Frank Wolf to retire after 17 terms in Congress; N.Va. seat will be a prime battleground in 2014

U.S. Rep. Frank R. Wolf announced Tuesday that he will not run for reelection in 2014, ending a distinctive three-decade career in Congress and instantly making his bellwether Northern Virginia seat a prime battleground in next year’s midterm elections.

Although the 74-year-old Republican has been a perennial subject of retirement rumors, his decision came as a surprise: As recently as last week, leaders in both parties fully expected him to run for an 18th term. But in a statement issued by his office, Wolf said he plans to turn instead to his longtime work on humanitarian issues.

 “As a follower of Jesus, I am called to work for justice and reconciliation, and to be an advocate for those who cannot speak for themselves,” Wolf said. “I plan to focus my future work on human rights and religious freedom — both domestic and international — as well as matters of the culture and the American family.”

Wolf has been a vocal and sometimes lonely advocate for oppressed religious minorities, particularly Christians in Egypt, Syria and Pakistan. And although he is conservative on many issues, he has been willing to defend federal workers, squabble with anti-tax activists and cooperate with Democrats, making him something of a rarity among modern House Republicans.

Wolf’s decision came just a week after Fairfax County Board of Supervisors member John W. Foust (D) said he would run for the House seat.

Obenshain concedes Virginia attorney general’s race to Herring

RICHMOND — State Sen. Mark D. Obenshain (R) conceded the race for Virginia attorney general to Democrat Mark R. Herring on Wednesday, bringing the election to a belated end and giving Democrats a sweep of statewide offices — but throwing control of the state Senate into question.

The move allowed Herring to claim victory for the third time since Nov. 5 in a contest that on election night was the closest statewide race in Virginia history. It also spared a three-judge panel in Richmond from having to continue slogging through more than 100 ballots that one side or the other had challenged.

Attention turns to the state Senate seat being vacated by Attorney General-elect Mark R. He

The choice angers some abortion rights activists but is seen as the “best shot” for Medicaid expansion.

And for the first time since Election Day, speculation in Virginia political circles shifted from who would succeed Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) to how differently the new attorney general would lead.

Herring spent much of the campaign promising not to run the state’s law firm like Cuccinelli, a social conservative who waged high-profile battles against a climate scientist, “Obamacare” and universities with policies that protect gay people from discrimination.

“Virginians are looking for mainstream leadership,” Herring, a state senator from Loudoun County, said during an afternoon news conference in the Capitol on Wednesday. “They want good jobs. They want better education for their children. They want a good transportation system that will serve our growing economy.”

Obenshain conceded defeat after Herring’s attorney announced that his client’s narrow lead had grown to more than 800 in a statewide recount that began Monday and was scheduled to finish Wednesday.

Senate passes bipartisan budget agreement

Congress declared a holiday truce in the budget wars Wednesday, sending President Obama a blueprint for funding the government through 2015. But the next skirmish was already on the horizon: an election-year fight over the national debt.

The budget deal that passed the Senate on Wednesday amounts to a handshake agreement to avoid a government shutdown when a temporary funding measure expires Jan. 15. However, the accord does not address the need once again to raise the debt limit, setting up a potentially complicated confrontation in late February or early March.

That fight would come just months before midterm congressional elections, and the GOP is deeply divided over tactics to deal with the debt, a core issue for the Republican base. Some conservatives are calling for another showdown, insisting on an additional round of spending cuts in exchange for granting the Treasury Department more borrowing authority to pay the nation’s bills.

But GOP leaders, especially in the House, have no appetite for another Washington fiscal crisis that could destroy their popularity among voters, aides said. Instead, they are hoping for a more peaceful resolution modeled on the latest budget deal — a bipartisan compromise that solves small problems and aims to offend almost no one

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New Mexico Supreme Court legalizes Gay Marriage

The New Mexico Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that gay marriage is legal in the Land of Enchantment.

