You know how Charlestonians get when they see snow falling? That was Pickens Rep. Neal Collins the morning Tropical Storm Helene arrived at his Easley home. He stood in his garage and shot video of the rain. “I woke up before my 5am alarm with unexpected excitement,” he posted on social medi…
If you have a hummingbird feeder in your yard, you’re probably enjoying watching the hummers sipping nectar to fuel up for their long migration south in the coming weeks. But did you know that nectar makes up only a small percentage of a hummingbird’s diet? Up to 80% of it comes from insects…
I recently embarked on a quest to collect stories of what I call Matthew 25 politicians. These aren’t politicians who are trying to enact the political agenda of self-appointed religious leaders. They’re politicians who are motivated by the agenda of Jesus — specifically his call in Matthew …
Beyond the Resurrection and the Virgin Birth, there are a couple of other universal concepts to Christianity: Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself — you know, the Big Two that Jesus identified when he was challenged by a Jewish scribe to name the greatest commandment.
We don’t pay for our groceries before they’re grown. Ditto our dinner; in fact, we’ve already consumed said dinner at sit-down restaurants before we pay.
Jeff is 14 years old and already in trouble. Asked about his home life, he said stoically, “My daddy died, and my mama’s on drugs.”
South Carolina’s legislators once believed, as USC law professor James Underwood explained in his authoritative four-volume history on the state's constitution, that “Promiscuous state fiscal aid to all forms of private endeavor, whether religious or not, was to be viewed with deep skepticis…
In this week's column, Kevin Fisher explores the benefits of the recently renewed Abandoned Buildings Tax Credit Bill, and remembers a late friend from Columbia with whom he worked.
Back when it was against the law in South Carolina to carry a gun into a bar, gun fetishists took to whining about how dangerous it was for them to have to walk from their cars to their favorite bar and back unarmed.
Columnist Kevin Fisher writes about his optimism for the Gamecocks' new quarterback and the upcoming football season for USC.
South Carolina’s chief justice isn’t just the guy who presides at oral arguments, the first among equals. He’s also the head of the judicial branch of government, tasked with managing the budget, hiring and firing staff, deciding where lower-court judges preside each week and setting the tone.
South Carolina’s constitution requires the Legislature to provide “a system of free, public schools open to all children” — which sounds pretty bare bones: Open schools, with books and teachers, and see what happens.
I became a defender of political attack ads as a reporter. South Carolina candidates had just started spending ridiculous amounts of special-interest money on elections, and one of my jobs was to write “fact check” articles on their TV ads and campaign mailings. Not all of them, of course — …
In the House District 75 race, columnist Kevin Fisher says, "we have a competitive House race with two quality candidates. I urge both of them to keep it smart and civil, as I know they both can."
Even the most corrupt S.C. sheriffs try to hide their crimes, and they certainly don’t pose for pictures that catch them in the act. So I suspect Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright truly believes it was legal for him to hire his son as a deputy.
I don’t cook breakfast, so the only time I get to experience the olfactory delight of bacon frying in the morning is on summer vacation at Pawleys. One of my friends gets up early to prepare the perfect, crispy bacon, and its incomparable aroma wafts gently through the house, serving as the …
I was driving through one of those gated golf communities in Columbia’s suburbs Monday when I approached a young boy on a bicycle, putting some serious thigh muscle into what looks in a car like level ground but is in fact (I know, having ridden it myself) a significant incline.
"So don’t be chicken, let’s get on with it," columnist Kevin Fisher writes about his dream for the House of Raeford chicken plant to relocate to a rural area and for cities to redevelop the riverfront site in West Columbia.
The most heartbreaking change coming to the S.C. Senate is the departure of Katrina Shealy, who lost her primary runoff Tuesday to a candidate who targeted the Lexington County Republican because she thought women ought to have six weeks to decide whether to end a pregnancy, and bolstered th…
The fallout from the Israel-Hamas war jumped the ocean and landed in West Columbia this spring, at the unlikeliest of places, Suburban Baptist Church. Or so it seemed at the time.
It has become a little clearer why Erskine College’s Charter Institute reversed course earlier this month and allowed Oceanside Collegiate Academy to transfer to a different charter school authorizer rather than forcing it to close.
Raise your hand if you’re totally psyched about the Biden-Trump rematch. Yeah, that’s what I thought. There’s about 10% of you over there on the left who are totally gaga over the president, and 15% on the right who are totally MAGA over the former president.
To say Riverbanks has been a success is an understatement. And a big one at that.
When the S.C. House finally debated the bill last month to tweak how the Legislature elects judges, Democratic Leader Todd Rutherford was of course unabashed in his opposition to even the small changes his colleagues wanted to make, because he has made himself into a poster child for much th…
We got a column this week from a member of the S.C. Freedom Caucus explaining why he was determined to kill the bill merging six of South Carolina's uncoordinated, overlapping health agencies. I was excited about being able to publish an opposing opinion, since we had written so many pieces …
Charleston Sen. Sandy Senn knew freshman Rep. Matt Leber was coming after her in the June 11 S.C. Republican primary, so she started collecting screenshots of his social media posts, his legislative bio, his Wikipedia entry.
