Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus (Reuters)

In an effort to sharpen its digital arsenal, the Republican Party is building a platform with outside groups that will give GOP vendors, campaigns and committees access to its massive warehouse of voter data, Yahoo News has learned.

The ambitious plan from the Republican National Committee to make the GOP more competitive in future elections—spurred by Mitt Romney’s bruising loss and the data-mining techniques that helped Democrats gain its technological edge—will provide select groups with access to terabytes of data with which to build apps and software to better mobilize individual voters and analyze political behavior.

The RNC’s plan, acquired by Yahoo News, will provide Republican organizations with "direct access to data through APIs” to groups that "are building or offering apps in the GOP campaign marketplace." (An API, or application programming interface, is a way for a company to allow others to access its internal data.)

In effect, the RNC hopes that by doing what Apple

Sen. Rob Portman (Charles Dharapak/AP)
A prominent conservative senator said on Thursday that he now supports gay marriage.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, told reporters from the Columbus Dispatch and other Ohio newspapers that his change of heart on the hot-button issue came two years after his son, Will, told him and his wife that he is gay.

"It allowed me to think of this issue from a new perspective, and that's of a Dad who loves his son a lot and wants him to have the same opportunities that his brother and sister would have—to have a relationship like Jane and I have had for over 26 years," Portman said.

In an interview with CNN, Portman said his son, then a freshman at Yale University, told him "that he was gay, and that it was not a choice, and that it's just part of who he is, and that he'd been that way for as long as he could remember."

The dramatic announcement comes just a week before the U.S. Supreme Court is to hear oral arguments on the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars federal recognition of same-sex

One of the photos taken from Allan Engstrom's stolen iPad (Engstrom/Facebook)Losing your iPad would be a source of anger and resentment for most people. But one Arkansas man describes his own stolen device as a “continuing fountain of entertainment,” thanks to the often bizarre pictures taken with the iPad that are posted to his iCloud photostream.

"It's been a continuing fountain of entertainment for me,” Allen Engstram told KTHV. “It's just like I'll wake up one day and they'll be new pictures there and I'm like oh my gosh, she has no idea."

Engstram says he lost the iPad on a flight from Phoenix to Denver. He assumed that was the end of the story until one day his son asked Engstram’s wife about a strange photo that appeared in the family’s photo stream.

"He said mommy, who's this? And of course she said, I have no idea who that is. It showed up on my phone too," Engstram said. "After a while we figured out what was going on. That's the person that has my iPad."

And while he doesn’t know if he’ll ever actually get the iPad back, Engstram is making sure to

The Mansfield News Journal reports that Reba Williams was presented her diploma on Wednesday by Mount Vernon Superintendent Steve Short.

Technically, the nation’s high school dropout rate just dropped a fraction. Though it’s unclear if that counts toward 1925 or 2013.

Back in 1925, Williams finished all 12 grades at Mount Vernon but never received her diploma.

And it wasn’t a bureaucratic error. Williams was denied her diploma after she refused to read a book assigned by one of her teachers. It turns out Williams had already read the book, didn’t like it and refused to dredge through its pages again.

“I’d tell them what happened to me,” Williams told the paper. “If they expect to get anyplace in this world, they have to learn.”

In fact, it was a recent profile of Williams by the Journal that helped her finally get her diploma. A former teacher read the profile of Williams and presented her situation to the board of education who unanimously decided to award Williams her diploma.

Join reporters and editors from Yahoo! and ABC News as we cover Samsung's Unpacked event live from Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

The assault weapons ban passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday in a vote along party lines–-but not without a fight.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and gun control advocate, had a fierce clash with newcomer Ted Cruz, a freshman senator from Texas. The two had a tense debate that caught the interest of the Web.

The tea party partisan wanted to know from the senior senator if she would “deem it consistent with the Bill of Rights” to apply the same guidelines of banning weapons in the Second Amendment to the banning of books in the First Amendment?

Directing his question at Feinstein, he asked, "Would she consider it constitutional for Congress to specify that the First Amendment shall apply only to the following books and shall not apply to the books that Congress has deemed outside the protection of the Bill of Rights?"

Feinstein, a Stanford graduate, appeared visibly annoyed and responded, “I’m not a sixth grader. Senator, I’ve been on this committee for 20

A 12-year-old spelling bee contestant is getting a second shot at a county crown after contest administrators admitted to making a big mistake.

KMPH reports that Sierra Shoemaker was competing in her school district's spelling bee in Fresno County, California. She was given the word "braille" and spelled it correctly. However, the judge said otherwise. He told Sierra that "braille" contained only one "l."

As if! In an interview with KMPH, Shoemaker said she knew the word-master was wrong. "I didn't want to say anything, because, you know, the word-master tells you you have a word wrong, you don't really argue with him. I was shocked. I was just kind of like, 'What?'"

Shoemaker ending up taking second place. Impressive, but not good enough to make it to the next round in the Fresno County Spelling Bee. Phone calls were made, petitions filed, and the story has a happy ending. Officials from Sierra's school district spoke with organizers of the county bee, who agreed to allow the

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—The organizers of this year's Conservative Political Action Conference tossed political junkies a taste of premium-grade smack Thursday when they scheduled back-to-back speeches by Sens. Rand Paul and Marco Rubio—two young Republicans who offered their own visions for the party.

Although Paul and Rubio agree on several things, they represent separate strands of the Republican Party. Paul embodies the more libertarian wing, which places a heavy emphasize on curtailing executive power. Rubio has set his sites on defending a traditional values agenda while focusing on policies that promote small business.

Both men, however, see a need for the party to extend its message to new constituencies, particularly minorities who traditionally support the Democratic Party.

The two junior senators, who joined the chamber together in 2010, are considered bright lights with promising futures in the party. Neither has denied interest in running for president in 2016. (Paul has said