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Joe Darby, a prominent pastor in Charleston, S.C., was discussing the Democratic presidential field with fellow clergymen when Pete Buttigieg’s name came up. A fellow pastor quickly interjected. “Isn’t that the dude who kissed his husband on TV?” the person asked skeptically, according to Darby. The exchange highlights a major obstacle for Buttigieg, who’s vaulted into the top tier of Democratic candidates without gaining traction among African Americans, according to recent surveys of national and South Carolina Democrats. But as the mayor of South Bend, Ind., devotes more effort to campaigning for black votes in the South and elsewhere, he...

The ruling could give carriers legal protections in blocking spam calls. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been fighting robocalls for years, but as anyone with a cell phone can tell you, they're still getting through. Now, the Commission wants to make it legal for phone companies to block unwanted robocalls by default. Chairman Anji Pai has circulated a declaratory ruling that, if adopted, would give carriers permission to develop new call blocking tools. The ruling could also allow consumers to prohibit calls from numbers that aren't on their contact lists. The proposed change targets spam robocalls that hijack legitimate,...

North Carolina's most infamous political story lines of recent years are merging into a congressional race this summer that pits the architect of the state's "bathroom bill" against a Democrat who was granted an electoral do-over after evidence of ballot fraud tainted his prior opponent's campaign. State Sen. Dan Bishop topped nine other Republican candidates seeking the 9th Congressional District nomination on Tuesday, winning almost half of the ballots cast in an extremely low turnout election that drew less than 10% of the eligible voters. He will face Democrat Dan McCready, as well as Libertarian and Green candidates, on Sept....

Is Brian Williams on his way back to the big chair he surrendered to Lester Holt on Nightly News? It’s starting to look that way. After his awkward departure from his anchor duties nearly four years ago, it looked as if his career was basically over. He’d been shuffled off to the network’s equivalent of the kiddy table at MSNBC after it was discovered he’d been “embellishing” his own role in news stories over the years. But as the New York Post reports, Williams was recently seen on stage at a high-profile event for advertisers, alongside some of the...

Former Vice President Joe Biden bills himself as one of the regular guys and gals, but as a Democratic Senator from Delaware, he cozied up to credit card executives while championing their cause in Congress, making it tougher for average Americans to file for bankruptcy. “Joe Biden pretends that he’s middle-class Joe, and in reality he’s corporate Joe,” Adam Levitin, a law professor at Georgetown University who specializes in bankruptcy, commercial law, and financial regulation, told the Washington Examiner. Biden was a key architect of and whip for the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, which made it...

The biggest damage from a renewed trade war with the United States will be China’s swing from 25 years as a net domestic saver to a global net borrower. More than $1 trillion in stock value was wiped out on Monday due to the collapse of the expected U.S./China Trade Deal. The American government mostly ignored the 600 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and soybean futures hitting an 11-year low; but China’s central bank was forced to inject $3.5 billion into the financial system after foreign investors dumped a record $1.6 billion worth of mainland shares...

Long Island University-Brooklyn will be scrapping its 84-year-old mascot/nickname of “Blackbirds” this fall as a result of an athletics program merger with its Post campus. But that’s not all: LIU President Kimberly Cline noted she “had heard” the nickname name “is an offensive racist mascot,” according to the New York Post. At the end of March, Cline had told a group of a dozen concerned LIU-Brooklyn alumni that “Blackbirds” was to be replaced “for a few reasons.”

The Left often claims that America is far ahead of the rest of the world in mass shootings, citing a paper by one Adam Lankford saying America has 31% of total mass shooters worldwide.  Since Lankford hasn't made all his data available to be checked by other researchers, it isn't likely his "study" is legit.  Others have gone over the paper and find that, far from leading the world in mass shootings, America is #56 at worst. This has all the earmarks of another Michael Bellesiles case.  Bellesiles in 2000 published a book purporting to show that colonial America had far fewer...

Now here's a surprise. MSNBC legal analyst Danny Cevallos went on today's Morning Joe and flatly declared that Roe v. Wade is "ripe to be overturned" because "even if you are pro-choice, the right to privacy [upon which Roe was based] does not exist either in the history or the text of the Constitution." Cevallos also said that Roe "stands on a weak foundational basis." [snip] Joe Scarborough didn't express a personal opinion on Cevallos' statement. But he did note that back in law school, his "very progressive" constitutional law prof, while agreeing with Roe's conclusion, acknowledged that it was...

