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RALEIGH – A new Civitas flash poll shows Trump leading Clinton in North Carolina the week following party conventions. All relevant questions and results can be found below, and crosstabs are available here. 1. If the election for President of the United States were today, and you were filling out your ballot right now, who would you vote for? Republican Donald Trump? Democrat Hillary Clinton? Or Libertarian Gary Johnson? 46% Trump (R) 42% Clinton (D) 6% Johnson (L) 7% Undecided

SAN DIEGO -- The closer Ichiro Suzuki gets to milestones, the bigger his media following becomes. About 50 Japanese media members were on hand Monday to watch the 42-year-old sensation inch closer to another significant benchmark. Ichiro had three hits, scored two runs and had an RBI in the Marlins' 13-4 win over the Padres at Petco Park. After he slapped a single down the third-base line in the eighth inning, he moved 23 hits shy of 3,000, and one away from matching a standard reached only by Pete Rose. • Ichiro moves within 23 MLB hits of 3,000 as...

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is driving young Muslims "closer to the terrorists," said actress and feminist icon Jane Fonda. Ms. Fonda, 78, appeared Sunday night at the Women's Equality and ERA Coalition's "Night of Comedy" in Manhattan, accusing Mr. Trump of "fanning the flames of people's anxieties and racism," the New York Daily News reported. "It's terrible and it's dangerous," Ms. Fonda said. "Even if he doesn't make it, which I don't think he will, the fact that he's said the things he's said about Muslims for example,...

As Katie mentioned earlier, sources at the FBI are telling Fox News that the bureau has expanded its probe into Hillary Clinton's improper, national security-compromising email scheme. Earlier in the week, I cited Politico's report that investigators have "stepped up" their efforts by conducting additional interviews regarding internal State Department concerns over classified data security while Clinton was operating her unsecure private server.  Fox's scoop comes on the heels of their previous revelation that the probe was focusing on a "gross negligence" provision within the federal Espionage Act.  Additional evidence of Clinton's negligence was made public last week.  What this latest leak indicates is that the inquiry's scope now includes...

Most Republican voters want someone from outside of the political establishment to win their party's nomination for the presidential election

When Donald Trump soared to the top of national polls earlier this month, Republicans had one hope — at least he wasn't yet leading in any early states! He is now. The past two polls of the New Hampshire GOP primary have both shown Trump in first place, and not by small margins. NBC/Marist shows him leading Jeb Bush by 7 points, and Monmouth University shows him up by 12.

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan says he could recommend extending the mission and maintaining U.S. troops in the country, Army Times reports. “I’m taking a look and assessing every day based on the enemy situation, based on how much we’re getting done with the Afghans, how they’re progressing on their lines of effort, how the [Train, Advise and Assist mission] is going, how the government’s coming along, [and] if we can really get after the objectives that we set,” said Gen. John Campbell, commander of the Resolute Support mission, during an interview Jan. 15 with Army Times. There are...

President Obama said Sunday that he plans to proceed with an executive order to ease immigration laws before the end of the year, despite dire warnings from Republican leaders that it will damage his relationship with the new GOP-run Congress. Mr. Obama said that he’s waited a year for the Republican-run House to act on the bipartisan immigration bill passed by the Democrat-run Senate, and he can’t wait any longer to address the country’s immigration problems. “I’d prefer and still prefer to see it done through Congress. But every day that I wait, we’re misallocating resources, we’re deporting people that...

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), sponsor of the federal "assault weapon" and "large" magazine "ban" of 1994-2004, is asking President Barack Obama to direct the BATFE to reinterpret a provision of the Gun Control Act of 1968 to prohibit the importation of various semi-automatic firearms and their parts. In a letter to Obama, the text of which was included in an article published by the Daily Caller on Thursday, Feinstein said that, "at a minimum," the BATFE should: prohibit importation of all semiautomatic rifles that can accept, or be readily converted to accept, a large capacity ammunition magazine of more...

These days, it’s popular to claim that Senator Ted Cruz is only looking out for himself. And this is undoubtedly true. Much in the same way John McCain is only looking out for himself and Chuck Schumer is only looking out for himself, and every millionaire Senator looking to hold on to his or her seat in perpetuity is looking out for #1. Cruz just happens to be better at it. Take the kerfuffle over the debt-ceiling vote. When Mitch McConnell met with Senate Republicans colleagues this week, he proposed that they allow a vote on the House debt limit...

