Election Night big for Christie

1. Election Night big for Christie

2. There was little drama in many of the local elections in Bucks County as well the major election race closest to us in New Jersey. But this election was important more for what it might say about the next presidential contest in three years. In his re-election victory speech Tuesday night, New Jersey's blunt talking governor, Chris Christie has become a serious contender for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. With Christie's re-election campaign seen as a tuneup or stepping stone for that probable White House bid, a big victory over his Democratic challenger Barbara Buono, was needed. And Christie came though, grabbing 60% of the vote, at last check. Another question heading into Election Day 2013 was how Christie would perform with voters who tend to cast ballots for Democrats. exit polls indicate the GOP governor grabbing 57% of the female vote, and winning all age groups except 18 to 29, which he narrowly lost. Christie also won the Latino vote and took just over a fifth of the African-American vote, a much better performance than most Republicans in recent elections. He also won two-thirds of independents and just over three in 10 Democrats. The exit polls appear to bolster Christie's case that he's among the most electable of the potential GOP White House hopefuls heading into 2016.

3. In Other News • Authorities have found the dead bodies of a Mississippi family that had been missing Atira Hill, Laterry Smith and Jaidon Hill, 7. The mother, stepfather and boy vanished last week. They were found overnight in a wooded area. They had been shot to death. The investigation is ongoing. • Months after a surprise ruling from a Mexican judge made him a free man, U.S. authorities have placed a new bounty for the capture of accused Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero. The U.S. State Department says it will pay up to $5 million for information leading to Caro Quintero's arrest or conviction. Caro Quintero, 61, once leader of Mexico's now-defunct Guadalajara Cartel, is accused in the 1985 kidnapping and killing of DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena and his pilot, Alfredo Zavala Avelar. He'd served 28 years of a 40-year sentence for the killings when a judge in Mexico's Jalisco state overturned his conviction in August. • Sen. Rand Paul took responsibility Tuesday for instances of plagiarism exposed in his speeches and writings, saying his office has been "sloppy" and pledging to add footnotes to all of his future material. The Washington Times, a right-leaning newspaper, announced later Tuesday it will drop Paul's weekly column, saying the Senator failed to attribute a passage in one of his September columns. The passage was originally from Forbes. • For a big chunk of the Cold War, the U.S. Air Force turned to the SR-71 Blackbird for many of its most important spy missions. The jet-black jet could fly at more than three times the speed of sound at altitudes of 85,000 feet, faster and higher than anything adversaries had to counter it. The last of the Blackbirds flew in 1999. Now, Lockheed-Martin, the maker of the SR-71, says the "Son of the Blackbird," the SR-72, is in the works, and it will be twice as fast as and way more lethal because it will be designed to launch missiles. A smaller-scale model of the SR-72 could begin testing in five years and be in the air in 10. The full-scale SR-72 could be operational by 2030.