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Few Detroiters think the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history is great news.

But plenty see it as an opportunity. Many Detroit businesses hope the bankruptcy will mean more stability and certainty, in a city that has had little of either in recent years.

Sandy Baruah, head of the Detroit Regional Chamber, says the bankruptcy filing did not come as a surprise to him. And it shouldn't surprise anybody else.

"Detroit is not unique," Baruah says. "Great American cities like New York, Pittsburgh have all gone through some form of bankruptcy/receivership, and all of those cities look back on the time as kind of the defining point that put their cities on a much more sustainable path. All three of those cities are now vibrant, urban centers."

The Two-Way

Michigan AG Appeals Court Order Blocking Detroit Bankruptcy

A court in Italy has convicted five people on charges of manslaughter and negligence for the shipwreck of the Costa Concordia off Tuscany last year that left 32 passengers and crew dead.

The court at Grosseto, the city nearest the spot where the Costa Concordia ran aground in January 2012, accepted plea bargains for the cruise ship's helmsman, cabin service director, two bridge officers and the head of the company's crisis team.

The sentences handed down by the court:

— Director of the crisis unit, Roberto Ferrarini: 2 years, 10 months

— Cabin Service Director Manrico Giampedroni: 2 1/2 years

— First Officer Ciro Ambrosio: 1 year, 11 months

— Helmsman Jacob Rusli Bin: 1 year, 8 months

— Third Officer Silvia Coronica: 1 1/2 years

The trial of Captain Francesco Schettino, accused of multiple counts of manslaughter and of abandoning the vessel with thousands still aboard, has been adjourned until late September as the court awaits electrical tests of the ship. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted on all counts.

The ship hit a rock and capsized after Schettino diverted it from its planned route, steaming past the island of Giglio at night as a salute to the people of the tiny Tuscan island.

Sky News says Schettino's defense claims that:

"... no one died in the collision itself, but that the failure of a backup generator and supposedly water-tight compartments that were flooded created problems during the evacuation, when the deaths occurred."

It was the eve of a series of votes to end GOP filibusters of seven presidential appointees, and Democrats had vowed they would resort to the "nuclear option" and get rid of such filibusters altogether should any of those stalled nominees remain blocked.

All but two of the Senate's 100 members squeezed into the camera-free old chamber that the Senate used until just before the Civil War. Behind closed doors, they talked for more than three hours.

I buttonholed West Virginia Democrat Jay Rockefeller as he stepped out of that Monday night meeting.

"Senator, is there any kind of a deal?"

"No, there's no deal, but there's a much better understanding."

And that "better understanding" likely did bring about a deal the next morning. In it, a group of Republicans would supply enough votes for the 54-member Democratic caucus to attain a 60-vote supermajority and shut down GOP filibusters of the seven Obama appointees.

In return, Democrats dropped their threat to unilaterally change Senate rules and strip the GOP minority of its right to filibuster executive branch nominees.

"We saw the Senate at its best, when reasonable people from both parties were willing to come together and find common ground," said New York Democrat Charles Schumer, who helped swing the deal. "That's how the Senate should work. That's the way things get done."

In reality, says Rutgers University Senate expert Ross Baker, while Democrats had the votes they needed to change the rules on the filibuster, they also knew doing so could actually make things even worse.

"I think it was a real dread that the atmosphere in the Senate — although to outsiders looks terribly poisoned, in actuality, there's a lot of cooperation that goes on under the radar — and that had the' nuclear button' been pushed, I think even that level of cooperation would probably have diminished," said Baker.

The end result, says No. 2 Senate Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois, was that while none of the rules changed, that still remains a possibility.

"What we basically said is we still have our rights to change the rules, if things go to the extreme," explained Durbin. "And the other side has the right to take them to the extreme. But I think we both came to realize Monday night it wasn't in our best interest."

Arizona Republican John McCain led GOP efforts to avert the nuclear option; he's confident it's off the table, at least for now.

"People walked to the edge of the abyss and then we've walked back, so I don't think this is going to come up again anytime soon," said McCain. "It may, depending on what goes on in the Senate."

Like other Republicans, McCain is still willing to block nominations; he put a hold this week on the re-nomination of Army Gen. Martin Dempsey as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill expects a 60-vote supermajority will still be needed for just about anything the Senate does.

"There's still room for bad behavior," she said. "There's room for the Republicans to say, 'We're gonna, you know, require 60 on motherhood and apple pie.' And there's room for the Democrats to say, 'You're not gonna get any amendments, and we're gonna change the rules.' That's all still out there."

Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski shares such skepticism.

"We got through this week. And that's good," she said. "But I think there are many on both sides who are looking at ... where we are today and saying, 'Yeah, I'm not so good with it.'"

The problem, says Idaho Republican Jim Risch, is that a polarized Senate reflects a polarized nation

"Until the country makes a decision which way they're gonna go, and I don't mean by a 51-49 [percent margin], I mean by a cultural shift, I mean by a 60-40, I think there's going to continue to be polarization. There's gonna continue to be frustration in America."

And likely in the Senate as well.

Brace yourselves, Francophiles.

First, we broke the news about fast food overtaking restaurants in France. Then we reported the shocker that more than a third of French restaurants serve frozen meals. If these revelations ruin your impression of France as a bastion of culinary tradition, you may not want to read further.

A French vintner has just launched a bottled red wine flavored with cola.

Bordeaux-based winemaker Haussmann Famille has already had success with grapefruit- and passionfruit-flavored ross and whites. Their newest wine, Rouge Sucette, which translates to Red Lollipop, is made from 75 percent grapes and 25 percent water, with added sugar and cola flavoring. It is meant to be served chilled.

Why the break with tradition?

Wine consumption in France is down. In 1980, more than half of adults consumed wine almost daily, as the BBC reports, but the figure has dropped to just 17 percent today. And so according to Pauline Lacombe, company spokeswoman for Haussmann Famille, vintners need to attract younger drinkers and women.

"[The cola flavor] is to answer to a new kind of need and a market demand," she tells The Salt. "Tastes evolve in time and we have to adapt."

French restaurant and hospitality expert Fred Sirieix cites several factors behind the downward trend in wine drinking among the French: the financial crisis, which brought with it the death of the long lunch hour; reduced legal limits for driving under the influence of alcohol; and a general move towards healthier living.

Cola wine may seem out of step with French ways, but Sirieix tells The Salt that's because a lot of people have the wrong idea about what those ways really are.

"The puritanical view of French things is not realistic," he says. "We're changing with the times. We have a strong foundation of food and wine, and it gives this perception we don't mix Coca-Cola and red wine, but we do!"

In fact, the wine and cola mix has roots in the Basque region, where it's called kalimotxo, and calls for equal parts of each one.

Lacombe says market research indicates fast-growing demand for such "wine-based aromatized drinks." Of the different aromas that Haussmann Famille tested, "cola was the best mix," he says. "That intrigued many people, and there were curious to taste it."

The thirst for sweeter drinks isn't limited to France. Led by Moscato, sweet wine consumption is up in the U.S., too.

"Think about it: You have wine spritzers, you have Kir Royale, Bellinis, shandy, the Italian spritzers with Aperol and prosecco," says Sirieix. "You have all sorts of champagne cocktails. So what's the difference between [those and] red wine and Coca-Cola? It's about marketing and perception. It's about what we perceive to be acceptable and the sort of snootiness we have about Coca-Cola."

Lacombe insists Rouge Sucette isn't just wine doused with cola, anyway: It is 75 percent wine and contains only the essence of cola, making it perhaps a bit more refined, though with a very similar flavor.

So how does a Frenchman like Sirieix rate it?

"It's refreshing and kind of fun," he says. "I don't think I would buy it, but if I was going to drink it, I would make it myself, because I would feel a bit better about it."

Jack Bruschetti was born in 1999, the same year his grandfather, Leonard Carpenter, died from Alzheimer's disease.

But 13-year-old Jack wanted to know more about his grandfather, who worked as a tire builder for BFGoodrich in Akron, Ohio, where he also raised his family.

"It was very important for him to be in control at all times," Jack's mom, Lynne Bruschetti, said to him during a visit to StoryCorps in Atlanta. "We lived in the city, and we had very tiny yards, and he didn't use a lawnmower. He used clippers because he wanted every blade of grass to be exactly the same height. We could play in the driveway, on the sidewalk, in the middle of the street, but we were not allowed in that showplace yard of his."

Lynne said her father — who was 86 when he died — always kept a comb, handkerchief and penknife in his pockets.

"And the handkerchief was always clean and pressed, and he would use a handkerchief not to blow his nose but to clean. If there was like a mark on the side of our house, he would wipe it," she recounted. "And when I was a teenager, I was starting to lose respect for your grandpa Leonard."

Lynne said she resented her father for "always wanting to keep the house perfect and always being in control, and I was starting to realize that he wasn't that educated."

Enlarge image i

With its bankruptcy filing Thursday, Detroit became the largest municipality in the United States to seek Chapter 9 protection.

As Scott reported, the city is saddled with $18.5 billion in debt.

Today, we ask, what happens next?

— CNN reports that Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said today "should be a regular day." The lights won't be turned off, and city services should continue. Snyder said that, perhaps ironically, future city services may improve because the city is no longer burdened with what he called "legacy costs."

"I know many will see this as a low point in the city's history," he told CNN. "If anything, this gets us on the path towards improved services."

— As for what happens on the legal side: The Associated Press says because Detroit is such a massive bankruptcy, the case "could take years to resolve."

First, a bankruptcy judge has to approve Detroit's request. Then:

"... city assets could be liquidated to satisfy demands for payment. The city would propose a reorganization plan. The wide-ranging plan could include anything from selling assets, layoffs, changing union contracts and more. Then, the city would need the support of creditors to emerge from bankruptcy."

Apple, Google, Microsoft and a broad coalition of major tech companies are making a loud call for greater government disclosure of digital communications monitoring.

In a letter out today, an alliance of 63 companies and groups are calling for dramatically increased transparency around U.S. government surveillance efforts. This comes as the companies — and individual Americans — continue to grapple with recent revelations of a sweeping surveillance program led by the National Security Agency.