The court said in an unanimous decision that it is unconstitutional to deny marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

"We hold that the State of New Mexico is constitutionally required to allow same-gender couples to marry and must extend to them the rights, protections, and responsibilities that derive from civil marriage under New Mexico law," Justice Edward L. Chavez wrote in the decision.Many counties in New Mexico had already been issuing marriage licenses to gay couples, setting up the state Supreme Court to decide whether it was legal or not. The state didn't explicitly ban or allow same-sex marriage, leaving the issue in limbo.

New Mexico becomes the 17th state to legalize gay marriage (map here) and the first in the American Southwest. Illinois and Hawaii did the same last month. Gay marriage is also legal in the District of Columbia.

Gay rights groups were quick to hail the ruling.

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Jang Song Thaek, Kim Jong Un's Ousted Uncle, Reportedly Executed

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea on Friday announced the execution of Kim Jong Un's uncle, calling the leader's former mentor a traitor who tried to overthrow the state.

The announcement came only days after Pyongyang announced through state media that Jang Song Thaek — long considered the country's No. 2 power — had been removed from all his posts because of allegations of corruption, drug use, gambling, womanizing and leading a "dissolute and depraved life."

The state news agency KCNA said a tribunal examined Jang's crimes, including "attempting to overthrow the state by all sorts of intrigues and despicable methods with a wild ambition to grab the supreme power of our party and state."

The report called him "a traitor to the nation" and "worse than a dog."

Jang was seen as helping Kim Jong Un consolidate power after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, two years ago. Jang was the latest and most significant in a series of personnel reshuffles that Kim has conducted in an apparent effort to bolster his power.

Some analysts see the purge as a sign of Kim Jong Un's growing confidence, but there has also been fear in Seoul that the removal of such an important part of the North's government — seen by outsiders as the leading supporter of Chinese-style economic reforms — could create dangerous instability or lead to a miscalculation or attack on the South.

Tensions are still high on the Korean Peninsula following a torrent of threats in March and April by Kim Jong Un's government against Washington, Seoul and Tokyo, including vows of missile and nuclear strikes and warnings that Pyongyang would restart nuclear bomb fuel production.

Jang was married to Kim Jong Un's aunt, Kim Kyong Hui, the younger sister of Kim Jong Il. He was earlier described by state media as "abusing his power," being "engrossed in irregularities and corruption," and taking drugs and squandering money at casinos while undergoing medical treatment in a foreign country.

Rivers' garbageman named CNN Hero of the Year

CNN) -- Chad Pregracke, an Illinois man who has dedicated his life to cleaning the Mississippi River and other U.S. waterways, is the 2013 CNN Hero of the Year.

Pregracke organizes community cleanups across the country through his nonprofit, Living Lands & Waters. About 70,000 volunteers have pitched in, helping Pregracke collect more than 7 million pounds of trash in the past 15 years.

"The garbage got into the water one piece at a time," Pregracke said earlier this year. "And that's the only way it's going to come out."

Pregracke was recognized during Sunday night's airing of "CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute" along with the rest of this year's top 10 CNN Heroes -- everyday people doing extraordinary things to help change the world. He was chosen as Hero of the Year through a five-week public vote on CNN.com.

"I'll just keep on cleaning up America's rivers and loving every minute of it," said Pregracke when he accepted the award.

For being named CNN Hero of the Year, Pregracke receives $250,000 to continue his work. That is in addition to the $50,000 that each Hero receives for making the top 10.

During the show, Pregracke pledged to spread some of his Hero of the Year money to the rest of the top 10 Heroes: "I've met so many great people today, the other Heroes, and I'm really moved by all their stories and all the things they do around the world. ... I'm going to give 10 grand to each of them, because they're awesome."

Pregracke, 38, grew up in East Moline, Illinois, where the Mississippi River was in his backyard. As a teenager, he worked as a commercial shell diver and began to notice the heaps of debris in the fabled waterway, which supplies drinking water to 18 million people in more than 50 U.S. cities.

