The residents of Bristol, Tennessee and Bristol, Virginia share a border, a downtown and even a nascar speedway. But thanks to the quirks of American federalism, the 27,800 Bristolians who live in the Volunteer State, as Tennessee calls itself, reside in what one ranking determines to be America’s least democratic state, while their 16,800 neighbours to the north live in one of the most democratic.

In his memoir Jimmy Carter recalls trying to copy the habits of black boys. In his poor peanut-farming community his closest confidants did not share his skin colour, and he wanted to fit in. But Mr Carter lived in the big house; his friends in tenant shacks. In Plains, Georgia, it still seems a wonder that the white child who was always out of place in the Jim Crow South became America’s 39th president. On December 29th he died, at 100, a mile from where he was born.

WHEN MAKING New Year’s resolutions few have violence on their minds. That was evidently not the case for Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old American citizen and military veteran from Texas. He rammed a rented Ford pickup truck into a crowd of revellers on Bourbon Street in New Orleans in the early hours of January 1st, killing 15 and injuring 35. After the crash police killed Mr Jabbar in a shoot-out. The FBI is investigating the attack as an act of terrorism; a black Islamic State (IS) flag flew from the bumper of the truck driven by Mr Jabbar and social media posts suggest he was a man of faith with intent to kill. The fact that he avoided detection suggests a fairly sophisticated conspiracy. “This is not a garden-variety attack,” says Colin Clarke of the Soufan Center, a global-security research group.