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Democrats in North Carolina say they could have defeated a bill to repeal renewable energy subsidies on Wednesday if Republicans had not pushed it through committee without counting the votes.

The state Senate Finance Committee debated the bill to end the state's 6-year-old renewable energy program for over 40 minutes before Republican chairman Bill Rabon called for a motion.

"It's still a factor that renewable energy sources really don't provide a constant reliable source of electricity to be put into the grid and that means that we still have to have the baseload plant cost into delivering electricity so that anytime that switch is turned on, there has to be power there," bill supporter state Sen. Bob Rucho (R) argued. "So with that being said, I move for a favorable report."

As one lawmaker shouted out to have the votes counted by a show of hands, Republican chairman Bill Rabon called for the yeas and nays, decided that the motioned carried and then gaveled the hearing to a close.

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A Fox News guest on Thursday slammed President Barack Obama's transportation secretary nominee, connecting him to an 18th century scientific movement that embraced reason, which she said was partially to blame for the Holocaust.

Fox News host Steve Doocy asked Penny Nance, CEO of the Christian activist group Concerned Women for America, if she could make any sense out of why Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx would proclaim May 2 as both a "Day of Prayer" and a "Day of Reason."

"He comes from North Carolina, which has the 7th highest church attendance, clearly he's not running for re-election since he's up for transportation secretary," she opined. "You know, G. K. Chesterton said that the Doctrine of Original Sin is the only one which we have 3,000 years of empirical evidence to back up. Clearly, we need faith as a component and it's just silly for us to say otherwise."

"You know, the Age of Enlightenment and Reason gave way to moral relativism. And moral relativism is what led us all the way down the dark path to the Holocaust... Dark periods of history is what we arrive at when we leave God out of the equation."

Foxx, who attends Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Charlotte, first declared a Day of Reason in 2012 at the request of Charlotte Atheists & Agnostics.

"I would like to actually thank [Charlotte] Mayor Anthony Fox for proclaiming a Day of Reason at our request," Charlotte Atheists & Agnostics President Shawn Murphy told Raw Story in 2012. "So, we do have support locally. … We requested a proclamation from the mayor’s office to proclaim it a day of reason and he was kind enough to oblige."

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Republicans in the North Carolina state Senate on Monday pushed through bill that would strip public benefits like food stamps and job training for people who fail a drug test.

In 35-15 vote largely along party lines, senators passed SB 594. A single Democrat voted for the bill, and no Republicans voted against it.

The bill requires those applying for benefits to pay for their own drug tests. Applicants who test negative would be eligible to have the costs of their tests reimbursed. The policy could cost the state more than $2.1 million.

At the same time, senators rejected an amendment offered by Democratic state Sen. Gladys Robinson that would have drug tested lawmakers, the governor and cabinet secretaries.

"We receive state funds, we represent the law, we institute policy," Robinson told senators on Monday night. "So, it should not be above any of us to submit to drug screening."

Republican State Sen. Jim Davis said that he did not mind being tested, but insisted that he would vote against the amendment because it had no mechanism to provide him with a reimbursement for the $100 test.

Instead of voting on Robinson's amendment, state Senator Tom Apodaca (R) used a substitute amendment as a parliamentary maneuver to kill the the proposal.

"The substitute amendment is offered to have the affect of killing the other amendment," Democratic state Sen. Martin Nesbitt explained in a floor speech. "You need to know that before you vote because you'll be killing the one that requires a drug test of the leaders of this state since we want to require it for the followers of this state."

"And we seem to be getting into a situation where where we're kind above the people," he added. "Kind of looking down on them, telling them what to do or telling them to be quiet while we talk, and I just sense that it keeps on going."

(h/t: Progressive Pulse)

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Republican lawmakers in North Carolina have proposed a bill that they say would allow to the state to establish an official religion and defy the Constitution of the United States.

Nine state House members joined with Republican state Reps. Harry Warren and Carl Ford of Rowan County to sponsor House Bill 494 in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) last month that sought to stop Christian prayers at official Rowan County government meetings.

In 2009, a court found that the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners had violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by using sectarian prayers to open official meetings.

In his ruling, Magistrate Judge Trevor Sharp wrote that Forsyth County prayers "display a preference for Christianity over other religions by the government" and "alienates those whose beliefs differ from Christian beliefs and divides citizens along religious lines."

Warren and Ford's bill would declare that North Carolina is "sovereign" and any court ruling about religion is nullified by the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution.

"The North Carolina General Assembly asserts that the Constitution of the United States of America does not prohibit states or their subsidiaries from making laws respecting an establishment of religion," the bill states.

"The North Carolina General Assembly does not recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the State of North Carolina, its public schools or any political subdivisions of the State from making laws respecting an establishment of religion."

A 1961 Supreme Court ruling found that a provision in North Carolina's state constitution which disqualifies anyone who does not believe in God from seeking public office was unenforceable.

Rep. Harry Warren in 2010 told NC Tea Party TV that the federal government had too much power and that it was doing everything possible to "infringe on sovereignty of the states."