It was barely an hour into the S.C. House’s marathon session Wednesday when freshman Rep. Heather Bauer stepped to the lectern and asked her colleagues to cut $163,999 out of the $13 billion state budget.
The chairman of Richland County's Democratic Party is concerned that a proposed Federal Reserve rule would harm Black homeownership in South Carolina by requiring higher down payments.
They’re playing games at the Statehouse again.
Columnist Kevin Fisher calls out SC House Speaker Murrell Smith for the 'simply cowardly' way he's gone about handling the medical marijuana bill, which is now dead.
I haven’t paid a lot of attention to S.C. legislators’ effort to protect kids from online pornography. It's not that I sympathize with the pornographers' arguments. Of course we ought to make it harder for kids to access porn, and I have no problem with making adults verify their age to acce…
If you don’t hang out at the Statehouse, you probably weren’t surprised that an overwhelmingly Republican Legislature refused to elect a former Democratic gubernatorial candidate to an open seat on the S.C. Circuit Court on Wednesday.
I was all ready to denounce the Senate Judiciary Committee for rushing the House’s 43-section S.C. utility regulation overhaul — ending its lone public hearing after only supporters had been allowed to testify and advancing it to the floor a mere week after senators got their first look at i…
The saying is "to the victors gets the spoils," but not for the Gamecocks.
The only thing that bothers me about House of Raeford possibly moving to Aiken County is this: Why didn’t Richland and Lexington counties offer rural/agricultural sites locally for the plant to relocate?
I started devouring Shakespeare as a hobby in the sixth grade (yes, I was that child), but somehow I read right over his use of “hoist with his own petard” to describe an episode of poetic justice.
At the risk of unleashing a tsunami of irresponsible, misleading and even fabricated claims from less-than-responsible elected officials, I need to tell you about absolute legislative immunity.
What does the striking mural on the side of a commercial building in Cayce's historic core have in common with Charleston?
If little Debbie’s parents prefer for her to dine on wagyu beef instead of mystery meat, should the taxpayers have to pay for her to have lunch delivered daily from Circa 1886 instead of standing in line in the school cafeteria?
The solution of how universities can afford to maintain history majors is the wrong question. The real question is how we can enhance the teaching of the humanities in ways that enhance student learning in an affordable way.
When Busted Plug was removed from its spot on Taylor Street last year, Columbia City Council did nothing except talk about relocating the statue. What’s next? Probably nothing unless citizens start to lean on City Council members to act.
There was a lively debate at the Statehouse Wednesday about House leaders’ plan to strip all the limits from South Carolina’s pilot voucher program before the first “education scholarship” check is even cut.
The S.C. Senate was about to vote on a muscular update to South Carolina’s Read to Succeed law, with a heavy emphasis on what’s being called “the science of reading,” and Senate Education Chairman Greg Hembree was explaining the bill and the background.
A 17-year-old Columbia high schooler pens an open letter to the Richland 2 School Board criticizing efforts to ban books and curb LGBT+ education.
Columnist Cassidy Spencer reflects on her role in Trustus Theatre's "Stupid F*cking Bird" in this week's Is This Thing On.
There's a special class of political opportunists who believe they can sell people any sort of nonsense just by adorning a "conservative" label or invoking the name of the defeated former president, and the other day they put on an exhibition leading up to a House subcommittee meeting.
As the SC House finally moves toward doing its job and taking a vote on the issue, I urge readers to contact House members and tell them you want the bill passed and you want it passed now.
Whether you consider South Carolina’s abortion law too restrictive or too liberal, it’s tempting to roll your eyes over yet another lawsuit challenging it.
The deafening silence that greeted Wednesday’s "draft recommendations" by the S.C. House’s special committee on reforming the judicial selection process speaks volumes.
For years, some of the biggest and best opponents of liberalizing our gun laws have been police. So last year, legislators who are determined to encourage everybody in South Carolina to carry a gun in public developed a cynical ploy to buy their silence:
The old parties offer us two doddering old men with highly questionable ethics and lowly placed expectations for success (or even survival) in a second administration that neither deserves. But another choice may be coming, one that could involve Nikki Haley.
I hadn’t thought about the S.C. Legislature’s long-secret, still-obscene, over-the-top pensions for years. Then earlier this month, the clerk of the Senate told me the reason nine senators didn’t collect extra pay for last summer’s special legislative session was that they’re “retired” for p…
And with that, the end of an era. Richland Mall, which has operated in some form on the corner of Forest Drive and Beltline Drive since the early 1960s, has closed its doors for the last time.
Public trust in American universities is rapidly eroding, spurred on by political and social conflicts that are rippling across the country.