Mitt Romney Could Benefit From GOP Engagement, Pew Research Poll Says

Who's really ahead, Mitt Romney or Barack Obama?

WASHINGTON -- Political junkies have been scratching their heads again this week as another batch of national surveys produced results ranging from a 13-percentage point lead for President Barack Obama to a 5-point advantage for his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

When rolled together into the HuffPost Pollster chart, the collective result from all the polls remains roughly where it has been for the past month and for much of the period before the contentious Republican primaries: Obama holds a narrow net advantage in the national polls, just under 1 percentage point.

Poll watchers are busily speculating about the cause of all the variation. But for those who care about where the race is headed, the most important results of the week might be those from an in-depth survey from the Pew Research Center, which measured voter interest and engagement in the presidential election.

Surface vs. iPad: 7 Things Microsoft's Tablets Have That Apple's Don't

Microsoft trotted out its new line of Surface tablets earlier this week at a press conference in California. Two versions will be available: one equipped with an ARM processor and running Windows RT, the other equipped with an Intel processor and running Windows 8 Pro. Prices for both tablets have yet to be announced.

Microsoft's competition in the tablet space is fierce, and no devices are as fearsome as the mighty iPad. Apple CEO Tim Cook said in April that 67 million iPads have sold since the device launched in early 2010,per the New York Times. Though Microsoft has a lot of catching up to do, it seems to be off to a solid start with the Surface.

Microsoft is leaving us in the dark on key details, such as the price and exact release date of the Surface, but so far we've seen a few tantalizing features that the iPad lacks.

Pennsylvania Public Defenders Rebel Against Crushing Caseloads

At half past 5 on a cold, cloudy April morning, Ed Olexa kneels by his front door, sorting through stacks of case files for the coming day's hearings. Olexa works as a public defender in Luzerne County in northeastern Pennsylvania, and he's quadruple-booked this morning, which means four clients are scheduled to appear at the same time before different judges.

"My choice last night was to watch 'American Idol' or get my files in order," he says.

Olexa represents nearly 120 clients at a time for the Luzerne County defender's office, the majority of them charged with felonies. It's a typical caseload for the office, which is one of the most troubled in the state, according to a 2011 report commissioned by the Pennsylvania legislature. The report excoriated the state system as a whole, calling it obsolete and ineffective, but singled out Luzerne as a place where inadequate training, funding and supervision of defenders contributed to a "shocking deterioration" in the quality of representation given to some poor people.

Public defenders are infamous as the workhorses of the legal system, charged by the courts with representing poor defendants in criminal matters ranging from misdemeanors to death penalty cases. The pay is low, the hours long and the turnover high. Complaints that they suffer from crushing caseloads and inadequate support staff can probably be heard in any courthouse in the country.

World's Wealthiest Women: Wealth-X

The richest women may span the globe, but two of them come from the same family: the Waltons.

Two of the Walmart heirs capture spots one and and three on Wealth-X’s list of the world’s richest women. Valued at $29.8 and $28.2 billion respectively, the two women are part of a family that’s worth the same amount as the bottom 30 percent of Americans, according to an analysis from a labor economist at the University of California-Berkeley.

Other super-wealthy women that made Wealth-X’s cut include Australian mining mogul Gina Rinehart, valued at $29.1 billion, and French socialite Liliane Bettencourt, who is valued at $24 billion.

Though she hasn’t made the list yet, Sara Blakely may be poised to crack the rankingsin a few decades. Blakely became the youngest female billionaire this year at 41, thanks to her wildly successful Spanx shapewear businesses.

Here are the world's wealthiest women, according to Wealth-X: 

The World's Wealthiest Women

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