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The price of oil has fallen by nearly half in just six months, a surprising and steep plunge that has analysts arguing over whether this is a good or bad thing. The price of oil has fallen by nearly half in just six months, a surprising and steep plunge that has consumers cheering, producers howling and economists wringing their hands over whether this is a good or bad thing. The price of a barrel of oil is just under $56, down from a summer high of $107, and lower than at any time since the US was still in recession...

If you’re like most Americans, you haven’t been questioning the welcome drop in gasoline prices. You just fill ’er up and feel grateful that you’re spending less.But why has this remarkable drop come about? And what can we do to help keep prices lower?Some of it, unfortunately, is beyond our control. Worldwide demand for oil is down now. That always causes the cost of gasoline to drop.But the other side of the equation -- the part that is under our control -- has gone largely unheralded in many media accounts: the boom in U.S. energy production. Simply put, we’re producing...

The 18-year long reign of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) has finally come to an end in Louisiana. In a landslide victory in Saturday’s runoff election, Republican Bill Cassidy defeated the incumbent and captured the ninth Senate seat for the GOP, capping off a victorious midterm election for his party. The road was rocky for Landrieu from the start. The public found out about her improper use of taxpayer funds, then the fact she doesn’t even own a home in Louisiana. Then, she dissed her constituents. Because of all her missteps and Cassidy’s growing lead, Democrats quickly gave up on Landrieu...

In what is likely a sign of things to come in 2016, the conservative Koch brothers-backed group Americans For Prosperity released an ad on Wednesday seeking to tie Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) to controversial ObamaCare adviser Jonathan Gruber. Gruber made headlines earlier this year for saying it was the “stupidity of the American voter” that helped the Obama administration pass the Affordable Care Act. The ad says Landrieu repeated President Obama’s ObamaCare “Lie of the Year” that if you liked your healthcare plan you could keep it, before launching into the Gruber attack. “An ObamaCare architect bragged about deceiving Americans...

With Mary Landrieu exiting the Senate, the usual rounds of finger pointing and recriminations have already begun. In the eyes of her supporters, the reasons are numerous and obvious. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the unpopularity of the President or the issues she espoused. No, the only reason that a Republican will occupy that seat next year is that the South is full of hateful, bigoted, stars and bars waving racists and homophobes. This, they will claim, is the result of an ongoing process which began simmering after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,...

This meme is in story after story. Since when is Florida not the "deep south"?? Was it not also part of the old Confederacy?? It certainly isn't a border state up near Virginia and Kentucky!

In the final insult of a devastating 2014 election for Democrats, Sen. Mary Landrieu, the party’s last remaining statewide officeholder from the Deep South, was trounced Saturday in the head-to-head Louisiana Senate runoff election. Republican Bill Cassidy’s resounding victory is the ninth Senate seat picked up by the GOP in this year’s elections, three more than the party needed to take control of the chamber. With nearly all the ballots counted, Cassidy led Landrieu by 14 points, 57 percent to 43 percent.

Live Results from Louisiana Secretary of State for US Senate Race and two House races. All three seem to be over. Three Democrats being whipped badly by three Republicans.

Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu lost her reelection bid Saturday in a runoff race with Republican challenger Rep. Bill Cassidy, despite a relentless, against-long-odds effort.

How it ended up on a Washington D.C. website called The Free Beacon is still a mystery, but Robert J Wright and Erin McCarty’s on air reaction to their 710 KEEL interview with Senator Mary Landrieu is ‘going viral’. In the segment following their eight minute chat with the incumbent Senator, the KEEL morning hosts joked about how Landrieu controlled the interview by time and again coming back to her charges of fraud against Republican opponent Bill Cassidy.

The values that are pre-eminent for Republican Party voters are probably freedom, independence, autonomy, limited government and self-reliance, and a strong belief in the powers of capitalism and a free market,” Cross said. “We see them in the South: the calls or less government, the call for people to take personal responsibility, the inveighing against the dependent class.” And in Louisiana and other energy-producing states, he said, the perceived antipathy of national Democrats for the oil and gas industry helps swell Republican ranks. “We’re looking at something more than just a bad year,” said Charlie Cook, the Shreveport native who...

