In the Tar Hell State, the government that governs best governs without accountability.

Senate boss Phil Berger (seated) takes his poodle, Speaker Moore, for an outing.

After decades of Jesse Helms' beebling about America as the shining city on a hill, North Carolina Republicans now take pride in crossbreeding states' rights, government overreach, and the banana republic:

Nor is it clear that America’s democratic norms and institutions are fundamentally any more rock solid than those of, say, Poland, Hungary or Venezuela. As bad as? No. But any more unassailable? To observe Republican legislators in North Carolina attempt to abrogate the results of a gubernatorial election—to say nothing of Senators Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, who have all but abandoned the legislative committee process in their feverish effort to cram the courts with conservative judges and pass deeply unpopular class legislation by cover of night—one can’t help but worry that the United States has slipped into what sociologist Larry Diamond calls a “democratic recession.”