The Biggest Liberal Protest Of 2013, Moral Monday 8. According to the Raleigh News and Observer, at least 3,000 people attended the state NAACP's ongoing protests against the rightward shift of the legislature. The theme for the week's protest was labor issues, women’s rights and economic justice. Specifically, the loss of federal unemployment benefits for 70,000 people set to take effect on July 1.

About 120 protestors were arrested, with over 100 traveling in buses from Asheville, over four hours away. An artsy, LGBT-friendly mountain city dubbed the "Cesspool of Sin" by a Republican state senator, Asheville faces state seizure of its drinking water system in a bill authored by a board member of the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Raleigh weekly, The Indy, reacted to Gov. Pat McCrory and the GOP-led legislature cutting off federal unemployment benefits. The move will cost the unemployed (and the state's struggling economy) hundreds of millions of dollars:

That's right, this decision will deny the people of North Carolina $600 million in federal aid, and it's not because McCrory and the Republicans slashed unemployment benefits more deeply than any other state—although they did that too. It's because they insisted on cutting benefits in mid-2013 rather than waiting until Jan. 1, 2014, when the federal program expires. Costs $600 million. Saves nothing. That's idiocracy.