(Read the full letter.)

The alliance, which also includes investors and trade organizations — asks for Internet and communications service providers to report national security-related requests with specificity.

In the letter addressed to President Obama, National Intelligence Director James Clapper, Attorney General Eric Holder and congressional leaders, they've asked to regularly report:

• The number of government requests for information about their users.

• The number of individuals, accounts or devices for which information was requested.

• And the number of requests that sought communications content, basic subscriber information and/or other information.

The coalition also asks that the government begin issuing a transparency report of its own, and in it, provide similar information — the total number of requests made and the number of individuals affected by each.

You may notice that no hosting providers like Amazon Web Services or Go Daddy have co-signed the letter. Also absent are payment processors like Visa and Mastercard. We're reaching out to these companies and will update with their input.

Click to read the full letter.

For decades after the 1930s, the National Labor Relations Board served as the arbiter for squabbles between management and unions, or workers who wanted to join a union. In more recent years, though, the board itself has become a battleground.

Democratic appointees to the NLRB have grown increasingly sympathetic to organized labor, while Republican appointees have grown increasingly hostile, says Harley Shaiken, who studies labor relations as a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

"Management tends to in general prefer a far less active NLRB, where unions view it as essential for the future of the labor movement," he says.

Shaiken says that antagonism extends to confirmation battles: Senate Republicans have repeatedly blocked President Obama's nominees to the board, making it hard to preserve the three-member quorum the NLRB needs to operate.

"The NLRB has been limping under the Obama presidency simply because the president has been unable to get appointments onto the five-member NLRB board," Shaiken says.

That could end as early as next week, after a Senate deal defused a standoff over Republican filibusters of executive-branch appointees.

The 'Recess' Gambit

Last year, Obama used controversial "recess" appointments to fill vacant seats on the board, when the Senate was out of town, but not technically in recess. Several federal appeals courts have challenged that move, and the U.S. Supreme Court will consider the issue in its upcoming term.

Those recess appointments became a crucial bargaining chip in this week's Senate negotiations over filibuster rules. Republicans agreed not to filibuster a series of presidential nominees, including the Labor secretary and the EPA administrator, both of whom were confirmed on Thursday.

But in return they insisted the White House come up with two new nominees for the NLRB.

"The NLRB nominations, I think, were at the heart of the deal to avert the so-called 'nuclear option' in the Senate," says Ilyse Schuman, an attorney who represents management in labor disputes.

Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America, is disappointed that Obama had to withdraw his two recess nominees. But Cohen says he's perfectly happy with their replacements: Nancy Schiffer, who has been a lawyer for the AFL-CIO and the United Auto Workers, and Kent Hirozawa, chief counsel to the NLRB.

Cohen says he thinks they'll be just as favorable for organized labor as were the previous nominees: Sharon Block and Richard Griffin.

"There's no difference, in terms of their skills, their background, their commitment, their values," says Cohen. "There's no difference."

'Full Speed Ahead'

Schuman agrees the new NLRB board members will be equally pro-labor, and without the handicap of a legally dubious recess appointment.

"With this cloud of uncertainty removed from the authority of the board, it is going to return full speed ahead, if not even faster, on implementing, I think, enormous changes to labor-management relations," Schuman says.

Schuman says the NLRB could now make it easier for workers to organize a union, something the Obama administration has tried but failed to do legislatively.

"In the face of the legislative logjam ... there are other avenues — administrative avenues — that are being turned to to try to achieve those same objectives. ... Trying to seek ways to facilitate union organizing and increase the sort of record low numbers of union membership."

Shaiken says Republican senators did come out of the week with a pair of political scalps.

"The Republicans won a symbolic victory in that the president's two initial nominees were withdrawn. But the Democrats won a substantive victory in that the two new nominees — very highly regarded, quite qualified — will be Democratic nominees on the NLRB," he says.

If the deal holds together and the new nominees are confirmed in the coming days, the NLRB will be fully staffed with five Senate-approved members for the first time in a decade.

In the 1980s, a popular fast-food commercial touted chicken-breast sandwiches — and mocked chicken nuggets sold by competitors.

In the ad, a competitor's doofus clerk explains nuggets. "All the parts are crammed into one big part," he said. "And parts is parts."

Today, clerks may believe that catchphrase could apply to them as regular full-time schedules disappear. For many workers, hours are not only short, but increasingly erratic as managers scramble to cover shifts without the steadying influence of experienced full-time employees.

"It's ridiculous," says Amere Graham, an 18-year-old high school graduate who works at a McDonald's in Milwaukee. "My schedule is all over the place. It's completely unpredictable."

Government data support Graham's impressions of workplace conditions. The ranks of people working part time because they can't find full-time jobs have roughly doubled since the summer of 2007, from about 4.3 million to 8.2 million.

"There has been a surge in part-time work," says Aparna Mathur, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute.

The change reflects business owners' reluctance to hire full-time workers while they still have so many worries about the strength of the recovery and the cost of the Affordable Care Act, Mathur says. "You want to maintain flexibility so you can respond to the economy" without having to carry the costs of hiring and firing full-time employees, she says.

In a study of retail working conditions, conducted in the fall of 2011 in New York, only 17 percent of retail workers said they have a set schedule.

With so many people working in so many part-time positions, frustrations are growing, according to Michael Wilder, coordinator at Wisconsin Jobs Now, a union-supported group that advocates for low-wage workers.

Business

Jobs Outlook Is Brighter For Class Of 2013

This summer was supposed to be a time to reintroduce the public to the Affordable Care Act and teach people how to sign up for benefits this fall.

But that's not what's happening.

Instead, earlier this month, the Obama administration decided to delay some key pieces of the law, most notably the requirement for larger employers to provide coverage or risk fines, because they couldn't have reporting regulations ready in time for next year's rollout.

Then this week, the Republican-led House voted to delay the so-called individual mandate for a year to match. It was the 39th such vote against the law.

And now some are starting to worry that the White House is getting dangerously off-message.

The administration tried to regroup Thursday: It put President Obama front and center in the White House East Room, surrounded by smiling beneficiaries of the parts of the Affordable Care Act already in effect.

Among those singled out: those who have been on the receiving end of a somewhat obscure provision requiring insurance companies to pay rebates to policyholders if the companies spend too much on administrative costs rather than medical expenses.

"Dan Hart, who's here, from Chicago, had read these rebates were happening," said Obama. "But he didn't think anything of it until he got a check in the mail for 136 bucks."

This year an estimated 8.5 million Americans will get rebates thanks to the law's "medical loss ratio" rules. That's actually down from the 13 million who got them last year. And Obama admitted that even those who are getting the checks don't necessarily associate them with the health law.

"I bet if you took a poll, most folks wouldn't know when that check comes in that this was because of Obamacare that they got this extra money in their pockets," he said.

Which is a big part of the administration's messaging problem. According to public opinion polls, many of the law's provisions are extremely popular. But the law itself isn't. Still.

And while the president is talking about a few million people getting refunds of $100 or $200, Republicans have been talking in much more expansive terms.

"A government-run health care system is at its very basis a beginning of socialism in medicine and we oppose that," said Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, during the House floor debate Wednesday.

At his daily briefing Thursday, White House spokesman Jay Carney derided Republicans' continuing efforts to roll back the law.

Carney said the president is willing to make changes to the law as necessary. "But that is wholly different from this constant and now almost comical effort to spend most of the time in the House of Representatives hoping to repeal in some form or manner a bill that has been passed into law by both houses, signed into law by the president, and upheld as the law by the Supreme Court of the United States."

Still, there's a major difference in the way Republicans talk about the law and the way the president does, says George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley and an expert on political messaging.

Lakoff says Republicans talk about the law as a moral issue. "Basically ... they say that democracy is about liberty, the liberty to pursue your own self-interest without you having to take care of anybody else's interests or anybody else having to take care of yours."

But when Obama talks about the health law — at least this week, says Lakoff — "his message was all about money."

And Lakoff says that's pretty much been the president's problem: He's mostly shied away from talking about health care on the same moral terms as have the Republicans.

But he could talk about it from the moral perspective of Democrats if he wanted to, Lakoff says.

"Health care is about life itself, about living a decent life, about living free from fear, and also free from economic fear. Fear of losing your home because you have to pay out of pocket for operations that really ought to be paid for by having healthcare insurance," he said.

The administration, however, has seemed to be all over the place when it comes to its messaging about the health law.

Of course it's been a lot easier for the Republicans. Their message is pretty much one word: No.

The Act of Killing

Director: Joshua Oppenheimer

Genre: Documentary

Running Time: 115 minutes

With: Haji Anif, Syamsul Arifin, Sakhyan Asmara

(Recommended)

Marti Olesen's favorite summer recipe is plucked straight from the garden — and the faster it gets to your plate, the better. She calls it Diane's Dad's Summer Sandwich.

"I've been eating this sandwich for 27 years and I am the epitome of health — and beauty," Olesen laughs.

Olesen is an elementary school librarian in Ponca, Ark. She first encountered the sandwich when a coworker, Diane Dickey, told her about it decades ago.

"She was reminiscing about this wonderful sandwich that she ate every summer with her dad. I was a vegetarian at the time and I thought, 'I'm game. Tell me about it,'" Olesen says.

The ingredient list starts out pretty traditionally: Tomatoes, Vidalia or red sweet onion and cucumbers, all fresh and sliced thinly. The veggies are placed between two slices of whole grain bread with white cheddar cheese. But the sandwich isn't complete until you slather on some crunchy peanut butter.

Olesen was skeptical as she headed to the farmer's market to gather the ingredients for the first time. Once assembled she took a big bite and thought, "'You know, it's okay, but I'm not loving it yet.'"

Realizing there might be a secret in the layering, she reordered the sandwich three of four different times but never loved the result.

"But I was very polite and I did not say anything to Diane," she says.

A couple of weeks went by before Dickey asked about the sandwich. Olesen played it off, conceding Dickey's love of the sandwich was probably wrapped up in her childhood memories.

Vote For Your Favorite

This recipe is among three finalists in our "Taste of Summer" contest. Take a look at the two others below and vote for your favorite by sending a message to All Things Considered here. Make sure to put "Taste Of Summer Vote" in the subject line.

