Last November the governor of Oregon, John Kitzhaber, put a moratorium on all executions and in April Connecticut became the fifth state in as many years to abandon capital punishment altogether.
The governor's work leading New Jersey through the recovery from the storm, which damaged more than 360,000 homes and businesses, helped cement his national reputation as a no-nonsense, hard-driving governor willing to work closely with Democrats to get things done.
In a hypothetical Venn diagram, one circle representing extremist Christians and the other fundamentalist capitalists, the lens-shaped overlap contains Sam Brownback, the newly re-elected governor of Kansas.
The vote offered to "alter the constitution to establish the Commonwealth of Australia as a republic with the Queen and governor general being replaced by a president appointed by a two-thirds majority of the members of the Commonwealth parliament", and also included a second question about inserting a preamble in the constitution.
Another well-received speaker, Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico and 2012 Libertarian party candidate for president, said "there's only one way to fix the Patriot Act: and that's to repeal the Patriot Act".
As the Bank struggles to find a way of controlling house prices without increasing interest rates and damaging the recovery, I am struck by a recent observation from my acquaintance Philipp Hildebrand, former governor of the Swiss Central Bank.
The governor of Hebron, Kamel Hmeid, said the men had been "executed" by Israel, whose forces made no attempt to detain or interrogate them.
The Hebron governor said: "We condemn this crime, this assassination, as deliberate and premeditated murder".
Related: Republican elite swarm New Hampshire as host of 2016 hopefuls take the stage The full-to-bursting roster of Republican presidential aspirants expanded again over the weekend after John Kasich, the governor of the crucial swing-state of Ohio, laid the groundwork for a run on the White House with an unusual attack on Wall Street.
The governor, a former congressman, stopped short of announcing his formal his entry into the presidential race on the show – as he did in 1999, before an extremely short-lived first run for the White House.
But they – or, at least, those he made before becoming governor of California – also form a crucial part of my upbringing.
