Search query: new jersey

President Obama signs healthcare reform in 2010 // Credit: Reid.senate.gov Can a state unilaterally suspend the operation of ObamaCare within its borders? Of course not. That measure would violate the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. We fought a Civil War over that question. What if two states banded together to suspend the operation of ObamaCare within their common territory? Can they do that? The answer remains the same. No. But let's try this. Let's have those two states - and others

In 2012, states with higher taxpayer burdens had a lower recovery in home prices. The American dream is to own a home, and it’s every American’s dream that the price of his/her home rises continually. Of course, there are many reasons for a change in the price of any single house—the local housing market, a neighborhood renovation, the construction of a nuclear power plant—but there are also broad statewide trends, which leads to an important question: Can political decisions influence the pri

Credit: Wikimedia Commons The United States Supreme Court is expected to rule on the Defense of Marriage Act (Windsor v. United States) and California's Proposition 8 (Hollingsworth v. Perry) in the next few days. There is a good possibility the decision on these two cases will be reserved for last. The Washington Post offers an easy to follow graphic on the potential rulings and what the implications would be for each decision. It also provides status for marriage rights in each state. Check

An IVN article revealed the top five states with the highest number of registered independent voters. Surprisingly, a majority of these states still have primary elections that disenfranchise this growing segment of the population. Massachusetts, Alaska, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Connecticut lead the nation with the highest percentages of independent or no party preference voters, hovering between 43 and 52 percent. However, despite the fact that in each of these states independents are mor

Friday, June 14th 2013 was flag day, a day which tends to go uncelebrated, and about which most people know very little. This post will be a brief detour from my continuing series on the different facets of the Kiera Wilmot Bottle Bomb story. It looks long, and it is, but most of it is pictures.  As you look through the various images included here, I hope you will contrast the actual origins of the U.S. flag, as it was originally adopted by the Founding Fathers, and contrast that with the nic

Out of the 28 states that record party affiliation upon registering to vote, Massachusetts, Alaska, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Connecticut have the highest percentage of independent or no party preference voters in the country. Unaffiliated voters in Massachusetts and Alaska are the majority with about 53 percent of voters in both states declining to register with a party. At the top of the list is Massachusetts with 53 percent of registered voters declining to state a party preference. Out

Eugene Parciasepe / Shutterstock.com Newark Mayor Cory Booker self-identifies as an “independent Democrat.” When he declared his official entry into New Jersey’s special election to fill Frank Lautenberg’s vacant Senate seat on Saturday, he explained that if elected, he would seek to “bring people together…actually get into the complicated difficult messy arena and take on the difficult challenges, work in uncommon ways with conviction and courage.” While this language is aimed at the entire s

Governor Chris Christie announced that New Jersey will hold special elections in October to fill the seat left vacant after the death of Senator Frank Lautenberg. The cost of this decision has already become controversial, including the $12 million spent on a partisan primary, nobody will vote in. To fill the vacancy, two solutions exist: nominate someone to fill in until the normally scheduled 2014 elections or organize a special election. Governor Christie chose the latter. This choice and it

On February 14, 2013, the 89-year-old senator from New Jersey, Frank Lautenberg, announced he would not run for reelection in 2014. Although the move had been long suspected from the man who was already the oldest serving senator, the announcement set into a motion a long race to replace him among Republicans, independents, and Democrats. However, when Lautenberg died earlier this week from complications with viral pneumonia, what had seemed like a marathon quickly became a sprint. Leading this

In modern American politics, the word “socialist” has lost a great deal of its true meaning, robbed of its shock value by frequent overuse and naïve misapplication. Many a conservative pundit has warned President Obama and the national Democratic leadership seek to steer the United States towards a socialistic, or even worse, Marxist state, far from anything the Founders envisioned when they penned the Constitution. Rightwing shock jocks, still waging the early 1990s “culture wars,” have railed