Most Recent Posts

Pirate Joe's, the grocery store that made waves — and attracted a lawsuit — for selling Trader Joe's items in Canada, has won a battle in its legal fight with the supermarket chain. A U.S. district court judge has granted the Vancouver store's motion to dismiss a trademark infringement lawsuit.

After the lawsuit was filed, Pirate Joe's took on the name _Irate Joe's. The store's owner, Mike Hallatt, says he began his enterprise on a small scale last year, driving groceries across the border from Washington state to Vancouver. Trader Joe's does not operate any stores in Canada.

In Seattle, U.S. District Judge Marsha J. Pechman ruled that Pirate Joe's was harming neither U.S. commerce nor Trader Joe's itself. She dismissed the claims with prejudice.

As Hallatt told us in August, he feels that his store's "blatant and unambiguous" admission that its products come from Trader Joe's — and his customers' awareness that there are no such stores in Canada — mean that he isn't harming the Trader Joe's brand.

"I bought the stuff at full retail. I own it," said Hallatt, who noted that his customers are big fans of Trader Joe's Ridge Cut Salt & Pepper Potato Chips, Low Calorie Lemonade, and other unique products, all bearing their original labels.

"I get to do with it whatever I want to, including reselling it to Canadians," he said. "My right to do this is unassailable."

Hallatt also said that he would shut his store down if the Trader Joe's grocery chain began opening stores in Vancouver. Hallatt announced news of the court victory Thursday, in a post titled "We won!"

In granting the motion to dismiss, the court noted that "Pirate Joe's makes no sales and has no place of business in the United States, and Pirate Joe's knows of no Trader Joe's locations in Canada."

"The impact on Canadian consumers and Canadian commerce is more significant than the impact in the United States," she wrote in her ruling, "even if the Court were to assume there is some diversion of business or reputational impact."

The judge's decision that the federal Lanham Act does not apply in the case also grants Trader Joe's 10 days to make their case under state law. The company could also pursue a federal appeal.

As The Vancouver Sun reports, Hallatt "has now been banned from some Trader Joe's stores in Washington and has hired others to do his shopping for him."

As the government shutdown enters its fifth day, House Republicans and Senate Democrats continue to spar over who's being more unreasonable in this fight.

GOP members now find themselves on the defensive, as they face questions about forgoing pay and forgoing staff during the widespread furloughs.

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers were forced to figure out this week just how many paychecks they can afford to skip.

In a show of solidarity, at least 150 lawmakers now say they're going to give up their pay too. The ones who wouldn't, like Renee Ellmers, R-N.C., soon learned that they touched a nerve.

"I need my paycheck," Ellmers told WTVD in Raleigh early this week. "That's the bottom line. And I understand that maybe there are some other members who are deferring their paycheck, and I think that's admirable. I'm not in the position."

Ellmers had voted to defund the Affordable Care Act as a precondition for keeping the government running. Her comment drew furious reactions, but on Friday, she reversed course, deciding she'd surrender her pay after all.

As the shutdown persists, so will the question of how much of the burden members of Congress will individually bear. For example, how much of their own staff are they willing to furlough?

Unlike the executive branch, where specific rules designate who is essential and who is not, members of Congress can furlough at their discretion. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., says his office is operating at half-capacity now.

"I told everybody, 'Look, I don't want anybody here to think they're non-essential, but at the same time, we're going to have to share some of the pain,' " Westmoreland says.

To furlough or not to furlough — it's a touchy question on Capitol Hill. Many House members didn't respond to calls or emails asking how many of their staff members were showing up this week. One House member, Kerry Bentivolio, R-Mich., simply walked away when he was asked.

Republican Steve King of Iowa is not furloughing a single soul on his staff, and isn't hiding it. King's one of about 30 House Republicans who are determined to use the spending fight as a way to end Obamacare.

"We don't know how this is going to emerge," he says. "We don't know what kinds of demands we're going to have. And so I want to make sure we have people here to answer the phones, to respond to the needs that we have, to deal with any legislation that we might be able to work."

King is not concerned that it looks like he's insulating himself from the effects of the shutdown, to have his full staff around.

"This is a decision made to get this job done," he said. "We're in a battle here. So just imagine, you're in a battle. Would you say, 'I'm going to send you all home on leave?' I mean, I can do that. I could furlough all my employees. I could roll the phones over to recording, and I don't even have to walk into my office. I could just wait for somebody to make a decision, come in here and vote. That's the easy way out."

King says it's a good thing he kept his staff around – they're working harder than ever this week. Though from the looks of it, Congress isn't getting any closer to resolving its spending feud.

The House has spent the last few days passing smaller individual spending bills – to fund specific things like national parks, the NIH, veterans' programs and disaster recovery. But Senate Democrats keep rejecting each and every one of the bills, pointing out the original Senate proposal still awaiting a vote in the House would fund all programs, not just some.

"How can Speaker Boehner stop the Republican shutdown?" says Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. "Just vote. Because everybody knows, if he put the bill on the floor of the House, it would pass."

But as of Friday, Boehner was still demanding a chance to sit down and have a discussion about bringing fairness to Obamacare. Senate leaders and the White House continue to say there will be no such negotiations until the government reopens.

Thanks to the federal government's partial shutdown, the Bureau of Labor Statistics skipped its monthly Big Reveal at 8:30 a.m. Friday.

There was no September employment report.

Without access to the BLS numbers, data junkies were left to scrounge around for lesser reports. Maybe if they could suck in enough small hits of other statistics, they could feel that old familiar rush?

Nope. Nothing can replace that BLS high.

"You do miss it," said Harry Holzer, Georgetown professor and former chief economist for the Labor Department. "I watch it closely. It's the single best number to explain what's going on" in the U.S. labor market, he said.

The BLS report surveys both employers and households. Also, it comes out monthly, rather than quarterly. Holzer said that frequency provides enough snapshots of wages and hours to create a kind of flowing documentary about jobs.

So here we are — with no new picture to advance the story.

But instead of dwelling on what we don't have, let's think of this as "Faux Friday" — a day offering plenty of data, just not from the BLS. Simply lower your standards, pop open a near-beer and let's go over the almost-important data that we did get this week:

— ADP's payroll report showed a gain of 166,000 private sector jobs for September — in line with what employers had been adding all summer.

— Initial claims for unemployment benefits increased by 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 308,000 last week. That number, based on state data, was somewhat better than the expected 314,000 new claims.

— PNC Financial Services Group Inc.'s Autumn Outlook survey of small and medium-size businesses showed 16 percent intend to add full-time employees during the next six months, while 8 percent plan to cut workers.

— The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas said companies announced plans for 40,289 layoffs in September, down 20 percent from August.

— Glassdoor, an online site for jobs, released its quarterly Employment Confidence Survey, conducted online by Harris Interactive. That showed only 15 percent of employees are afraid of being laid off, the lowest percentage since the fourth quarter of 2008.

The Government Shutdown

Without Key Jobs Data, Markets And Economists Left Guessing

Britain's Conservative-led government delivered a one-two punch for more pillars of Britain's social benefits system this week. It announced more cuts to the country's social welfare programs — moving ever-closer to "workfare."

It started when George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, told the Conservative Party's annual conference that starting next April, some 200,000 people who have been unemployed for two years or more will be offered three choices: undertake unpaid community work; report to a job center every workday; or take part in a full-time intensive program to work on the personal issues that have kept them out of the workforce.

If they don't, they'll lose their benefits check.

"No one will be ignored or left without help. But no one will get something for nothing," Osborne told the Tory gathering. "Because a fair welfare system is fair to those who need it, and fair to those who pay for it, too."

Iain Duncan Smith, the country's work and pensions secretary, told the BBC that when similar requirements were enacted on a smaller scale to address the problem of "playing" the system, about 70 percent of recipients stopped claiming benefits.

Enlarge image i

The eye-popping new movie Gravity will make you very grateful you're planted on terra firma. It's a thriller directed by Alfonso Cuaron, in which shuttle astronauts on a spacewalk are stranded after a collision with a vast cloud of space debris.

And one of those astronauts — played by Sandra Bullock — is left on her own, hundreds of miles above Earth. She's running out of oxygen and tumbling untethered through the void of space.

Bullock tells NPR's Melissa Block that she spent much of the shoot by herself inside a cube, basically doing a kind of modern dance to help create the illusion of a zero-gravity environment.

"I likened it to Martha Graham," she says. "It was slow, modern, interpretive movements at 30-percent speed. And so my body would move as in weightlessness and contract the way your body would move in zero gravity."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered some rare, if fleeting, hope Thursday in regard to his country's relationship with Iran.

In an interview with Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep, he said the election of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani "might" offer an opportunity for diplomacy and that he would "consider" meeting him.

"I don't care about the meeting. I don't have a problem with the diplomatic process," Netanyahu said.

"You're saying you would meet him?" Steve asked.

Transcript: NPR Interview With Prime Minister Netanyahu

It must be draining to do eight interviews in a row, but Benjamin Netanyahu seemed energized by it. The Israeli prime minister walked into our meeting in a New York hotel room bantering and smiling. He commented on the shades (pulled down to avoid a backlit photo) and noticed a novel that our engineer had brought along. Netanyahu picked it up and looked it over — a novel by Joe Hill, the pen name for the son of Stephen King.

When we settled into the interview, Netanyahu picked up the book that he had brought along, which he held up in more than one of his interviews Thursday. This book was authored by Hassan Rouhani, the new president of Iran, who had written about his past experience as Iran's nuclear negotiator. When Rouhani was in charge of the nuclear file from 2003 to 2005, he made some progress in his talks with the West, but only temporary progress, even as Iran continued its nuclear development. Netanyahu took that book as a confession of Rouhani's duplicitousness. "He's an open book," Netanyahu said, "and we have the book!"

