Politics

Based on book sales, Republicans are dominating Democrats in most of the country (including Washington state), according to a new “election heat map” created by book retailer Amazon.com.

SPOKANE, Wash. — A controversial photo of state Rep. Matt Shea, R-Spokane, standing in front of his Democratic challenger's house has become a political hot potato for Republicans.

The chairman of the Spokane County Republican Party is trying to persuade Shea to remove the photo from his Facebook page. Amy Biviano, the Democrat challenging Shea, has accused Shea of trying to intimidate her by posting the photo of her home and refusing to take it down.

Missouri Congressman Todd Akin, the Republican who's challenging Democrat Claire McCaskill for the U.S. Senate seat, said in a television interview Sunday that it's "rare" for women to become pregnant when they are raped.

"If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down," he said in an interview with KTVI, a St. Louis television station.

Above: The first of many thousands lined up early today to enter Hempfest, Seattle's mega pro-pot festival.

For more than 20 years, the Seattle Hempfest festival, rally and outdoor party has pushed for the decriminalization and mainstreaming of marijuana.

But as this year’s event gets underway today, with more than 300,000 expected over the weekend, regulations contained in an initiative that would legalize pot have split many advocates.

It seemed normal enough when President Obama chatted with a coffee shop patron about beer in Iowa Tuesday. The president has shown he's a fan of beer — and it's the most politically expedient, "everyman" beverage a candidate can drink. But then the president told a man at Knoxville, Iowa's Coffee Connection cafe that he travels with his own home-brew — and gave him a bottle to prove it.

Two days after Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney introduced him as his running mate, Paul Ryan made his first solo appearance at the Iowa State Fair, today.

It's a grand tradition in Des Moines where candidates stand on a "soapbox" and get a microphone and 20 minutes to say whatever they like.

The latest election results from Washington’s primary shows that more than 43 percent of Washington voters cast their ballots for a state supreme court justice candidate with no judicial experience, who raised no campaign funds and was a public no-show.

The biggest factor in the race appears to have been one candidate's last name - Gonzalez.

Election results published by the Washington Secretary of State’s office this afternoon showed Bruce O. Danielson pulled in 276,142 votes for, so far, 43.1 percent of voters.

Democrat Jay Inslee and Republican Rob McKenna will advance to the November election, after winning the top two spots in Tuesday's primary for Washington governor. At last count, Inslee won 47 percent of the vote to McKenna’s 43 percent.