Hari Kondabolu is a brainy comedian who cuts through the polite talk around race and gender. He's made a lot of key people laugh with his incisive anecdotes, including Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O'Brien and John Oliver.

A full-time writer on the FX show Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell, he recently did a comedy bit on the National Spelling Bee, or "as I like to call it," he joked, "the Indian Super Bowl."

Kondabolu makes a fair point: For six years in a row, the winner has been Indian-American. As a result, he continued, "it gives me great pleasure to finally be able to say 'Hey white people, learn the language.' "

At first he was reluctant to write a bit about South Asians winning the spelling bee because it's kind of a clich.

"At the same time, I'm like: Let's own it," Kondabolu explains. "There's nothing embarrassing about kids doing well at school and dominating that happen to be South Asian, which is very exciting for me. And there aren't any South Asian athletes. I mean Jeremy Lin was Taiwanese-American. I took ownership of that. It's as close as we've gotten.

"But this is something we dominate at. This isn't the Indian Cricket team. These are South Asian-Americans, Indian-Americans dominating. And I loved it."

Thirteen-year-old Arvind Mahankali won this year's spelling bee. During his interview after his victory, he said that he planned to spend the rest of his summer studying physics. Kondabolu jokes, "He's a two-sport athlete!"

A Time To Unite?

Kondabolu was born and raised in a diverse neighborhood in Queens, N.Y., which he describes as having "different immigration status, different income levels, different languages, different parts of the world. It was incredible."

His parents were born in India and moved to the U.S. when they were in their 20s. Kondabolu describes a time in his childhood when his mother took he and his brother to Burger King, because she wanted them to assimilate into American society.

"We never saw something strange about that," he says. "As I got older, it was kind of bizarre, like 'Wait a second, why are you, why? Why did you take us to Burger King and, if we're Hindu, how come you let us eat beef?' She said that she wanted us to get used to what it was like to be an American, and apparently Burger King, well, it's fast food. What's more American than fast food?"

His mother, Uma Kondabolu, laughs as she says that, yes, she did take her sons to Burger King because it is very American but also where they found people of all backgrounds.

"That's where they played with other kids of all colors," she says. "And then I used to meet with other parents of all colors."

Uma wanted her kids to see that interacting with people of all colors was not "bad" or "scary." And Hari Kondabolu says that he felt safe growing up in his Queens neighborhood. He didn't think racism was a serious problem until the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

"You hear about the hate violence all around the country, even in New York, and I think that's what struck me the most, it was happening in New York, and it was confusing, because I grew up in Queens, I grew up in New York, and we just dealt with this terrorism, we dealt with 9/11," says Kondabolu, who was 18 when the World Trade Center attacks happened.

"And you're telling me, after this, everyone's claiming we're all coming together, we're getting closer, this is a time where we unite. It's like, really? Because, in my community, I see people getting hurt and being put into detention centers."

As a result, Kondabolu became politically active. He worked in the Queens district attorney's office bureau of hate crimes, went to Seattle to work for an immigrant rights group and got his masters in human rights at the London School of Economics.

All the while, his stand-up comedy was just a hobby. The idea of doing it full-time came when, in the early 1990s, Kondabolu saw Margaret Cho on Comedy Central.

"To see someone who wasn't black or Latino or white do stand-up was huge," Kondabulo explains. "And she was talking about immigrant parents, and I have immigrant parents — my parents are different from her parents, but she was talking about it. And that was OK, and it was funny. I was so amazed by that. I wanted to do that after watching her perform."

'A Good Laugh Over A Drink'

Today, Kondabolu's material is not so much about his own family, but about being an outsider in general — or at least being treated like one. And he's not afraid of challenging some long-standing beliefs.

"How do people justify homophobia in this country? 'Y'know, it's not Adam and Steve, it's Adam and Eve,' " he said at a recent show at the Black Cat in Washington, D.C. "Look, technically that is true. Right, it was Adam and Eve. But if you remember the story, it was Adam and Eve and a talking serpent. I feel like the talking serpent throws the whole account into question. I don't know how true this is. There's a talking snake involved. Maybe you shouldn't base your values on a Jungle Book-type scenario. What would Baloo do? What about Shere Khan? What about Winnie the Pooh? Oh, is that a different world? Does it matter at this point? That's a Jungle Book-type scenario. Look, I'm an Indian-Hindu alright. I know all about Jungle Book-type scenarios. That is a Jungle Book-type scenario."

Kondabolu says he knows some people won't like his point of view. "I've been approached after shows from people who said, 'I don't agree with anything you said, but I laughed the whole way through.' That's still a little strange to me. Like, nothing? Really? But at the same time that's what happens in a conversation. You might not agree with everything the other person is saying, but you can still have a good laugh over a drink, right?"

At the show in Washington, D.C., the audience was very diverse and didn't seem to have a problem with his point of view.

"People keep bringing up the year 2042 on the news when Census figures indicate that whites will be the minority," he joked. "In 2042, apparently white people will be 49 percent. First of all, why do we give a f—k? Why do we keep mentioning this? Why is this even an issue? Are there white people here that are concerned that they'll be the minority in 2042? Don't worry white people, you were a minority when you came to this country. Things seemed to have worked out for you."

Kondabolu also recently recorded material for his first live comedy album, being released on the record label Kill Rock Stars. Although the label is best known for punk rock, Kondabolu thinks it's a perfect fit.

Monkey See contributor/longtime nerd Glen Weldon is headed to San Diego Comic-Con. He's filing periodic updates from one of the largest media events in the world.

Glen and F's Apartment, Washington, DC.

4:00 a.m. ET: Alarm goes off.

4:05 a.m. ET: Alarm goes off.

4:10 a.m. ET: Alarm is like, "Hey. HEY. HEY JERK."

4:11 a.m. ET: Arise, grudgingly. Shower, grudgingly. Get dressed, grudgingly. You know what? It's 4:11in the morning, so you can pretty much just add ", grudgingly" to the end of every sentence from here on. It'll save me a little time.

4:25 a.m. ET: Final check before getting in cab. Laptop? Check. Tablet? Check. Phone? Check. Digital voice recorder? Check. Cords to connect the above to one another in various Byzantine ways? Check. Chargers for all of the above? Check. Backup chargers? Check. Backup to the backup chargers? Check. Clothestoiletriesshoesblahblahboringtravelstuffwhatever? Check.

Bag full of pointy, pointy lapel buttons?

... Check?

Well, of course that's the question of the whole morning. Do I check these buttons, or can I carry them on the plane?

A bit of background: I am flying to San Diego Comic-Con for the first time. I have attended several comics conventions, but nothing like the sprawling 130,000-plus-attendee transmedia cross-platform clusterfest of hypermegalosynergistic promotion that awaits me at the San Diego Convention Center.

For the past few months I've been nervously joking with SDCC veterans: "It's pretty much like the Small Press Expo (an annual gathering of indie/art-comix creators and devotees I've attended for years), right? A bunch of beardy, fixie-bike guys and eye-linered Betty Page girls talking soberly about the linework of Tony Millionaire and Kolbein Karlsson, right?"

Wrong. "You'll see," they say, and sink into a reverie, gazing fixedly into the middle distance like a hard-bitten 'Nam vet at an American Legion spaghetti dinner.

My habit, when going to conventions (and when going, you know, anywhere) is to hang back and observe. And were this any other year, and any other convention, I'd probably stick to that plan. But there are a few things that are forcing me out of my shell and into the Great Nerdy Scrum of Humanity, Robotity and Ewokity.

1. I've got a book to shill, and where better to shill it than Shill Central, the Great Geek Shillodrome, The Big Shill, Shillapalooza? My book, Superman: The Unauthorized Biography, came out in April, and sales have been neither underwhelming nor overwhelming. They are, instead, whelming: plainly, resolutely and unremarkably whelming.

This year is Superman's 75th anniversary. I'd applied for an official SDCC panel with Brad Ricca, author of the great new book Super Boys (a beautifully written bio of Superman's creators Siegel and Shuster and their legal and financial struggles with DC Comics), and Mark Waid (legendary comic book writer, editor, and Superman expert non-pareil), but we were rejected. This year, the only Superman celebrations at SDCC are hosted by his corporate overlords, DC Comics. More on this later.

Without a pre-set place and time to hawk the book, my original plan to send a bunch of copies to the hotel doesn't make much sense. Can't imagine I'll find a lot of opportunities for ad-hoc book-hawking, or — given that I won't have any hard copies on hand — many takers. I am great at marketing.

2. I've got a book to research. My next book is about the rise of nerd culture, and Comic-Con is nerd culture in ... it feels funny to use the term "microcosm" when speaking of this particular media event, but there you go.

My plan is to comb the con floor and stalk the panel discussions looking for SDCC long-timers to interview, folks who have seen the show metastasize from what it was in 1970 — an opportunity for 300 fans to paw through some back issue bins in a hotel ballroom and meet Jack Kirby and Ray Bradbury — to what it is today.

3. You, dear reader. I'm hoping that all that aforementioned research will help me bring a wider historical context to my coverage of the con for NPR. Oh, there'll be photos of cosplayers, never fear. Trust me, I'll be the Tom Joad of hot dudes in spandex. ("Wherever there is a bare-chested Hawkman, you will find me... Wherever there is Kraven the Hunter, I'll be there.") And I'll try to provide a sense of the upcoming movies and shows that people on the floor are excited about. But you can get that kind of coverage anywhere.

What I'll look for, in this diary, is the scrappy little comic book convention hidden inside the exultant corporate branding workshop that is Comic-Con. I'll be asking people I meet what books they love that not enough people know about. I hope to come away from the next four days with a list of books and series to get excited about.

4. It's maybe time to get over my damn self already. I've gotten to be Twitter-friendly with several people who'll be at SDCC, and I hope — in stark defiance of my ingrained, muscular, weaponized form of introversion — to meet them in person, and buy them a beer or six.