Related NPR Stories

The Two-Way

Israel's Netanyahu Says He'd 'Consider' A Meeting With New Iranian Leader

The eye-popping new movie Gravity will make you very grateful you're planted on terra firma. It's a thriller directed by Alfonso Cuaron, in which shuttle astronauts on a spacewalk are stranded after a collision with a vast cloud of space debris.

And one of those astronauts — played by Sandra Bullock — is left on her own, hundreds of miles above Earth. She's running out of oxygen and tumbling untethered through the void of space.

Bullock tell's NPR's Melissa Block that she spent much of the shoot by herself inside a cube, basically doing a kind of modern dance to help create the illusion of a zero-gravity environment.

"I likened it to Martha Graham," she says. "It was slow, modern, interpretive movements at 30-percent speed. And so my body would move as in weightlessness, and contract the way your body would move in zero gravity."

More From This Episode

Ask Me Another

LIVE From Central Park, It's Ask Me Another

Happy Friday, fellow political junkies. Of course, it's hard to be happy if you're one of the more than two million federal workers either furloughed or working without pay, or one of the millions of other Americans whose lives are disrupted by official Washington's dysfunction. It's Day Four of the federal government shutdown, 2013 edition. And an end to the disagreement still doesn't seem in the offing.

On that grim note, here are some items of political interest worth mulling over this morning.

Yielding to the logistical challenges of pulling off a major overseas trip with much of the executive-branch staff furloughed by the government shutdown, President Obama cancelled his scheduled Asia trip. An unhappy White House blamed House Republicans for setting back U.S. economic and strategic interests since Obama won't represent his nation among other world leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bali, Indonesia, ceding the field to China and Russia.

The very people Tea Party activists could care less about, the Republican establishment, are upset that the conservative insurgents are damaging the party's effort to reshape its brand after recent national election failures, reports The New York Times' Jonathan Martin.

Some constitutional-law experts have argued that the president could solve the debt-ceiling problem himself by broadly interpreting his powers to safeguard the nation. The president is apparently not among those experts proposing what one White House official called "unicorn theories" writes Adam Liptak in the New York Times. Obama insists it's Congress' job, not a president's, to ensure the nation doesn't default on its debts. Alas, no $1 trillion coin.

The morning after, the reason is still unclear why a woman with a young child in the car drove erratically near the White House and Capitol Hill and failed to stop when ordered to by police, leading them to shoot her to death, reports the Washington Post. The event further raised anxieties in a city on edge because of a recent mass shooting and the political and financial angst caused by the government shutdown.

The federal government shutdown is damaging the private sector. The Labor Department won't issue the all-important jobs-data report, a critical gauge used by economists and financial markets for decision-making. As Daniel Gross writes in The Daily Beast, companies like Sikorsky, the helicopter maker, are facing real or potential layoffs, creating a downdraft on an economy with a ho-hum recovery.

Newark Mayor Corey Booker, a Democrat, seems to have more of a contest in the special election for a U.S. Senate seat from New Jersey than many observers expected. His Republican rival, Steve Lonegan, a former small-city mayor, has made significant gains in some polls. All of which makes a Friday debate loom larger, writes Matt Friedman of the Newark Star-Ledger. Meanwhile, Politico's Maggie Haberman writes that Booker is seen as having run a campaign far less dynamic than his famous Twitter feed.

How polarized have Americans become? The answer depends on which method researchers use to ask people their views. Princeton political scientists Lori Bougher and Markus Prior write in the Monkey Cage blog that Internet polls made respondents appear more partisan than old-fashioned face-to-face polls.

Twitter filed for its initial public offering Thursday, which means we get to see a lot of previously private money and traffic numbers about the San Francisco-based social media giant. Some takeaways from the public IPO filing, or "Form S-1," of the seven-year-old company:

Its revenue is fast growing, but it's not earning money yet.

Twitter says its revenue increased to $316.9 million in 2012, from $106 million in 2011. So far for the first half of 2013, the company made $253 million, but its net losses grew to $69.3 million.

Twitter will seek to raise $1 billion for its IPO.

The company will sell shares under the name TWTR, but we don't know yet which stock exchange it plans to list itself on. The $1 billion target is significantly smaller than social behemoth Facebook's $16 billion offering in May 2012.

More and more people are using Twitter.

Twitter now has 218 million monthly active users, up from 85 million at the same time last year. In comparison, Facebook boasts more than 1 billion monthly active users.

It's making a lot of money from mobile.

In the second quarter of this year, "Over 65 percent of our advertising revenue was generated from mobile devices," the filing shows. This boosts the company's moneymaking prospects, and is perhaps why Twitter has an estimated market value of $10 billion, "based on the appraisals of venture capitalists and other early investors," reports the AP.

Twitter's trying to keep itself weird.

There's been a lot of grousing about how going public will lead Twitter to lose a lot of what makes it attractive to users. But Slate's Will Oremus points out that the IPO filing, a typically dry document, actually shows a conscious effort to maintain some quirk:

"The most amusing—and the most illustrative of what makes Twitter weird—comes on page 97. That's where the company touts the opportunity it provides for people around the world to interact directly with celebrities and public figures. From the filing: 'For example, when a Twitter user sought cooking advice from chef Mario Batali (@Mariobatali), the user received a response from @Mariobatali and musician Gavin Rossdale (@GavinRossdale) joined the conversation and provided some advice of his own.' "

Israel eased a major restriction on the Gaza Strip last week. For the first time in six years, limited commercial shipments of cement and iron were allowed through Israel into Gaza.

The 70 trucks per weekday will barely put a dent in the need in Gaza, where demand for housing is high and construction work is a quick way to cut unemployment. But it is a significant decision for Israel, connected to larger strategic issues, including the upheaval in neighboring Egypt and the recently restarted Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

For the past several years, much of the cement and rebar that came to Gaza arrived through smuggling tunnels from Egypt. Israel allowed only materials for thoroughly documented humanitarian projects, fearing militants would use concrete and rebar to build bunkers.

But after the Egyptian military took control in Cairo three months ago, Egypt began systematically destroying the tunnels. Construction materials in Gaza became hard to get, making an already weak economy worse.

A Peaceful Gesture

Guy Inbar, the spokesman for the Israeli military unit that manages all goods going between Israel and Gaza, says the change in policy came due to a request by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen.

"We hope the people in the Gaza Strip will understand that Abu Mazen and the situation in the West Bank is better than what is happening right now with Hamas," Inbar says.

Abbas leads the Palestinian political party Fatah and rules the West Bank. He is also negotiating with Israel for a peace deal. As part of these negotiations, and under international pressure, Israel has made several gestures to ease economic restrictions on Palestinians and to support Abbas.

The Palestinian faction Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, is an enemy of Israel. It is also in bad economic shape. Hamas has so little money it paid only half salaries for August, and those came a month late, says Ghazi Hamad, Gaza's deputy foreign minister. He says Hamas is just trying to keep its head above water.

"The main two problems [are] the building materials and the fuel," Hamad says.

Enlarge image i

The Greek lawmaker who leads the neo-fascist Golden Dawn Party is behind bars, awaiting trial for allegedly running a criminal organization. Nikolaos Michaloliakos' views are racist and anti-Semitic, and he's been blamed for inciting violence, especially against immigrants.

He says he's not a criminal and is being persecuted for his beliefs.

But will shutting down the party shut down its support?

When Michaloliakos arrived in court late Wednesday night, escorted by police in balaclavas, hundreds of his supporters were waiting for him, chanting: "Blood! Honor! Golden Dawn!"

Enlarge image i

The Greek lawmaker who leads the neo-fascist Golden Dawn party is behind bars, awaiting trial for running a criminal organization. Nikolaos Michaloliakos' views are racist and anti-Semitic, and he's been blamed for inciting violence, especially against immigrants.

He says he's not a criminal and is being persecuted for his beliefs.

But will shutting down the party shut down its support?

When Michaloliakos arrived in court late Wednesday night, escorted by police in balaclavas, hundreds of his supporters were waiting for him, chanting: "Blood! Honor! Golden Dawn!"

Enlarge image i

An international team overseeing the dismantling of Syria's chemical weapons program reports that it's making "encouraging initial progress," according to the United Nations.

"Documents handed over [Wednesday] by the Syrian Government look promising, according to team members," the United Nations said in a statement on Thursday.

The joint team of experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the United Nations says "further analysis, particularly of technical diagrams, will be necessary and some more questions remain to be answered."

The Associated Press reports:

"The inspectors said in a statement Thursday that the team 'hopes to begin onsite inspections and the initial disabling of equipment within the next week,' but doing so depends on the work of technical groups established with Syrian experts."

High-flying billionaire Elon Musk's Tesla Motors has seen its shares skid the past couple days because they've been downgraded by analysts and because of a YouTube clip showing one of the all-electric luxury cars engulfed in flames earlier this week.

Just before noon ET, a share of Tesla was trading around $169.50 — down about 6.5 percent for the day and $25 (13 percent) below its 52-week high of $194.50.

The downgrade by analysts from Baird Research, who shifted Tesla shares from a rating of likely to "outperform" to one of "neutral," was basically because Baird believes there's already been "significant price appreciation" in the stock.

The news about Baird's new rating came out Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Jalopnik.com gave wide exposure to the YouTube clip, which shows a Tesla Model S that burned the day before near Seattle. Seeing that video of a vehicle from the company that boasts about making "the safest car in America," seemed to worry investors, AutoWeek writes.