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5 reasons why Congress might (finally) pass a budget

Washington (CNN) -- (CNN) -- The words "budget" and "compromise" haven't been connected in Congress in recent years.

But legislators stunned observers and perhaps each other this week when Republicans and Democrats proved that they can, indeed, agree on government spending.

Republican Rep. Paul Ryan and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray worked out a budget framework to fund the government into 2015.

The House approved the compromise agreement Thursday. The measure now goes to the Senate, where it is expected to pass as early as next week. The White House supports the proposal.

It was the first full budget agreement by a divided Congress -- in which different parties control the House and Senate -- since 1986, Ryan boasted in announcing the deal.

After years of bruising political fights over spending and the federal borrowing limit, dysfunction reigned supreme in October when the government shut down for 16 days.

A short-term spending plan got it going again, but a CNN/ORC International poll found that 71% of Americans thought another shutdown would occur when the money ran out in January.

Instead, such repeated budget brinksmanship would be put on hold if Congress passes the Ryan-Murray proposal. While neither side loves the compromise legislation, it appears to be on a path to approval.

So, what changed this time?

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Raising the Minimum Wage Is Good for Business (But the Corporate Lobby Doesn't Think So)

As soon as President Barack Obama called on Congress to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour in his State of the Union address last week, you could see Speaker John Boehner, seated behind the president, uttering his religious mantra: "Job killer." And even if you couldn't read his lips, you could read his mind: "Campaign contributions." He and his Republican colleagues could expect huge donations from business lobby groups -- especially those that depend on low-wage workers, like the hotel industry, restaurants and fast-food chains, nursing homes and hospitals and big-box retailers -- to keep Congress from embracing Obama's modest proposal.

Boehner's "job killer" grumble should come as no surprise. Business groups and their political allies have been "crying wolf" about the minimum wage ever since President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed it during the Depression to help stimulate the economy. The critics warned that enacting a minimum wage would destroy employees' drive to work hard and would force many firms out of business. The minimum wage law, warned the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) in 1937, "constitutes a step in the direction of communism, bolshevism, fascism, and Nazism." Congressman Edward Cox, a Georgia Democrat, said that the law "will destroy small industry." These ideas, Cox claimed, "are the product of those whose thinking is rooted in an alien philosophy and who are bent upon the destruction of our whole constitutional system and the setting up of a Red Labor communistic despotism upon the ruins of our Christian civilization." Roosevelt and most members of Congress ignored these warnings and adopted the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, establishing the federal minimum wage of 25 cents an hour.

Since then, each time Congress has considered raising the minimum wage, business groups and conservatives have repackaged the same arguments. In 1945, NAM claimed that, "The proposed jump from an hourly minimum of 40 to 65 cents at once, and 70 and 75 cents in the following years, is a reckless jolt to the economic system. Living standards, instead of being improved, would fall -- probably to record lows." Instead, the next three decades saw the biggest increased in living standards in the nation's history.

In 1975, economist Milton Friedman, a conservative guru, said: "The consequences of minimum wage laws have been almost wholly bad, to increase unemployment and to increase poverty. In my opinion there is absolutely no positive objective achieved by minimum wages." While campaigning for president, Ronald Reagan said, "The minimum wage has caused more misery and unemployment than anything since the Great Depression." In 2004, David Brandon, the CEO of Domino's Pizza, declared: "From our perspective, raising the minimum wage is a job killer." Earlier this month, Jason Riley, aWall Street Journal editorial writer, called the minimum wage a "proven job killer" on the newspaper's cable talk show.

Following Obama's State of the Union address, business representatives and conservative media pundits echoed the same talking points. Analyzing Obama's speech for Fox News, Nina Easton, an editor for Fortune magazine, repeated the claim that increasing the minimum wage is a "job killer." Michael Saltsman, research director at the business-backed Employment Policies Institute, told Fox Business News that "minimum wage hikes lead to job losses." Bill Herrle, executive director of the National Federation of Independent Business' Florida affiliate, told Sunshine State News that Obama's plan was a "job killer."

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