This week Yellowhammer will be doing a three part series on polling numbers for Alabama Governor Robert Bentley that outline how his popularity has grown since taking office. Today we will start by taking a look at the Governor’s overall favorability rating among all voters from his inauguration up until today. Later this week we […]

As we mentioned in mid-December, three Republicans qualified for the Senate District 35 special election set to take place Jan. 29: 1. Rep. Jim Barton: Owner of Bay Area Resources and Old South Construction and Chairman of the House General Fund Budget Committee. 2. Bill Hightower: President of Tower Strategies, Inc. with a business background […]

Teachers unions, trial lawyers associations, and radical environmental groups are examples of organizations that are operating across the country in an effort to undermine conservative policy makers. Alabama may be a solid red state, but don’t think for a second these groups have stopped working hard to influence our state government any way they can. […]

For the first time in a couple of decades Congress will give the American people a significant tax hike. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the fiscal cliff deal passed by the Senate in the wee hours of Jan. 1 includes $41 in tax hikes for every $1 in spending cuts. These tax hikes, for […]

Alabama politics had very few clear winners and losers in 2012. With few exceptions, most of the key players and organizations ended the year with mixed results. Republicans continued to dominate the political landscape in the lingering wake of their 2010 electoral tidal wave. However, they also experienced some of the growing pains that come […]

By Cameron Smith On December 14, 2012, Americans saw the darkness in Newtown, Connecticut. And for many of us it is hard to grasp, maybe impossible. How could a young man be so full of pain and rage that he would take so many young lives? Where are the answers? What can we do? What […]

“ Hate Mail of the Week” is a weekly feature on Yellowhammer Politics in which some of the hate mail submitted through our contact page or in response to our email blasts is published exactly as it was received. The only edits made are to remove expletives — this is a family show, after all. […]

“Rumors and Rumblings” is a weekly feature that runs each Wednesday. It includes short nuggets of information that we glean from conversations throughout the week. Have a tip? Send it here. All sources remain confidential. 1. State House insiders are rumbling that a House freshman will likely be landing a committee chairmanship ahead of the […]

The Alabama Policy Institute (API) has released a new infographic in its By the Numbers series that outlines the significant impacts to the federal budget and the budgets of families across the nation should Congress not act to avoid the fiscal cliff. The one-page Fiscal Cliff By the Numbers infographic below details figures that show […]

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley today announced that she will appoint Congressman Tim Scott to the U.S. Senate. Scott will replace conservative stalwart Senator Jim DeMint who announced a couple of weeks ago that he was resigning to head D.C.-based think tank The Heritage Foundation. As I wrote on Yellowhammer and The Daily Caller last […]

According to AL.com and multiple Yellowhammer sources, the Alabama Attorney General’s office has subpoenaed the Alabama Republican Party’s financial records. Members of the Party’s steering committee told Yellowhammer last week that the subpoena appears to be part of a grand jury investigation into the ALGOP’s campaign finance activities during the 2010 election cycle when now […]

The Alabama Public Service Commission staff convened on Tuesday with one of our state’s utilities for their annual meeting to review the regulatory climate and the state’s plan to comply with President Obama’s ever-expanding environmental regulations. The PSC is not usually a hotbed for political activity, but any time energy policy is being discussed there’s […]

The Daily Caller posted a phenomenal video this morning from inside a Chicago classroom. In the video, an unidentified student from Chicago’s South Shore High School goes absolutely ballistic on her music teacher for not teaching the class in spite of going on strike demanding higher wages. “The unnamed student is loud. She’s viscerally strident. […]

(Washington, DC) The Chairman of the Congressional panel that has jurisdiction over the Department of Defense today named Alabama Congressman Mike Rogers the next Chairman of the panel’s Strategic Forces subcommittee. As Chairman, Rogers will oversee our nation’s strategic weapons, ballistic missile defense, space programs, and most of the Department of Energy national security programs. […]

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Rep. Martha Roby (AL-02) has been appointed to serve on the conference committee tasked with negotiating a final agreement between the House and Senate on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The House and Senate passed different versions of the NDAA, which Congress must pass every year to authorize military programs and […]

If Americans are less than confident, slightly confused and even a little angry with the political narrative they are hearing about the “fiscal cliff”, they have every reason to be. The fiscal cliff is a politically-created crisis resulting from two separate legislative undertakings. In December of 2010, Congress passed and President Obama signed the “Tax […]

Trending topics are the most-talked-about topics on Twitter at a given time. They are listed on each Twitter user’s homepage to show what topics are currently the most discussed by other users around the city, state, nation or world. 2012 was a big year for Twitter when it comes to politics, and political conversations many […]

“Rumors and Rumblings” is a weekly feature that runs each Wednesday. It includes short nuggets of information that we glean from conversations throughout the week. Have a tip? Send it here. All sources remain confidential. 1. House Republican Freshmen are huddling this week in Andalusia at Rep. Mike Jones’s farm for their yearly Freshmen retreat. […]

Dieter Zetsche, chairman of Mercedes’ parent company Daimler, personally delivered the Pope’s brand new modified M Class crossover to the Vatican last week. “It is an honor for Mercedes-Benz to be accompanying His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI on his future journeys with our new Popemobile”, Zetsche said in a statement. “For more than 80 years […]

I was as surprised as anyone last week when conservative stalwart Sen. Jim DeMint resigned from his South Carolina U.S. Senate seat to become the president of conservative Washington, D.C. think tank The Heritage Foundation. While it’s never good to lose a solid conservative vote in the Senate, I think it’s great that President Reagan’s […]

I attended the annual meeting of the Business Council of Alabama today at the Harbert Center in downtown Birmingham. I enjoyed hearing Jay Timmons, President and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, give an excellent speech covering the challenges facing American manufacturers, including the so-called “fiscal cliff,” high corporate taxe rates and over-regulation. The […]

This is a very open blog so I allow free dialogue and I welcome criticism. That’s why the Yellowhammer comment section frequently contains both positive and negative comments directed at me personally and toward this blog’s content. That will continue. However, I won’t allow personal attacks on Chairman Armistead, the Governor or anyone else. Feel […]

As the automatic tax increases and spending cuts of the so-called “fiscal cliff” near the horizon, political pundits continue to argue whether the government should solve its budget woes by reducing spending, raising taxes, or some combination of the two. Even the President has engaged with the trendy narrative of taking a “little more” from […]

“Rumors and Rumblings” is a weekly feature that runs each Wednesday. It includes short nuggets of information that we glean from conversations throughout the week. Have a tip? Send it here. All sources remain confidential. 1. For the first time ever, we’re only going to have one Rumor & Rumbling this week. I’ve decided to […]