Appearing on Alan Colmes‘ Fox News radio show, the former Republican congressman indicated he isn’t concerned with whether Trump is a force for good or bad within the party. However, he added, “I think he’s is a dangerous person. And a lot of people find him sort of funny, and love him, even libertarian types.”

Beyond dangerously resembling a half-rotted canteloupe, how exactly is Trump a “dangerous person”?

“He’s so disruptive to the party system, and I enjoy that too,” Paul explained,” but I think he’s a man that if conditions deteriorate — which they can, see I work on the assumption that the world is no more stable than Greece, and if those conditions come — people want to be told what to do.”

"People listen to him, and believe he may be raising white horses someplace and he’s going to ride in. Because he is almost the opposite of a libertarian, because it’s not like ‘I want to give you your freedom and your liberty to run your life as you choose. Your civil liberties are absolutely yours, you can’t hurt anybody, it’s your own money you can spend it any way you want.’ But he sounds like the person: ‘I know the answers and I’m going to do this and I’ve done this, I’ve done this, this and this."

If you ask most conservatives why African-Americans vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party, they will typically reply that black people are either lazy moochers who want “free stuff,” or else they’ve been duped by a massive lie that the Democrats have become the party of civil rights. Rick Perry delivered an interesting speech last week, which continues to reverberate among conservative thought leaders, in which he made an important, if not unprecedented, concession. The historic defection of the black vote, Perry admitted, reflects the failings not of African-Americans but the Republican Party itself. Perry conceded that his party’s obsession with states’ rights, including his own, alienated a constituency that has depended on the federal government to protect its rights. This is an important admission about the Republican Party’s history. What Perry has failed to display is any grasp of how African-Americans have been turned away by the Republican Party’s present incarnation.

Perry makes two important, persuasive points in his speech but fails to see how they collide with each other. The first point is that states' rights is a dangerous doctrine for African-Americans, who rely on the power of the federal government to protect them from abuses by states. Perry frames this as a confession that he has overemphasized the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which reserves for the states or the people powers not delegated to the federal government, rather than the 14th amendment, which prevents states from denying any citizen equal protection of the laws. “There has been, and there will continue to be, an important and a legitimate role for the federal government in enforcing Civil Rights,” Perry said, “Too often, we Republicans, me included, have emphasized our message on the 10th Amendment but not our message on the 14th.”

Perry’s second point is that urban policy often works to the detriment of the disadvantaged. “In blue state coastal cities, you have these strict zoning laws, environmental regulations that have prevented buildings from expanding the housing supply. And that may be great for the venture capitalist who wants to keep a nice view of San Francisco Bay. But it’s not so great for the single mother working two jobs in order to pay rent and still put food on the table for her kids.”

Perry frames the latter as an indictment of government in general. But it is actually an indictment of localized government regulation. This is an aspect of government policy where Perry can legitimately boast that his state has outperformed the blue-state model. Deregulated zoning has allowed Texas to create affordable housing that is denied residents of big coastal cities.

The Obama Administration is committed to addressing climate change, promoting clean energy, and creating good paying jobs. That is why the Administration is announcing a new initiative to increase access to solar energy for all Americans, in particular low- and moderate- income communities, while expanding opportunities to join the solar workforce.

Last year, the United States brought online as much solar energy every three weeks as it did in all of 2008, and the solar industry added jobs 10 times faster than the rest of the economy. And since the beginning of 2010, the average cost of a solar electric system has dropped by 50 percent. The executive actions and private sector commitments that we are announcing today will help continue to scale up solar for all Americans, including those who are renters, lack the startup capital to invest in solar, or do not have adequate information on how to transition to solar energy. The key components of the initiative that the Administration is announcing today are:

-Launching a National Community Solar Partnership to unlock access to solar for the nearly 50 percent of households and business that are renters or do not have adequate roof space to install solar systems, including issuing a guide to Support States In Developing Community Solar Programs;
-Setting a goal to install 300 megawatts (MW) of renewable energy in federally subsidized housing and providing technical assistance to make it easier to install solar, including clarifying how to use Federal funding;

Up until a few weeks ago, I worked at a historic site in the South that included an old house and a nearby plantation. My job was to lead tours and tell guests about the people who made plantations possible: the slaves.

The site I worked at most frequently had more than 100 enslaved workers associated with it— 27 people serving the household alone, outnumbering the home's three white residents by a factor of nine. Yet many guests who visited the house and took the tour reacted with hostility to hearing a presentation that focused more on the slaves than on the owners.

The first time it happened, I had just finished a tour of the home. People were filing out of their seats, and one man stayed behind to talk to me. He said, "Listen, I just wanted to say that dragging all this slavery stuff up again is bringing down America."

I started to protest, but he interrupted me. "You didn't know. You're young. But America is the greatest country in the world, and these people out there, they'd do anything to make America less great." He was loud and confusing, and I was 22 years old and he seemed like a million feet tall.