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Camas, Wash. "They thought I was being cute. I wasn't being cute. I just didn't want to go to jail."
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• WASHINGTON (AP) -- As a Republican, freshman Rep. Ted Yoho of Florida cares about the Republican Party's image and fate. But what he especially cares about is a tiny sliver of the GOP: about 22,000 primary voters who lean heavily conservative and who secured his spot in the House.
• Yoho is hardly alone. Many other House Republicans owe their elections to similarly small and ideologically intense electorates. These GOP lawmakers pay far less attention to the party's national reputation. And that deeply frustrates activists trying to build broad, national coalitions to elect a Republican as president in 2016 and beyond.
• Yoho and his fellow tea party-backed House members essentially say, "Not my problem."
• "I ran on what I stood up to do," Yoho said after defying party leaders and voting against a bipartisan measure to raise the debt ceiling and end last month's government shutdown. "And I got elected on that," he said.
• Yoho and many colleagues were elected by a conservative subset of a conservative subset of a conservative subset. It helps explain why they often stick to hard-right positions their party leaders oppose, and why they shrug off polls showing the overall Republican Party's approval ratings plummeted during the shutdown episode.
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• BOSTON (AP) -- Relatives of people killed by gangster James "Whitey" Bulger will finally get a chance to describe their loss as a federal judge convenes a two-day hearing to consider his sentence for decades-old slayings.
• Family members of at least 11 murder victims are expected to speak at the hearing, which begins Wednesday. But the judge has not yet ruled on whether relatives of people whose murders Bulger was acquitted of will also be allowed to speak. Prosecutors are seeking two consecutive life sentences.

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