(Also: The great and good Maggie Thompson, who with her husband Don gave birth to comic-book fandom [and also gave birth to NPR Music's own Stephen Thompson, for their sins] has offered to be a voluble, wise and extremely well-connected Virgil to my squirrelly, hyperventilating Dante. She's also invited me as her +1 to the Eisner Awards on Friday night, where the comics industry honors its own.)

To force myself to engage with others while I'm at SDCC, I've decided to take two hundred or so Pop Culture Happy Hour ... buttons? Lapel pins? You know those metal dealies you stuck to your backpack, back in the day? Those. I'll hand them out – A CON EXCLUSIVE!!! (say, maybe I'm good at marketing after all?) – like Johnny Frickin' Buttonseed.

Which brings me back to the dilemma that faces me now, at ...

4:45 a.m. ET: These buttons are awfully pointy. They're basically 200 elaborately decorated needles. Or if you prefer: 200 tiny, tiny pikes that may not, given their size, be considered "deadly." "Ouchy"? Oh my yes. "Deadly?" No.

So: Can I carry them on the plane? We're really really trying not to check any luggage. The thought of waiting at a baggage carousel for a bunch of lapel pins fills me with a very specific form of sadness which is only the latest aspect of my life that would be impossible to explain to my grandparents.

Last night we asked Twitter what to do. Twitter said, "That would raise eyebrows!" Twitter said "Don't risk it." Twitter said "Mail them to your hotel room!"

Twitter worries a lot.

We called the airline. "Put them in a clear plastic baggie, and have it go through the x-ray machine alone," the airline said. "Should be fine."

But then, the airline also said the plane will be on time. So. I mean. Pound of salt, you know?

Regardless! We're taking them in a carry on bag! Because we're LIVIN' ON THE EDGE!

4:50 a.m ET: Walk the dog, who'll have a longish wait until the dogsitter comes. The dog attends to his morning ablutions. Groggily. Grudgingly. You and me both, pal.

5:15 a.m. ET: In the cab! On the way to Comic-Con! Wooo! Flight's not till 6:30! Plenty of time! Using the boarding pass app on our phones! Wooo!

5:25 a.m. ET: HOLY CRAP I LEFT MY I.D. BACK AT THE APARTMENT TURN THE CAB AROUND WE HAVE TO GO BACK OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD

5:35 a.m. ET: WHY ARE THE TRAFFIC LIGHTS SO LONG AT THIS TIME OF THE MORNING THERE'S ONLY LIKE MILKMEN ON THE ROADS RIGHT? YES THERE ARE SO STILL MILKMEN AROUND SHUT UP.

5:40 a.m. ET: OKAY WE GOT IT. Now please hurry. It's going to be tight.

6:00 a.m. ET: Airport. More anxiety: I watch the bag of Pop Culture Happy Hour lapel pins disappear into the maw of the x-ray machine to bathe in roentgens – and in the baleful gaze of a security professionals.

6:15 a.m. ET: The gods are merciful, and brand-conscious, this day. The PCHH pins make it through.

6:20 a.m. ET: As we board, I inspect my fellow passengers, expecting to catch knowing looks from fellow members of my nerdy tribe. .... Nope. This flight doesn't go straight to San Diego, though. We're going to change planes in Minneapolis. Nobody looks like they're SDCC-bound. Unless they're cosplaying as Jim Gaffigan.

9:15 a.m. ET: Leaving Minneapolis; headed to San Diego. If we stay on time, we should arrive at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time. We will head to the hotel, where F will meet some friends from Miami, and do outdoorsy vacation-type things in San Diego, the chump.

I, on the other hand, will coordinate with Maggie, head to the Convention Center, get my press pass and wait in line for the floor to open for "Preview Night" at 6:00 p.m.

I look around the plane. Okay. HERE's my people: Two young women ahead of us carry Doctor Who Cabbage Patch Dolls (Four and Eleven, for the nerds among you) as they chat animatedly about Batroc the Leaper. Across the aisle, a lean and hungry dude clutches his portfolio worriedly. The six-year-old behind me ticks off the Thursday schedule for Hall H from memory.

The floor won't open for hours. But Comic-Con has begun.

One day after his two years in limbo ended and he was confirmed by the Senate as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Richard Cordray told NPR that though political bickering held up his nomination he now believes he has bipartisan support for the bureau's work.

"It was a bipartisan vote to confirm me as director — 66 to 34 — and I like to think that reflects the fact that people recognize the work we're doing benefits constituents in every state," Cordray told All Things Considered host Audie Cornish.

Before Cordray could get confirmed, of course, there had to be a "showdown" over filibuster rules that had held up his nomination and those of some others — capped by an extraordinary behind-closed-doors meeting of nearly all 100 senators. And a deal had to be struck that saw President Obama withdraw two nominees for posts on the National Labor Relations Board in order to get Republicans to agree to votes on the nominations of Cordray and a few others.

With all that now behind, Cordray said his bureau is going to focus on exposing "deceptive and misleading marketing" schemes, "debt traps" that such consumers in over their heads financially and on educating consumers so that they aren't "just lambs to slaughter" when it comes to dealing with those looking to manage their investments.

"We're here to stay," he said of the bureau, which was created over the opposition of many Republicans.

We'll add the as-aired interview with Cordray to the top of this post later.

The morning's major economic news:

— Inflation. Wholesale prices rose 0.8 percent in June from May, fueled by a 2.9 percent surge in the price of energy products, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says. As drivers can confirm, a 7.2 percent jump in the cost of gasoline was responsible for most of that boost.

Reuters says the overall increase in wholesale prices was "more than expected" and may be a sign that the economy is picking up speed — which in turn could mean that the Federal Reserve will soon feel it can stop trying to give the economy a boost.

— The Fed. Bloomberg News reports that "former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers is indicating to President Barack Obama's Wall Street supporters that he wants to become Federal Reserve chairman, according to people familiar with the matter, as he keeps in touch with senators who would vote on the nomination."

Summers was Treasury secretary in the later years of the Clinton administration, and was a top economic adviser to President Obama during his first term in office.

Bernanke's second term as chairman expires Jan. 31, 2014. It's thought he does not want to stay on and that President Obama will be looking for a new person to lead the central bank.

This is a big year for mayor's races. And it was supposed to be "the year of the woman" for mayoral candidates.

When 2013 began, there was a fair amount of hope that women could make up for their relatively measly representation in local offices nationwide by capturing the mayoralty in three of the nation's five largest cities.

Houston Mayor Annise Parker still looks like a good bet for re-election, but New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has slipped in polls behind former Rep. Anthony Weiner in the race to replace Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Quinn still has a chance, but out in Los Angeles, onetime front-runner Wendy Greuel lost the mayor's race in May.

"Progress has been slow," says Nichole Bauer, who is writing a dissertation on women and politics at Indiana University.

In all the U.S. cities with populations above 30,000, only 17 percent have women serving as mayor. EMILY's List, the political action committee that seeks to elect women who are pro-abortion rights, hopes to change that.

The PAC, which has declared 2013 to be the "year of the woman mayor," has provided support to eight mayoral candidates thus far.

"It's about building the pipeline, getting women to run for local offices because we know they'll run for higher office," says Marcy Stech, the group's press secretary.

So far, though, it's been tough getting anywhere near proportional representation for women in city halls.

Women are already serving as mayor in Baltimore, Fresno, Las Vegas and Fort Worth — but, along with Houston, those are the only ones with populations above 500,000.

"It's encouraging that there are so many women running for mayor around the country, but there's still not equality there," says Mary Ann Lutz, the mayor of Monrovia, Calif.

Betsy Hodges, a member of the City Council, remains in contention in Minneapolis, but beyond that the races where women are favored or have a strong chance are taking place in relatively smaller cities such as Dayton, Ohio; Syracuse, N.Y.; and Tacoma, Wash.

The low number of female mayors nationwide roughly tracks with the percentage of women holding other offices. Women make up 18 percent of the House and 20 percent of the Senate — despite record gains in 2012. They've made up 20 to 24 percent of state legislators for the past two decades.

Lutz says that voters still expect women to concentrate on education and health care — "quote, unquote, women's issues," she says. As a result, many female candidates will consciously adopt a strategy of talking more about matters such as crime and financial matters.

"Sometimes women get painted unfairly with the brush of unfettered compassion over concern with law and order," says Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

Female mayors and their champions such as Stech say that women are less likely to engage in partisan gamesmanship than men and more willing to compromise. That's presented as a plus, but it may not come across as such to voters, says Bauer, who says that voters often picture women as not being as "decisive and aggressive" as they want leaders to be.

Political science research has also shown that successful women in careers such as the law are much less likely than men to consider careers in politics in the first place.

"Men over the years have developed better networking, going back to the expression 'good ol' boys,'" says Lori Moseley, the mayor of Miramar, Fla.

But she says the increasing number of women running for local office provides a way of changing all that.

"We're going to continue to be a force to be reckoned with," she says. "You have to know we're not going to accept anything else."

Quinoa lovers have been put on a bit of a guilt trip with stories suggesting that the increased demand in the U.S. has put the superfood out of reach for those living closest to where it's grown.

How can poor Bolivians in La Paz afford to pay three times more for quinoa than they would pay for rice, critics have asked?

So some quinoa farmers in Bolivia and distributors are talking back. And what they want us to know is that their incomes are rising. As the price of quinoa has tripled since 2006, and farmers plant more of the crop, they're typically making more money.

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Quinoa lovers have been put on a bit of a guilt trip with stories suggesting that the increased demand in the U.S. has put the superfood out of reach for those living closest to where it's grown.

How can poor Bolivians in La Paz afford to pay three times more for quinoa than they would pay for rice, critics have asked?

So some quinoa farmers in Bolivia and distributors are talking back. And what they want us to know is that their incomes are rising. As the price of quinoa has tripled since 2006, and farmers plant more of the crop, they're typically making more money.

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Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., sent a shudder through the Olympic world Wednesday when he told American Olympic network NBC that the United States should consider boycotting the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics if Russia grants the asylum request of "NSA leaker" Edward Snowden.

"I love the Olympics but I hate what the Russian government is doing throughout the world," Graham told NBC. "If they give asylum to a person who I believe has committed treason against the United States, that's taking it to a new level."