Tesla spokeswoman Liz Jarvis-Shean "said the fire Tuesday was caused by a large metallic object that directly hit one of the battery pack's modules in the pricey Model S," The Seattle Times says. "The fire was contained to a small section at the front of the vehicle, she said, and no one was injured."

Jalopnik adds that firefighters "released more details [Wednesday night] on the fire, saying a battery pack at the front of the car was burning and adding water made the flames worse."

(Note: There are some expletives in the video, so we're pointing to it rather than embedding it. We are a "family" blog, after all.)

With the current bloom of artisanal small-batch producers across the country, you'd think that all you need to start up a new food business is a good idea and a lot of gumption. And for the most part, that's true. But when it comes to artisanal producers working with meat, you also need something else: a Hazards Analysis and Critical Control Points plan. Or, if you will, a HACCP.

A HACCP (pronounced, by those in the industry, as HASSup) aims to accomplish the admirable goal of keeping our food supply safe by planning out critical control points and monitoring and hazard analysis and all that fun stuff, making sure that you don't get a dose of Listeria along with your saucisson sec.

For dry-cured meats, which never get a turn in the bacteria-killing heat of the oven, and rely instead on critical control of pH and moisture levels, this is especially important. It may seem surprising that there isn't one universally required procedure. But that's both the bane and beauty of the HACCP.

"The USDA Food Safety Inspection Service wants you to demonstrate that the food you make is safe," explains Arion Thiboumery, founder of the Niche Meat Processor Assistance Network. "They put out performance standards, but they don't tell you how. People have tried a lot of different ways." This focus on results, rather than process, means that as long as you meet the safety requirements at the critical control points, you have some leeway in how you get there.

"The brilliance behind a HACCP plan is that it's so flexible," extols Elias Cairo, the co-founder of Portland's Olympic Provisions, the first USDA-certified charcuterie in Oregon. "The lack of guidelines lets you produce anything you want, in exactly the way that you want, as long as you can prove that it's safe."

Cairo is clearly a big fan of the HACCP (and the USDA in general), whose adaptability has allowed him to produce cured meats that are winning fans across the country. But this flexibility comes at a cost.

Because of the sausage world's variation in process and recipe, each HACCP is uniquely tailored to each small-batch producer's process. Sausage-makers have to spend months and months familiarizing themselves with the scientific literature, taking classes and exams and providing the USDA documentation for the path they're taking — or pay significant money to consultants to come up with a plan for them, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

And once they've paid (in money or sweat) for these plans, they don't necessarily want to share their trade secrets. But one sausage maker — Underground Meats, of Madison, Wis. — is looking to establish a new model, by developing (via Kickstarter) an open source HACCP plan template for all to use.

"I think this is a large barrier to people entering the market, and if we remove it, we'll see really good products coming out," hopes Underground Meat's Jonny Hunter.

If the project's funding goal is reached, he aims to work with a third party company (possibly the University of Wisconsin) to lay out the process, and then publish the results under a Creative Commons license. "The craft is something that takes time, but the knowledge of the safety side is something that should just be open and free."

Hunter's mission seems to have struck a nerve in the artisanal meat community — as of this writing, the campaign is nearly three-fourths of the way to its $40,000 goal.

Arion Thiboumery, of the Niche Meat Processor Assistance Network, notes that with the age of the average butcher, like the age of the average farmer, continuing to go up every year, removing barriers to entry for new, young producers could revitalize the industry.

"I think it would be consistent with the mission of a land grant institution — let's use public money to solve a problem that we all agree should be solved."

But some, like Olympic Provisions' Elias Cairo, are a bit skeptical as to how it'll play out. The HACCP must be so specific that it'd be hard to universalize a sort of "bible" — beyond providing already-available general information on critical control points.

But Underground Meat's Jonny Hunter thinks that while it won't be a one-size-fits-all fix, the control points, steps, and scientific justifications will be a valuable jumping-off point. "People would have to tailor it individually — nobody would be able to just download it from the Internet, it needs to be specific. But if I would have had this five years ago, it would have saved me so much time."

One new option he'll soon have is to buy insurance through Covered California's SHOP exchange. SHOP stands for for Small Business Health Options Program. It's California's version of a small-business insurance program that is part of the federal Affordable Care Act. The state has 500,000 small businesses.

All states are offering similar small-business exchanges. These are marketplaces for employers with 50 or fewer full time workers, and are designed to offer more affordable insurance to mom-and-pop businesses that have long paid more than large companies for the same level of coverage.

"Small businesses are horribly disadvantaged in terms of being able to purchase insurance," says Peter Harbage, president of the Sacramento-based health policy firm Harbage Consulting. "If they're even able to purchase it, they have to pay more and they get less."

Harbage says that not only will SHOP plans offer competitive prices, they will also offer tax benefits that for some smaller companies might cut premium prices in half.

But John Kabateck is not so optimistic. He is California executive director for the National Federation of Independent Business, and represents more than 22,000 small businesses in California.

"There are a lot of uncertainties as it relates to the law," he says. "We are hopeful that they will find affordable coverage within the exchange. We are hopeful they will have the ability to pick and choose in the marketplace."

Planet Money

One Key Thing No One Knows About Obamacare

The health benefits of eating fish are pretty well-known. A lean source of protein, fish can be a rich source of healthful omega-3 fatty acids and has been shown to benefit heart, eye and brain health.

But for years, pregnant women have been advised to go easy on the fish. The U.S. government advises expecting mothers to eat no more than 12 ounces of seafood like salmon and shrimp, and to steer absolutely clear of bigger catch like swordfish and shark. The reason for this caution: concerns that mercury, found in nearly all seafood, could harm their babies' developing brains.

Now, fresh research suggests that advice might have been too restrictive.

Researchers at the University of Bristol in England have found that eating fish accounts for only 7 percent of the mercury in a person's body. "That was much lower than people have assumed," lead researcher Jean Golding tells The Salt. "It really implies that if women are worried about mercury affecting their children, stopping eating fish will not be beneficial."

The study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, analyzed 103 types of food and drink items consumed by over 4,000 pregnant women. The team at Bristol sent blood samples from the expecting mothers to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for analysis.

Even if a person were to avoid eating all 103 items analyzed, the researchers concluded, using regression analysis, that would only lower their blood mercury content by 17 percent.

Your Health

Getting Brain Food Straight from the Source

President Obama has been railing against Republicans in Congress nearly every day this week.

"One faction of one party in one house of Congress in one branch of government shut down major parts of the government," he said in the White House Rose Garden on Tuesday. "All because they didn't like one law."

He's expected to take that message on the road on Thursday, visiting a construction company in Maryland to talk about the impact of the shutdown on the economy.

And that finger-pointing at Republicans is sure to be part of his speech again.

Obama's rhetoric in this conflict is a shift from some of his earlier complaints about Congress — and that's having a positive effect on Democrats.

Talking about his adversaries who work in the Capitol in 2011, for example, he characterized lawmakers as lazy, saying "there shouldn't be any reason for Congress to drag its feet."

In 2010, he described them as wasteful. "Congress has provided unrequested money for more C-17s that the Pentagon doesn't want or need," he said.

In those speeches, the enemy was not specifically the House or the Senate, not Republicans or Democrats. Often it was just "Congress."

"There's a long and honorable tradition going back to Harry Truman of running against the Congress," says former Democratic Sen. Ted Kaufman of Delaware.

That tactic worked for Obama — he was running for re-election at the time. But it rankled congressional Democrats.

"Obviously, if you're part of the criticism, you don't feel good about it," Kaufman says. "I mean, one of the things that really bothers Democrats in the Senate is ... when people say, 'Well, it's the Republicans and the Democrats — it's all of you.' "

Back then, Obama was also trying to reach a grand bargain with Republicans. Singling them out as the enemy wouldn't have done much good. So he lumped in his own party as part of the problem.

Now the situation has changed dramatically, and so has Obama's rhetoric. The president does not pass up any chance to single out his adversaries as a minority within the GOP.

Related NPR Stories

It's All Politics

Unable To Stop Shutdown, Obama Pins Blame On GOP

The United States filed a court brief (pdf) opposing the release of details concerning the surveillance requests they hand big tech companies in the U.S.

As we reported back in August, Microsoft and Google were trying to reach an agreement with the government about what they could reveal about national security requests for customer data. When tech companies receive those requests, they also come with a gag order, making it illegal for them to tell their customer or anyone else about the request from the government.

Those talks crumbled and the companies moved forward with a lawsuit filed in the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, demanding the ability to publish information clearly showing the number of demands for user content like the text of an email.

"Unless this type of information is made public, any discussion of government practices and service provider obligations will remain incomplete," Brad Smith, a Microsoft vice president and general counsel, said in a blog post.

In a Sept. 30 filing with the court responding to the lawsuit, the Justice Department argued that releasing too much information about its requests would risk revealing its "sources and methods of intelligence collection, including the Government's ability (or inability) to conduct surveillance on particular electronic communication service providers or platforms."

"Releasing information that could induce adversaries to shift communication platforms in order to avoid surveillance would cause serious harm to the national security interests of the United States," the government said.

The tech companies have argued that by issuing gag orders, the government is denying them of their First Amendment rights. But the government dismissed that, saying the information they want to disclose is classified, therefore not covered by the First.

All Things D reports on the tech firms' response:

"Google said in a statement today, 'We're disappointed that the Department of Justice opposed our petition for greater transparency around FISA requests for user information. We also believe more openness in the process is necessary since no one can fully see what the government has presented to the court.'

