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They're asking politely. Malcontents from 20 different states are petitioning the White House to allow them to secede from the union.

Using the White House website's We the People function, in which petitions garnering at least 25,000 signatures get a response from the president, people from the state of Texas are asking to "peacefully ... withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government."

Robert Siegel speaks with Harper Reed, who was chief technology officer for the Obama reelection campaign, about the strategies they employed to mobilize volunteers and reach voters.

Titan, the new supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, has been crowned the fastest in the world. It can clock 17.59 petaflops (quadrillions of calculations per second). Audie Cornish talks to Steve Henn for more.

The Greek government passed a 2013 budget on Monday that includes more spending cuts and tax hikes. But European leaders, while welcoming the move, won't give Greece its latest loan fix for now because of the country's rising debt. More than two years after Greece adopted a punishing austerity regimen in exchange for bailout loans, the country remains deeply in debt and addicted to loans.

On Saturday, the BBC's Director General, George Entwistle, resigned. On Monday, Helen Boaden, director of BBC News, and her deputy Stephen Mitchell, took leaves of absence after what appear to be major breaches of journalistic ethics. The first occurred a few weeks ago when the organization spiked an investigative report about alleged child sex abuse by a former BBC star, Jimmy Savile. The second happened last week when the BBC falsely accused a former senior politician, still living, of child abuse.

Robert Siegel talks with Yaser Tabbara, spokesman for a newly formed umbrella organization of Syrian opposition groups. The coalition, forged over the weekend in Doha, is much broader than its predecessor, the Syrian National Council, bringing together roughly 90 percent of Syria's opposition. Tabbara, an attorney typically based in Chicago, helped broker the coalition's agreement.

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

And I'm Audie Cornish.

We begin this hour with the conflict in Syria. There are both military and diplomatic developments to report. First, cross-border fire between Syrian and Israeli forces. Israel's military says it hit back today at a Syrian army mortar unit that had launched a round into Israeli-held territory in the Golan Heights. And Israel says it's ready to escalate its response if necessary.

Many veterans aren't just looking for a job; they're looking for a career, a calling and, of course, financial stability. Those recently separated from the military have to confront what is still a fairly weak civilian job market.