Pennsylvania

pANCHORAGE, Alaska — Two Pennsylvania men accused of harassing Sarah Palin’s lawyers in Alaska by phone plan to forgo trial and again plead guilty, this time without the benefit of a plea agreement./ppA federal court judge in December rejected plea deals for 20-year-old Shawn Christy and his father, Craig Christy, and ordered them to stand trial./pbra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/03/sarah-palin-shawn-christy-craig-christy_n_1181764.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/sarah-palin/”More on Sarah Palin/a pa href=”http:/

div id=”uimg_right”img src=”http://www.dailykos.com/i/user/59419/Penn_Flag_275.png” / div id=”uimg_caption”Pennsylvania is quickly becoming a must-watch state/div /div pLooking ahead to the 2012 elections, one of the burning questions has been what will become of the key large states of the industrial Midwest. Ohio and Pennsylvania were central not only to the Obama election in 2008, but the Democratic surge to control of Congress in 2006 and 2008.

div class=”dkimg-r”img src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/151025/Herman_Cain_by_Gage_Skidmore.jpg” alt=”" height=”343″ width=”275″ / div class=”dkimg-cap”Does Herman Cain really want to be president?br / (Gage Skidmore)/div /div As a href=”http://www.thenation.com/blog/164575/four-signs-herman-cain-isnt-really-running-president”Ari Melber/a has pointed out, there are several indications that Herman Cain isn’t particularly interested in moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

div id=”uimg_right”img src=”http://www.dailykos.com/i/user/59419/Penn_Flag_275.png” / div id=”uimg_caption”Pennsylvania is tight, but still leans to Obama/div /div pPennsylvania is a state that has (justifiably) received a lot of attention in recent weeks, as it relates to the 2012 presidential election.

Pennsylvania tightening, according to Q poll A myriad of pollsters have confirmed that the debt ceiling negotiations in Washington have exacted a political toll on the president. President Obama’s numbers took a precipitous dip in Gallup tracking, though they have rebounded a bit . In trial heats, however, that drop has been less pronounced. Tuesday’s release of a new poll in Pennsylvania by Quinnipiac, however, is the clearest sign yet that the protracted standoff between the president and Congressional Republicans has eroded support for his reelection.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A Pennsylvania man is asking an Alaska court to dissolve a restraining order against him from Sarah Palin, saying a state magistrate denied his right of due process. Craig Christy is the father of 19-year-old Shawn Christy, who is accused of stalking the former Alaska governor, 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee and possible GOP presidential candidate. Read More… More on Sarah Palin

NEW YORK — The mothers of three Americans jailed in Iran returned to the United States on Saturday, pained to leave their children behind yet heartened to find they’re being treated well and are “in reasonable health.” At a brief news conference at John F. Kennedy International Airport shortly after they returned to New York, Cindy Hickey thanked the Iranians for allowing the women to see the three and said they were disappointed they could not return with their children.

WASHINGTON — Party-switching Sen. Arlen Specter fell to a younger and far less experienced rival in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, and political novice Rand Paul rode support from tea party activists to a Republican rout in Kentucky on Tuesday, the latest jolts to the political establishment in a tumultuous midterm election season. In another race with national significance, Democrat Mark Critz won a special House election to fill out the term of the late Democratic Rep. John Murtha in southwestern Pennsylvania.

In a strong reflection of just how strong his standing remains within the die-hard conservative community, Texas Republican and 2008 presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul won the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll on Saturday, earning nearly one-third (31 percent) of the entire vote. The crowd, however, booed heavily when the results were announced.

For the last Idon’tknowhowlong, Republicans and Democrats have been locked in partisan warfare that has gone on for longer than the 100 Years War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, or what it feels like to sit through one episode of “The Real Housewives of NYC.” The Republicans like to refer to themselves as “traditional.” That means, they are anti-progress. The Democrats like to refer to themselves as “progressives.” That means, not liberals. Republicans want to fight about social issues, such as gay rights.