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The actual number of SNL viewers will be available later in the week. But for point of comparison, the season premiere delivered 6.3 million viewers, so last night could be close to 10 million. Trump, who continues to lead the GOP primary polls, previously fueled an August debate on Fox News Channel to a record 24 million viewers, and September debate on CNN drew an also impressive 23 million viewers.

UPDATED with additional stats: According to Nielsen Fast National ratings data, CNN’s Democratic debate averaged 15.3 million total viewers last night. That would make it the sixth-biggest nonsports cable telecast in history. In the 25-54 demographic, the faceoff among White House hopefuls averaged 4.8 million — the most ever for a Dem debate. CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield bragged on-air this morning that her network’s debate drew “a higher number than the season premiere of The Walking Dead.”

My ten year old told me she wanted to organize the kids in her class to support Carly Fiorina. Ms. Fiorina’s speech was the only Presidential speech at the RedState Gathering that my daughter wanted to hear. She’s a big fan. In fact, Fiorina’s 2016 Presidential campaign has been very impressive and she has been sharp. Her debate performances have been impressive. The points she has made on life and limited government have been spot on. But I still have concerns about Carly Fiorina. Conservatives who want to hold up Donald Trump’s prior positions should do the same to Carly...

A former board member of Hewlett-Packard who voted to fire Carly Fiorina as CEO is now endorsing the businesswoman's 2016 Republican presidential campaign. "Carly did what she was brought in to do: turn the company around and make it successful again. Not only did she save the company from the dire straits it was in, she laid the foundation for HP's future growth," Tom Perkins wrote for a full-page New York Times ad. The comments, in an advertisement placed in the newspaper's business section Thursday by a pro-Fiorina super-PAC, were framed as a response to an Aug. 18 Times column...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Sunday turned his attack on rival Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, in his soaring and often unpredictable campaign that has largely targeted frontrunners but spared essentially nobody. “His state has not performed well,” Trump, the billionaire businessman who now leads in most polls, told ABC’s “This Week.” “We need someone who’s going to make it perform well, this country perform well. … I’m the one to do it.” Like many political candidates, Trump is spending the early part of the election cycle trying to downgrade the early favorites -- in this case Republican Jeb Bush,...

Carly Fiorina has been widely extolled for her solid performance in the Fox News debate featuring the second tier candidates last Thursday. Judging by her rise in the polls, her overall message clearly resonated with a number of voters. Most prominently, voters are likely tantalized by her promise to “throw every punch at Hillary” and not pull punches, as has been the case with previous GOP nominees. Indeed, it is critical for the eventual GOP nominee to have the ability to articulate a bold contrast on the key issues and pin the failures of the current policies on the Democrat...

As the presidential-election season kicks off, governors from all over America are seeking the Republican nomination. Historically, voters in presidential elections have tended to favor the executive experience of governors, and it seems more likely than not that the eventual Republican nominee will be one of these gentlemen. A governor is different from other politicians in that he governs an identifiable state for an identifiable period of time, and thus can be empirically associated with an economic track record in a way that a senator or a heart surgeon cannot. Economics, however, remains an inexact science. Even if a million...

Scott Walker, along with Ted Cruz and perhaps a handful of others on the Right, understands the pernicious nature of the kind of “bipartisanship” that has give us the likes of Poppy and W. Bush, and is currently exemplified in the current entitled scion, Jeb. It’s a terrible, undemocratic idea: The town hall attendee asked for the microphone to pose this question to newly announced presidential candidate Scott Walker: Americans are fed up with the partisan gridlock in Washington, so what would he do as president to “end the partisanship and parochialism that is really stifling this great country”? Walker...

Eight years ago Barack Obama bound his own party to what proved to be a successful class warfare platform–for him, at least. Unfortunately, and largely due to him, that binding turned out to be more of a hamstringing: there isn’t much of the party he brought along with him left in Washington. Obama’s constant narrative of division by wealth, sex, race and geography (urban vs. suburban/rural, coasts vs. heartland), is wholly dependent upon grooming and molding enough elected talent within the party to keep it growing. And yet all that’s left of the vibrant, rising, seemingly invincible party that Obama...

There are no sure things in politics, but Hillary Clinton is the closest thing to a sure thing to become the Democrats’ candidate for president in 2016. This is one of the painful but inescapable signs of our time. There is nothing in her history that would qualify her for the presidency, and much that should disqualify her. What is even more painful is that none of that matters politically. Many people simply want “a woman” to be president, and Hillary is the best-known woman in politics, though by no means the best qualified. What is Hillary’s history? In the...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton holds a dubious record: she’s gone longer than any presidential candidate in modern history without appearing on a national television news network or conducting a sit down interview with national media. Clinton, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, announced she would run for president via a recorded two-minute video message on Twitter Sunday April 12th. Following the announcement, Clinton dashed off to Iowa in her “Scooby” van without giving any time to the national press, and very little time – if any – to local reporters.