"I wholeheartedly believe that we have to do what we need to do to protect our sovereignty," he explained. "And I would fight very hard to make sure we maintain our sovereignty and our state's rights."

(h/t: The Huffington Post)

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A child in North Carolina spent part of his Easter Sunday morning protesting outside a Winston-Salem church that has vowed not to host any wedding ceremonies until same sex marriage is legalized.

Kelly Carpenter, the pastor of Green Street United Methodist Church, said last month that no weddings were being scheduled because his congregation was becoming more diverse and the heterosexual members wanted same sex couples to “share a sense of the love that they have found.”

Anti-LGBT activist Brian Cranford, who says that the "Lord has called Me specifically into evangelism Street ministry," on Sunday posted a YouTube video of an unidentified child standing outside Green Street Church and yelling at the congregation as they exited after Easter services.

"You have your chance to repent, to stop your sinning, to quit affirming the gay people!" the kid shouts in the eight-minute video clip. "The Bible talks about the homosexuals, they're worthy of death!"

"And you people approve of that! And that's why you're going to hell! You can turn from your sin. You can turn to Jesus or go to hell!"

(h/t: Good As You)

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The National Rifle Organization (NRA) on Thursday used armed security to force mothers of victims of gun violence to leave the organization's headquarters.

The groups MomsRising.org and the Reston-Herndon Alliance to End Gun Violence traveled to NRA headquarters in Virginia on Thursday to deliver a petition with over 150,000 signatures calling for universal background checks, a ban on high-capacity magazines, a ban on military-style assault rifles and new laws to crack down on gun trafficking.

Included in the group were mothers like Lori Haas, whose daughter was wounded in the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech, and Louisa Davis, whose nephew was killed by a gun in North Carolina.

But in video captured by WUSA, a plainclothes security guard and an armed uniformed guard are seen refusing to accept the large stack of signatures and then shooing the gun safety advocates off NRA property.

"They're not willing to listen to all members," one NRA member who was in the group told WUSA. "We're in a democracy, we need to have a conversation. And the NRA likes to shut down conversation."

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CNN host Soledad O'Brien on Friday advised former Republican National Committee Chairman Mel Martinez that Republicans would need to do more that just encourage African-Americans and Hispanics to get to know them better because "they know you and they decided they don't like you."

Speaking with Martinez before the the Republican Party's winter meeting continued in North Carolina on Friday, she noted that the party had launched a website asking for suggestions but wondered how it would be turned into "real change."

"Well, I think first of all, it's a great reassessment taking place within the party and I think it's very, very healthy," Martinez explained. "I'm really quite encouraged, not only by the website and the fact we're reaching out to people to input because I think we've lost the ability to communicate well and I think that's a beginning."

O'Brien pointed out that South Carolina committeeman Glenn McCall, who is part of a task force charge with moving the party forward, had suggested to The Wall Street Journal that the problem was that minorities "simply don't know us."

"In many ways, we're at square one," McCall said. "There are large portions of the population -- African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, young voters -- who simply don't know us. We have to change that."

"Is it that they don't know you? Meaning you as the GOP," O'Brien asked Martinez. "Or is that they know you and they decided they don't like you?"

"Look, I think there's a communication gap and I think that our party has done a poor job reaching out to these particular groups," the former U.S. senator insisted. "And I think this is about communicating our message."

"But on some other things you might say are core to the GOP message, I think you're going to have a challenge," the CNN host explained, pointing to the Republican Party's policy of keeping taxes low for wealthy Americans while cutting government programs that help the poor.

"Does that mean that you take the assessment and then you change policy potentially?" she wondered.

"No, I don't think you change principles, but I think you change the conversation," Martinez declared. "We shouldn't be talking about protecting the wealthy from raising taxes. We should be talking about a tax code that promotes economic growth, and that lifts all boats."

"So, the bottom line is that it's about taxes, it's about an overbearing government but it's really about how we communicate it. Are we really protecting a certain segment of taxpayers or are we looking to have a tax code that really promotes economic growth?"

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The Newton County Sheriff's Department in Georgia is investigating flyers that North Carolina's Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) say were distributed in as many as nine states on the East Coast to "counteract Martin Luther King's birthday."

"They need to get a life, really," Georgia resident Hadiyah Abdul-Mateen, who received one of the flyers even though she is black, told WGCL. "I hope it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that President Obama was re-elected."

The racist flyer received by Abdul-Mateen urged her to join the Klan because "Our Aryan Heritage, Our American Culture, Our Christian Religion, Our White Homelands" were under attack by the so-called Zionist Occupied Government (ZOG).

Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard Chris Barker told WGCL reporter Steve Kiggins that the effort was "more of a recruitment drive" than an effort to intimidate residents, adding that he wanted to "let the neighborhood know that the Klan is there and that we're not going nowhere."

Barker claimed that his group had timed the distribution of flyers in states from Florida to New York to coincide with Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday.

"We just told our members to go out pretty much to counteract Martin Luther King's birthday, who was a known communist," he explained. "And we decided to put out Klan literature."

