Ny Safidinao

The election ushered in a number of big changes in the states, with several for the first time legalizing gay marriage and marijuana , but one of the most dramatic shifts might be a change to the actual number of states. Puerto Ricans voted Tuesday to change their relationship with the United States and become the 51st U.S. state in a non-binding referendum that would require final approval from Congress. The AP wrote : The two-part referendum asked whether the island wanted to change its 114-year relationship with the United States. Nearly 54 percent, or 922,374 people, sought to change it, while 46 percent, or 786,749 people, favored the status quo. Voters then chose among three options for their new status, and statehood won with 61 percent. “Sovereign free association,” which would have allowed for more autonomy, received 33 percent, and independence garnered 5 percent. It’s the fourth time in 45 years that Puerto Rico has voted on changing its national status — it’s current...

Geithner Puts Issue of Debt Limit in Writing At the end of the year, the United States will hit its statutory borrowing limit, starting a countdown clock that would within a matter of weeks lead to it failing to pay all of its obligations, according to a statement from the Treasury Department. On Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner wrote a letter to Congress informing it that the United States would hit its $16.4 trillion borrowing limit on Dec. 31. The Treasury will “shortly” begin undertaking “extraordinary measures” to avoid the limit — essentially moving money from pocket to pocket to give the government enough breathing room to pay all of its bills, from soldiers’ salaries to Social Security payments, after that date. But within weeks — sometime in February or March, analysts estimate — its required payments would overwhelm its receipts, leaving an unprecedented cash shortfall. That would most likely send financial markets into a tailspin and lead to another downgr...

A collection of classroom-safe training pistols from a concealed-weapons permit class in Florida. (BRIAN BLANCO/REUTERS) “The facts are every time guns have been allowed, concealed-carry has been allowed, the crime rate has gone down.” --Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.), on “Fox News Sunday,” Dec. 16, 2012 In the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., a number of lawmakers have pushed for new gun-control legislation. But some gun-control foes, such as Rep. Louie Gohmert, have argued that instead more guns, not more controls, are needed. Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Gohmert said of slain principal Dawn Hochsprung: “I wish to God she had had an M-4 [assault rifle] in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out and she didn’t have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands, but she takes him out, takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids.” Laying aside the question of armed teachers in schools, we w...

GREENCASTLE, Pa. — The Green Grove Gardens banquet hall was decked out for Christmas, but the atmosphere at the Franklin County Republicans’ annual Eisenhower dinner here was anything but cheery. As the evening’s speaker, former Pennsylvania senator and 2012 presidential contender Rick Santorum, made a meet-and-greet round of the tables Tuesday, one woman implored him to “get rid of Obamacare.” “We had a chance,” Santorum told her. “It was called the last election.” So much for comfort and joy. Not quite six weeks after Republicans lost a presidential contest that many of them thought was in the bag, the shock has begun to wear off. The recriminations, on the other hand, are likely to go on for quite some time. And the tough work — figuring out what needs fixing — has only just begun. Some Republicans still argue that nothing is fundamentally wrong with the party. Or nothing that a better get-out-the-vote operation, a field of more appealing candidates, and more outreach to...

On the wish lists of Americans: A fully operational Death Star, a nationalized Twinkie industry, and motorcycle-riding "judges" who also act as jury and executioner The White House 's "We the People..." website allows Americans to petition the Obama administration on a variety of issues citizens believe need addressing. Requests range from serious ( petition to have the White House publicly acknowledge the U.S. drone program ) to self-interested ( federally legalize weed now! ) to completely absurd (have Vice-President Joe Biden serve as Guy Fieri's sidekick on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives ). Most are angry with the administration, with roughly 70 percent of current petitions asking that individual states — like Texas — be allowed to peacefully secede. What's more: Anyone can create a petition, with the caveat that each request must garner 25,000 signatures in order to be considered for an official White House response. Presente...

BOSTON (AP) — Mitt Romney 's shadow looms over a Republican Party in disarray.   The face of the GOP for much of the last year, the failed presidential candidate has been a virtual ghost since his defeat Nov. 6. He has quietly weathered the fallout of the campaign from the seclusion of his Southern California home, emerging only momentarily for a private lunch at the White House with President Barack Obama on Thursday. His loss and immediate withdrawal from politics, while welcomed by most, has created a leadership vacuum within his party. It's left the GOP rudderless, lacking an overarching agenda and mired in infighting, with competing visions for the way ahead, during what may be the most important policy debate in a generation. In his final meeting with campaign staffers at his Boston headquarters, Romney promised to remain "a strong voice for the party," according to those in attendance. But so far he has offered little to the Capitol Hill n...