"And Microsoft: 'We will continue to press for additional transparency, which is critical to understanding the facts and having an informed debate about the right balance between personal privacy and national security.'"

Let's start by agreeing to this premise: Kale is very good for you.

And yes, we here at The Salt have been known to indulge in – nay, crave — kale chips and kale salads on a not infrequent basis.

Still, when we found out that Wednesday is National Kale Day – featuring a kale dance party (we kid you not) — we couldn't help but think: Come on, people, the kale love has officially Gone. Too. Far.

Turns out, the ringleader of this spanking new holiday is Drew Ramsey, a psychiatrist at Columbia University who wears his passion for the dark, leafy green on his sleeve – or perhaps more aptly, on his book jacket: He's the author, most recently, of the cheekily named 50 Shades of Kale, a book of recipes.

Ramsey specializes in the link between nutrition and mental health, and says kale first drew his attention because of its excellent concentration of nutrients, including vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamin K and omega-3 fatty acids. And he became convinced that advising patients to eat kale was one of the most important pieces of advice he could give them.

"Food is a big part of my practice, and I realized that the standard messaging – telling people to avoid fat and cholesterol — was unhelpful because it doesn't help people fill their plate," Ramsey tells The Salt. "Instead we need to be telling people what foods we want them to eat – nutrient-dense foods like kale, mussels and farm-fresh eggs."

As Ramsey sees it, kale is also an ideal antidote to a public health crisis. And his kale evangelism has been growing ever more fervent in preparation for National Kale Day. Ramsey's "festival of kale" includes several scheduled Google+ Hangouts and a kale health summit. Then there's the aforementioned kale dance party, complete with kale cocktails, at Seasonal Whispers in Soho in New York City (you can dance along at home via the magic of Google+ Hangout).

"Our goal is to get more converts," he says, "especially kids in school, and kale newbies who have heard about it but haven't actually tried it."

All of which is laudable — except there's a small problem with superfood evangelism. As we've reported many times, it can be dangerous to fixate on individual foods as curative sustenance, because your diet's influence on your health is an incredibly complex equation.

The dangers of elevating this cabbage cousin to canonization status were brilliantly illuminated recently by paleo-blogger Melissa McEwen. In a satirical post on her blog HuntGatherLove, she enumerated the "dangers" of eating kale – including its "horrific effects on livestock" and that it's laden with pesticides.

The post, by the way, was meant to show how easy it is to demonize a food by selective citation of scientific studies, but it also does a good job of noting the dangers of focusing your diet almost exclusively on one ingredient – "which I think anyone will agree is a bad idea," McEwen writes.

Besides, the health of humanity seems like an awfully big burden to place on the fragile shoulders of little ole kale. As we make kale the health halo food du jour, we risk turning it into the Gwyneth Paltrow of the vegetable world – the smug goody two-shoes everyone loves to hate on. (Hat tip to Modern Farmer for pointing out this celebrity/cultivar comparison.)

And as a recent New York Times article reminded us, kale is not universal. In France, where kale is often seen as a reminder of the dietary deprivations of World War II, an American woman named Kristen Beddard is waging a crusade to put this trendy green on menus far and wide. (Not surprisingly, Beddard happens to be on the board of National Kale Day.) A noble quest, perhaps, but is it also a necessary one to save the French?

As French food writer Sana Lemoine noted to the Times, "They don't need magical vegetables or superfoods. They already have a tradition of eating balanced meals. In a strange way, kale is superfluous."

Still, such snickering will not deter kale crusader Ramsey. To all the naysayers, Ramsey has this to say: "Eat more kale to improve your attitude."

It's Day Two of the Federal Government Shutdown, 2013 edition with no end in sight.

So there's a heavy focus on shutdown-related items or themes today in this morning's political mix of items and themes that caught my eye:

Many in Washington now expect the government shutdown to last longer than a few days. That makes it increasingly likely that policymakers will link an agreement on a spending bill that reopens federal agencies to a resolution in the debt-ceiling dispute as well, Politico's Manu Raju, Jake Sherman and Carrie Budoff Brown report.

Congressional Republicans may, on the whole, be less sensitive to any widespread public backlash against the federal government shutdown than they were in the last one 17 years ago because more of them represent districts that are safer for Republicans than was true in 1995-1996, writes the National Journal's Ron Brownstein.

The group of hardline conservatives who are largely dictating the House Republican Conference's shutdown strategy believe they are winning, according to a New York Times piece by Jonathan Weisman and Ashley Parker. But they now face growing unrest from fellow Republican lawmakers who actually want to be part of a governing party that governs.

While most Americans might think that Washington D.C. is the metro area most dominated by federal workers as a percentage of its workforce, the winner in that category is actually Colorado Springs at 18.8 percent of its working population receiving paychecks from the U.S. government. An interactive Washington Post graphic provides details.

The Affordable Care Act's health-care exchanges had a noticeably glitchy unveiling Tuesday. But the heavy use of the websites by consumers suggested a pent-up demand for health insurance that supported the contention of Obamacare's backers that the law filled what had been a great unmet need, reported Jay Hancock, Phil Galewitz and Ankita Rao of Kaiser Health News.

President Obama has had a visit to Asia to begin Saturday on his schedule for months. But the government shutdown is raising pressure on the White House to reschedule partly because of the greatly reduced number of federal employees available to handle such an overseas trip's logistics, report David Nakamura and Julia Eilperin of the Washington Post. The Wall Street Journal reports that Obama phone the Malaysian prime minister to tell him that a visit to his country was postponed.

The nation's future military officers are being severely affected by the federal government shutdown which has forced severe disruptions at U.S. military academies that go far beyond the cancellation of some athletic events. The Air Force Academy's 4,400 cadets now have no library, and no media and tutoring centers, reports Politico's Libby A. Nelson.

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel attached some real faces to a recent poll result which indicated that support for the Affordable Care Act rises or falls depending on whether people are asked if they favor the ACA or Obamacare. One takeaway? We should all keep our critical thinking caps when it comes to polls in general and those on the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare in particular.

We said it Tuesday: "no end in sight."

The story's the same on Wednesday.

Pardon us for being repetitive, but there's no end in sight to the partial shutdown of the federal government.

There isn't even a glint of solution somewhere off on the horizon, NPR's Mara Liasson says.

On Morning Edition, she told host Steve Iskeep that as of Wednesday morning there was "no escape hatch."

Republicans, Mara said, "aren't yet ready to compromise" on their position. They say they'll only agree to fully fund government operations if the new health care law ("Obamacare") is either defunded, delayed or otherwise denuded.

This week's government shutdown could be just a warmup for an even bigger budget battle in a couple of weeks.

Congress has to raise the limit on the amount of money the federal government is allowed to borrow by Oct. 17. If the debt ceiling is not raised on time, President Obama warns that Washington won't be able to keep paying its bills.

"It'd be far more dangerous than a government shutdown, as bad as a shutdown is," Obama said Tuesday. "It would be an economic shutdown."

No one is exactly sure what would happen if the government suddenly had to make do without a credit card. But experts agree that the fallout could be scary and far-reaching.

While government shutdowns are messy and disruptive, the country has lived through them before. The U.S. government, on the other hand, has never had to go cold turkey on borrowed money.

If Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling, the government has to get by with just the amount of cash that comes in every day.

Former Republican budget staffer Steve Bell has been trying to imagine what that would look like. "The Treasury has to wait all day for money to come in and see how much money they have and see how much they can pay," he says. "It's kind of a stunning thing because any business that ran that way would be bankrupt."

Related NPR Stories

It's All Politics

What The House Wants: A Debt Ceiling Preview

After weeks of wondering what would happen, Americans now know:

1. Congress missed the midnight funding deadline for the new fiscal year, triggering disruptions in government operations.

2. That will slow economic growth, at least in the short term.

But just how far the damage will go is far from clear. Economists say they can't refine their predictions because they have no idea how long the shutdown might last or how many federal workers may be furloughed.

Among the questions they are pondering: If, as is now expected, the Labor Department fails to release the September unemployment report on Friday, will that lack of key data rattle investors?

"Getting some clarity would be a big relief for the markets," said John Canally, economist for LPL Financial, a Boston-based financial services firm.

Uncertainty about the scope and duration of the federal disruption reflects the division of responsibilities among branches of government. It's up to Congress to agree on a funding mechanism to reopen the government. But it's up to the Obama administration to determine exactly which workers are "essential" for the protection of life and property.

In some federal workplaces, the "essential" line might be bright and clear. For example, at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, visitors will be turned away, but pandas will get fed.

But other calls will be much more complicated, and directions from supervisors have been murky so far, according to Michael Roberts, a Food and Drug Administration employee who serves as president of Chapter 212 of the NTEU, a union representing workers at several federal agencies.

"We've been getting conflicting information, with no clear guidance at the moment," Roberts said.

To the best of his understanding, many workers may be told to stay home for a few days but then could be recalled as "essential." For example, imports may start coming into this country without inspection — until someone determines that certain shipments represent "the highest level of risk," he said.

So exactly how high does a risk have to be before inspectors get called back? No one knows, and the answer may be a moving target, he said. "You would think we'd have an idea what's going on by now," Roberts said.

Even trying to determine how many people the government employs can be tough because of part-timers. A census report shows the government employs about 2.62 million people. And of those, perhaps 800,000 could be called nonessential, or at least that's the most commonly reported estimate.

IHS Global Insight economist Paul Edelstein says that if Congress were to keep the shutdown going for, say, three weeks or more, then the gross domestic product — i.e., the sum of all goods and services — would lose momentum. Instead of growing by the expected 2 percent this quarter, the economy might slow to just a 1.5 percent pace, he said.

