Alan Greenblatt

There's a big race right now to become the 51st state.

Forget traditional contenders like Puerto Rico. In several existing states, residents of less populous areas are hoping to create new states of their own.

Citizens in 11 mostly northeastern Colorado counties are among them. They'll vote on Nov. 5 ...

People aren't exempted from new regulations because they're old and crotchety, even if that's what it sounds like when we say they're "grandfathered in."

The term "grandfathered" has become part of the language. It's an easy way to describe individuals or companies who get to keep operating under an existing ...

The new eastern span of the Bay Bridge, connecting Oakland and San Francisco, opened earlier this month. But it's the western span that's now causing controversy.

The California Senate is expected to vote this week to approve a resolution naming the span after Willie Brown, a former San Francisco mayor ...

By scheduling his Syria address on Tuesday night, President Obama had initially intended to shape the course of events. Instead, events had already overtaken his speech.

He had planned to rally public support for military action against Syria, in hopes of winning over a reluctant Congress. As things turned out, ...

Rep. Jim Himes is willing to vote against the wishes of his constituents. Probably not this time, though.

"Like the rest of the country, my constituency is pretty much opposed to the intervention in Syria," says the Connecticut Democrat. "Since health care reform, I haven't seen an issue that energized ...

Crime has been bad on the south side of Stockton. Katherine Anderson, a lifelong resident of the Northern California city, says she's almost gotten used to hearing shots fired in her neighborhood.

Stockton has long had a problem with drugs. But there's been more crime because Stockton is broke.

Until ...

This won't be a standard party-line vote. Big factions within both parties remain skeptical about President Obama's plans to launch punitive airstrikes against Syria.

If the vote were held today, it might not pass. Obama and his allies — including top House leaders of both parties — have ...

President Obama cleared one of the most important hurdles Tuesday in his effort to win support in Congress for taking action against Syria: Both of the top Republican House leaders — Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia — said they would support such a ...

Is President Obama falling into a trap of his own making?

The Obama administration has assiduously avoid intervening in Syria, where more than two years of conflict has left upwards of 100,000 people dead.

Even against that backdrop of so much suffering, there's a case to be made that the ...

Colorado's politics have become positively Californian lately. There are new restrictions on guns. Pot is legal. The legislative agenda featured an expansion of alternative-energy use requirements for rural consumers. Gay couples can now enter into civil unions.

There's a reason for all this.

Lots of Californians have moved to Denver ...

St. Louis is about to get something it hasn't had in 152 years: control of its own police force.

Thanks to a statewide ballot measure approved last fall, Missouri officially hands over the keys to the squad cars on Sunday.

It's only right for the city, which spends $180 million ...

If you're looking for the most interesting gubernatorial races to watch in the coming year, the nation's biggest states are a good place to start.

Democrats Jerry Brown and Andrew Cuomo look like safe bets for re-election in California and New York, respectively. And, despite the pending retirement of Rick ...

For most people, Scranton isn't high on their lists of must-see places. Most people know the struggling Pennsylvania city, if at all, as the nondescript setting for the television comedy The Office.

But politicians can't get enough of the place.

This time, it's President Obama making an appearance, speaking at ...

Would you go to a bar to celebrate a massacre? That's a choice people in Kansas City are facing.

Wednesday marks the 150th anniversary of Quantrill's Raid, a notorious killing and burning spree in Lawrence, Kan., the present-day home of the University of Kansas. It was the worst atrocity in ...

As the school year begins, districts in cities such as Oakland, Fresno and Los Angeles have not gone on a hiring spree.

But they might soon.

California has revamped its school funding formula in ways that will send billions more dollars to districts that educate large numbers of children who ...

Paula Deen might have a hard time recovering.

The other day, a judge threw out charges of racial discrimination filed against the celebrity chef. That made sense, since the person suing Deen is white.

But consumers still know that she has used the N-word in the past and ...

Amanda Northrup would never do it again.

She's dated Democrats in the past, but she found their acceptance of abortion heartbreaking and their support of President Obama nearly as off-putting.

"He was going off to celebrate Obama becoming president, and I felt betrayed and like he didn't understand me," recalls ...

Revelations this week that the U.S. intercepted communications between top al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri and other key terrorist figures in the Arabian Peninsula offered a pretty good plug for the work of the National Security Agency.

As leaks go, this was a big one. Was it a signal that government ...

It's going to be another ugly fall in Washington.

The federal government runs out of money on Oct. 1, unless spending authority is granted to agencies for the new fiscal year. If Congress can't pass its spending bills by then, most of the government will shut down.

It's no empty ...

Tim Oviatt was once a successful businessman. For 32 years, he owned an apparel store in San Francisco called All American Boy.

"If you wore my logo T-shirt, people knew you were gay all over the world," he says.

Now, Oviatt finds himself symbolizing something stark about the gay community. ...