Free Republic

One of the underreported stories to come out of the California recall election was the fact that Gray Davis' signing of the illegal alien driver's license bill actually mobilized votes against him. A poll commissioned by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (search) and conducted by Luntz Research showed that nearly one-third of those who voted in last Tuesday’s recall said they were influenced to vote for Gov. Gray Davis’ removal by his decision to grant driver’s licenses to illegal aliens (search). Thirty percent of voters said that Davis’ approval of the driver’s license bill influenced them to support his...

RALEIGH — Gov. Mike Easley and the state legislature have approved a revised budget for the current fiscal year that will likely result in hundreds of millions of dollars in new taxes on North Carolina businesses and families, further damaging an already weakened state economy, according to a preliminary analysis by the John Locke Foundation. John Hood, chairman and president of the Raleigh-based think tank, observed that the new budget directly raises the state tax burden by approximately $157 million, largely through changes in business taxes and the elimination of previously scheduled tax cuts that had been designed to help...