When Louisiana Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu lost her re-election runoff on Saturday it put Barack Obama in the record books as the two-term president with the most midterm losses for his party. The record previously was held by Harry Truman. Truman’s Democratic Party lost 74 seats in 1946 and 1950, while under Obama the Democrats have lost a total of 75 seats in 2010 and 2014. He could lose one more if Republican Martha McSally beats Democratic Rep. Ron Barber in Arizona in an election recount, Breitbart News reports. McSally is currently ahead by only 200 votes. …

Michael Tomasky is not content to argue, in the wake of Mary Landrieu's defeat, that Democrats should write off the South as politically-unfriendly territory. In his Daily Beast item of today, Tomasky goes to great lengths to trash the region in the ugliest of terms. "Reactionary, prejudice-infested, fetid, reject[ing] nearly everything that’s good about this country, just one big nuclear waste site of choleric, and extremely racialized, resentment," is how Tomasky slurs most of the South, saying "almost the entire South" is as he describes it.

Landrieu is a household name in Louisiana. A Southern, conservative Democratic stronghold for generations, the Gulf States have edged toward the GOP since the mid-1990s, when Bill Clinton made fiscal discipline a national value, yet his party failed to follow suit. Still standing true on American values, limited government, and individual liberty, Southern Democrats felt less welcome in their party, and started moving to the GOP. Except for US Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, who has had it pretty easy in the Big Easy. A staunch defender of the oil industry, a reliable provider of federal earmarks, she flew out...

This week U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) appeared as a guest on my radio program, Ringside Politics, on WGSO 990 AM in New Orleans.Over the past 16 years as host of Ringside Politics, I have interviewed Senator Landrieu over a dozen times. In the past, she would call in to promote a particular issue or cause, usually engaging in pleasant conversation or good natured debate.Our relationship certainly changed in our last radio interview, which occurred over a year ago on the contentious topic of Internet taxes. It was a testy exchange as the Senator and I clashed on whether the...

Republicans will hold at least 246 House seats come January, according to election results on Saturday, giving the GOP a commanding majority that matches the party's post-World War II high during Democratic President Harry S. Truman's administration. The GOP retained control of two seats in runoffs in Louisiana, expanding the advantage for Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who can afford defections from his increasingly conservative caucus and still get legislation passed. Combined with the Republican takeover of the Senate, Congress will be all-GOP for the final two years of President Barack Obama's second term.

Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-La.) luck ran out Saturday night. The Democrat’s colleagues talk about her as a fighter who has won tough runoff elections in red Louisiana before, even if she was the underdog against Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.). But in 2014, a host of factors conspired to keep her from ultimately falling short for a fourth term. Collapse among white voters Landrieu’s support among black voters in Louisiana is nearly universal, but strategists in the state wondered if there were enough of them to counteract Cassidy’s huge lead among white voters. There were not. Landrieu’s percentage of the...

BATON ROUGE, La. | Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy handily defeated Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, denying her a fourth term and extending the GOP’s domination of the 2014 midterm elections that put Republicans in charge of Capitol Hill for the final two years of President Obama’s tenure. With Mr. Cassidy’s victory, the GOP will hold 54 seats when the Senate convenes in January, nine more than they have now. Republican victories in two Louisiana House districts Saturday — including the seat Cassidy now holds — ensure at least 246 seats, compared to 188 for Democrats, the largest GOP advantage since the...

You have to say one thing for Mary Landrieu. She told everyone that she wouldn’t be going down without a fight, and she’s living up to her word. In the closing hours of the election, Landrieu supporters have been busy bees indeed. One report coming in to Hot Air indicates that a very specific threat has been going around to anyone in several low income communities as to what will happen if they don’t get out there and vote for the incumbent Senator. The following flyer was picked up by an activist on the scene and submitted to the Black...

Republican Congressman Bill Cassidy still holds a double-digit lead over incumbent Democrat Mary Landrieu going into tomorrow’s Louisiana Senate runoff. The latest Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey of Likely Louisiana Voters shows Cassidy leading Landrieu by 16 points – 56% to 40%. Four percent (4%) are still undecided.