Free Republic

Another underreported fact from Tuesday's election is the extraordinary night Republicans had in winning state legislative seats. The GOP now controls two thirds of state legislative houses – 66 of 99 (Nebraska's legislature is unicameral).  They upped the number of states where they control both house and senate to 24 – one more than they had before the election.  And according to this article in Vox, they cut the number of Democratic-held legislatures from 14 to 7. Republicans made historic gains in state legislatures in 2010. They held on in many states in 2012, or made up for losses...

This could be the nicest thing you read today, via the Wall Street Journal: A West Virginia University freshman who did most of her campaigning out of her dorm room became the youngest state lawmaker in the nation Tuesday. Republican Saira Blair, a fiscally conservative 18-year-old, will represent a small district in West Virginia’s eastern panhandle, about 1½ hours outside Washington, D.C., after defeating her Democratic opponent 63% to 30%, according to the Associated Press. A third candidate got 7% of the vote. In a statement, Ms. Blair thanked her supporters and family, as well as her opponents for running...

In the following post, I am going to go through what happened last night for those finding it hard to follow, perhaps because they don't know who is who etc. I will go systematically through the highlights and lowlights of the governor's races, US Senate races, US House races, and state legislature makeup, picking out the ones I was watching out for in particular. I will then state the big winners and losers of the night in general Finally, my opinion on where we should go next, how to improve on successes and not repeat failures. Without further ado, and...

Map of Flyover Country

MSM reports of individual States protocol and subsequent monitoring of travelers from West Africa for Ebola ALABAMA MontgomeryAdvertiser: Alabama monitors 3 from Ebola outbreak areas October 30, 2014 Alabamas13: Gov. Bentley and State Health Officer address Alabama’s Ebola plan ALASKA BuffaloNews: A look at Ebola guidelines in some states October 31, 2014 State health officials in Alaska are finishing a plan that will outline the steps for when to put someone in quarantine or how to manage a patient who is off Alaska's limited road system, said Dr. Joe McLaughlin, the state's chief epidemiologist. Anyone who traveled to the hardest...

RUSH: Okay. So let me see if I understand this. The states want to set up their own Ebola quarantines. Why would they want to do that? That's because they don't trust the federal government's quarantine protocols, right? That means they don't trust the CDC. That means they don't trust Obama, the Ebola czar, who has yet to make an appearance. They had a 27-member meeting, though, they had an Ebola meeting with 27 people, problem solved. So one week before the election we have here a bunch of states that are deciding to do their own quarantines, and the...

The White House pushed back against the governors of New York, New Jersey, Illinois and other states that instituted procedures to forcibly quarantine medical workers returning from West Africa, deepening an emotional debate brought on by recent Ebola cases in the U.S. [snip] It wasn’t clear what action the (Obama) administration could take to end the quarantines. New York Gov. (Andrew Cuomo) on Sunday night gave the first new details about how his state’s quarantine would work, ( noting that individuals would be allowed to stay in their homes for 21 days).

(CNSNews.com) – Individuals from West African nations who travel to airports in six U.S. states will be tracked for 21 days for signs of Ebola, but it will be up to individual states to decide what to do if these travelers fail to self-report, the White House said Wednesday. White House spokesman Josh Earnest called it “an additional layer that will be based upon an effort to share information with state and local health authorities so they can put in place the measures that they believe would be most effective in protecting the populations of their states.” Screening has already...

t’s a movement that’s been building in recent years: efforts by states to reclaim their constitutional authority by declaring Washington’s health care laws, gun control or other restrictions simply don’t apply within their boundaries. After all, the Constitution stipulates that, except for a couple of dozen specific issues such as national defense, the powers in the U.S. rest with the states. Now a new lawsuit contends states can regain their authority by returning to the practice of having state legislatures elect U.S. senators, as the Constitution originally required. The case is being brought by author, columnist, commentator and activist Devvy...

Last night I attended the premiere of this movie, which is a riveting documentary on the conditions at the border. It contains interviews with the agents, ranchers and citizens explaining the dangers that continue to head north to the heartland. It shows the violence, the tragedy and the lawlessness that results from our government's indifference to the needed border security Despite all I thought I knew, this movie is an eye-opener. The full movie is available for viewing at the home link. It is fully sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots. You don't have to pay a penny. Bump this...