An American boycott of the $52 billion Sochi games would diminish the symbolic power of the world's biggest sporting event. Graham apparently sees a boycott as a threat Russian President Vladimir Putin could not ignore. Graham even threw in a comparison to the 1936 Berlin Olympics that Adolf Hitler promoted as a demonstration of Aryan superiority.

"If you could go back in time, would you have allowed Adolf Hitler to host the Olympics in Germany?" Graham asked, referring to the Berlin games as a "propaganda coup."

"I'm not saying that Russia is Nazi Germany," Graham added, "but I am saying that the Russian government is empowering some of the most evil, hateful people in the world."

Some argue that the success of American athletes in Berlin, especially sprinter and long-jumper Jesse Owens, robbed Hitler of the propaganda value he sought. Owens, an African-American, won four gold medals, an Olympic track and field record for Americans unequaled for close to 50 years.

The U.S. Olympic Committee responded to Graham with a history lesson of its own.

"Olympic boycotts do not work," says Patrick Sandusky, the spokesman for the USOC, in reference to the American boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. The boycott was one way President Jimmy Carter protested the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

"Our boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games did not contribute to a successful resolution of the underlying conflict," Sandusky adds. "It did, however, deprive hundreds of American athletes, all of whom had completely dedicated themselves to representing our nation at the Olympic Games, of the opportunity of a lifetime."

The International Olympic Committee had nothing to add, except to note that "at this stage it is no more than a hypothetical," according to IOC spokesman Mark Adams.

Russian officials sharply criticized Graham's boycott suggestion, according to aroundtherings.com (ATR), an independent Olympic news service.

ATR quotes Russian senator Ruslan Gattarov, who says that Graham's statements show that "in the international arena, when the United States can't use its army and navy to strike at a country directly, it starts issuing political statements that belittle itself."

Shamil Tarpischev, a Russian member of the International Olympic Committee, dismissed Graham's remarks as "tabloid chatter and an attempt to attract attention and show off," ATR reports.

Some of Graham's Republican congressional colleagues quickly dismissed any suggestion of an Olympic boycott.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who has criticized and scrutinized Olympic corruption and spending, told The Hill that: "There's many things we can do, but I think the experience of canceling the Olympics the last time around wasn't very good."

And House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, called the boycott talk "dead wrong." At a news conference, he asked: "Why would we want to punish U.S. athletes who've been training for three years to compete in the Olympics over a traitor who can't find a place to call home?"

The 1980 Moscow boycott prompted Soviet retaliation four years later when Los Angeles hosted the 1984 Olympics. Soviet athletes stayed home. Olympic athletes and officials denounced the "politicization" of the games.

American Olympic medalist Allison Baver tells NPR that "the concept of boycotting the Olympics has become slightly outdated." Baver is a short track speed skater and is training hard for Sochi.

She's "not taking this issue lightly," Baver adds, in referring to Snowden's leaks of intelligence information. But, "I believe it's important for political figures to respect the grounds upon which Olympians compete. The Olympics has the power to unite mankind through one commonality — sport."

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

The 33rd annual Ernest Hemingway look-alike competition at Sloppy Joe's Bar in Key West, Fla., kicks off Thursday. The stoically bearded among us will go head to head in the fiercely competitive three-day tournament to win the coveted title of "Papa." Last year, Florida defense attorney Frank Louderback was so eager to compete that he asked a judge to postpone a murder-for-hire trial so he could take part. The judge, however, was unimpressed. In her denial of the motion, she wrote: "Between a murder-for hire trial and an annual look-alike contest, surely Hemingway, a perfervid admirer of 'grace under pressure' would choose the trial," adding, "Or at least, isn't it pretty to think so?"

The good name of Jonathan Franzen was besmirched Tuesday when one Jesse Montgomery of the blog Full Stop claimed she saw the author pretending to be a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz in an attempt to rent movies from the library: "It was then that the 2001 National Book Award winner began a fraudulent attempt to rent films from the library's audio visual department and perhaps defraud the state of California." Franzen maintains his innocence. In response to an inquiry from NPR, he wrote, somewhat grumpily, "The dialogue the author reproduces is totally inaccurate. I never represented that I was a student. And I do have a valid UCSC library card, because I'm a fellow of Cowell College. But it's true that I was there in the media center last week."

NW author Zadie Smith's next book will be a "science-fiction romp" (a romp!). The London Standard says, "As for her own next move, she says it will be a total departure: a science-fiction romp. She has been reading a lot of Ursula K Le Guin. 'It's a concept novel. It's the only novel I've ever written that has a plot, which is thrilling. I don't know if I can do it. Those books are incredibly hard to write.' "

Open City author Teju Cole recalls for Granta the experience of being robbed in Lagos, Nigeria: "What I feel each time I enter the country is not a panic, exactly; it is rather a sense of fragility, of being more susceptible to accidents and incidents, as though some invisible veil of protection had been withdrawn, and fate, with all its hoarded hostility, could strike at any time."

In The Guardian, author Michael Cunningham compares Virginia Woolf and James Joyce: "To the Lighthouse doesn't slay and pillage in the same way, yet it is every bit as revolutionary as Ulysses, and for some of the same reasons. Like Joyce, Woolf knew the entire world could be seen by looking not only at the big picture, but also the small one, in more or less the way a physicist who studies subatomic particles is witness to miracles every bit as astonishing as those observed by an astronomer."

Sixties pop artist Tom Wesselmann liked women, and saluted them on his canvases — or, sometimes, just parts of them: perfect glossy red mouths with lips parted to reveal pink tongues; nipples, even on the oranges he paints. These are just a few of the images that might make you blush in a Wesselmann retrospective now on view at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond.

"I don't think you could ask for a more literal interpretation of the objectification of parts of the female body," says curator Sarah Eckhardt.

Before these large works focusing only on closely observed individual body parts, Wesselmann painted a series of full nudes, sprawling indiscreetly against patriotic backgrounds with red, white and blue stripes, and some stars.

The Great American Nude series was Wesselmann's best-known work. Painted in the 1960s, the large canvases featured the colors of Old Glory, sprawly nudes, and on the walls behind them, pasted clippings from magazines: a portrait of George Washington, a photograph of JFK, a reproduction of Van Gogh's Sunflowers, the Mona Lisa. What's going on here?

Curator Sylvia Yount says Wesselmann was paying tribute to an artistic tradition: "[He was] putting himself into that larger pantheon of artists who are dealing with the mainstay of art history: the female nude."

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In early 2002, a pair of battered old trucks drove through deep snow into a tiny Alaska ghost town carrying a large family that looked to be from another century.

The patriarch, with his long, unruly beard, introduced himself to one of the town's few residents as Papa Pilgrim (though his real name was Robert Hale). Long before, he explained, a shaft of celestial light had brought him a big-bang religious awakening and now God had whispered to him, telling him to move with his wife and family to Alaska. All 15 Pilgrim children had been delivered and schooled at home. They had names like Hosanna, Jerusalem, Psalms and Job; they didn't use calendar months; they addressed their father as "Lord"; and they'd never seen a TV, or experienced the temptations of the world.

Most of us are familiar with that hot, musky-smelling, cloudy drink served in teacups at sushi bars and sometimes called, erroneously, "rice wine." In other words, most of us have had bad sake.

But finally, Americans are learning to love the good stuff.

Imports of high-end sake from Japan are escalating, and countless sake-focused bars and restaurants in cities across the country are carrying hundreds of bottles each. Savvy gourmands are pairing sake with cheese and chocolate. Mixologists are making sake cocktails. Portland, Ore., has hosted a sake festival three summers in a row.

Perhaps best of all, Americans are now making their own sake. SakeOne, in Portland, has been doing so since the 1990s and now sells almost 1 million bottles per year. Much more recently, microbreweries have begun appearing in garages, warehouses and restaurant kitchens across America, turning white pearls of rice into Japan's most famous table beverage.

Several such operations are already in business, while a half-dozen others are gearing up to go. In Asheville, N.C., two microbreweries may be just weeks away from launching: Blue Kudzu and Ben's American Sake.

The latter will be based out of an izakaya-ramen restaurant called Ben's Tune-Up. Co-owner and brewer Jonathan Robinson says that, in a local market saturated with craft beers, sake helps his place stand out.

"I wouldn't want to be opening a brewery now," Robinson tells The Salt. "Everyone is making beer now, and here a lot of people have been brewing for 20 years. But with sake, we're breaking new ground."

Ben's American Sake will be brewed onsite and served on tap. The bar list will include a sake infused with honey and kumquats, as well as a carbonated, bubbly sake. Robinson also has plans to borrow a trick from the specialty beer world to make a decidedly nontraditional brew: bourbon barrel-aged sake.

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Former President George H.W. Bush, who spent nearly two months in a Houston hospital during late 2012 and early 2013 for treatment of a variety of life-threatening illnesses, was hailed by President Obama at the White House on Monday.

"We are surely a kinder and gentler nation because of you," Obama told the nation's 41st president at a ceremony where the 5,000th Points Of Light Award was given to Floyd Hammer and Kathy Hamilton. As The Associated Press writes, the retired couple and farm owners from Union, Iowa, "created Outreach, a nonprofit organization that delivers free meals to children suffering from hunger in more than 15 countries, including the United States."

Bush, now 89, spoke only briefly from his wheelchair — thanking the president for his "wonderful hospitality."

The Points of Light awards were established by then-President Bush in 1990. That same year, the Points of Light Foundation was "created as an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization to encourage and empower the spirit of service."

On most recent days, nothing that wasn't bitterly partisan has seemed possible in the nation's capital.

On Tuesday, the city got its exception.

Republican Tea Party Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas stood with liberal Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, endorsing her bill that would dramatically change how military sexual assault cases are reported and prosecuted.

And the Senate's best frenemies, Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stepped back from the "nuclear option" brink and struck a temporary deal on filibusters of presidential appointees.

My colleague, Frank James, looks at the filibuster deal here:

But while partisans were relieved that the Senate had, at least for the moment, managed to provide that mythic "cooling saucer of democracy," the response to Cruz and Paul's embrace of Gillibrand's bill was decidedly divided.

