Mississippi, a position it has held on this CQ Press list for nine of the last 10 years. Close behind Mississippi are South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas. The most livable states:...

On a sunny morning, 70 middle school students hop off the school bus and cram themselves into a classroom originally meant to seat 20 kids. Taking notes while trying to avoid your neighbors' elbows is hard, but the hardships these students face are nothing compared to the ones challenging the thousands of state workers recently laid off.If you're a resident of one of the most troubled states in America, here's a glimpse of what's to come: higher taxes, layoffs of state workers, longer waits for public services, more crowded classrooms, shorter school years, higher college tuition and less support...

Young parents Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston may have gotten engaged again recently, but they are still a quintessential "red" family trying to swim against the tide of family change, say two family law professors who have launched a debate about "red" and "blue" American families. The 2004 and 2008 elections showed a divided America — and that division extends even to families, Naomi Cahn and June Carbone write in their book, "Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture." In blue states, families tend to be well-educated, have high-paying jobs, be tolerant of diversity and...

(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama’s job approval rating is lowest in Wyoming and Utah, according to the Gallup polling company, which tracked the numbers for all 50 states and the District of Columbia from January through June 2010. The poll of more than 90,000 adults nationwide showed that in Wyoming, for example, only 29 percent of the people there approved of the job the president was doing. That was the lowest approval rating in the states and D.C.

“So many and so various laws are giv’n; So many laws argue so many sins.” –Paradise Lost, John Milton, 1667 In the epic poem Paradise Lost, Adam and Eve have taken the forbidden fruit and God is asking Adam why. As in Genesis, Adam is passing the buck, telling God that this woman whom He made gave him the fruit. Adam asks God how such evil could have ever been expected from one so lovely. God tells Adam that the mistake is Adam’s not Eve’s; that Adam was to look out for Eve. God points out that just before Eve...

The Southern Republican Leadership Conference wrapped up on Saturday afternoon after three days of speeches dripping with red-meat criticisms of Democrats and President Obama. This is par for the course for any party gathering, especially one where the party holding the shindig is on the outs. But there was also something most unusual about the conference: an uncommon amount of talk and discussion of the United States Constitution. Ordinary people from all walks of life, not a constitutional scholar or lawyer among them, are actually trying to come to grips with the fundamental meaning and purpose of our founding document....

Ten years ago I asked the following question in a column titled "It's Time To Part Company": "If one group of people prefers government control and management of people's lives and another prefers liberty and a desire to be left alone, should they be required to fight, antagonize one another, risk bloodshed and loss of life in order to impose their preferences or should they be able to peaceably part company and go their separate ways?" The problem that our nation faces is very much like a marriage where one partner has broken, and has no intention of keeping, the...

The latest proof that President Barack Obama is ignoring the half of the country that dares to disagree with him and his policies is a recent analysis of more than 500 addresses, speeches, and remarks he has given. Evidently Mr. Obama chose to speak publicly in states he carried in the 2008 election almost 10 times more often than in those states carried by John McCain. (source) Here's the breakdown:

PRINCETON, N.J., Feb. 1 (UPI) -- Two New England states were the most Democratic U.S. states in 2009 and two Mountain states were the most Republican, a poll indicates. Rhode Island and Massachusetts, along with the District of Columbia, were the bluest, while results, based on aggregated data from the Gallup Poll Daily tracking in 2009, painted Utah and Wyoming the reddest, the Princeton, N.J., polling agency said Monday.

Major news sources like to monitor migration trends among states. The Census Bureau has been watching these trends also and what you find "between the lines," is really quite interesting. The fastest growing states for population are (in order) Wyoming, Utah, Texas, Colorado, Alaska, Arizona, Washington, North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina. There are several unique characteristics about these population shifts:

Statistical correlations chart: Comparison of various ideological and societal aspects and their possible relations to each other. Red states versus blue; Protestant and Catholics; rich versus poor, etc.

With the Census Bureau's release today of its annual population estimates for the 50 states, the final projections of next year's decennial census reveal further details of the likely winners and losers. Here are some highlights based on the analysis by Polidata, a demographic and political research firm. • Of the 11 House seats that would switch among the states as a result of the projections, Texas would gain four. The remaining seats would be distributed one each to seven states -- four in the West (Arizona, Nevada, Utah and Washington) and three in the South (Florida, Georgia and...

Oklahoma has the unwanted distinction of having the largest revenue shortfall of any state, according to a new report. That reality is illustrated by the state's revenue collections, which are down by more than 25 percent from a year ago. The state last week ordered yet another round of cuts, this time instructing agencies to cut 10 percent from their budgets. A November state budget report by the National Conference of State Legislatures says Oklahoma's 18.5 percent shortfall for the current fiscal year edges out Arizona's 18 percent, with Illinois in third at 16.5 percent. State agencies appeared to be...

The South has risen again, at least in terms of belief in God. Mississippi is the America's most religious state, according to a Pew Forum study on the levels of devotion in America, which asked respondents whether religion is important in their lives. Eighty-two percent of Mississipians said yes. "That is not too surprising," said William F. Lawhead, chairman of the religion and philosophy department at the University of Mississippi. "This is the Bible Belt. We are primarily made up of small towns - not many urban areas like Dallas and so on, where there's a lot of people coming...