WASHINGTON -- In a fresh sign of turmoil among defeated Democrats, a growing number of the rank and file say they won't support House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a politically symbolic roll call when the new Congress meets in January.

"The reality is that she is politically toxic," said Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley, one of several Democrats who are trying to pressure Pelosi to step aside as her party's leader in the wake of historic election losses to Republicans last week.

Pelosi startled many Democrats with a quick postelection announcement that she would run for minority leader. She has yet to draw an opponent for the post. Party elections are scheduled for next week, although a postponement is possible...

JUNEAU, Alaska -- Election officials planned to begin poring over more than 92,500 write-in ballots in the Alaska Senate race on Wednesday, in spite of a federal lawsuit that's challenging the way the count was to be conducted.

Republican nominee Joe Miller sued Tuesday to prevent the state from using discretion in determining voter intent on write-in ballots. But Lt. Gov. Craig Campbell, the Republican overseer of Alaska elections, said the count would go forward on Wednesday as planned.

Miller's GOP rival, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, mounted a write-in campaign after losing their party's primary to him in August...

Now that the Republican Party has recaptured the House, an author and former member of President Ronald Reagan's staff thinks the GOP must deliver on its promises if it wants to put the breaks on the Obama administration's agenda.

Tom Pauken, author of Bringing America Home: How America Lost Her Way and How We Can Find Our Way Back, is a former chairman of the Republican Party of Texas who served on Reagan's transition team and White House staff. He is encouraged by the overwhelming GOP win in the House of Representatives and the significant gains made in the Senate on November 2. But now, he says it is time to take on the president's agenda.

"I think they're going to go to Washington and hopefully not start drinking the Kool-Aid and fall into the inside the beltway mentality, but be serious about making significant changes. So I think that what we've accomplished is to stop the bleeding, stop the damage from the Obama administration," Pauken suggests...

An immigration reduction advocacy organization says the recent midterm elections will make the House friendlier to border enforcement than that of the current Democratic-controlled assembly.

Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, says immigration enforcement supporters celebrated a victory last week when November 2 brought a Congress more interested in reducing immigration than what the U.S. has seen since 1924, and certainly over the past 50 years...

Republicans are making some big promises to try to lure West Virginia Senator-elect Joe Manchin to cross the aisle.

Aside from his pick of committee assignments (likely the Energy and Natural Resources Committee), Manchin might get support for one of his pet projects - a plant to convert coal to diesel fuel that has stalled under Democratic leadership in Washington.

It's one of Manchin's pet projects and could mean big money for the state's coal producers...

(CNSNews.com) – In a letter sent to supporters by e-mail on the day after Republicans were swept in as the new majority in the House of Representatives and gained seats in the Senate, Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards used the election results to press for an “emergency donation” to help fight against “dangerous politicians who oppose women's health and the right to choose.”

“Even before yesterday's election, women's health was under attack,” Richards wrote in the e-mail, which was sent on Nov. 3. “Anti-choice Republicans like Congressman Mike Pence from Indiana have introduced legislation to defund Planned Parenthood.”

“That's the frightening reality we face, and it's only going to get worse,” Richards wrote...

The mainstream media reported heavily on the importance of economic issues in the 2010 elections as if to exclude the perennial importance of the life issues.

Take for example an October 29th article from USA Today which proclaimed: “Social issues such as abortion…have had their day.”

That phrase seems to suggest that valuing human life is a mere political fad, but the evidence suggests this is very much untrue. The issues of abortion and health care rationing played important roles in the midterm elections and pro-lifers turned out to vote into office legislators who will make the right-to-life an important issue in their agendas...

Neither rookies nor seasoned veterans were spared in Tuesday's House Democratic bloodbath, which saw Republicans defeat three major committee chairmen and at least seven lawmakers who claimed 20 years' seniority or more in Congress.

While the losses of 16 freshmen "Obama babies" — those elected during the president's 2008 sweep — were expected, the number of long-serving Democrats who lost re-election this week is staggering, and suggests a widespread dissatisfaction with Washington.

All told, with about a dozen races still uncalled, Democrats have already shed 376 years of congressional experience, and that could go as high as 430 years if five other Democrats lose races in which returns show they are trailing...

(CNSNews.com) - Republican Susana Martinez, who won New Mexico’s gubernatorial race by running as a conservative, vowed to boost security along the Southwest border during her campaign.

In a state that is more than 40 percent Hispanic, Martinez took 54 percent of the vote on Tuesday, beating her Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. Diane Denish, by eight points. She was endorsed by Sarah Palin.

Martinez will replace Democrat Governor Bill Richardson, who is nearing the end of his two-term limit. She will be the first female Hispanic governor in U.S. history...

Nancy Pelosi will relinquish her role as Speaker of the House of Representatives in the next Congress after her party was shellacked in Tuesday’s midterm elections. But she wants to remain Democratic leader.

Pelosi says she will wage a battle to continue leading the party, which became even more pro-abortion following the defeat of some of its pro-life members who voted for the abortion-funding ObamaCare bill.

Some political observers predicted she would step aside and let someone else run the party in the House after her election failure, but she said she’s “gotten a positive response” in calls to fellow Democrats...