Politics
Republican Rep. Allen West, the outspoken Army veteran who won Florida's 18th congressional contest during the 2008 Tea Party blitz, lost by a slight margin Tuesday in his hotly-contested battle against Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy. But while Murphy has declared himself the winner, after securing an initial vote count in front by 2,456 — out of more than 300,000 total votes — West has yet to concede the race and is asking for a recount.
Just one day after President Obama was reelected to a second term, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 313 points. While some analysts believe the drop was in response to the election results, others assert that it was provoked by fearful anticipation of the impending fiscal cliff that the federal government will be forced to contend with at the end of 2012. The fiscal cliff refers to the terms of the Budget Control Act of 2011 that are scheduled to go into effect in 2013.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was the main Democrat celebrity at a party fundraiser featuring top officials of front groups for the Muslim Brotherhood and terrorist Hamas organization.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) reported last week that Pelosi “headlined” the fundraiser in May. One of the guests was Nihad Awad, a founder of the Council for American-Islamic Relations, a group that ostensibly fights for the rights of Muslims, but which federal prosecutors have said is connected to the financing of terrorists.
Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory since 1898, voted in favor of statehood for the first time Tuesday, with 61 percent of the island's voters opting for inclusion as the 51st state in a non-binding referendum. Yet the same voters gave a narrow victory in the governor's race to Alejandro Garcia Padilla, whose Popular Democratic Party opposes statehood. Padilla appears to have edged out incumbent Luis Fortuno of the New Progressive Party by less than one percent of the vote.
Voters in California voted against Proposition 37, the initiative that would have mandated genetically engineered foods be labeled, on Tuesday. The final results on the ballot measure were 53.1 percent opposed to the measure and 46.9 percent in favor.