That would translate into 75,000 fewer net jobs for the economy this fall, coming on top of the loss of income for those 800,000 workers' salaries.

The government shutdown will "throw a wrench into the gears" of a recovering economy, President Obama warned Monday.

FDA worker Roberts said the loss of federal paychecks will have an impact on many families, from park rangers to secretaries to inspectors. "We have people who are struggling and living paycheck to paycheck," he said. "They don't know when or if they will be paid."

That means lots of households will be cutting back on spending, and that worries store owners.

"Our industry is keenly concerned," said Greg Ferrara, spokesman for the National Grocers Association. "There's a lot riding on this for us."

Many restaurant owners are worried, too. Andy Thompson, a co-owner of the Thornton River Grille in Sperryville, Va., says many of his customers come to visit the nearby Shenandoah National Park — especially now during the peak of leaf-viewing tourist season.

If federal workers in Virginia lose paychecks and the park gates remain locked for long, then his restaurant could feel the pinch.

But he said business owners have come to expect poor economic results from Congress when it comes to orderly budget planning. "Everyone has that feeling: Why can't they get it together?" he said.

The number of people who leave their countries to work abroad is soaring, according to the United Nations. More than 200 million people now live outside their country of origin, up from 150 million a decade ago.

And migration isn't just from poor countries to rich countries any more. There also is significant migration from rich country to rich country — and even from poor country to poor.

Beginning Thursday, the U.N. will hold a high level meeting on the subject in New York.

Moving For Work

In the Philippines, at the offices of Industries and Personnel Management in Manila, some 30 nervous applicants sit in hard plastic chairs watching a video about a day in a life of an employee at a duty free shop at the international airport in Dubai, on the Persian Gulf.

As soothing music plays in the background, the video shows workers — in robin's egg-blue jackets — looking almost robotic as they cheerfully assist customers in checkout lanes and count money.

More than a week after Islamic militants stormed an upscale mall in Nairobi, Kenya, President Uhuru Kenyatta has vowed to set up a commission to look into lapses in intelligence and security. At least 67 people died in the four-day siege, which ended with dozens still unaccounted for.

Days after the attack, a man who manages a clothing store in the Westgate Mall sorts through damaged shoes, shirts and ties. He's visibly shaken from his trip back into the place he escaped under gunfire. Much of the damaged clothing is from bullet holes.

"These are all waste now," he says. "Even it if it is small hole, it is waste." He says there's no insurance for a terrorist attack, and some of the most expensive suits and shoes are missing.

Other shop owners reported Rolex watches, diamond jewelry and mobile phones looted, allegedly by Kenyan soldiers during the fight against the terrorists. The allegations have shaken people in Nairobi, who just a week ago were hailing the soldiers as heroes.

"We wish to affirm that government takes very seriously these allegations of looting," Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku said at a press conference.

Lenku was on the defensive, and not just about what his soldiers allegedly did during those four days in the mall, but what they did not do. A leaked intelligence report indicates that security chiefs and cabinet ministers were warned about Westgate as an al-Shabab target. They were even warned of one likely mode of attack, where operatives "storm the buildings with guns and grenades."

Lenku's response: "With regard to the issue of our information or our intelligence, that is our business."

Probably the most sensitive questions still lingering in this shaken city are about how the fight was waged. Why did it take the Kenyan army four days to kill five militants? And what happened to the other five to 10 terrorists?

Kweya Obedi is the Nairobi county director of the Red Cross. He was leading a team of volunteers who rushed in on the afternoon of Sept. 21 to rescue people from where they hid inside shops. Even by that point, he says, some hours after the initial assault, the terrorists had been mostly pushed back by the special Israeli-trained unit of the police called the Recce group, experienced in hostage rescue.

"The police had better control of the situation," Obedi says.

Related NPR Stories

The Two-Way

In Kenya, Questions Arise Over Reported Warnings Of Attack

And two things happened. One, much of the blood coming out of Michael Emory's head kept going into Adam Schumann's mouth. And on the day he left the war and all the days since, it's not that he can still taste it, it's that he hasn't been able to stop tasting it.

And the other thing that happened is he was exhausted at the end of these three flights of stairs, and when they finally got Emory — a big guy — on this litter to get him to the Humvee, there's this moment where Adam loses his balance and almost drops Emory on his head.

And years later, there's a part in the book when Emory — who's alive, who shouldn't be but is alive — comes to visit Adam in Kansas. [Emory] just starts making fun of him for almost dropping him and killing him. And it's heartbreaking and it's tender and it's lovely — it just encapsulates so much of the intimate lives that are being played out in all these people trying to recover.

On the availability of treatment programs for veterans

Random is a very good word here. There are three people I write about in this book who go into treatment programs. Tausolo Aieti spent seven weeks in an inpatient PTSD program at a [Veterans Affairs] hospital, so he got the seven-week program.

Another guy I write about, Nic DeNinno, he wanted to get into the VA one, but it was full, so his case worker looked around and found one in another state that lasted four weeks. Was it as good? Well, it did OK for him, but four weeks is not seven weeks.

War and Literature

'Operation Homecoming': The Writings of War

Day One of the federal government shutdown, 2013 edition, was business as usual, at least when it came to each side trying to win the message war and keep the pressure on the political opposition in the hope of getting them to blink first.

President Obama had a White House Rose Garden event to mark what also was the first day individuals were able to enroll in the Affordable Care Act's health-insurance exchanges. With real people who would benefit from Obamacare arrayed behind him in a photo op, he used the moment to blast Republicans.

"They've shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans," Obama said. "In other words, they demanded ransom just for doing their job."

Congressional Republicans worked a two-pronged strategy. First, they portrayed themselves as eager to negotiate with Democrats but disappointed that the other party declined to talk with them.

Second, they proposed a plan suggested by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to fund various federal agencies and services in a piecemeal way, like the National Park Service, Veterans Affairs and the District of Columbia, in a partial reversal of the shutdown.

They were so eager, in fact, that some House Republicans held a photo op where the other side of the table was empty (to symbolize that they lacked Democratic negotiating partners).

"I would say none of us want to be in a shutdown," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said. "The way to resolve our differences is to sit down and talk. And as you can see, there's no one here on the other side of the table."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., didn't spare the sarcasm: "Now that's really so unique," he said of the GOP photo op. "Has it ever been done before? Only 5(000) or 6,000 times since I've been in Washington."

Democrats were equally dismissive of House GOP idea of a piecemeal reopening of the government, which was aimed, in part, at making it appear that Democrats were the reason national parks remained closed. Jay Carney, the president's press secretary, said the proposal pointed to an "utter lack of seriousness."

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the Senate minority leader, reinforced his message that Democratic intransigence is to blame. "It's pretty clear to me, at least at this point, that neither the Senate Democratic majority nor the president of the United States have any interest whatsoever in entering into any discussions about how to resolve this impasse."

Shutdown Sidelight: The Battle Of The Mall

A group of World War II veterans found themselves in the shutdown news cycle Tuesday. The elderly men were confronted by barriers and police tape at the World War II Memorial, which was closed because of the shutdown.

But aided by Republican congressmen who included Louie Gohmert of Texas and Steve King of Iowa, the vets got in to the closed memorial, although it's not entirely clear how, according to The Washington Post.

Shutdown-related promotions sprung up around Washington. A local Italian restaurant offered free use of its private dining rooms to Obama, Reid and House Speaker John Boehner to negotiate over pasta.

Another local restaurant offered furloughed federal workers a free daily cup of coffee. Members of Congress, however, would be charged double the price.

It was proof that one person's shutdown is another's marketing opportunity.

No doubt most of you reading this post have looked at Yelp or Google+ Local to check the user reviews before you tried that fish store, bakery or even dentist. On occasion, you may have wondered if some of those reviews were too good to be true.

It turns out that some of them were.

New York's attorney general revealed the results of a yearlong investigation into the business of fake reviews. Eric T. Schneiderman announced Monday that 19 companies that engaged in the practice will stop and pay fines between $2,500 and $100,000, for a total of more than $350,000 in penalties.

Schneiderman said his office used undercover agents. One agent, posing as the owner of a yogurt shop in Brooklyn, called up search engine optimization companies and asked for help in combating negative reviews on consumer websites. In many cases, the agent was told that they would write fake positive reviews for a fee.

One of the reputation companies required its freelancers to have an established Yelp account more than three months old, and at least 15 reviews and 10 Yelp friends. The jobs paid the false writers — who lived as far away as Bangladesh and the Philippines — between $1 and $10 per review.

The investigation also uncovered businesses that did their own reputation management. For example, US Coachways, a charter bus company on Staten Island, had its employees write positive reviews and offered $50 gift certificates to customers who would do the same — without requiring those customers to reveal the gift.

Ratings website Yelp says it welcomed the crackdown. However, the company has also been accused of manipulating reviews on its site by merchants who claim Yelp offered to move positive feedback closer to the top of the page for a payment. Yelp denies this.

All Tech Considered

Dear Apple: Good Luck Against The Smartphone Black Market

These days, many people wear their vegetarianism as a badge of honor — even if it's only before 6 p.m, as food writer Mark Bittman advocates. (Actually, he wants us to go part-time vegan.) There's even a World Vegetarian Day, which happens to be today, FYI.

But more than 100 years ago, when Hitl, the world's oldest continually operating vegetarian restaurant, opened its doors in Zurich, it was an entirely different story.

"The first several years, people entered Hiltl through the backdoor," says Peter Vauthier, the head of Hiltl guest relations.

