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John Hood, president of the conservative John Locke Foundation, says its a myth that there are two Pat McCrory's - a moderate Pat and a conservative Pat. This is what he wrote on his column, Daily Journal.

"With Pat McCrory not yet inaugurated as the next governor of North Carolina, there is already a conventional wisdom about his administration – that he will have to choose “which Pat” will move into the governor’s mansion.

Will it be the former mayor of Charlotte, ask the pundits, who governed as a moderate booster of mass transit and urban development? Or will it be the conservative candidate of 2012, who moved to the Right to capture the Republican nomination and build relations with the conservatives who now run the General Assembly?

Is Mitt Romney staging a comeback with his debate performance last night? Did Walter Dalton draw any blood in his debate? What are the prospects in the 7^th district race between Mike McIntyre and David Rouzer? Will Debra Goldman be the next state auditor?

Those questions and more will be discussed tonight in a free panel discussion -- “North Carolina: Battleground State” at the N.C. Museum of History at 7 p.m.

John Hood of the Locke Foundation writes that the legislature's rewrite of the the Racial Justice Act was a major blow to death penalty opponents. “The Racial Justice Act was just the latest in a series of initiatives used by death-penalty foes to maintain a de facto moratorium on executions in North Carolina, as nearly every death row inmate had filed RJA claims to convert their sentences to life in prison,” Hood writes in his weekly column for the Locke Foundation.

“The newly rewritten RJA, however, is no longer so easy to abuse,'' he writes. “Rather than use old or irrelevant data to assert racial bias in sentencing, murderers on death row now have to cite recent statistics from the counties or prosecutorial districts where their sentences were imposed as well as other evidence directly related to the handling of their cases.' For more read here.

The News & Observer asked four area political pundits -- John Hood, Tom Jensen, Gary Pearce and Carter Wrenn -- to share their reaction about Monday night’s gubernatorial debate. Here are their thoughts:

Tom Jensen, director Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-leaning polling firm based in Raleigh: “Most Democratic voters are undecided in the race for Governor and I don’t think this debate did anything to change that. The frontrunners, Dalton and Etheridge, did little to distinguish themselves from each other. Faison was entertaining but is ultimately irrelevant.”

Gary Pearce, veteran Democratic strategist in Raleigh who blogs at Talking About Politics: “Etheridge won: smiling, at ease and physically dominating the stage. Dalton was too tightly wound; Faison, too combative. No disasters and no knockouts. With minor differences on policy, personality trumps.”

John Hood, the president of the conservative John Locke Foundation, has weighed in against the constitutional amendment banning same sex marriages.

In a recent column, Hood writes that neither the Foundation or he personally get involved in social issues, focusing on fiscal and economic matters. But he decided to make an exception after a free lance contributor to the Locke Foundation's Charlotte blog used an offensive post involving President Obama attacking the president's stance against the amendment.

“As it happens,” Hood writes, “JLF(John Locke Foundation) staffers and contributors have a wide range of views on social issues, including the marriage amendment. Some support it, based on a heartfelt moral or religious convictions. Others oppose it, including me.

“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,” Hood writes. “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.''

Hood then goes on to say he believes it will pass and calls for a civil discourse on the issue.

The Locke Foundation is a Raleigh-based think tank started by Raleigh businessman Art Pope. It has long had small-government, libertarian leanings.
 

A bipartisan proposal to change how the state draws legislative and congressional districts, which is based on Iowa's redistricting process, will be considered in the House this year.

The proposal would have nonpartisan legislative staff draw districts that legislators would accept or reject.

The aim is to take partisan politics out of redistricting, cut down on lawsuits, save money, and work efficiently.

Iowa is close to approving its new maps. North Carolina has barely gotten started. The proposal is supported by a N.C. Coalition for Lobbying & Government Reform, a group of individuals and organizations representing a wide range of ideologies.

"John Hood is right on this," said Chris Fitzsimon, director of the left-leaning N.C. Policy Watch.

"Chris is wrong, but not on this," said Hood, president of the conservative John Locke Foundation. "Representative government is impossible if voters can't elect representatives of their choice," he said.

Legislators are deeply involve in drawing districts. Republicans this year say they are going to draw fair and legal districts, but redistricting is frequently an opportunity for the majority party to exercise its advantage.

