The Mahogany Boxes Hold No Surprises From the Electoral College

WASHINGTON - President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will serve another term in the White House.

Though that may seem like old news, a joint session of Congress confirmed the Democratic ticket's victory Friday, tallying the ballots from the Electoral College to officially declare Mr. Obama the winner with 332 electoral votes to Mitt Romney's 206 votes.

Capping off a week that started with an 11th-hour resolution to the fiscal impasse by the departing Congress, the session offered another moment of tradition as the new Congress, fresh from the swearing-in ceremonies Thursday, fulfilled the constitutionally mandated practice of certifying the presidential election results.

The newly reappointed Democratic leaders, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, sat together as Mr. Biden announced the results in his role as president of the Senate.

The session, which began with the procession into the House ch amber of the mahogany boxes containing each state's electoral vote totals, took a little more than 20 minutes. Four lawmakers - Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York; Representative Candice Miller, Republican of Michigan; Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee; and Representative Robert Brady, Democrat of Pennsylvania - read each state's results aloud, punctuated a couple of times by mild applause from the otherwise silent chamber.

There are 538 electors, who cast separate votes for president and vice president. While most states require their electors to vote in accordance with the popular vote, there was still a chance that a few “faithless electors,” as they are called, could break away and cast their ballots for other candidates. Before the November election, there were reports that some Republican electors might vote for Representative Ron Paul of Texas, one of Mr. Romney's primary challengers. However, the fi nal tally fell in line with the popular vote.

The session typically occurs on Jan. 6, but because that falls on a Sunday this year, Congress passed a law moving the count, just this once, to Jan. 4.

A Changing of the Guard Among Veterans in Congress

The 113th Congress convened for the first time on Thursday, welcoming the largest wave of veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since those wars began more than a decade ago.

Sixteen members of the new Congress served in Iraq or Afghanistan, including nine new members, according to the group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

But the number of veterans joining Congress continued a four-decade long slide, dropping to 106 in the 113th Congress, according to data from CQ Roll Call.

The Senate will have 18 veterans, down from a peak of 81 in 197 7 and the lowest since at least World War II, according to data from the Senate Historical Office. The House will have 88 veterans, down from a peak of 347 in 1977, according to the Military Officers Association of America.

The presence of veterans in Congress peaked in 1977, shortly after the Vietnam War, when 412 veterans were sworn in with the 95th Congress, according to the military officers group.

But the number of veterans serving in Congress has fallen steadily since then, with Congress losing about 10 veterans over the last few election cycles, according to the military officers group.

The new crop of veterans includes the first two female combat veterans to serve in Congress, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, both Democrats.

Barney Frank Seeks Short Stint in Senate

Barney Frank is finding it hard to say goodbye to Congress.

The day after his 32-year term in the House of Representatives ended, Mr. Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, said on Friday morning that he would like to be appointed as an interim senator to fill John Kerry's seat until a special election later this year.

He would not run for election, he said on the MSNBC program “Morning Joe.”

It is up to Gov. Deval Patrick to name someone to fill the vacancy created by Mr. Kerry's nomination to be secretary of state.

If selected, Mr. Frank would be a reliable liberal vote in a series of decisions on taxes, spending and the debt that face Congress this winter and spring.

He said it was those votes that had made him think twice about his earlier disinterest in the job.

He said he had told Mr. Patrick of his interest .

Mr. Frank's appointment would also give Massachusetts a distinctive voice in Senate on matters involving the regulation of banks. Mr. Frank steered the landmark overhaul of financial institutions through the House in the last Congress and would join newly elected Senator Elizabeth Warren, a proponent of pro-consumer banking regulations, as a fellow senator.

App Smart Extra: Keeping Fitness Resolutions

This week App Smart was full of apps that can help you, one way or another, to stick to any New Year's resolutions you've made.

Making a resolution to keep healthy is pretty common, and like me you may have resolved to improve your fitness by going for a regular jog. The iFit Running app ($2 on iOS) is great for this because it can track your runs using GPS, help you keep note of your timings and even measure your daily calorie intake. To keep you motivated when you're running, it has voice prompts, or you can turn on a metronome to help keep your pace steady or play music.

Stopping smoking is another common health resolution, and the free and highly popular Android app Quit Now! (free on Google Play) could be ideal for helping you kick the habit. This app's main trick for motivating you is a list of statistics about how long it's been since you smoked your last cigarette, and roughly how much time and money you've saved - the dollars will rack up very quickly! There's also a social networking system so you can chat with other people battling the habit.

