Wanted: moderate Democrats. Contact the mostly liberal House Democratic leadership if interested.

Democrats hope to take back the House of Representatives in 2014 by mirroring their last successful effort to flip the chamber in 2006.

George Prescott Bush filed the official paperwork Tuesday to run for Texas land commissioner next year, hoping to use a little-known but powerful post to continue his family’s political dynasty in one of the country’s most-conservative states.

Texas senators started a debate Tuesday that will likely last for weeks as lawmakers try to decide how many standardized tests students must take to graduate from high school.

After the disastrous introduction of a new testing regimen last year, the Legislature is anxious to overhaul what parents, teachers, students and business leaders all consider a flawed system. Texas law currently requires some high school students to take 15 exams to graduate, though the state education commissioner has waved a requirement that exam results count toward 15 percent of the final grades in core courses.

Colorado lawmakers took a historic vote to approve civil unions for gay couples Tuesday, delivering on a campaign promise from Democrats who have capitalized on the changing political landscape of a state where voters banned same-sex marriage not long ago.

Black smoke poured from the Sistine Chapel chimney on Tuesday, signaling that cardinals had failed on their first vote of the papal conclave to choose a new leader for the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics and their troubled church.