Previous efforts to have a commission draw political lines have gone nowhere.

The Iowa way has legislative staff, who are not allowed to talk to legislators while they're drawing districts, do the plans.

Two Iowa House members appeared via Skype at a news conference today, saying the process has worked well.

Rep. David Lewis, a Harnett Republican and chairman of the House Elections Committee, said the committee would consider the bill.

"This is an excellent road map, an excellent first step," he said.

The N.C. Coastal Federation and the John Locke Foundation agree that the state should maintain its ban on seawalls.

Since the proposal to lift the ban is moving through the legislature, the groups say that local taxpayers should at least be able to vote on whether the walls meant to protect coastal inlets from erosion should be built.

Todd Miller of the coastal federation and John Hood of the John Locke Foundation today said that the state should require local governments hold referenda before they build terminal groins, as they're called.

The walls can cost as much as $10.8 million to build, and up to $2.2 million a year to maintain.

"The best way to protect local taxpayers is to maintain the current ban on terminal groins,” John Locke Foundation president John Hood said in a statement. “Short of that, local taxpayers should be allowed to vote on the issue before their community builds a terminal groin. Without a vote, taxpayers will have no voice and no choice but to pay a bill they don't want and can't afford for years to come."

LOOK WHO'S TALKING: Rielle Hunter broke her silence with an interview and photo spread in GQ magazine. If her goal was to get people talking about her, she succeeded with the come hither pose on her child's bed and subtle digs at Elizabeth Edwards and Andrew Young.

WHOLE TRUTH: Americans for Prosperity got dinged on an ad it's running in the state about health care reform. Two independent, nonpartisan factcheckers said the ad was completely false and was slinging misinformation about what the Democratic proposals would do. The libertarian group disputes those findings and the ad kept running.

CLOSING ARGUMENT: Gov. Bev Perdue and a group of top state education leaders were grilled by the federal panel that will decide how to dole out billions in federal education dollars.

IN OTHER NEWS: Cal Cunningham and Ken Lewis are gaining ground on Elaine Marshall in a new poll on the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan said it's time for a confirmation vote on two N.C. judges who were nominated to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. John Locke Foundation president John Hood got a shout-out on Rush Limbaugh's show.d

John Hood, president and chairman of the John Locke Foundation, got his named called on Rush Limbaugh's radio show Wednesday.

The foundation quickly took to promoting the column that Limbaugh cited. Hood wrote that he "will not comply" with a health care reform bill that is passed without a vote.

Some Democrats have hinted that they could use a parliamentary maneuver that Republicans say would allow the health care bill to pass without members actually voting on it directly.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not planning to recognize such a result as legally binding. I’m not going to pretend to obey any dictates from federal health-care bureaucrats that have never been authorized by a constitutional vote of both houses of Congress. I will not submit to any extra-constitutional order to dismantle the consumer-driven health plan I have set up for my employees.

I will not comply. If the government tries to make me comply, I’ll sue. And I’ll win.

This is not (yet) a banana republic where constitutions are seen as inconvenient impediments to the rule of the despot. This is not (yet) a European-style welfare state where some powerful parliament can exercise legislative, executive, and judicial power all in one stroke. This is a constitutional republic in which government power is divided, its exercise is strictly limited, and our rights are not some generous gift of those in power, to be withdrawn at their whim, but are instead a permanent check on their power.

In his show Thursday night, MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann named John Hood of the Raleigh-based John Locke Foundation, along with five other conservative commentators, as being his "Worst Persons in the World."

Hood was quoted as saying President Barack Obama appeared "flippant and arrogant" during Wednesday's State of the Union address, Michael Biesecker reports.

"When racist white guys get together and they don't want to use any of the popular epithets that are in use every day in this country about black people, ... when there's a risk in even saying 'uppity' or even 'forgetting his place,' the white guys resort to using euphemisms and code words," Olbermann said. "And among the code words they think they're getting away with are cocky, flippant, punk, and, especially, arrogant."

Hood responded Friday that Olbermann's ratings are so low that, statistically, it is highly unlikely he'll run into anyone who saw the segment.

"I think that people who, like Olbermann, are race obsessed, tend to assume that everyone else shares the same obsession," Hood said. "So they hear things that are not said and imagine meanings that are not intended."