There is no law against KKK recruitment in Georgia, but the Newton County Sheriff's Department has urged anyone who received the flyers or felt threatened to call the department at (678) 625-1400.

(h/t: The Blaze)

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Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist says that President Barack Obama did not win re-election because of his promise to raise taxes on the wealthy, but it was because attack ads made voters thing that Mitt Romney was a "poopy-head."

During a Monday interview on CBS, Norquist suggested that Republicans had a mandate not to raise taxes, even it meant going off the so-called "fiscal cliff."

"The House of Representatives was elected, committed to keeping taxes low," the Americans for Tax Reform president explained. "The president was elected on the basis that he was not Romney and that Romney was a poopy-head and you should vote against Romney. And he won by two points. But he didn't make the case that we should have higher taxes and higher spending, he kind of sounded like the opposite."

"Well, I'm not sure that's what the president called Mitt Romney," CBS host Norah O'Donnell pointed out. "The debate that was had -- and I listened very closely to it -- he said very clearly throughout the debate that the wealthiest Americans should pay more. And he won eight of the nine battleground states. And Republicans failed to reclaim the White House or the Senate. What about the exit polls that show a broad support on raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans? Are you wrong?"

"Again, you saw those ads that suggested Romney gave people cancer in Ohio for months and months unanswered," Norquist insisted. "You can trash an individual and get them to vote against him. Again where we have an election, there are 30 Republican governors, okay? And they're running campaigns against raising taxes and in favor of, frankly, phasing out the income tax in North Carolina and Kansas and Oklahoma."

O'Donnell pointed out that even House Speaker John Boehner had said that Republicans were willing to accept new revenue as part of a compromise.

"In 2011, Obama said the world would end and we should pass around smelling salts because he wanted to raise the debt ceiling," Norquist opined. "We got a debt ceiling agreement. It was a great compromise. We cut spending. We didn't raise taxes. We didn't cut spending as much as the Republicans wanted. The [Paul] Ryan plan would have reduced Obama's overspending by $6 trillion, we only got two and a half trillion in restraint."

"That's a compromise, it's not as much as the Republicans wanted. The Republicans have already compromised."

In exit polls released on Tuesday, six in ten voters said they supported raising taxes. Almost half wanted to see tax hikes specifically on those making more than $250,000 a year.

“On this particular issue, it wasn’t close,” Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod told CBS News on Sunday.

“You need new revenues, and every objective person who has looked at this agrees on that, so the question is where is that revenue going to come from?” he pointed out. “The president believes it is more equitable to get that from the wealthiest Americans who have done very well and frankly don’t need those tax cuts and who benefited disproportionately from the tax cuts in the last decade. Most Americans agree with that.”

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At a so-called "storm relief event" on Tuesday, GOP hopeful Mitt Romney repeatedly refused to answer questions about his promise to the federal agency responsible for responding to disasters like Hurricane Sandy, which devastated much of the east coast this week.

"TV pool asked Romney at least five times whether he would eliminate FEMA as president/what he would do with FEMA," according to a pool report. "He ignored the [questions] but they are audible on cam. The music stopped at points and the [questions] would have been audible to him."

A subsequent pool report elaborated on some of the specific questions the Republican presidential nominee refused to answer:

"Gov are you going to eliminate FEMA?" a print pooler shouted, receiving no response.
Wires reporters asked more questions about FEMA that were ignored.

Romney kept coming over near pool to pick up more water. He ignored these questions:

"Gov are you going to see some storm damage?"

"Gov has [New Jersey Gov.] Chris Christie invited you to come survey storm damage?"

"Gov you've been asked 14 times, why are you refusing to answer the question?"

As The Huffington Post's Ryan Grimm noted on Sunday, Romney had pledged to "absolutely" abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency when asked about it by CNN's John King during a Republican primary debate earlier this year.

"Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction," the former Massachusetts governor said, adding that it would be "even better" to "send it back to the private sector."

At the time, King even pressed Romney on whether he would completely eliminate federal disaster relief.

"We cannot -- we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids," the candidate insisted."It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we'll all be dead and gone before it's paid off. It makes no sense at all."

Campaign spokesperson Amanda Henneberg on Monday reiterated that Romney still believed that disaster relief should be left up to the states.

"Governor Romney believes that states should be in charge of emergency management in responding to storms and other natural disasters in their jurisdictions," Henneberg said. "As the first responders, states are in the best position to aid affected individuals and communities and to direct resources and assistance to where they are needed most. This includes help from the federal government and FEMA."

The Grio managing editor Joy Reid told MSNBC's Alex Wagner on Tuesday that Romney might have a good reason for wanting to avoid questions about FEMA less than a week before the election.

"Do you know who likes FEMA? Florida," Reid explained. "Florida loves FEMA and Florida is a very close state and Florida has had to rely on FEMA a lot because a lot of hurricanes have hit there. And you know who else is about to like FEMA? West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina. I mean, there are a lot of states where people say, 'I don't like the government, I don't want the government in my life.' But when something like this happens, you know who you want in your life? The government."