The Swiss, you see, have long been a pretty meat-loving bunch. "If you didn't eat meat, it meant you had no money," he says. Vegetarianism, in other words, was kind of a badge of shame.

The gap between the 1 percent and the 99 percent is growing, according to an analysis of IRS figures by an international group of university economists, and it hasn't been so wide since 1928.

The incomes of the very wealthiest 1 percent of Americans increased by 31.4 percent from 2009 to 2012. By contrast, the bottom 99 percent saw their earnings in the same period go up by just 0.4 percent. In 2012, the top 1 percent collected 19.3 percent of all household income and the top 10 percent took home a record 48.2 percent of total earnings, The Associated Press reports.

The result, according to the analysis by economists from the University of California, Berkeley, the Paris School of Economics and Oxford University, who looked at 1913 onward, is the broadest income gap between super-rich and everyone else since just before the Great Depression.

The AP says:

"The top 1 percent of American households had pretax income above $394,000 last year. The top 10 percent had income exceeding $114,000.

"The income figures include wages, pension payments, dividends and capital gains from the sale of stocks and other assets. They do not include so-called transfer payments from government programs such as unemployment benefits and Social Security.

"The gap between rich and poor narrowed after World War II as unions negotiated better pay and benefits and as the government enacted a minimum wage and other policies to help the poor and middle class.

"The top 1 percent's share of income bottomed out at 7.7 percent in 1973 and has risen steadily since the early 1980s, according to the analysis."

One of the strictest gun laws in the nation went into effect in Maryland on Tuesday. The new law bans assault rifles and high capacity magazines, and makes Maryland one of only six states that requires handgun purchasers to get fingerprinted and take gun safety courses.

Gun owners in the state aren't happy, and in recent weeks, they've been flocking to snap up firearms. On Monday, outside Fred's Sporting Goods in Waldorf, there was a huge crowd and a countdown sign advertising: "1 day left."

The law is just a lot of "bureaucratic nonsense," says gun owner Leslie Cates. "I want to be able to own and have what I like and what I want, and I don't feel like the government should be able to tell me what I can and can't have and how I have to get it."

Gary Gilroy, also shopping at Fred's, says the new law infringes on his rights. "I think it's unconstitutional," he says. "It's against the Second Amendment."

A Surge Of Registrations

Joe Herbert, the store owner, says he was ready for the onslaught of customers ahead of the deadline. "I got full staff for the last week and a half ... working overtime," he says.

And, he says, he can't keep his shelves stocked. In recent weeks he's done about five times his usual sales.

It's been like this all over the state. Sgt. Marc Black, a spokesperson with the Maryland State Police, the organization responsible for processing background checks, says the office has been "working 21 hours a day, seven days a week."

As of September 20, he says, "we're looking at 106,000 applications."

That's more than double the number for all of 2011 and represents an unprecedented surge in gun purchases, he says.

The rush on firearms started after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., when President Obama started pushing Congress to tighten federal gun laws. That didn't happen, but in Maryland, lawmakers got behind state legislation.

Related NPR Stories

The Two-Way

No Guns Please, Starbucks Tells Customers

A team of chemical weapons experts has arrived in Syria, where they will begin the long and complicated task of destroying the country's chemical weapons arsenal. Under a plan endorsed by the U.N. Security Council, the weapons are to be destroyed by next June.

Syria is wracked by a civil war that has killed more than 100,000 people and forced more than 2 million others to flee the country, according to recent U.N. figures.

The experts from the Netherlands-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons are expected to meet with Syria's foreign minister later today, the AP reports.

The OPCW team enters Syria one day after a U.N. inspections team departed. Led by Ake Sellstrom, that team had earlier concluded that poisonous sarin gas had been used in Syria in an Aug. 21 attack that left hundreds dead — a report that prompted a U.S.-Russia agreement to rid Syria of the weapons.

The U.N. team had returned to Syria for about a week to examine claims of at least six other chemical weapons attacks in Syria, spanning from March to August. It is due to present its final report on those incidents later this month.

As NPR's Parallels blog has reported, "dismantling a chemical weapons program is a laborious process."

After weeks of wondering what would happen, Americans now know:

1. Congress missed the midnight funding deadline for the new fiscal year, triggering disruptions in government operations.

2. That will slow economic growth, at least in the short term.

But just how far the damage will go is far from clear. Economists say they can't refine their predictions because they have no idea how long the shutdown might last or how many federal workers may be furloughed.

Among the questions they are pondering: If, as is now expected, the Labor Department fails to release the September unemployment report on Friday, will that lack of key data rattle investors?

"Getting some clarity would be a big relief for the markets," said John Canally, economist for LPL Financial, a Boston-based financial services firm.

Uncertainty about the scope and duration of the federal disruption reflects the division of responsibilities among branches of government. It's up to Congress to agree on a funding mechanism to reopen the government. But it's up to the Obama administration to determine exactly which workers are "essential" for the protection of life and property.

In some federal workplaces, the "essential" line might be bright and clear. For example, at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, visitors will be turned away, but pandas will get fed.

But other calls will be much more complicated, and directions from supervisors have been murky so far, according to Michael Roberts, a Food and Drug Administration employee who serves as president of Chapter 212 of the NTEU, a union representing workers at several federal agencies.

"We've been getting conflicting information, with no clear guidance at the moment," Roberts said.

To the best of his understanding, many workers may be told to stay home for a few days but then could be recalled as "essential." For example, imports may start coming into this country without inspection — until someone determines that certain shipments represent "the highest level of risk," he said.

So exactly how high does a risk have to be before inspectors get called back? No one knows, and the answer may be a moving target, he said. "You would think we'd have an idea what's going on by now," Roberts said.

Even trying to determine how many people the government employs can be tough because of part-timers. A census report shows the government employs about 2.62 million people. And of those, perhaps 800,000 could be called nonessential, or at least that's the most commonly reported estimate.

IHS Global Insight economist Paul Edelstein says that if Congress were to keep the shutdown going for, say, three weeks or more, then the gross domestic product — i.e., the sum of all goods and services — would lose momentum. Instead of growing by the expected 2 percent this quarter, the economy might slow to just a 1.5 percent pace, he said.

That would translate into 75,000 fewer net jobs for the economy this fall, coming on top of the loss of income for those 800,000 workers' salaries.

The government shutdown will "throw a wrench into the gears" of a recovering economy, President Obama warned Monday.

FDA worker Roberts said the loss of federal paychecks will have an impact on many families, from park rangers to secretaries to inspectors. "We have people who are struggling and living paycheck to paycheck," he said. "They don't know when or if they will be paid."

That means lots of households will be cutting back on spending, and that worries store owners.

"Our industry is keenly concerned," said Greg Ferrara, spokesman for the National Grocers Association. "There's a lot riding on this for us."

Many restaurant owners are worried, too. Andy Thompson, a co-owner of the Thornton River Grille in Sperryville, Va., says many of his customers come to visit the nearby Shenandoah National Park — especially now during the peak of leaf-viewing tourist season.

If federal workers in Virginia lose paychecks and the park gates remain locked for long, then his restaurant could feel the pinch.

But he said business owners have come to expect poor economic results from Congress when it comes to orderly budget planning. "Everyone has that feeling: Why can't they get it together?" he said.

In the three years since President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, it has survived more than 50 votes in Congress to defund or repeal it, a Supreme Court challenge, a presidential election and, as of Tuesday morning, a government shutdown. Much of the spending for the law is mandatory and won't be cut off.

But now, it must survive its own implementation.

Tuesday is the day that Obamacare goes operational. Americans can begin signing up for health insurance on online marketplaces known as exchanges.

And that begins a new chapter in the nearly five-year-old political battle over Obamacare, says GOP pollster Bill McInturff.

"What happens today is we're going to move from this policy debate about Obamacare to a reality outcome debate: What impact does it have on millions and millions of Americans, and do they judge it to be good or bad?" McInturff says. "And I believe attitudes will shift based on that reality of the outcome of Obamacare."

The Political Costs

The president is confident that attitudes will shift in his direction. Like the Green Eggs and Ham story invoked by Republican Sen. Ted Cruz — Obamacare's chief antagonist in Congress — Obama is certain that when Americans try it, they will like it.

"That's what's going to happen with the Affordable Care Act," the president has said. "And once it's working really well, I guarantee you they will not call it Obamacare."

But Obamacare — as it will be called for the foreseeable future — has already exacted a stiff political price from the president.

Opposition to the health care overhaul fueled the rise of the Tea Party, which led to the Democrats' historic loss of their House majority in 2010. But Republicans paid a political price, too. Their efforts to repeal the law in 2012 failed, and Democrats held on to the White House and the Senate.

Through it all, public opinion has been consistent — consistently negative about the law, even if voters don't want it defunded. Health care historian Jonathan Oberlander says that's why he's not sure even a flawless rollout will change perceptions.

"This is not a program like Medicare or Social Security; it is a program that really is a series of policies and regulations and subsidies," he says. "And that makes it difficult to explain to the uninsured what the benefits are, and I don't think it's going to be easy for Obamacare, regardless of how well or not it does in the next year to overcome that chasm."

Related NPR Stories

It's All Politics

Unable To Stop Shutdown, Obama Pins Blame On GOP

Fast food, it turns out, isn't quite as fast as it used to be.

A new study finds that McDonald's posted its slowest drive-through times since this survey was first conducted 15 years ago.

At McDonald's, customers will spend on average 3 minutes and 9 seconds from the time they place their orders until they receive their food. That's about 10 seconds more than the industry average — and a lot slower than a decade ago, according to the study, which was commissioned by QSR, an industry trade publication.