And the political motives of the two ascending, new-breed Republican senators, both 2016 presidential prospects who are eager to broaden their bases, were under fire from party solons.

Bill Kristol at the conservative National Review excoriated the Republican senators for joining the "anti-military caucus" and "grandstanding" for the media.

"Sens. Paul and Cruz are signing on to Sen. Gillibrand's proposal to undermine the military's chain of command on behalf of the pseudo-crisis of military sexual assault," Kristol fumed online. "The Obama administration thinks Gillibrand's proposal is a bad idea. It is a bad idea."

Gillibrand's bill, written in the wake of reports of a sexual assault and misconduct epidemic in the military, failed in May to move out of the Senate Armed Services Committee on which she serves. The legislation would remove the investigation and prosecution of sexual assault cases from the purview of the military brass, and create a new justice system to handle the cases.

It's a proposal that has been opposed by Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the White House and military leaders.

Her proposal would need 51 votes to move to the Senate floor. Though Tuesday's developments gave the effort some momentum, it still qualifies as a steep climb. Gillibrand had rounded up 33 Senate co-sponsors, including four Republicans, before the two GOP rising stars formally signed on Tuesday.

Here's what Cruz said at the press conference with Gillibrand:

"Sexual assault is a grave violation of the duty that we owe our servicemen and servicewoman. When our sons and daughters sign up to defend our nation... they don't sign up to be potentially subject to sexual assault by their colleagues."

"All of us, Republicans and Democrats, and I think the commanders in the military," Cruz said, "want to solve the problem."

Paul added: "Some say we have no bipartisan cooperation. I disagree. This is a great example of how people from both sides come together and are willing to work on a problem."

After the press conference came this rarity: an email from the liberal Agenda Project urging progressives to give "credit where credit is due ... to Rand Paul and his Tea Party colleague Ted Cruz for doing the right thing about rape in the military."

But Kristol likened their apostasy to efforts earlier this year by both men to clarify the military's domestic drone strike policy. Paul famously filibustered for 13 hours the nomination of John Brennan to CIA director over drone strike policy, dramatically raising his national profile.

At the conservative Heritage Foundation, military expert James Carafano said that the move by Cruz and Paul had him scratching his head.

"This is a really difficult issue, and at the emotional level, these [sexual assault] stories are really gripping and very troubling," said Carafano, an expert in national security and foreign policy and 25-year Army veteran. "The impulse is to do something, but the UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice] is a very, very technical matter."

Carafano argues that the commission of the sexual assault crimes, not their prosecution, is the military's defining problem. He and others are convinced that the military may not have but is capable of improving its investigation and prosecution system within the existing structure.

Heritage Foundation scholars weighed in on proposed changes to the military justice system earlier this year here.

"They're going after the wrong problem," Carafano said, likening the position taken by Cruz and Paul, in support of Gillibrand's bill, as tantamount to blaming firefighters for the people starting the fires.

"I never talked to them about this issue; they never called me," Carafano said. "If you did your homework on this issue, you wouldn't be doing this."

"Sometime," he said, "senators pick a bumper sticker answer."

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Dennis Laich, an outspoken critic of the current military system of investigating and trying sexual assault cases, says that Cruz and Paul have made a difference.

"This indicates that the issue is not dead, and that if those of us who support the bill voice our strong support, others may join Cruz and Paul," he said.

Laich pointed to what many have characterized as a sea change in Congress' relationship with the military, as illustrated by Gillibrand and other female senators' aggressive questioning of top brass at recent hearings and by a handful of Republican senators who have bucked party orthodoxy on sexual assault remedies, drones and military spending.

"It may indicate that after the 'buzz' of all the four-stars sitting in front of Congress and offering their sanctimonious pronouncements of a commitment to fix the problem, these two senators may have looked at the performance of the chain of command over the past 30 years and realized that they have forfeited their right to retain UCMJ authority over these crimes," Laich said.

"What makes any rational person think they are right on this issue?" he said.

Whatever the motives of Tuesday's move by Cruz and Paul, it undoubtedly serves as a reminder that an emerging class of new senators from both parties are changing the terrain in the nation's capital in ways that just a handful of years ago would have seemed unimaginable.

Sickle cell anemia may not be as well-known as say malaria, tuberculosis or AIDS. But every year, hundreds of thousands of babies around the world are born with this inherited blood disorder. And the numbers are expected to climb.

The number of sickle cell anemia cases is expected to increase about 30 percent globally by 2050, scientists said Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa, where the disease is most common, will be the hardest hit.

A child gets sickle cell anemia by inheriting two copies of a defective gene, one from each parent. The mutations cause red blood cells to collapse and form a crescent moon-like shape. These so-called sickle cells clump together and can't carry oxygen throughout the body.

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We've got two words for you: Goth Barbie.

Not only does such a thing exist, but after Barbie, it's the best-selling doll in the world. The dolls of Monster High are bone-thin beauties all related to famous monsters. They come with books and Web episodes that follow their stories in that place where everyone feels like a freak — in high school.

Monster High is made by the world's biggest toy company, which also manufactures Barbie. But no one at Mattel expected Monster High to become one of the biggest retail sensations of the past several years. Last spring at Toy Fair, New York's annual showcase of top toys, Monster High wannabes were everywhere — even zombie princesses that Walt Disney could have never imagined, including zombie Snow White and a zombie Little Mermaid.

In the hopping Toy Fair compound run by Mattel, Barbie's pink displays seemed almost dowdy and passe next to Monster High's glamorous dolls, which look like the underfed love children of Tim Burton and Lady Gaga. Mattel's Dana De Celis is showing off a pretty brunette doll with flowing hair and wolfish ears: "She's our werewolf so she's gonna howl for us," De Celis says as the doll issues an electronic wolf howl. "She tosses her head back, she arches her back, she closes her eyes and she is literally howling at the moon."

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Monkey See

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Liz Cheney, the elder of former Vice President Dick Cheney's two daughters, a former State Department official and a conservative commentator who's often on Fox, is going to challenge Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi in next year's Republican primary.

According to The Associated Press, Cheney, 46, confirmed what had been wide speculation about her plans on Tuesday — not long after the 69-year-old Enzi said that he will seek a fourth term.

Her family's roots are in Wyoming. Dick Cheney was the state's congressman from 1979-89.

According to The Hill, Cheney could give Enzi, "a tough race. She is well-known to national Republican donors, especially those focused on international issues."

The New York Times has noted that a Cheney run:

"Threatens to start a civil war within the state's Republican establishment, despite the reverence many hold for her family. Mr. Enzi, 69, says he is not ready to retire, and many Republicans say he has done nothing to deserve being turned out. It would bring about 'the destruction of the Republican Party of Wyoming if she decides to run and he runs, too,' Alan K. Simpson, a former Republican senator from the state, said in an interview. ... 'It's a disaster — a divisive, ugly situation — and all it does is open the door for the Democrats for 20 years.' "

Most of us are familiar with that hot, musky-smelling, cloudy drink served in teacups at sushi bars and sometimes called, erroneously, "rice wine." In other words, most of us have had bad sake.

But finally, Americans are learning to love the good stuff.

Imports of high-end sake from Japan are escalating, and countless sake-focused bars and restaurants in cities across the country are carrying hundreds of bottles each. Savvy gourmands are pairing sake with cheese and chocolate. Mixologists are making sake cocktails. Portland, Ore., has hosted a sake festival three summers in a row.

Perhaps best of all, Americans are now making their own sake. SakeOne, in Portland, Ore., has been doing so since the 1990s and now sells almost a million bottles per year. Much more recently, microbreweries have begun appearing in garages, warehouses and restaurant kitchens across America, turning white pearls of rice into Japan's most famous table beverage.

Several such operations are already in business, while a half-dozen others are gearing up to go. In Asheville, N.C., two microbreweries may be just weeks away from launching: Blue Kudzu and Ben's American Sake.

The latter will be based out of an izakaya-ramen restaurant called Ben's Tune-Up. Co-owner and brewer Jonathan Robinson says that, in a local market saturated with craft beers, sake helps his place stand out.

"I wouldn't want to be opening a brewery now," Robinson tells The Salt. "Everyone is making beer now, and here a lot of people have been brewing for twenty years. But with sake, we're breaking new ground."

Ben's American Sake will be brewed onsite and served on tap. The bar list will include a sake infused with honey and kumquats as well as a carbonated, bubbly sake. Robinson also has plans to borrow a trick from the specialty beer world to make a decidedly nontraditional brew: bourbon barrel-aged sake.

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Then, he sent the book to two linguistic analysts who compared it to Rowling's other work. "Both said that this book, The Cuckoo's Calling, had similarities in the style of writing, the words that were used, punctuation, to J.K. Rowling's book."

Initially, Brooks says, he played a "cat and mouse game" with the publisher. "I ... went to them and said I'd been reading this Cuckoo's Calling, and I didn't think it was actually written by this guy Robert Galbraith. I said, 'Who is he? Can I interview him?' And they came back and said, 'Sorry, no.' So I put a very, very direct question: Is it Rowling?"

So, is it all a public relations stunt? "Of course I'm aware of it," Brooks says. "That original tweet, perhaps, might have been from Rowling herself — who knows — who wanted to be outed. Who knows?"

Read an excerpt of The Cuckoo's Calling

Tucked between Russia and Turkey, the Republic of Georgia is renowned for great food: cheese dishes, pickles, breads and stews. This is a cuisine that you should not miss.

And on summer evenings in the capital, Tbilisi, the air is fragrant with the smells of one of Georgian cookery's highlights: grilled meat, or shashlik.

You can find good shashlik at restaurants with white tablecloths, but the very best in all Tbilisi is said to be at a roadside stop called Mtsvadi Isalamze. It's an unassuming place with rows of wooden picnic tables in an open yard.

The grill is a brick hearth where Giorgi Kavelashvili follows the traditions of his native Kakheti, the easternmost province of Georgia and the nation's wine country. Kavelashvili is 19, but he grills with absolute confidence, because, he says, "In Kakheti, everyone knows how to make shashlik. So I studied it from my childhood."

One of the secrets, he says, is the wood.