For a really simple iOS app to help you commit to keeping your resolutions, try Commit ($3 on iTunes). It's very cleanly designed. You simply enter your goal, and when you've achieved it each day you can tap on the giant tick mark button. Several goals can be entered, each accessed by a simple swipe gesture, and the app displays a progress bar to show you how many days in a row you've clicked on the tick for each goal. There's not much else to this app, but the simplicity may keep you using it. Commit really only takes a second to fire up and click on the button.

Learning a language is another popular New Year's resolution, and newly updated app TripLingo (free on iOS) could help you with the task - and also when you're vacationing in another country. It's not designed to be an exhaustive dictionary, but it does have an extensive offline dictionary system and it has sev eral tricks for teaching you useful phrases, including slang words.

Good luck keeping your resolutions, folks!

Q&A: How to Turn an Excel Spreadsheet into Mailing Labels

Q.

I have Microsoft Office and a list of addresses in an Excel spreadsheet. Is there a way to get these addresses into Word so I can create stick-on mailing labels out of them?

A.

You can import the address data on the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet into Microsoft Word and make labels out of them with Word's Mail Merge feature. The process does take several steps, but saves quite a bit of time in the long run.

Those precise steps vary based on which version of Microsoft Office you are using, but generally goes like this: You set up a label template in Word, format the type in the text field, import the data from the Excel spreadsheet with the mail merge command and then print the labels. (A quick video overview gives you an idea of what to expect.)

Microsoft's site has its own detailed instructions for the entire label-making process from an Excel spreadsheet, as well as the steps for making labels from Outlo ok contacts. Once you get the addresses set up, you just need the blank labels to run through the printer. Word's Labels tool can create templates for a variety of popular adhesive label sheets from Avery and other office-supply companies, including the common Avery 5160 style that fits 30 labels per sheet.

If you are unfamiliar with some of Word's more advanced features, using the mail merge feature may take a bit of practice. Microsoft has an interactive online course and a 15-minute video “Webinar” that further explain how to use it.

Justice Roberts to Preside at Obama Swearing-In

WASHINGTON â€" President Obama's inaugural planning committee will announce this morning that â€" surprise! â€" Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. will deliver the oath of office to Mr. Obama when he is sworn in for a second term later this month.
Most Americans (including this correspondent) simply assume the chief justice always delivers the oath. In fact, the president gets to pick who will swear him in, and Mr. Obama has selected the chief justice to deliver not one, but two, oaths to him: first in a private ceremony at the White House at noon on Sunday, Jan. 20, the constitutionally mandated date and hour for the swearing-in, and again as part of the public inaugural festivities scheduled for Monday, Jan. 21.
“I will be honored to again stand on the inaugural platform and take part in this important American tradition,'' Mr. Obama said in an announcement the planners will release later this morning. “I look forward to having Chief Justice John Roberts administer my oath of office as we gather to celebrate not just a president or a vice president, but the strength and determination of the American people.”
The ceremonies will mark the second time the chief justice has delivered back-to-back oaths to the president. During Mr. Obama's 2009 inauguration, Chief Justice Roberts flubbed the 35-word oath, prompting the president to misstate it as well. The two later redid the swearing-in privately at the White House, out of abundance of caution, the White House said then.
The tradition of chief justices administering the presidential oat h began in 1797, when Oliver Ellsworth swore in John Adams. But over time, there have been exceptions to the unwritten rule. In 1923, President Calvin Coolidge took the oath from his father, a notary public, in the wake of the death of President Warren G. Harding. But when questions were raised about the propriety of the ceremony, Mr. Harding retook the oath from a federal judge.
And on Nov. 22, 1963, the day John F. Kenn edy was assassinated, Lyndon Johnson was sworn in aboard Air Force One at Love Field in Dallas by a federal judge, Sarah T. Hughes, who became the first woman to deliver the oath of office to a president.

The Early Word: 113th

In Today's Times:

• Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio weathered dissent from fellow conservatives on Thursday to win re-election as speaker of the House, Jonathan Weisman reports. Mr. Boehner called for the House to focus on results, emphasizing that the Republican majority would address the federal debt and deficit in the 113th Congress.

• Mr. Boehner's victory came with a warning from his party that while he holds a powerful position, his power is greatly diminished, Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports. There were 12 Republican defections in the vote for speaker, including 9 lawmakers who cast ballots for other people.

• The new Congress brings new diversity to Capitol Hill, as a record number of women, including the first female combat veterans, as well as the first openly gay senator, the first Hindu representative and more were sworn in, Ashley Parker reports.

• Google won a victory on Thursday as the Federal Trade Commission declared the company had not violated antitrust or anticompetition statutes in its arranging of Web search results, a decision that could enable it to further strengthen its place on the Internet, Edward Wyatt reports.

Washington Happenings:

• The Labor Department will release its unemployment numbers for December on Friday.

• President Obama and his family continue their vacation in Hawaii.