And McDonald's wasn't alone in slowing down: Other chains, like Chick-fil-A, also saw their drive-through performance slow down.

Among the reasons for the more sluggish service: Today there are more choices on the menu, and the products themselves are more complex — flavored lattes, smoothies and salad bowls, for example. All of that can take longer to prepare and adds to the time spent waiting in the drive-through line.

Speed, of course, is essential to the drive-through experience, and drive-throughs are hugely important to chains such as McDonald's, Burger King and Taco Bell.

"Usually the drive-through accounts for 60 percent or 70 percent of all business that goes through a fast-food restaurant," notes Sam Oches, editor of QSR.

Of course, consumers also want their orders prepared correctly and on that score, Oches says, "accuracy is still really high."

The American quest for speed and convenience is now prompting some so-called fast casual chains like Panera to expand their drive-through offerings.

"It's a defensive thing, if nothing else," says Bob Goldin, an executive vice president with food and restaurant industry research firm Technomic. As Goldin puts it, you don't want to lose a customer who's in a hurry.

As the federal government lurches toward a shutdown, there's one thing a lot of people in Congress actually agree on.

A 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices that took effect at the beginning of 2013 should be undone, they say. House Republicans included a provision to do that in a funding bill passed over the weekend that also sought a one-year delay in the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said in a statement last week that "there is strong bipartisan support for repealing the medical device tax, with Democrats and Republicans uniting behind our effort. I will continue to work to get rid of this harmful tax so Minnesota's medical device businesses can continue to create good jobs in our state and improve patients' lives."

Minnesota is home to Medtronic, St. Jude Medical and lots of smaller device companies.

What's the big deal? About $29 billion in funding for the expansion of health coverage under the Affordable Care Act is expected to come from the device tax. Hip implants, MRI scanners and catheters to unclog heart arteries are all affected. Toothbrushes, contact lenses, hearing aids and other consumer products are exempt.

As you might expect, AdvaMed, a big trade group for makers of medical devices, has been adamant about wiping the tax from the IRS' books. "AdvaMed has consistently and strongly opposed the $30 billion medical device tax because it will harm job creation, deter medical innovation and increase the cost of health care," the group's website says. "Congress should repeal it before it can do more damage to American Innovation."

Others say it's the device industry's consistent opposition to concessions related to the health law that got the tax slapped on in the first place.

Back in the early horse-trading days over the legislation that became the Affordable Care Act, lobbyists for the device industry made what looks more and more like a "strategic error," as The Wall Street Journal reported in 2009.

While the legislation was taking shape, the White House looked to health-related industries to cut deals that would help pay for the law. The Journal reported that the administration went so far as to ask for pledges.

When it came time for the device makers to pony up, they demurred, suggesting instead that the government get money elsewhere, such as from the groups that buy in bulk for hospitals. It didn't work.

"You either come to the table early, or you end up part of the dinner," a person close to the negotiations told the Journal.

In contrast, drugmakers agreed to save the federal government about $80 billion over a decade in exchange for protection from provisions they didn't like, such as legalized drug imports. There's no excise tax on pharmaceuticals.

The $80 billion was a compromise, the head of the drugmaker trade group PhRMA told NPR in 2009. The president wanted more, and the drugmakers were looking to pitch in less.

Even if many people agree that the device tax should go, some important ones don't.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called the repeal idea "stupid," through a spokesman, The Associated Press reported. "The Senate will reject any (funding bill) that includes a repeal of the medical device tax." And, in fact, that's just what happened shortly after the Senate convened Monday afternoon.

White House spokesman Jay Carney's response to a question about whether the president would support a repeal: "Absolutely not."

Among those affected by the chaos of the government shutdown are 9 million low-income women and children who may be worrying where next week's meal is going to come from.

They rely on the government for food assistance through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, known as WIC.

And according to Douglas Greenaway, president and CEO of the National WIC Association, some of the state programs that serve these women and children may run out of money by next week, while others may have enough funds to offer the food benefits through the end of the month. But across the country, he says, anxiety is rising as both program administrators and participants wonder how long they'll be in limbo.

"When Congress fails to act to fund programs like WIC that serve people in need, it just places vulnerable women and children in very precarious positions," Greenaway tells The Salt.

The Salt

Women And Children Caught In Middle Of Potato War

Months after federal agents raided its Knoxville, Tenn., headquarters over charges that it withheld millions in diesel fuel rebates from customers at its truck stops, Pilot Flying J says it is paying the companies that were cheated.

From Nashville, Blake Farmer of member station WPLN filed this report for our Newscast unit:

"The family-owned company is accused of withholding millions of dollars' worth of diesel rebates. Seven members of the Pilot Flying J sales staff have pleaded guilty to fraud charges, and others have been put on administrative leave during the federal investigation.

"CEO Jimmy Haslam — who also owns the Cleveland Browns — says the shortchanging represents a fractional part of the company's $30 billion in annual sales. He says most has been paid back, with interest. Still, he says the episode has taken a toll.

"'This has been a very humbling, very embarrassing time for myself, for our family and for Pilot Flying J. There's no other way to say it.'"

Updated at 12:24 a.m. ET Sunday

The House voted early Sunday to tie government funding to a one-year delay in implementing Obamacare, sending the dispute back to the Senate, where it is certain to get a frosty reception. The House measure also repeals the Affordable Care Act's tax on medical devices.

But with a government shutdown looming at midnight Monday, the White House said President Obama would veto the House bill, on the unlikely chance it made it through the Senate. And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., released a statement rejecting the House plan as "pointless."

House Democrats called the plan a vote to prolong the dispute and close the government down.

"Let us be very clear," Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, said on the House floor. "Let us not be full of smoke and mirrors. Tonight the Republican majority will vote to shut the government down."

Those in the Republican majority are hoping to turn that argument on its head.

"We're going to give a stark choice to the president of the United States and the Senate," said Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas. "Do you want to shut down the government, or do you want to force onto the American people a 2,500-page bill that was forced through here so fast, Speaker Pelosi said we have to pass the bill to find out what's in it."

Asked what happens after the Senate inevitably rejects their version of the bill on Monday, a number of House Republicans said they didn't have the next play planned out.

The House also passed a measure that would insure the troops continue to get paid in the event of a shutdown. Democrats ripped into Republicans for what they said was unfair treatment of other government workers, who are not guaranteed back pay if they endure a closure.

"We are the board of directors of that government," said Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland. "I can't believe there's one of us, Mr. Speaker, that would serve on a board of directors and treat a large portion of our employees with such disrespect, with such lack of consideration, with such contempt at times as we treat our civilian employees."

But Republicans defended their measure, which would keep government operations funded through the middle of December.

"This is a bill to keep the government open," said Rep. Rob Woodall of Georgia.

Early in the day, Republicans exiting their closed-door meeting said they were united behind the one-year-delay strategy.

"I think conservatives are winning," said Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas. "Stop Obamacare and not stop the government is what we're hearing from folks at home, so I think leadership's listened."

Republicans insist their proposal doesn't have to lead to a government shutdown, and could even get some Democratic support in the Senate.

That is unlikely. Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state weighed in promptly after the proposal was announced:

"By pandering to the Tea Party minority and trying to delay the benefits of health care reform for millions of seniors and families, House Republicans are now actively pushing for a completely unnecessary government shutdown."

On an example of how Reagan and O'Neill would "fight like brothers" but find ways to work it out

[They were at a summit] about a deficit problem which was arising the year after Reagan took office and got his big tax cuts through, and his defense increase ... and the deficits were far beyond what they expected or what they could defend, and they needed Democrats to sign on to some kind of change in Social Security.

... I discovered outside the meeting [that] staffers for the president were passing the word that the Democrats were the ones who were ... urging a cut on Social Security benefits. And I told [O'Neill] ... and said to the president, 'Are you calling for a cut in Social Security or not?' And Reagan said, 'No, I'm not doing it, it's you guys that are doing it.' And the speaker said, 'No, I'm not doing it.'

So they got nowhere in that meeting but there was good chemistry there ... these guys were working together. And before the end of the year, before the big midterm election of '82, the speaker backed the president in raising taxes to make up for the excessive deficits from the year before, and he went on the floor of the House and told the Republican members, 'You're here because of Reagan, you owe him your loyalty,' and Reagan said in his diary that day [that] it was very strange to have Tip on his side on this issue. So this is the pattern: they would fight like brothers, and then they would deal.

On the ways that Reagan was willing to compromise

He was far more of a political figure than we think of. We think of him as a philosopher and the leader of ... the conservative moment. ... He wanted Social Security to be voluntary, he didn't like Medicare, he campaigned against it ... those are all in the history books, on the record. And yet ... when he was governor of California, he signed a pro-choice bill.

... He would compromise. He would compromise on making Social Security the strong program that it is today. He didn't just vote to keep it alive, he voted to keep it strong and keep the revenue flowing into it so there'd be enough money to pay for the retirees benefits. He really did make a decision there. And I got to tell you, I think the difference between him and a true purist is that he would always say, 'I'll fight as hard as I can and then I'll make the best deal I can.' And he did that on spending, on taxing, on defense.

On his own interviewing style

More With Chris Matthews

The Two-Way

In Tense Confrontation, Chris Matthews, RNC Chair Priebus Debate 'Race Card'

The author is a Syrian citizen living in Damascus who is not being further identified for safety reasons.

The young men of Syria account for many of those fighting on both sides of the country's civil war. Yet those on the sidelines of the conflict are facing heavy burdens of their own.

All over Syria, many young men, and particularly those from rebellious towns, spend their days holed up at home to avoid running into trouble with the Syrian authorities.

