Maryland

Minnesota, like a lot of states, is facing a major budget shortfall. In order to close the state's $6.2 billion gap, the Wall Street Journal reports that the state's new Democratic governor is considering jacking up the state's taxes on high income earners to unprecedented levels:

Delaware Senate. It wasn’t even close.  Republican Christine O’Donnell jumped out to a lead against Mike Castle right away last night and did not look back.  Final result: O’Donnell 53 percent, Castle 47 percent, with a little more than 3,500 votes separating the two.

My native Virginia does extremely well in the latest Forbes rankings of the nation's wealthiest counties. As the Washington Examiner points out, 12 of Forbes's 25 most prosperous counties are in the Washington Metro area. Who says public service doesn't pay?

Joking aside, the transformation of the DC area over the last several decades is absolutely stunning. As recently as the beginning of the Reagan presidency, outer Fairfax County, where I grew up, was a relative backwater. Now the growth stretches west beyond Loudoun County (the wealthiest county in the nation) and south beyond Prince William County (fourteenth on the Forbes list) and even Stafford County (number twelve). Some people --they may be insane -- commute to work in D.C. from as far away as beautiful Charlottesville. And there's no end in sight. Some folks in Fairfax County want to incorporate the million-person entity as one big city. One day in the future, it will make little sense to distinguish between the Washington metro area and the Richmond metro area. They will have fused.