March 28-29, 2015 Departure: Red Ball Parking Garage – 142 East 31st Street, NY, NY 10016 Arrival: R10 Social House – 179 N Harbor Dr, Redondo Beach, CA 90277 13 states – NY, NJ, WV, PA, OH, IL, IN, MO, OK, TX, NM, AZ, CA 2811.5 miles in 26 hours, 28 minutes, 13 seconds 106.21 mph Overall Average 23 Minutes 17 Seconds Stopped 107.79 mph Moving Average 3 Fuel Stops: 8m13s, 11m29s and 3m35s 70 Gallons Fuel Capacity ~230 Gallons of E85 used 12.22 MPG

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Tuesday the agency is “fairly certain” that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not sign a separation statement upon her departure from Foggy Bottom. “We don’t have record of it,” Psaki admitted. “Can you put to rest the questions that you have not been able to answer to this point about former Secretary Clinton, whether she signed this separation form or not?” asked The Associated Press’ Matt Lee. “Well, we have reviewed Secretary Clinton’s official personal file and administrative files and do not have any record of her signing any of the 0F-109,”...

24 degrees breaks old record of 30 set in 1873. Thursday morning not only broke an "ancient" record from 1873, but we also dropped to the second coldest temperature ever recorded in the month of November in Jacksonville. According to the National Weather Service, for the second morning in a row, Jacksonville set a new cold weather record. Thursday mornings temperature dropped to a bone chilling 24 degrees breaking the old record of 30 degrees set in 1873. If that wasn't cold enough for you, Thursday's 24 degrees also marks the second lowest temperature ever recorded in the month of...

MADISON, Wis. — Mary Burke’s resume, much like the Democratic candidate for governor, has gone through a lot of changes — particularly during the course of her campaign. And some new tax records obtained by Wisconsin Reporter beg more questions about Burke’s shifting employment record. Burke is running against incumbent Republican Gov. Scott Walker in next month’s election. There is “no record” of Mary Burke on Wisconsin’s income tax rolls in 1988. That’s peculiar because Burke did pay $3,514 in 1987, and $3,750 in income taxes in 1989, according to a document from the state Department of Revenue’s Central Tax...

Call it the return of the summer "polar vortex" if you want -- a mass of cool, dry air from the north is forecast to bring more unseasonably cool temperatures next week in Maryland and across the eastern United States. **SNIP** Twice this month, Baltimore has set new record lows, most recently on Friday. The low of 57 degrees at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport broke a record set in 2008, of 59 degrees. On July 18, a low of 57 broke a record dating to 1976.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks finished nearly flat on Tuesday, although the Dow eked out another record closing high as utilities' shares fell while 10-year bond yields hit their highest level in a month. Six of the 10 primary S&P 500 sector indexes ended the session lower. The decline was led by a 0.3 percent drop in the S&P utilities index (.SPLRCU). Utility stocks' high dividends tend to lose some of their appeal when bond yields jump. It was the Dow's fourth straight record closing high. The S&P 500, though, broke its four-day string of record high finishes. The...

(CNN) -- Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling is banned from the NBA for life. Sterling has confirmed it is his voice expressing racist views on audio of a private conversation that was leaked to the media. Some who have followed Sterling over the years say he had shown this side before and the leaked audio led to public outcry too loud for the NBA commissioner to ignore.

There's striking new evidence that Earth's atmosphere is increasingly saturated with carbon dioxide, the major gas from fossil fuel emissions that trigger climate change. ... "This should be taken as a warning," said Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist with the Carnegie Institution's department of global ecology at Stanford University. "It is time to stop building things with tailpipes and smokestacks. "It is time to stop using the sky as a waste dump for our carbon dioxide pollution. If we fail to heed this warning, our children will end up living in a world that is much hotter than any human...

STURTEVANT, Wis. — Scott Walker is nothing if not consistent. From his time as a local official in Milwaukee a decade ago to his explosive first year as governor of Wisconsin in 2011, Mr. Walker, a Republican, has deviated little from a platform to spend less, tax less and rein in the power of public sector unions. Again and again, Mr. Walker has shown a rare aptitude for recognizing and seizing ripe political opportunities, and he has advanced himself in ways that have him being mentioned with Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio and...