Some want to avoid compulsory military service required of most young men. Others live in areas where the rebels are active, and therefore are suspected of being rebel fighters or at least sympathizers.

In parts of the Arab world, particularly in conservative, traditional communities, the streets are full of men while women are relatively scarce. But in parts of Syria, this dynamic has been reversed.

In the embattled province of Homs, displaced families have taken shelter anywhere they can in the city. But with government checkpoints all around them, many men stay indoors while the women go out to run errands and buy food.

The same holds true in other areas where the government still has a strong presence, including the capital Damascus and all along Syria's Mediterranean coast.

Once Detained, Now A Recluse

Abdulrahman is a young man in the capital who only leaves his house on the days when the government authorities do not setup a checkpoint at the end of his street. Otherwise, he runs the risk of being harassed, detained and imprisoned, something he says he already experienced.

Related NPR Stories

Parallels

The Deadly Checkpoint That Divides Syria's Biggest City

Both of the Hillary Clinton biopics that drew protests from the Republican National Committee have now been canceled before even being made.

As we reported in August, the RNC had "unanimously passed a resolution preventing the committee from partnering with CNN and NBC for debates if they don't drop their Hillary Clinton productions ahead of the 2016 presidential election."

The GOP accused the networks of showing "clear favoritism."

CNN was planning a documentary. NBC was planning to give the former first lady, former secretary of state and potential 2016 Democratic presidential contender a historical-fiction treatment in a mini-series. The networks said in August that the RNC's objections were unwarranted.

But now, documentary filmmaker Charles Ferguson writes at The Huffington Post that he's pulling the plug on the CNN production because:

Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that:

"NBC, in a statement, said it canceled its mini-series 'after reviewing and prioritizing our slate of movie/mini-series development.' Several NBC executives denied there had been any pressure from the Clinton side that affected the decision. Nor was the unhappiness of members of NBC's News division a critical factor, they said.

"One senior NBC executive said that NBC did not specifically bow to pressure from either the Republican National Committee or the Clinton camp. But the executive acknowledged that the Clinton project had already generated so much criticism that it was deemed not worth pursuing because it would only invite more as it went into production. The NBC executives would not speak for attribution because the network was limiting comment to its official statement."

John Boehner might not have the worst job in politics, but not many people envy the House speaker these days.

The GOP rank and file won't listen to him, grass-roots conservatives don't trust him, and Democrats say he can't deliver votes.

For a man who occupies the most powerful position in the House, Boehner's inability — or, possibly, his unwillingness — to persuade his fellow House Republicans to accept a budget without delaying or blocking parts of the Affordable Care Act has resulted in the first government shutdown since 1996.

"He's a man who is in place at the wrong time," says James Thurber, a longtime observer of Congress at American University. "He has a caucus he can't control."

Boehner is in a position that might not work out too well for anyone. With a 32-seat majority at the moment, he has few votes to lose and not enough members of his own majority that he can count on. Making any deals with Democrats at this point puts his own job at risk.

"Clearly, Boehner has one of the most difficult jobs in Washington, trying to lead what is a borderline ungovernable caucus," says Chris Krueger, a former House GOP aide and now a policy analyst with Guggenheim Securities.

No Way To Negotiate

President Obama over the past couple of years has complained that Boehner can't deliver the votes on any deal they might strike. For his part, Boehner has said the president has changed the outline of deals as they've gone along and refuses now to meet one-on-one with Obama.

Within his own institution, Boehner hasn't always been able to push through packages he seemed to want. Last week, he floated a plan to wed spending cuts and regulatory changes to an increase in the government's authority to take on more debt. It went nowhere with his conference.

This was reminiscent of Boehner's failed attempt last December to put forward a budgetary "Plan B," which had to be shelved after he couldn't persuade enough House Republicans to support it.

Boehner has, on three occasions, allowed significant legislation to pass largely with the support of Democrats. But advancing bills that lack support from a majority of his GOP colleagues isn't something he can do very often.

Part of the problem is the unrest within the GOP conference: A dozen Republicans voted against his second term as speaker in January. Conservatives haven't grown much happier with his leadership. And they've been prodded to resist Boehner's compromises by forces outside the chamber, such as Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz.

"A guy has to worry more about his Twitter universe and niche followers than [about the] the leaders of the House," says Terry Holt, a former Boehner aide, referring to the relative lack of leverage that House leadership has these days over individual members, compared with outside forces who threaten to mount challenges to their re-election bids.

Long Climb To The Top

None of this could have been what Boehner wanted when he finally reached the top spot after 20 years in the House.

Boehner himself was a rebel in his first term in Congress, part of the "Gang of Seven" freshman Republicans who prodded the institution to face up to the abuses of a banking scandal.

In 1994, he was part of the team that helped win the GOP its first House majority in 40 years and was rewarded with the fourth most powerful slot in the leadership.

He lost it four years later, after Republicans lost seats in the 1998 midterm elections. Rather than fade away, however, Boehner took over the chairmanship of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, helping craft laws covering pensions and school vouchers and working with Democratic Senate lion Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts to pass the landmark education law known as No Child Left Behind.

"He's a serious legislator and these Band-Aid solutions can't be what he wanted his speakership to be about," Krueger says.

Leadership Frustrations

Typically, leaders who work out deals gain strength from them. Each win creates momentum going into the next fight.

In Boehner's case, every major bill that has passed into law with President Obama's signature has been seen as a setback that makes his troops more eager to dig their trenches deeper next time.

The fact that the budget process itself has come undone makes Boehner's job harder. Speakers in the past could help recalcitrant members see the light by promising goodies for their constituents. Just about all of them could use a new bridge for their district, or an expansion of the local VA hospital.

But with earmarks, or even the entire idea of appropriations bills setting new priorities each year, seemingly a thing of the past, the speaker has lost that kind of leverage.

"That process is either nonfunctioning or dysfunctional, so it limits the power leaders have," says Holt, a media strategist with HDMK, a communications and lobbying consulting firm.

Posing Problems For Anyone

Thurber, who directs the Center for Congressional & Presidential Studies at American University, wonders whether Boehner isn't just about ready to pack it in.

"I think he sort of hopes to limp to the end [of his term] and then not run for Congress anymore," Thurber says. "It would be embarrassing to be there and be thrown out of the speakership."

Despite rumors that he will step down after the 2014 elections, Boehner is no quitter, Holt says. He recalls that after Boehner lost his leadership position back in 1998, the Ohio Republican sought to buck up his mopey staff.

"John stood up and said, 'Shhhh, listen people: No matter how you feel today, this is not the end,' " Holt says. "We believed him, and you can never count him out."

Boehner opened a news conference last Thursday by saying, "Oh, this ought to be a blast." But in general, if Boehner is frustrated, he's wearing that emotion lightly. He's continuing to issue statements and press releases placing the blame for the impending shutdown on Obama and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

Boehner has learned, Holt suggests, that politics and governance is a game without end. The speaker may indeed be resilient enough to get through the present crisis. But the job's not likely to get any easier.

"If the next speaker is a Democrat, they're going to have the same problems," Holt says.

In a rare move, the top Marine on Monday forced two generals into retirement after concluding they should be held accountable for failing to secure a base in Afghanistan against a Taliban attack that killed two Marines.

Gen. James Amos, the commandant of the Marine Corps, said that Maj. Gen. Charles M. Gurganus and Maj. Gen. Gregg A. Sturdevant "did not take adequate force protection measures" at Camp Bastion, a sprawling British-run airfield in southwestern Afghanistan that was the Taliban target.

The Sept. 14, 2012, attack by 15 Taliban fighters caught the Marines by surprise and resulted in the deaths of Lt. Col. Christopher K. Raible, 40, and Sgt. Bradley W. Atwell, 27. The Taliban also destroyed six Marine Harrier fighter jets valued at $200 million and badly damaged others. It was one of the most stunning and damaging attacks of the war. Fourteen of the 15 attackers were killed; one was captured.

Gurganus, who was the top American commander in that region of Afghanistan at the time, did not order a formal investigation after the attack. In June, Amos asked U.S. Central Command to investigate, and he said he decided to take action against the two generals after reviewing the results of that investigation.

"While I am mindful of the degree of difficulty the Marines in Afghanistan faced in accomplishing a demanding combat mission with a rapidly declining force, my duty requires me to remain true to the timeless axioms relating to command responsibility and accountability," Amos said.

Amos added that Gurganus bore "final accountability" for the lives and equipment under his command, and had made "an error in judgment" in underestimating the risk posed by the Taliban in the Bastion area of Helmand province, which included his own headquarters at a sprawling base known as Camp Leatherneck.

Sturdevant was in charge of Marine aviation in that region of Afghanistan. Amos said Sturdevant "did not adequately assess the force protection situation" at Bastion.

Amos asked the two generals to retire and they agreed.

Gurganus, who had referred to the Taliban's penetration of Camp Bastion's supposedly secure perimeter as a "lucky break," had been nominated for promotion to three-star rank; that nomination had been put on hold during the investigation. He will retire as a two-star.

A few weeks after the Taliban attack, Gurganus told a news conference that "there's no mystery" to how the Taliban managed to get onto the supposedly secure base and launch their deadly attack using rocket-propelled grenades.
Gurganus said they used simple wire cutters to penetrate the perimeter fence, which was not equipped with alarms. "We have sophisticated surveillance equipment, but it can't see everywhere, all the time," he said. "This was a well-planned attack. I make no excuses for it. This was well planned and it was well executed."

In fact, at least one of the guard towers near the Taliban fighters' entry point was unoccupied at the time, officials have said.