Alarmed by November election results, four New Jersey Democratic women are now challenging Republican incumbents for a spot in the state’s congressional delegation

“At the end of the day, we’re all just walking each other home.”  Anne Lamott, one of my favorite writers, first introduced me to this quote, taken from author Ram Dass, and I’ve been thinking a lot about it these past several days in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.

Walter McMillian had already been sitting on death row for more than a year when Bryan Stevenson walked into his life. He’d landed there even before he was tried, convicted and sentenced to death for the 1986 murder of an 18-year-old white woman in Monroeville, Alabama.

The party of less government rolled into Raleigh after the 2010 elections champing at the bit, eager to fulfill an agenda long delayed. “Regulations kill jobs” became the rallying cry, but as it turned out, that cry only went so far. When it came to voting booths, bedrooms, doctor’s offices and execution chambers, the self-styled opponents of intrusive government injected themselves in ways not seen before in state government.

Conservative justices hold a 4-3 majority on the ostensibly nonpartisan state Supreme Court and, as party operatives understand well, maintaining that edge has been critical to ensuring Republican control elsewhere throughout the state. “Lose the courts, lose the war.” Political consultant John Davis labeled this “Rule Number Five” in his 2013 report, “How the North Carolina Republican Party Can Maintain Political Power for 114 Years.”