Deregulator: Alive since '85!

If you accept the notion that money has too much influence in politics, consider GOP strategist Karl Rove, who had visions of creating a "permanent Republican majority." Turns out that the all-powerful Rove was incapable of buying a few Senate seats. The two independent political groups he spearheaded, American Crossroads and Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, spent somewhere between $176 million and $300 million backing Mitt Romney and a targeted group of Senate and House candidates. What did he and his donors get for their money? Not much. We know Romney lost. But so did 10 of the 12 Senate candidates and four of the nine House contenders the Rove groups backed. Bloomberg News reported . Which brings me to John Hood's column today reviewing (among other things) the tenor of the presidential campaign. It included this gem: Because the Republicans relied heavily on independent expenditures to make up for President Obama’s advantage in hard money, they we...

It seems like I come back here every six or seven months, whether or not I need to. Since my last post, we've lost a beloved family member, Mandy (who left us at about age 110), gained a beloved family member (Grover, who's a genuine hoot, sweetheart, and the king of the daily walks) and appear to be on the verge of losing another beloved family member (the wonderful Nano, who's about as broken-down as Mandy was when she passed on). We've also traveled and gardened and rearranged furniture and I've enjoyed covering an election cycle in a role much like that of the metro editor of a capital daily. ( Carolina Journal 's election coverage is here .) Which brings me to today's post. I'm still stunned about the outcome of the election, not because I thought Mitt Romney was destined for greatness, but because I spent too much time being absorbed with politics and not enough time enjoying life. I mistakenly thought that because North Caroli...

We're entering the third full year in our house, and we learn something new about gardening here every season. Last year we tried growing most of our vegetables in large containers and put up a Topsy Turvy tree. That didn't work well, requiring lots of water and producing very little we could eat. This time, we're going more traditional, planting in our 12-by-12 and 3-by-3 raised beds (with a few exceptions). We're also using a modified version of square-foot gardening , a system Cara has used before with success. We started largely with a blank slate -- a few Columbines and two large chive plants, plus peas I planted a few weeks ago. Then, I used a garden fork to turn the soil. To set up a vertical space for the plants to grow, I stole an idea from one of our neighbors: install six-foot fenceposts and hang fencing on them. And after hanging the fencing, we put in a small drip irrigation hookup. Finally, we planted a dozen tomatoes, five peppers, four e...