California is being targeted by a monster El Niño Storm that will bring seven days of torrential rain, up to three feet of mountain snow, and may cause an Oroville Dam overflow. A period of strengthening trade winds that seemed set to end this year’s El Niño that brought a record 188 percent of average snow pack to California’s Sierra Mountains, reversed in mid-April to surge a bloom of heated water along the Equatorial Pacific and reawaken a late season El Niño that has a 70 probability of lasting through the summer. The upper atmosphere jet stream normally blows east to west...

The witness rose from her seat, raised her right hand, and swore to tell the truth before Congress. But four words were missing: “So help me God.” In the House of Representatives, to the winner go the spoils, and Democrats, the new decision makers, control everything, including what legislation gets a vote and the minutiae of procedural choices, such as whether witnesses must utter the traditional plea for divine aid. Democratic chairmen and chairwomen of several key committees have deemed no such entreaty is necessary. “I think God belongs in religious institutions: in temple, in church, in cathedral, in mosque...

DoubleLine CEO Jeffrey Gundlach warned investors Tuesday that the U.S. is unequipped for recession as it becomes increasingly strapped by debt. “Any thoughtful person would be concerned,” the so-called “bond king” said in a webcast. “It’s sounding like a pretty bad cocktail of economic risk, and risk to the long end of the bond market.” The billionaire investor said the United States is “out of tools” to gin up the economy during the next recession. He pointed to the Federal Reserve’s decision to leave interest rates steady and a dovish turnaround that boosted stocks this year. The Fed signaled it...

The time-honored American tradition of outlandish political promises continues apace. Now, the spotlight is on student debt. Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren added to the debate recently when she put forward a proposal to cancel $640 billion worth of federal and private student loans. Warren touts her plan as a way to boost the economy, redistribute wealth, and help struggling borrowers. But as justifications for canceling nearly half the outstanding $1.5 trillion balance of student debt, these arguments are woefully inadequate. To her credit, Warren has recognized and partially addressed one of the major problems with canceling all outstanding student...

CENTURY, Fla. (WEAR) — Two women allegedly attempted to get contraband in a prison by sneaking it in their genitals. A report from the Escambia County Sheriff's Office says on September 3, 2018 a K-9 advised deputies there were narcotics present in a black Chevrolet Impala that was parked in the Century Corrections Institute parking lot. There were two women and two children in the car, the report states. The women were identified as Rukeiya Heygood and Rikeishma Noack, according to the report. One of the deputies stated they used highly sensitive metal detects used to detect electronic contraband on...

University of Southern Maine Commencement Speech 2019 by the governor of Maine Janet Mills (Dem). ME! ME! ME! Start at 1:57:30 The "I" governor. She beats Obama cold in self-referencing during a speech. It was supposed to address the graduates and their lives. Instead was an ad for her. Embarrassing. Definitely could kill a lot of scotch with a shot everytime she said I or Me. Start at 1:57:30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czEZeGiiA9Q

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As robocall numbers continue to skyrocket, the FCC is fighting back, proposing new ways for phone companies to crack down on unwanted calls. NBC’s Tom Costello takes a look at a new tool that can hopefully keep your phone from ringing. Click here to watch the video report

When a Florida man tried to evade law enforcement, the car he chose for his getaway was classic. Oswald Pereira, who allegedly set fire to his wife’s home in Marion County, hopped in a Dodge Charger that was painted to look like the General Lee from the old "Dukes of Hazzard'' television show, WKMG reported. Alas, Pereira was caught and faces charges of arson, fleeing and attempting to elude law enforcement, resisting without violence and three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, WKMG reported. And Pereira was admitted to UF Health Shands Hospital in Gainesville with burns over...

Over the weekend, the climate system sounded simultaneous alarms. Near the entrance to the Arctic Ocean in northwest Russia, the temperature surged to 84 degrees Fahrenheit (29 Celsius). Meanwhile, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eclipsed 415 parts per million for the first time in human history. By themselves, these are just data points. But taken together with so many indicators of an altered atmosphere and rising temperatures, they blend into the unmistakable portrait of human-induced climate change. Saturday’s steamy 84-degree reading was posted in Arkhangelsk, Russia, where the average high temperature is around 54 this time of...

The Public Broadcasting System — the one American taxpayers fund, whether they like it or not — aired a new episode of the long-running kids' cartoon Arthur in which an elementary school teacher reveals himself as a homosexual by walking down the aisle with another male. "Arthur," the longest-running animated series for children in the USA, began its twenty-second season with the surprise "marriage" of Arthur the Aardvark's teacher Mr. Ratburn to another man.  In the episode, Arthur and his classmates are intrigued to discover that their teacher is getting married and begin to investigate who his bride might...