Here, shashlik is grilled on burning grapevines. Kavelashvili demonstrates by hefting a big bundle of grapevines onto the hearth and setting it alight. The vines burn quickly, leaving a heap of finger-sized coals that he rakes into an even bed of fragrant heat.

"Georgians, and especially Kakhetians, know from very, very ancient old times that only [this] type of wood is much more better to make shashlik," explains Nani Chanishvili, my guide and translator. She's a linguist, a professor of the Georgian language and a connoisseur of Georgian food.

What the Georgians of ancient times discovered, she explains, is that the aromatic smoke and high heat from the vines seal in the juices of the meat.

Perhaps the best test of the griller's skill is how well he cooks kebabs made from finely minced meat, usually lamb, that's mixed with spices and squeezed by hand onto the skewer.

Good timing is everything, because Kakhetian kebabs are cooked very close to the coals, and it's easy to overdo them.

Giorgi's kebabs pass the test perfectly: They are juicy and full of flavor from regional herbs, spices and sweet-smelling smoke. They come served with fresh, chewy Kakhetian bread and, of course, Georgian white wine.

Why white? As Chanishvili explains, Georgians like to drink a lot of wine when they speak — and "that means, only white wine, only white," she says, "because it is not possible to drink, for example, four, five, six, seven liters of red wine — then you will be dead. That's not right. But white [wine], yes, you can."

Chanishvili doesn't drink much herself, but she insists that her father could drink as many as 14 liters of white wine during a single feast. Then again, a real Georgian feast is an event that can go on for 12 hours.

According to Georgian tradition, that time should be spent enjoying food, making long and witty toasts, reciting verse and singing.

But be warned: Even 12 hours wouldn't be enough time to sample all of Georgia's delicacies, especially the best of the country's shashlik.

Unfortunately," says Chanishvili, "it's not possible to eat everything."

After what had been a week of calm, violence returned to the streets of Cairo late Monday into early Tuesday.

NPR's Leila Fadel reports that Egypt's health ministry said seven people were killed and more than 200 were injured as supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi clashed with police. From Cairo, Leila filed this report for our Newscast unit:

"Police fired teargas and birdshot at protesters in Cairo's Ramses Square where supporters of the president gathered to demand Morsi's reinstatement. The Muslim Brotherhood-led marches went throughout the city in what protesters called a peaceful escalation. They put up roadblocks and used walls of protesters to cut off streets and bridges.

"The bloody event came as Egypt's military-installed leaders are rushing to put together a cabinet and move forward despite the discontent. There are so far no Islamists in the proposed cabinet which is expected to be formed this week. The Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters are refusing to participate calling this military appointed president and his government illegal."

The garment factory collapse in Bangladesh, which killed more than 1,000 people in April, has spurred the Parliament into action.

The legislature approved a law Monday that makes it easier for workers to unionize. The vote comes amid scrutiny of working conditions in the country after the building collapse outside Dhaka, the capital.

The building, Rana Plaza, housed garment factories that churned out products for some of the world's top brands.

The collapse, the worst disaster in the history of the garment industry, highlighted the global nature of the business — goods made in low-cost, low-wage countries such as Bangladesh being sold in popular Western chains like Zara, H&M and Gap.

Reuters has more on the new law:

"The legislation puts in place provisions including a central fund to improve living standards of workers, a requirement for 5 percent of annual profits to be deposited in employee welfare funds and an assurance that union members will not be transferred to another factory of the same owner after labor unrest."

Calm largely prevailed after a jury acquitted George Zimmerman Saturday night in the killing of Trayvon Martin. Law enforcement and community leaders had prepared for potential unrest, and a general riot panic had been set in place for months. Slate's Dave Weigel sums up the fears:

" 'The public mind has been so poisoned,' wrote Pat Buchanan last year, 'that an acquittal of George Zimmerman could ignite a reaction similar to that, 20 years ago, when the Simi Valley jury acquitted the LAPD cops in the Rodney King beating case.' In fringe media, like the Alex Jones network of sites, it was taken for granted that a Zimmerman acquittal would inspire a race war. The only dispute was about the scale."

Can a rhythm and blues song change the world? That's the question at the heart of veteran author Mark Kurlansky's new book, Ready for a Brand New Beat, a chronicle of the spectacular success of Motown hit "Dancing in the Street."

Released in the summer of 1964, "Dancing in the Street," by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, emerged at an explosive time in American history. John F. Kennedy had been killed the year before. The U.S. was on the brink of major combat in Vietnam. Racial tensions continued burning hot in the Deep South, and "race riots" were causing chaos in urban areas from coast to coast. Meanwhile, in Detroit, Berry Gordy's Motown record label had made the conscious decision to remain apolitical with its music, which consisted mostly of bouncy, flouncy love songs by an all-black stable of artists. But then came "Dancing in the Street."

Much of the first half of Ready for a Brand New Beat can sometimes read like filler, with Kurlansky giving pages and pages of details on the history of jazz, Detroit, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, the automotive industry — even the Warren Report. Thankfully, in the second half is when the narrative starts to sing. That's when the reader is introduced to the large and fascinating controversy one tiny 2 1/2 minute song can create.

According to Martha Reeves and the Motown staffers who wrote "Dancing in the Street," the song was little more than a party anthem, a nice ditty about celebrating wherever one feels. To others, however, "Dancing in the Street" was understood to be a protest song about airing one's grievances in the middle of America's large and unequal metropolises: "Philadelphia P-A / Baltimore and D.C now / Can't forget the Motor City ..."

Civil rights activists began playing "Dancing in the Street" at rallies before they spoke to excite their audiences. In 1965, following another summer of urban racial clashes, an article in the black activist magazine Liberator read, "We are coming up! And it's reflected in the riot-song that symbolized Harlem, Philly, Brooklyn." The song to which Liberator was referring, of course, was "Dancing in the Street." It wasn't long before reporters were asking Martha Reeves if her tune was "a call to arms," a query that would bring Reeves to tears. Reeves was deeply saddened by the idea that her music was ever associated with violence, righteous or not.

Ultimately, Ready for a Brand New Beat offers no definitive answer about whether "Dancing in the Street" was meant to inspire urban insurrection. But it does offer interesting historical tidbits and a good look at the difficulties associated with cultural interpretation. I'm also glad it makes sure to touch on the fact that Motown founder Berry Gordy ended up coldly abandoning many of the original Motown greats when his company became big enough to move to Los Angeles. Even Martha Reeves got left behind, her contract cut without a word after coming back from having a baby. "Dancing in the Street" may have bolstered a great many protests, but at Motown it was more of the same.

Cord Jefferson's work has appeared in Filter, The A.V. Club, MTV, The Root and National Geographic.

Calm largely prevailed after a jury acquitted George Zimmerman Saturday night in the killing of Trayvon Martin. Law enforcement and community leaders had prepared for potential unrest, and a general riot panic had been set in place for months. Slate's Dave Weigel sums up the fears:

" 'The public mind has been so poisoned,' wrote Pat Buchanan last year, 'that an acquittal of George Zimmerman could ignite a reaction similar to that, 20 years ago, when the Simi Valley jury acquitted the LAPD cops in the Rodney King beating case.' In fringe media, like the Alex Jones network of sites, it was taken for granted that a Zimmerman acquittal would inspire a race war. The only dispute was about the scale."

Tucked between Russia and Turkey, the Republic of Georgia is renowned for great food: cheese dishes, pickles, breads and stews. This is a cuisine that you should not miss.

And on summer evenings in the capital, Tbilisi, the air is fragrant with the smells of one of Georgian cookery's highlights: grilled meat, or shashlik.

You can find good shashlik at restaurants with white tablecloths, but the very best in all Tbilisi is said to be at a roadside stop called Mtsvadi Isalamze. It's an unassuming place with rows of wooden picnic tables in an open yard.

The grill is a brick hearth where Giorgi Kavelashvili follows the traditions of his native Kakheti, the easternmost province of Georgia and the nation's wine country. Kavelashvili is 19, but he grills with absolute confidence, because, he says, "In Kakheti, everyone knows how to make shashlik. So I studied it from my childhood."

One of the secrets, he says, is the wood.

Here, shashlik is grilled on burning grapevines. Kavelashvili demonstrates by hefting a big bundle of grapevines onto the hearth and setting it alight. The vines burn quickly, leaving a heap of finger-sized coals that he rakes into an even bed of fragrant heat.

"Georgians, and especially Kakhetians, know from very, very ancient old times that only [this] type of wood is much more better to make shashlik," explains Nani Chanishvili, my guide and translator. She's a linguist, a professor of the Georgian language and a connoisseur of Georgian food.

What the Georgians of ancient times discovered, she explains, is that the aromatic smoke and high heat from the vines seal in the juices of the meat.

Perhaps the best test of the griller's skill is how well he cooks kebabs made from finely minced meat, usually lamb, that's mixed with spices and squeezed by hand onto the skewer.

Good timing is everything, because Kakhetian kebabs are cooked very close to the coals, and it's easy to overdo them.

Giorgi's kebabs pass the test perfectly: They are juicy and full of flavor from regional herbs, spices and sweet-smelling smoke. They come served with fresh, chewy Kakhetian bread and, of course, Georgian white wine.

Why white? As Chanishvili explains, Georgians like to drink a lot of wine when they speak — and "that means, only white wine, only white," she says, "because it is not possible to drink, for example, four, five, six, seven liters of red wine — then you will be dead. That's not right. But white [wine], yes, you can."

Chanishvili doesn't drink much herself, but she insists that her father could drink as many as 14 liters of white wine during a single feast. Then again, a real Georgian feast is an event that can go on for 12 hours.

According to Georgian tradition, that time should be spent enjoying food, making long and witty toasts, reciting verse and singing.

But be warned: Even 12 hours wouldn't be enough time to sample all of Georgia's delicacies, especially the best of the country's shashlik.

Unfortunately," says Chanishvili, "it's not possible to eat everything."