It may take election experts years to unravel the mystery of why Mitt Romney was convinced he had won the 2012 presidential election , as a new report shows some skewed internal poll numbers, and explains Romney’s two trips to Pennsylvania . romney wins Image of Romney's "transition" website. But at the same time, the article from The New Republic ’s Noam Scheiber shows inconsistencies with reports from November 5 and November 6 about the numbers that might have convinced Romney and his team that he had a good chance of beating President Barack Obama in Ohio . Obama’s resounding win is starting to take on more of a resemblance to Harry Truman’s “upset” in 1948, with Romney playing the role of Thomas Dewey. Obama wound up with 332 electoral votes, taking every swing state except North Carolina. Somehow, the Romney campaign was seemingly convinced that he would win one of the final three swing states , or make a strong showing in Pennsylvania. In th...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco may be getting ready to shed its image as a city where anything goes, including clothing.   City lawmakers are scheduled to vote Tuesday on an ordinance that would prohibit nudity in most public places, a blanket ban that represents an escalation of a two-year tiff between a devoted group of men who strut their stuff through the city's famously gay Castro District and the supervisor who represents the area. Supervisor Scott Wiener 's proposal would make it illegal for a person over the age of 5 to "expose his or her genitals, perineum or anal region on any public street, sidewalk, street median, parklet or plaza" or while using public transit. A first offense would carry a maximum penalty of a $100 fine, but prosecutors would have authority to charge a third violation as a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $500 fine and a year in jail. Exemptions would be made for participants at permitted street fairs and parades, such as the ci...

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Louisiana's Bobby Jindal is urging the Republican Party to rethink its pitch to voters. Bob McDonnell of Virginia says Republicans should look to outsiders to fix partisan gridlock in Washington. Their fellow governor, Wisconsin 's Scott Walker , says the next GOP leader must do a better job explaining why the party's policies will help ordinary Americans.   New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is holding court with admirers — and ignoring reporters as he ducks into nominally private meetings. And Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida is packing his bags for a very public trip to Iowa . Yes, the jockeying for 2016 has already begun. Less than two weeks after Republican nominee Mitt Romney came up short in his bid to unseat President Barack Obama , the next class of potential GOP presidential hopefuls is laying the groundwork for bids of their own. Some subtle and some overt, the maneuvering by would-be-candidates runs along a sometimes perilous path marked by donors,...

The presidential election is over, and now there are some cool tools to show just how Barack Obama won re-election. One that's getting plenty of attention on the Web is a new take on a familiar image — maps. The series of graphics show the election results illustrated by population , not geography. Republicans were surprised by the win . Many had assumed — wrongly — that young people wouldn't come out as much as they did in 2008. The New York Times graph shows that not only did Obama nab young voters, but also that the numbers of young voters who voted for Obama actually increased from 2008. While white male voters supported the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, Obama held his support with women, increased his support with Hispanic voters, and improved young voter turnout where it mattered: in the swing states. For serious political junkies, another graphic from the New York Times shows lots of fun facts about how voter groups since 1972 have swayed electi...

Spinners and Winners In his first national television interview since the 2012 election, Congressman Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., better known as the vice presidential nominee, says losing came as something of a surprise. "We thought we had a very good chance of winning. You know, the polling and the data and all the people who are the smart people who watch this stuff -- they had a pretty optimistic view on the night," says Ryan. "So as you can imagine, it was a bit of a shock when we didn't win." But as soon as the final numbers on Virginia and Ohio began coming in, says Ryan, "we knew." In an interview earlier this week in Wisconsin, the congressman said one reason Obama won was because his campaign drove up turnout in urban areas. "I'll let the pundits decide exactly how he won," says Ryan. "The point is, he got more votes than we did. That's how he won." The voter turnout for Obama went beyond urban areas, the president a...

Petitions signed by hundreds of thousands of Americans   seeking permission for their states to peacefully secede from the union have now been filed for all 50 states on   the White House website . The secession petition push began last week on the site's   We The People section   after a Slidell, La., man  filed a petition on Nov. 7 to allow Louisiana to secede . Residents from other states followed suit. As of Wednesday afternoon,  North Carolina ,  Tennessee ,  Alabama ,  Georgia ,  Louisiana   and  Texas —all states that voted for former Gov. Mitt Romney—as well as  Florida   each had accumulated more than 25,000 signatures, the threshold needed to trigger an official response from the Obama administration. Collectively, the secession petitions now have more than 700,000 digital signatures. Texas is in the lead with more than 99,000, but Gov. Rick Perry said on Tuesday that he does not support secession. "Gov...