Leaders in McCain’s home state frustrated by repeal failure

Sen. John McCain sent shockwaves through the Senate early Friday morning when he cast the deciding vote rejecting the GOP's heath care effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. While his dramatic thumbs-down rejection drew gasps and cheers in Washington, D.C., leaders in Arizona have responded with a mixture of disappointment and frustration - but little in the way of direct criticism in this Republican-heavy state.

Alabama high school pulls conservative reading list after complaints

An Alabama high school has pulled a teacher's summer reading list after people complained it only contained conservative and right-leaning texts. Gene Ponder, a teacher of AP Government/Economics at Spanish Fort High School, assigned a virtually partisan summer reading list that included books from Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Ron Paul and other conservative and libertarian authors, Gulf Coast News Today reported .

No Such Thing as a Close Election

In Georgia's Sixth Congressional District special election last week, 57 percent of registered voters stayed home. The race repeatedly made national news because it was possible that a Democrat could be elected to that seat for the first time since 1979.

John Hood: Learning and winning go together

It was during the 1988 presidential election. Like many conservative and libertarian students of the day, my friends and I at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill were looking for a leader to follow in the footsteps of the president we all revered, Ronald Reagan.

Congressional Votes

Congressional Votes WASHINGTON - Here's a look at how area members of Congress voted the week of March 17-23. Check out this story on portclintonnewsherald.com: http://ohne.ws/2n1T5G6 Along with roll call votes this week, the Senate also passed the Honoring Investments in Recruiting and Employing American Military Veterans Act , to encourage effective, voluntary investments to recruit, employ, and retain men and women who have served in the military with annual federal awards to employers recognizing such efforts.

In health care push, Trump couldn’t master art of consensus

He'd been greeted with a standing ovation - one of his favorite measures of success - when he entered the Roosevelt Room on Thursday to meet with members of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus. After seven years of promises, the president said Republicans had reached a crucial moment to repeal and replace the "Obamacare" health care law.

The InfoWars Hit Austin: Alex Jones in Richard Linklater’s Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly

Mainstream awareness of Breitbart, Infowars and other unsavory conservative "news" outlets has skyrocketed, as millions suddenly found themselves needing to know who Steve Bannon et al. were. For me, none of these outlets or talking points were news: I'm Texas born-and-raised.

Alaska lawmakers are following a budget path that’s ended in gridlock …

The Alaska Legislature's budget process for the past two years has ended in gridlock and partisan sniping, then long overtime sessions. Halfway through the Legislature's 90-day session, the Republican-led Senate and the largely Democratic House majority are still drifting apart, with senators pushing for a spending cap and steep budget cuts as the House advances an income tax proposal and increased oil and gas taxes.

Dana Milbank: Trumpa s takeover of conservatism is complete

President Trump, addressing the annual Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, reminisced about the “very exciting” moment several years ago when he had his coming out as a conservative. I was there when Trump spoke at that 2011 CPAC gathering, at its former site in the Marriott ballroom in Washington's Woodley Park neighborhood.

Our View: Leashing Visit Florida

Instead of euthanizing Visit Florida, House Speaker Richard Corcoran has decided to try to put it on a tighter leash. Corcoran, a Republican from Land O'Lakes, has been waging an internecine battle against Gov. Rick Scott over the state's taxpayer-funded tourism marketing agency.

There was one group noticeably absent from CPAC, the biggest conservative conference of the year

The "Stand With Rand" shirts were out, and the "Make America Great Again" were in among the younger crowd at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference. Libertarians, who normally make up the loudest and most vocal faction at the annual nationwide gathering of conservatives, had a noticeably diminished presence at the 2017 political confab.

Trump wins Electoral College vote; a few electors break ranks

Republican Donald Trump prevailed in U.S. Electoral College voting on Monday to officially win election as the next president, easily dashing a long-shot push by a small movement of detractors to try to block him from gaining the White House. Trump, who is set to take office on Jan. 20, garnered more than the 270 electoral votes required to win, even as at least half a dozen U.S. electors broke with tradition to vote against their own state's directives, the largest number of "faithless electors" seen in more than a century.