john locke foundation

John Hood addresses the recent controversy over racist homophobic Obama image:

I was horrified, outraged, and very sorry that I hadn’t seen it much earlier. The image was immediately taken down, but the damage was done. Whatever Tara’s intentions may have been, we simply don’t publish or condone that kind of thing.

I usually don't post direct links to JLF/Civitas articles, and if the author would like this removed from BlueNC, I will gladly comply. But I asked John (on another forum) to publish this on his main page, and I meant what I said about people needing to see this. But what I didn't expect (and am doubly pleased to see) was his stance on Amendment One:

From North Carolina's leading conservative intellectual

I think amending North Carolina’s constitution to forbid gay and lesbian couples from receiving any future legal recognition, including civil unions, is unwise and unfair. In my opinion the real threat to marriage is not the prospect of gay people getting hitched. It is the reality of straight people too quickly resorting to divorce, or never getting hitched in the first place.

It's time to put the weight of your leadership, and Art Pope's money, behind those words, Mr. Hood. BlueNC extremists like me have contributed many thousands of dollars to help stop Amendment One. We'd welcome your contributions too.

Lost in the midst of today's tempest in the John Locke Foundation teacup is a big question that has gone unanswered: Why aren't John Hood and his minions pulling out the stops to defeat Amendment One?

It's easy enough to evoke righteous indignation about something as offensive as the despicable Meck Deck post, but what about the underlying issue? In his criticism of Amendment One, President Obama took a stand that every freedom-loving American - and certainly any Libertarian - should take as a matter of principle. Amendment One is not only bad law and bad public policy, it also cuts to the heart of a cherished document that is supposed to protect individual liberties, not take them away.

The so-called Libertarians at the John Locke Foundation should be singing Mr. Obama's praises.

More to the point, why isn't John Hood using the power of his pulpit to spread the word that Amendment One should be defeated? He has unfettered access to the editorial pages of newspapers all across the state. Why isn't he using that access to encourage people to vote AGAINST Amendment One? I suspect that only two people have an answer to this question: Art Pope, and John Hood himself. And neither of them is lifting a finger to fight the wrong being perpetrated on North Carolina families.

Just to say it John, this is the stuff of deathbed drama. One of these days you'll be there. One of these days you may have to tell a gay grand child that you did nothing to stop your Republican allies from trampling over her right to create her own loving family.

“We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”

It is often said that one can judge the strength of a person's character by observing their behavior in the face of a moral dilemma. If that is indeed the case, the silence by Art Pope's minions at the John Locke Foundation says all we need to know about their political perversion. Kudos to Rob Schofield for calling them out.

In the final analysis, this kind of hypocrisy has emerged as the defining quality of the free-market right in North Carolina. Cowards one and all.

Today's Meck Deck blog, a division of the Art Pope Puppetshow, has a particularly good example of the use of circular logic. In a post titled "Smaller State Budget Means More Jobs", Jeff Taylor states

... to defenders of the status quo, who insist if you cut North Carolina’s taxes and shrink the state budget you are somehow impoverishing the state — and wiping out jobs. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Business as usual at the Show.

Too bad they couldn't get Sarah Palin. At least then Puppet General Ta-ta would have been happy.

Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, will be the featured speaker at the John Locke Foundation's 21st anniversary dinner in February. Cheney, 44, is a former State Department official in the Bush administration, who has become a frequent Fox News commentator, often discussing Middle Eastern policy.

A whole room full of experts! Very funny.

There's broad agreement among scientists nowadays that global warming is real and caused in large part by human activities like burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests.

For example, a survey by university researchers published last year in EOS, the journal of the American Geophysical Union, found that 90 percent of earth scientists agree that mean global temperatures have generally risen since the 1800s, and 82 percent think human activity contributes significantly. As respondents' level of specialization in climate science increased, so did their confidence in human-caused global warming, with climatologists who actively work on climate change agreeing most strongly. That broad agreement is why prestigious scientific organizations including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Meteorological Society and the National Academy of Sciences all refer to a climate science "consensus."