RALEIGH — Recessions hurt. North Carolina’s headline unemployment rate hit 11.2% during the peak of the Great Recession in 2010. During the COVID-era Great Suppression of 2020, it briefly hit a mindboggling 14.2%.

RALEIGH — It was 250 years ago this week that the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia to organize America’s rebellion against the British crown. War had broken out a few weeks earlier at Lexington and Concord. But there was as yet no national government, no formal American army or relations with foreign countries, and no clear explanation of what the rebellious colonists sought to accomplish.

RALEIGH — Few states are adding housing stock more quickly than our state — but far too many North Carolinians struggle to find reasonably priced residences to rent or buy.

RALEIGH — When my colleagues and I call ourselves Freedom Conservatives, it’s a pretty good tell that we believe freedom is essential to human flourishing — and that we place a high priority on conserving freedom for future generations.

RALEIGH — As the United States celebrates its semiquincentennial — Americans launched their rebellion against British rule 250 years ago this month at Lexington and Concord — I’ve been writing a series of columns chronicling the contributions North Carolinians made to the birth of our great nation.

RALEIGH — North Carolina’s motto is a Latin phrase: Esse quam videri. Popularized by the ancient Roman statesman and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero, who likely first read the Greek version from Plato and Aeschylus, the phrase means “to be rather than to seem.”

RALEIGH — There are many critters designated by law to symbolize North Carolina. For example, we have an official state bird (red cardinal), reptile (eastern box turtle), horse (colonial Spanish mustang), mollusk (Scotch bonnet), dog (Plott Hound), and mammal (eastern gray squirrel), as well as two state amphibians (the marbled salamander and Pine Barrens tree frog).