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Link only, due to copyright issues: http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2015/may/06/experts-support-base-growth-still-chall/?f=news-arkansas

Mike Huckabee is not the evangelical candidate. Oh sure, he’ll get a hefty amount of the evangelical vote even though there is a much more competitive field this time around. But if you think he’s a one-trick pony then you miss the larger story. The easy media narrative will be that Huckabee must appeal to evangelicals to do well. And there’s no denying that will be a part of his potential winning equation. But what Huckabee has that no other candidate possesses is an, “aw shucks,” bless your heart, southern charm. That will play well in the heartland of this...

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has officially entered the race. On Tuesday, Huckabee announced that he would be seeking a 2016 White House bid, joining a rapidly growing field of GOP contenders, including former neurosurgeon Ben Carson, and previous Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, both of whom announced their intentions earlier in the week. With all the fanfare surrounding Huckabee’s announcement though, many have expressed worries he just isn’t the political heavyweight he once was — more importantly, they predict that Huckabee won’t be able to win the religious vote a second time around. The governor’s first failed bid in...

The All-Star Panel on Fox News’ “Special Report” Tuesday was extremely skeptical of former Republican Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s chances of winning the 2016 Republican presidential primary. One panelist compared him to a segregationist and another said “he has no chance” in the current political environment. “The problem is, he won Iowa once before, he has to win it again, really,” syndicated columnist George Will said. “The only person who’s done that twice in contested caucuses was Bob Dole in ’88 and ’96, and he did it by having the evangelicals, but only the evangelicals. This time around, before he...

The foul-mouthed women of Fox News were a disquieting element of doing his weekly show for the conservative cable TV network, ex-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee told an Iowa radio interviewer. Huckabee is back courting the Hawkeye State — he won Iowa’s 2008 precinct caucuses — in preparing his second bid for the White House. The religious right champion quit his weekly show on Fox News to get ready for the 2016 Republican race. A Baptist preacher, Huckabee confessed to culture shock when doing his show in New York. “In the South, or in the Midwest, there in Iowa, you would...

Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, announced he would run for president of the United States on Tuesday and he already has the support of Chuck Norris. "I still believe Mike Huckabee is the most qualified,” Norris told the New York Times. “He has the moral clarity and experience to lead our great country forward.”

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Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is slated to announce Tuesday that he will make a second bid for the Republican nomination. The challenges are formidable for the man who won the 2008 Iowa caucuses. In that earlier race, Huckabee, 59, a former Baptist preacher, struggled to expand his reach beyond evangelical voters, and ran out of money in subsequent contests. Huckabee is a gifted communicator. Polls have consistently shown that he has relatively high name recognition and popularity among Republicans. Early this year, he quit his television show on Fox News, so that he could more deeply explore the possibility...

The religious right remains the largest voting bloc in the Republican Party, and that gives Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, the potential to play a big role in the presidential nominating contest. But Mr. Huckabee, who was set to announce his presidential bid Tuesday morning, will have a harder time winning Iowa than he did in 2008, when religious conservatives had serious reservations about the two main candidates, John McCain and Mitt Romney. This year’s conservative favorites do not have Mr. Romney’s vulnerabilities among evangelicals, like Mormonism or past support for abortion rights. Some candidates might be outright good...

Bill heads to House when they return from recess next Tuesday.

Maine may be the most likely state to pass constitutional carry next.  The state is one of those which has has preserved open carry without government permission, though that applies to over 60% of the states.   In addition, it has a quirky shall issue permit system that gives a little bit of arbitrary power, in the form of a "good moral character" requirement, to local police or to elected officials, if there is no police chief.  The system was created in 1985, one of the early "shall issue" laws. These characteristics have lead to an effective campaign to reform...

There's a new hazard in the Heartland.  The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently released a map highlighting the future risk for man-made earthquakes, and up to eight states have an increased chance to see ground shaking.  Azle, Texas, which had no recorded quakes for 150 years, felt 27 tremors from November 2013 to January 2014. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex continues to feel regular earthquakes. As Science Magazine reports, earthquakes hit areas of Kansas bordering Oklahoma 192 times in the last two years; the same counties were only hit twice in the preceding 35 years.  For the most part, the scientific...

Mike Huckabee is going to run for president in 2016. While he won't make that official until next Tuesday, he released a two-minute video on Friday that both previews the themes on which he will run and shows why he may be the most underrated candidate in the field.

Houston (CNN)Mike Huckabee rallied a crowd of Hispanic evangelicals on Wednesday night, pushing back in the debate over religious freedom just one day after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments to determine whether states have the right to ban same-sex marriage.

Sen. Tom Cotton is insisting on simple majority votes on contentious amendments to legislation to provide congressional review of any final nuclear deal with Iran, apparently stymieing the possibility of moving forward, at least for now. The Arkansas Republican sought to line up a pair of amendments that supportive Democratic senators have said could cause them to remove support for the bill. One of those, sponsored by Cotton, would require Iran to allow inspectors full access to suspicious sites. The other, led by Florida Republican Marco Rubio, would require Tehran to recognize Israel’s right to exist. “I think some of...

Two junior conservatives blindsided Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) Thursday by attempting to force a vote on an amendment that could derail the bipartisan Iran nuclear review bill. Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who is running for president, surprised McConnell by leapfrogging ahead of colleagues waiting for chances to get votes on their amendments. They used a procedural maneuver to force McConnell to schedule a vote on an amendment requiring Iran to recognize Israel’s right to exist as part of any nuclear deal. McConnell’s only way of avoiding the controversial amendment would be to file a...

CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin had choice words for President Obama last night when she appeared on “The Lead” with Jake Tapper. ...“Both Mayor Rawlings-Blake and President Obama, today, using the word “thug,”” Tapper said after showing a clip of Mayor Rawlings-Blake speaking. “Sunny, you take issue that?” “I do,” Hostin responded. “It’s not a word, certainly, that I’m comfortable with. It’s not a word that I use. I think that we can all agree that that word, that term has been racialized, and I think what I saw during the riots was, I saw a lot of crimes being...

Last year, Michael Bloomberg’s gun control organization launched a “six-figure ad campaign” pressuring Kroger to ban guns on its property. The extensive campaign had “print and digital ads in USA Today, the Cincinnati Enquirer, Columbus Dispatch, Detroit Free Press, Detroit News and Houston Chronicle. Print-only ads will run in the Tennessean.” On April 22nd, fortunately a concealed handgun permit holder who was leaving a Kroger had his handgun with him. From Fox News 16 in Little Rock, Arkansas:

Movie star Ben Affleck has another nine slaveholder ancestors from Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia, according to publicly available Census records and genealogy research conducted by Breitbart News. Last week, Affleck admitted that he successfully pressured Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates to edit his Georgia slaveholding ancestor, Benjamin Cole, out of an episode of the PBS series “Finding Your Roots” that featured his family history. This brings the number of Affleck’s known slaveholder ancestors to 12, who owned a total of 214 slaves. The relative ease with which Breitbart News was able to find these nine additional slaveholding...