The book then leaps across decades and states to Burbank, Calif., where we first meet young Clifford, who lives with his unflaggingly upbeat mother and stroke-afflicted father, "Like flies trapped in amber, the three of them stuck / Like so many others dealt cards of rough luck." In a particularly lovely passage, Cliff's mother correctly susses her artistic son's sexuality when she informs him that there will be both male and female models in his drawing classes:

Remembrances

David Rakoff: 'There Is No Answer As To Why Me'

We have news this Monday that automaker Nissan is reviving the Datsun name for the Indian market — where the larger auto sector is struggling.

The new Datsun Go — priced at below $6,700 — doesn't look like the iconic 240z, which for many years was the top-selling sports car in the U.S. Here's an old ad for it:

A beer cocktail quaffed around the world for centuries is quickly becoming America's "it" drink of the summer: shandy.

Traditionally, a shandy consisted of beer mixed with equal parts lemonade or ginger beer or citrus soda. But these days, bartenders are pushing the boundaries with inventive mixes, like fresh fruit purees and syrups, from rhubarb to apple and maple.

And major beer manufacturers have also jumped on the shandywagon, rolling out their own bottled versions from brewers like SAB Miller subsidiary Leinenkugel, Traveler Beer and Sam Adams. Worldwide, the number of shandy product launches more than tripled between 2009 and 2012, according to research firm Datamonitor. Manufacturers are also mixing up traditional shandy flavors, such as Leinenkugel with it's new Orange Shandy, infused with cardamom and white pepper.

So what's driving this growth?

In the U.S., "you've got the whole cocktail and mixology culture coming into play now," says Datamonitor's Tom Vierhile.

Shandies, he notes, have always been more popular in summertime, when beer drinkers are looking for a lighter brew to help chase off the heat. And younger drinkers, he adds, tend to favor a sweeter alcoholic beverage.

But globally, Vierhile says there's another fundamental reason why shandy is growing in popularity: Because shandy is beer mixed with another, usually non-alcoholic drink, it's often half as alcoholic as the same volume of a regular beer.

And less is better, he says, in a world where governments are tightening laws around drinking and driving, reducing the legal limits for how high drivers' blood alcohol content can be before they're breaking the law.

"Depending on the local laws, you may be able to drink a shandy and still be within the legal limit for driving," he notes. "If you're in a place like Germany, with a limit of .05 percent [blood alcohol concentration], which is lower than the U.S.'s at .08 [percent], you could still drink a shandy, legally," and then get behind the wheel.

That's good news for U.S. beer drinkers, considering that the National Transportation Safety Board recently backed a proposal to lower the legal blood-alcohol threshold in the U.S. to match Germany's .05 percent.

Funny enough, its lower alcoholic punch is also why shandy was eagerly embraced by 19th-century England, says beer historian Ron Pattinson.

"People outdoors in the summertime," he says, "wanted a refreshing drink with less alcohol than full-strength beer."

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At the end of another demoralizing and unproductive Washington week, it struck us that the messaging of failure is a very delicate business — for members of both flailing parties.

New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer's straight-faced characterization of the House GOP's rejection of his immigration bill as "encouraging" best illustrated the problem.

For nothing was hopeful and nobody was a winner in the nation's capital this week.

Certainly not Schumer, who emerged from a White House meeting on immigration Thursday to utter this mind-boggling assessment: "If I had to choose a word for yesterday's House meeting, it would be 'encouraging.' "

It was also a bad week for Republicans, who may be reflecting the reality of their base by pushing back on an immigration overhaul that includes a path to citizenship, but who are increasingly seen by the nation's voters as responsible for Washington gridlock.

Cut 'Extraneous' Food Aid

Republicans this week also managed to write out of the farm bill the food stamp nutrition program used by 15 percent of Americans.

The move, certain to be squelched by the Senate, is largely symbolic. GOP messaging seemed a bit awkward: "What we have carefully done is exclude some extraneous pieces," said Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, about taking the food program out of the farm bill.

Voters may be forgiven, however, for finding their "who-to-blame" calculation more complicated this week, especially after a filibuster rules snit-fest Thursday morning on the Senate floor involving Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

A taste:

Reid: "Senator McConnell broke his word. The Republican leader has failed to live up to his commitments. He's failed to do what he said he would do — move nominations by regular order except in extraordinary circumstances. I refuse to unilaterally surrender my right to respond to this breach of faith."

McConnell: "No majority leader wants written on his tombstone that he presided over the end of the Senate. Well, if this majority leader caves to the fringes and lets this happen, I'm afraid that's exactly what they'll write."

Reid: "If anyone thinks since the first of the year that the norms and traditions of the Senate have been followed by the Republican leader, they're living in Gaga Land."

On the Crucifixion

"There's only one reason to be crucified under the Roman Empire and that is for treason or sedition. Crucifixion, we have to understand, was not actually a form of capital punishment for Rome. In fact, it was often the case that the criminal would be killed first and then crucified. Crucifixion was, in reality, a deterrent; it was an obvious symbol to subject peoples of what happens when you defy the will of Rome. Which is why crucifixions always had to happen in public places: at crossroads, on hills, at the entrance of cities. So for that reason, crucifixion was a punishment reserved ... solely for the most extreme crimes, crimes against the state. ...

"And so, that's why if we really want to know who Jesus was and what he meant, we should start not at the beginning of the story — with him in a manger — but at the end of the story, with him on a cross. Because if Jesus was in fact crucified by Rome, he was crucified for sedition. He was crucified because he challenged the Roman occupation."

On the Roman destruction of Jerusalem

"They murdered tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Jews in the city. The survivors were scattered to the winds. [The Romans] renamed Jerusalem, in a sense. They wanted to create the impression that there were never any Jews to begin with in the city. This was a moment of deep psychic trauma for the Jews. What made it worse, however, is that as a result of the revolt, Judaism in the Roman Empire became a pariah. It became almost an illegal religion. Jews were not seen as a legitimate cult among the many, many other cults that existed within the Roman Empire.

More With Reza Aslan

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'Zealot' Tells The Story Of Jesus The Man, Not The Messiah

When an oil-laden train derailed last weekend, it turned into an inferno that killed dozens in Lac-Megantic, a small town in Quebec.

This week, the Canadian tragedy is morphing into something very different. It is becoming Exhibit A in the political case for building pipelines — as well as for opposing them.

LISTEN: NPR's Marilyn Geewax Discusses The Pipeline Debate On 'Hear & Now'

On Jesus as a political figure

"[In one story,] Jesus walks into the temple, and he begins to cleanse it. He turns over the tables of the money-changers, who are exchanging the foul foreign currency of the Roman Empire with the Hebrew shekel, which was the only currency that the temple would accept. And then, of course, in a loud, booming voice, he says, 'It is written that my house shall be a house of prayer for all nations, and you have made it a den of thieves.'

"Now, as all historians recognize, this was the action that precipitated his arrest, his torture and his execution by the state. And there's a very simple reason for that: The temple was not just the center of the Jewish cult; it was, in many ways, the representation of the power and the presence of the Roman Empire."

On using The Bible as a source

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'Did Jesus Exist?' A Historian Makes His Case

The Cory Monteith that most Americans knew wasn't Cory Monteith at all. He was Finn Hudson, the high school football star turned Glee club member, whose singing talents were discovered in the shower during the musical comedy's pilot episode on Fox TV.

But outside of a love for drumming, Monteith said, the character on the hit show wasn't him.

"You see this young all-American quarterback-looking dude on the show, and you just immediately make assumptions," Monteith told Canadian talk show host George Stroumboulopoulos on his CBC show, Tonight. "And I think people really started identifying me with those assumptions."

And that wasn't the reality. Monteith wasn't a high school football star. He was a high school dropout.

Monteith, 31, was found dead early Saturday in his hotel room in Vancouver, British Columbia. An autopsy reportedly is scheduled for Monday, but authorities have said that the Canadian's death doesn't appear to involve foul play.

Monteith got into drugs at age 13. He dropped out of school at 16 and found work as a Wal-Mart greeter and a taxi driver. At 19, he checked into rehab.

"I really had no idea what I was going to do. ... I was really lost. I was really lost for a lot of years," he said in the 2011 interview with Stroumboulopoulos. "For me it wasn't so much about the substances per se, it was more about not fitting in. ... I hadn't found myself at all."

But Monteith said acting changed that. He started landing small parts in TV shows like Stargate and Smallville.

And then came Glee.

"I think they were looking for the triple threat: singer, dancer, Broadway-type person for this part. And that's not really me," he said during the CBC interview. "I had never sang or danced or anything before this. And so I sent them a tape of myself acting, doing a scene. And instead of singing and dancing for the part I sent a tape of myself playing the drums on Tupperware."

Scientists and lawyers are scheduled to debate the safety of certain "BPA-free" plastics this week in a U.S. District Court in Austin, Texas.

At issue is whether a line of plastic resins marketed by Eastman Chemical contains chemicals that can act like the hormone estrogen, and perhaps cause health problems.

The court battle has attracted attention because the Eastman resins, sold under the name "Tritan," have been marketed as an alternative to plastics that contain an additive called BPA. BPA has been shown to act a bit like estrogen, though it's not clear whether people are affected by the small amounts that come from plastic water bottles or food containers.

Eastman has sued two small companies based in Austin, Texas, that published a study showing that a wide range of plastic products exhibit what's known as estrogenic activity. Some of the products were made from Eastman's Tritan.

Eastman's suit says PlastiPure and CertiChem have made false or misleading statements about Tritan in marketing their own services. CertiChem tests plastic products for estrogenic activity. PlastiPure, a sister company, helps manufacturers make plastic products with no estrogenic activity.

Both companies were founded by George Bittner, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and an author of the study that found estrogenic activity in most plastics. The study included tests of plastic products that had been subjected to heat, wear and radiation intended to mimic exposure to sunlight.

"We certainly thought the results were not going to be greeted with favor by at least some plastic manufacturers," Bittner says. But, he says, "by bringing suit, Eastman Chemical has effectively put its Tritan product on trial."

Eastman Chemical wouldn't comment for this story. But in an interview last year, Lucian Boldea, a vice president of the company, said Bittner's study used a screening test for estrogenic activity that is known to produce false positives.

"To misrepresent a screening test as conclusive evidence is what we have the issue with," he said.

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Plastic's New Frontier: No Scary Chemicals