According to National Nurses United, 76 percent of nurses surveyed say their hospital has not communicated to them any policy regarding potential admission of Ebola patients, 85 percent say their hospital has not provided education sessions where nurses can ask questions, and just over one-third say their hospital has insufficient supplies of face shields and impermeable gowns.

Amazon.com today begins collecting sales tax from purchasers in Minnesota and Maryland, marking the 22nd and 23rd states where the online retailer assesses the levy. With the new states, about 69% of Americans—nearly 219 million people—will be subject to tax on their Amazon purchases. That's a big switch from a few years ago, when Amazon fought to protect customers from sales tax, viewing it as a competitive advantage over brick-and-mortar rivals. Now, Amazon perceives itself as disadvantaged versus online rivals such as eBay and Overstock. That's because a 1992 Supreme Court ruling allows states to apply sales tax to any...

America’s high business taxes are discouraging investment and prompting companies to move their headquarters abroad. Most policymakers say they favor cutting the corporate-tax rate to help fix the problem, but reforms are stuck in Washington gridlock. Thank goodness for the states. Many governors are championing fiscal reforms, and business tax cuts are one area of progress. We document these reforms in Cato’s new “fiscal report card,” which assigns grades of “A” to “F” to the governors based on their efforts to restrain government since 2012. This year we awarded “A” grades to four governors: Pat McCrory of North Carolina signed...

We managed to repeal the 18th Amendment, which created Prohibition. It is time to repeal the 17th. What? You have no idea what the 17th Amendment is? Well, it is the one that effectively ended federalism by taking the power to appoint U.S. senators from state legislatures and having the citizens directly elect them, as they had always done with the House of Representatives. We may not get better senators, but it is likely they would not try dictating to the states what they should do — as they did when they set the national speed limit at 55 mph...

On Thursday evening, what was touted as a nail-biter of a vote in Scotland which would determine if the country would break away from the United Kingdom turned out to not even be close. By a vote of 55 to 45 percent, Scotland decided that it would remain a member of the union of which it has been a part since 1707. Americans were… unimpressed. First, the lack of exit polling and the methodical counting of votes ensured that those watching the coverage of the independence ballot had to wait until the late hours of the evening to get...

The U.S. economy is in pretty good shape. GDP is growing, unemployment is falling, and we're seeing signs that wages may be on the rise. However, the U.S. economic story is actually just an aggregation of 50 economic stories. Previously, Business Insider examined ranked every state by how quickly the economies were growing. This time around, we calculated which states had the best economies outright. We ranked each state on seven economic measures: the July unemployment rate; the change in nonfarm payroll jobs from June to July 2014; the 2013 GDP per capita; the 2012 per capita consumption; the 2013...

The Deloitte University Press has a very interesting, and comprehensive study on job gains and losses, by type of job, and state by state. The biggest winners are states involved in energy production, finance, or healthcare. The biggest losers are states that did not recover from the real estate bust, or lost population due to emigration. With that overview, let's dive deeper into the Geography of Jobs. Only now, as we reach the fifth anniversary of the end of the recession, has employment in the United States finally regained its pre-recession peak. The national story of slow recovery obscures the...

While the labor market has improved significantly since the depths of the recession in 2009, high underemployment may be an indication that the economy is still struggling. As of the first quarter of 2014, 13.4% of the nationÂ’s labor force was considered underemployed, meaning they were unemployed, were working only part-time despite wanting full-time jobs or would like a job but had given up on actively looking. The underemployment rate has dropped from its peak of 16.7% in 2010, which indicates that the labor market has improved. However, underemployment is still well above its pre-recession levels. Based on underemployment data...

Twelve states filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration on Friday seeking to block an Environmental Protection Agency proposal to regulate coal-fired power plants in an effort to stem climate change. The plaintiffs are led by West Virginia and include states that are home to some of the largest producers of coal and consumers of coal-fired electricity. The suit was filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The other plaintiffs are Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming. The E.P.A. rule, announced by President Obama on June...