News 14 Carolina turned to John Locke Foundation experts for a pair of stories Thursday. Joseph Coletti critiqued the state’s sales tax holiday for energy-efficient appliances, while communications director Mitch Kokai reacted to Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand’s plans to resign from the General Assembly. Meanwhile, a Greensboro News & Record blog entry noted a Carolina Journal exclusive focusing on a recent spike in events at UNC-Chapel Hill featuring diverse political viewpoints. Speaking of education, JLF Education Policy Analyst Terry Stoops reviewed the book Montessori, Dewey, and Capitalism for the latest issue of The Freeman. In other news, a recent edition of Manteo’s Coastland Times highlighted Currituck County’s recent improvement of its grade at JLF’s NCTransparency.com. (Currituck County has learned that the John Locke Foundation has raised the transparency grade of the county’s website, CurriiuckGovernment.com, to an eight, meaning that Currituck is one of the leading counties in North Carolina in regards to providing public information online in an easy to use format.)