Aggressive actions and double standards used by the National Park Service are vindictive and designed to inflict maximum inconvenience and fear among visitors, say Republican lawmakers whose efforts to reopen the parks are gridlocked by Senate Democrats. World War II veterans were blocked by barricades and armed guards from paying tribute at their memorial last week. However, the national mall where the memorial is located was opened Tuesday to allow hundreds of illegal immigrants to stage a protest demanding amnesty. ... the administration has closed the Mall and memorials to some groups and not others, giving preferential treatment under the...

The McCain/Palin ticket lost in 2008, right? Fiction can change that. ”Christian Nation” is a new novel from lawyer Fred Rich that wonders what would happen if the Republican ticket won in 2008. But Rich goes even further than that, plotting a would-be Palin presidency after McCain passes away in the novel. And although it’s fiction, Rich is dead serious about what a Palin presidency would mean for the country. As the title suggest, Rich is concerned about how religious extremists on the right could upend society. “If somebody like Sarah Palin, who holds so firmly to this conviction that...

Mark Levin tells his millions of listeners that Sen. Lindsey Graham is the Arlen Specter of South Carolina. Mark declares that he's had enough of him and that he's going to take an active interest in his 2014 U.S Senate primary. Click the excerpt link for this excellent YouTube clip and please share it with your friends especially if they're in the great state of South Carolina.

A judge has ordered an early-voting site in central Florida to stay open an additional four hours Sunday, following lawsuits filed by the state Democratic party. The judge ordered the polling site in Orange County to extend its hours because it was shut down Saturday while authorities investigated a suspicious package. Bill Cowles, the county’s elections supervisor, said voters who are showing up Sunday are being asked to use a provisional ballot because they can be found should the order be overturned, per Florida law. The Florida Democratic Party filed separate lawsuits to get four counties to offer more time...

Charles Woods, the grieving father of one of the security officials killed in the terrorist attack on the U.S diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya – former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods – called into conservative media outlets this week, offering some unflattering descriptions of his interactions with the president and top officials of his administration.

WASHINGTON — With a handful of genuinely undecided voters holding sway in a tight race, Wednesday’s Denver debate will likely determine the next President. One way or another, debates are almost always decisive. Just ask Texas Gov. Rick (Oops) Perry — who couldn’t remember a cabinet agency he’d shut down in this year’s GOP primaries — or veterans of Gerald R. Ford’s 1976 campaign. At the second debate, in San Francisco, Ford made a lethal unforced error, declaring, “I don’t believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union.” The first question asked at a postdebate press conference...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Cue "Fanfare for the Common Man" and rev up the Government Motors engines. Wednesday is Great American Auto Bailout Day at the Democratic National Convention. Party propagandists have prepared a prime-time-ready film touting the "rescue's" benefits for American workers. UAW President Bob King will sing the savior-in-chief's praises. But like all of the economic success stories manufactured by the White House, the $85 billion government handout is a big fat farce. "I said I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back," Obama bragged on...

Al-Qaeda’s main Web forums have been offline for the past 11 days in what experts say is the longest sustained outage of the sites since they began operating eight years ago. No one has publicly claimed responsibility for disabling the sites, but the breadth and the duration of the outages have prompted some experts to conclude the forums have been taken down in a cyberattack — launched perhaps by a government, government-backed organization or hacking group. The first Web site, Shumukh al-Islam, a primary source for al-Qaeda videos and messages, went down on March 22, and since then four others...

If the pope called for the destruction of all the mosques in Europe, the uproar would be cataclysmic. Pundits would lambaste the church, the White House would rush out a statement of deep concern, and rioters in the Middle East would kill each other in their grief. But when the most influential leader in the Muslim world issues a fatwa to destroy Christian churches, the silence is deafening. On March 12, Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, declared that it is “necessary to destroy all the churches of the region.” The ruling came in response...

U-boats may be on navy's shopping list BY DAVID ELLERY DEFENCE REPORTER 29 Dec, 2011 01:00 AM Australia's ''future submarine'' could be a super U-boat built by a German company that made many of the submarines that nearly brought Britain to its knees in World War II. HDW has released details of a concept design, designated the Type 216, for a long-range conventional submarine. Experts say the design, based on the successful Type 214, is specifically targeted at Sea 1000 - Defence's future submarine program. Rex Patrick, a former submariner and the director of Acoustic Force, said yesterday the information...