Gubernatorial candidate Brian Murphy's signing the no-new-taxes pledge is a major step forward for highlighting taxpayer protection in Maryland. Businessman Murphy is among the few heavy-duty statewide GOP contenders to sign the pledge in a decade. Former governor Bob Ehrlich did not do so in 2002 nor in 2006, and discouraged new GOP legislators from signing it. Senate candidate Michael Steele took pains not to do so in his 2006 campaign for the U.S. Senate.
Mark Krikorian: "Why are the state think tanks generally so bad on immigration, when they address it at all? This is a generalization, of course, but my experience has been that the state think tanks lean heavily, if not all quite so flamboyantly, in the same anti-enforcement, pro-amnesty, open-borders direction as Sutherland, even as they're seen as "conservative." I suspect this is because the issues that originally animated most of the groups belonging to the State Policy Network, the clearinghouse for the nation's state-based free market think tanks, are ones where libertarians and conservatives agree: education, taxes, government spending, regulation, etc. Furthermore, because of the narrow focus on economic issues, the funding and boards are likely dominated by businesses in their respective states that either don't care about uniquely conservative issues like life or national sovereignty, or simply disagree with conservatives on those points because they really are libertarians. Either way, an important area of state legislation remains generally without conservative policy ideas."
At the 103nd Maryland Thursday Meeting, June 10, 2010...
	Jim Simpson, expert on the Cloward Pivan strategy and other existential threats to America.
London calling! Free State conservative voices overseas...
Carroll County 's Rosemarie Helminiak talks with Margaret Thatcher in London June 7, 2010 - - Maryland conservative leader Larry Helminiak stands in the center.

The Maryland Thursday Meeting is an invitational and off-the-record gathering of center-right activists and organizations across Maryland. Ours is one of around fifty such state center-right coalitions across the U.S.

Guests and newcomers can get a better understanding of what the Maryland Thursday Meeting aims to accomplish and our Rules of the Road by clicking here.

The Thursday Meeting does not promulgate any orthodoxy. Rather it is a center-right coalition seeking common ground and actionable items.

We begin promptly at 8 AM; doors open at 7:45 AM; the Thursday Meeting serves hot coffee and bagels.

In 2010, the Maryland Thursday Meeting will probe a variety of Maryland fiscal and values concerns. These include the profound consequences for prosperity and property rights of policies of the Green Statists; underfunded and over-promising Maryland retirement systems; getting Maryland off the worst ten list on the “2010 State Business Tax Climate Index” (by doing so, through tax cuts and state and local regulatory reform, Maryland can attract good private sector jobs); the attack of the Maryland Education Cartel on public charter schools; the Montgomery County Transgender Law and similar assaults on traditional values; the fiscal, civic, and cultural costs of making Maryland a magnet state for illegals; and homeland defense concerns for our seacoast state.

The Thursday Meeting began its work on November 16, 2000 and is chaired by long-time taxpayer advocate Richard Falknor.

APPALLING VIDEO -- "Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border 2: Drugs, Guns and 850 Illegal Aliens." Janice Kephart & Bryan Griffith of Center for Immigration Studies.

Senator Judd Gregg on the minority's rights in the U S Senate. Blue Ridge Forum: the Senate should obstruct and delay Obama's revolutionary initiatives until the nation has spoken on November 2.

Calvin Coolidge's address at the Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia, July 5, 1926. Hat tip: Jonah Goldberg.

AMPUTATE OR DIE. New Zeal's TREVOR LOUDON: "An excellent column from Jack Wheeler."
Thursday Meeting: The question Wheeler raises is whether the Tea Partiers have "the courage and the capacity" to force Republican to do what must be done. Wheeler says the Tea Partiers are "America's only hope now."
For more Jack Wheeler, click here.

Will Senate Stop Really Bad Bills? Erick Erickson reveals “NRA Issues Gag Order to Its Board Members on Elena Kagan.” NRA DISCLOSE deal fallout?

Hans Bader: "Obama blocks clean-up of oil spill by Louisiana and our foreign allies, through pointless red tape."

CEI: "Center-Right Groups Protest Durbin ‘Interchange Fee’ Amendment Pushing Through Price Controls and Benefitting Big Retailers."

2009 letter from Maryland's John Kane to senators Leahy and Specter endorsing Tom Perez as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.

Obamacare Watch: "The More We Learn, The Worse It Gets." Now: "a $125 million propaganda campaign to sell the recently enacted health-care law to the public."

YOUTUBE: "Your next stop, the Nanny Zone."

ENCOUNTER BROADSIDES: AMMUNITION FOR INTELLIGENT DEBATE.

Mike Hammond/John Gizzi in Human Events: "The Way to Block Kagan."

Jack Dunphy in NRO: "Illegal Immigrants and the Arizona Law - Anyone who knows how the police actually work would not be afraid of the Arizona law."

Montgomery County: Goons, Cops, Tongue-Tied Pols. Blue Ridge Forum.

Richard Baehr in American Thinker: "The Jews of Silence."

YOUTUBES:

Latma: What Israelis think of Rahm Emanuel, liberals, etcetera.

BLOGS TO VISIT FREQUENTLY:

--America's Survival, Inc. Freedom, Independence and Sovereignty. See archive page.

--John Fleischman's Flash Report (California).

--Center for Immigration Studies blog

--Refugee Resettlement Watch: Washington County, MD-based blog, covering abuses in our bigger-than-you-would-think 'refugee' program.

--American Dream Coalition: "Protecting freedom, mobility, and affordable home ownership"

--Neighborhood Effects: "American state and local economic policy and political economy issues"

--Research on philanthropy and nonprofits. Capital Research Blog

SEE PHOTO STORIES FROM EARLIER MEETINGS

BASIC LINKS

How Our Laws Are Made. Revised and Updated by John V. Sullivan, Parliamentarian, U.S. House of Representatives. Presented by Mr. Brady of Pennsylvania. July 24, 2007

Ed Hudgins: Maryland's Regulatory Burden.

FAIR's Jack Martin: The Costs of Illegal Immigration to Marylanders.

The Trillion Dollar Gap: Underfunded State Retirement Systems and the Road to Reform - Maryland and Virginia, Pew Foundation.

City Journal's Steven Malanga - "The Beholden State: How public-sector unions broke California"

Maryland Republican Assembly, an organization dedicated to electing CONSERVATIVE Republican candidates.

Maryland State Constitution.

City Journal's Bradley A. Smith" In Defense of Political Anonymity.

The Manhattan Declaration.

The Founders' Constitution: George Mason Law School's key readings.

Multiculturalism and Cultural Marxism, William S. Lind. Click here.

Conservatives and education: Click here.

The Birth of the Administrative State. Click here.

Overcriminalization. Click here.