Posey Gruener

When future generations look back on this election, the first after President Obama's dramatic victory in 2008, will they see it as a repeat of the 1994 Gingrich Revolution? An unraveling of the Obama agenda? Or a chance for the president to rebrand himself?

For Tea Partiers, last night's race was a mixed bag. Tea Party candidates did well in states that were already red, like Kentucky, and South Carolina, but failed to make gains in bluer states like Delaware. In Nevada, Sharron Angle, one of the most notorious Tea Party Republicans, lost to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the state's wildly unpopular Democratic Senator.

President Obama has had a large impact on several key Senate races — for better and for worse.

In Pennsylvania's Senate race, Democrat Joe Sestak relied on Obama to rally the core group of African American voters he'll need to win the election – and it appears to be working.

But a little further south, in West Virginia, Democratic Governor Joe Manchin is facing a tough special election bid for the late Sen. Robert Byrd's seat — and has been repeatedly called a "rubber stamp" for Obama.

The Tea Party has grown up fast. Back in April, the news was dominated by images of scrappy rallies and angry voters. By November, Tea Party groups have backed some candidates who seem poised to win their races, and the movement has acquired both serious financial backing and a "godfather" waiting to help them establish power when (or if) they arrive in the Senate this January.

On Tuesday, voters will cast their ballots, bringing mid-term election season to a close. Unless, of course, some races are too close to call. Polls show that close Senate and gubernatorial races in Nevada, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Washington, Wisconsin, Alaska, Colorado, Ohio and Florida could require recounts.

It’s an anxiety-inducing thought — and could potentially leave the House and the Senate hanging in the balance while the chads (or the absentee ballots, or the broken machines) get sorted.

With just five days left until mid-term elections, Republicans and Democrats alike going to be making lots phone calls and knocking on lots of doors, trying to reach out and talk to undecided voters — or as they’re called in polling circles, “persuadables.” That little semantic shift that reveals how desirable these voters are and what lengths a campaign will go to in order to get them. 

But who are these persuadables? And what exactly do they need to be persuaded?

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's expected announcement of billions of dollars in federal grants for high speed rail today is beginning on a sour note. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced yesterday that he is stopping construction of an $8.4 billion Hudson River rail tunnel connecting New Jersey and New York. Citing billions of dollars of expected cost overruns, Christie says his "decision is final." This comes after LaHood made a personal appeal to Christie, and negotiations between the Obama and Christie administrations.

With Republicans running against President Obama's stimulus, an issue that's resonated with voters, LaHood's announcement comes at a questionable time. There will be events in Iowa, Michigan, California. There's also money for Connecticut and Florida. These are all states with close races. How is this going to affect the midterm elections?

A textbook distributed to Virginia's fourth graders states that African Americans served in the Confederate Army by the thousands. The book, "Our Virginia: Past and Present" was distributed for the first time last month to outcry from parents and educators.

Shares of financial companies dropped yesterday on concerns about how reviews of home-foreclosure practices will affect their balance sheets. Louise Story, Wall Street and finance reporter for our partner, The New York Times, has been looking at analyses of how hard the blow may be for banks, and how long it might last.

Cameron Todd Willingham was executed by the state of Texas in 2004. He was tried, convicted, and executed by lethal injection for setting fire to his home and killing his three young daughters, on December 23, 1991.

But forensic investigators have called the facts of the case into question – most notably whether the fire was arson, or an accident. (Willingham maintained his innocence to the very end, passing up a chance to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence.)

At 26, Danielle Evans is already the kind of writer who makes other writers jealous. She's still fresh from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, but she's already been chosen – twice –  for The Best American Short Stories, and both Salman Rushdie and Richard Russo have praised her work. There's already a lot of buzz around her new book, a collection of eight short stories called “Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self.” She joins us to talk about the challenges of being a young black writer in a world that's not over race, but may be over talking about it.

In the 80's, the infamous McMartin Preschool sexual abuse trial ignited a hysteria about child sexual abuse. The McMartin trials never found anyone guilty, however, and several of the children, now adults, have come forward, saying no molestation ever happened. Across the nation, though, tens of thousands of people became convinced that they had repressed – and recovered – memories of awful abuse.

Meredith Maran, a journalist and author, found herself caught up in it.  She began to believe that her own father had molested her, and at age 37, she accused him.  Ten years later, she realized that he was innocent and recanted.  But it was almost too late.

Snooki did not invent celebrity – and chances are she won't break it either.

That's according to Professor Fred Inglis, author of "A Short History of Celebrity." Inglis is a cultural historian, and he takes the long view on our fascination with the likes of Tiger Woods, Marilyn Monroe and Angelina Jolie. Over the past 200 years, says Inglis, it has become easier and easier to live vicariously. 

Many voters, frustrated with their current elected officials, have decided to take action well ahead of election day. In cities and towns across America, constituents are calling for recall elections—efforts to oust their elected officials from office in the middle of their terms.

Louise Patton, the granddaughter of the only surviving officer from the Titanic, has written a book revealing the secret her grandfather took to his grave: The Titanic rammed into that iceberg because of one human error.

At a CNBC Town Hall Meeting on Monday, President Obama announced some good news coming out of Michigan: the three US automakers are making a profit for the first time in a long time.

It hasn’t been so long since the day when GM was almost synonomous with doom. But it’s been long enough, apparently, for the companies to start turning a profit — and for the Car Czar behind the recovery to write a book about how it all came to pass.

Reverend Terry Jones, leader of the Dove World Outreach Center, a tiny Pentecostal church in Gainesville, has backed down from his plan to burn the Quran. Reverend Jones’ plan to burn copies of the Quran on the ninth anniversary of September 11^th lit an international firestorm. Now Reverend Jones says he will not burn any Qurans – and he doesn’t think anyone else should, either.

Every year, with NYPD sponsorship, 200 young kids, most of them Muslim, gather in open spaces to yell and throw and hit.  More specifically, they're praising glovesmanship, bowling carrom balls, and knocking Dilscoops: They're playing cricket for the "NYPD United."

It's the end of summer, and that means that businesses around the country are being emptied of their interns. Early this summer, they arrived with their youth and their ambition. As the air turns crisp, they go home, leaving behind neatly stacked piles of folders, well organized databases, and, perhaps, a good impression.  

But a small group of those interns left something else behind: a wad of cash. Today, a growing number of young people – or their parents – are paying thousands of dollars for the privilege of working an unpaid internship.

Less than a week after President Obama declared the end of combat operations in Iraq, U.S. forces have exchanged fire with insurgents in Baghdad. American troops helped repel a coordinated attack on an Iraqi base. At least five bombers carrying grenades and wearing suicide jackets attempted to breach checkpoints and killed at least 12 people, wounding at least 20. 

The engagement was the first for U.S. forces since last Tuesday, when President Obama delaclared the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the 7 1/2 year war, and the start of Operation New Dawn, in which 50,000 troops will remain in Iraq in a non-combat role to support and train the Iraqi military.