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As you gather with friends to watch the Olympics this weekend, why not prepare what they might serve in Sochi? Try, say, herring instead of chips.

But if you're really presenting food the Russian way, you'll need to make more than one snack. And get your libations in order.

Zakuski are often described as Russia's answer to tapas — a little bite to have with your drink.

They can be as simple as salted herring, or as rich as blini and caviar. Traditionally, when you welcome guests in from the cold (whether from the Moscow streets, or the hundreds of miles to a country estate), you give them a warming shot of vodka. And to protect your stomach and palate from the harsh vodka, you quickly follow it with a bite of zakuski.

The Salt

Kitchen Time Machine: A Culinary Romp Through Soviet History

There are a lot of things most people don't know about Arizona. For example, did you know it has two United States senators? Sure, one senator gets on all the Sunday morning talk shows and runs for President all the time, but it turns out, just like every other state, they've got another!

We've invited Sen. Jeff Flake to play a game called "Dude, that skijoring was sick!" As we enjoy the classic winter sports underway at the Winter Games in Sochi, we'll ask three questions about non-Olympic winter sports.

When Shirley Temple Black passed away earlier this week, many of the tributes mentioned one of the most iconic scenes in American movie history: The staircase dance that Temple performed with the Bill "Bojangles" Robinson in the 1935 movie The Little Colonel. They were the first interracial couple to dance on screen. But their partnership was more than just a movie milestone.

He was in his 50s. She was six. He called her darlin'; She called him Uncle Billy.

Robinson taught Temple his joyful, elegant tap-dancing routines. She thought he was the perfect partner.

In the 1980s, Black told NPR that Robinson taught her to feel the beat, rather than count it out.

"We held hands and I learned to dance from Bill by listening, not looking at the feet," she said. "It was kind of a magic between us."

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A high-stakes drama played out over the debt ceiling on Capitol Hill this week. It ended with President Obama getting exactly what he'd asked for — an extension of the Treasury's borrowing authority with no strings attached — and an even wider gulf between GOP congressional leaders and Tea Party-aligned conservatives.

Underlying the Republican rift was House Speaker John Boehner's determination to avoid another episode like last fall's government shutdown.

Boehner initially tried adding one sweetener after another to a debt limit extension, but none managed to get enough fellow Republicans on board. Resorting to a bill with no conditions — one that would win the votes of almost all the Democrats, but few Republicans — was an outcome Boehner seemed to anticipate while speaking with reporters last week.

"Mother Teresa is a saint now, but if the Congress wanted to make her a saint and attach that to the debt ceiling, we probably couldn't get 218 Republican votes," Boehner said.

On Tuesday, he bowed to that reality, telling his stunned caucus that he was offering a "clean" debt ceiling hike. His explanation afterward was simple.

"It's the fact that we don't have 218 votes. And when you don't have 218 votes, you have nothing," he said. "You've seen that before. We see it again."

Indeed, it was the sixth time since the start of last year that Boehner relied on House Democrats to pass legislation sharply opposed by Tea Party-backed members. President Obama praised those Democrats Friday while speaking at their annual retreat.

"The fact that we were able to pass a clean debt limit is just one example of why, when you guys are unified, you guys stick together, this country is better off," Obama said. "I could not be more thankful and more appreciative and prouder of what you're doing."

But Boehner's conservative critics are furious. Jenny Beth Martin, president and co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, started a nationwide petition this week demanding that Boehner be fired as speaker.

"Speaker Boehner is unable to lead the House of Representatives," Martin said. "He's certainly unable to lead his own caucus."

As he has done increasingly with other votes, Boehner ignored demands from conservative groups for lawmakers to oppose the clean debt limit bill. One such group was Heritage Action for America, whose spokesman, Dan Holler, expressed displeasure.

"The speaker and Majority Leader Cantor and others have always had the option of working with Democrats to pass these bills. And if that's the sort of Republican-controlled House they want — where they have Democrats that are the sort of de facto majority in terms of setting policy — that's a decision they can make," he said. "It's not the right one. But it's one that they control the floor and they have to make."

Late last year, on the day the House passed a bipartisan budget deal over outside groups' objections, Boehner made clear what he thought of them: "Are you kidding me?" he said.

That outburst punctuated Boehner's observation that such groups pushed for a government shutdown last fall despite doubting that it would work. A reporter asked if he was finally saying "no" to the Tea Party.

"I think they're misleading their followers," Boehner said. "They're pushing our members in places where they don't want to be and, frankly, I just think that they've lost all credibility."

And yet this was the very same speaker who, nearly three years ago, put the White House on notice that he expected some big concessions for raising the debt ceiling.

"Without significant spending cuts and changes in the way we spend the American people's money, there will be no increase in the debt limit," he said. "The cuts should be greater than the accompanying increase in the debt limit that the president is given."

The showdown that then ensued led to a downgrade in the nation's credit rating. The harm that the episode caused Republicans was compounded by last year's shutdown.

This time, Boehner's decision to attach no strings to a debt limit extension spared the nation one more crisis — and his party another political black eye. It also allowed most Republicans to vote against a measure they likely knew, in the end, had to pass.

The step is not as quick. The swing is not as crisp or as powerful. In the career of every great athlete, there comes a moment of profound reckoning: Should you continue when your skills have clearly diminished? If you can't be the absolute best anymore, should you settle for just being really, really good?

This week, beloved New York Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter announced that the 2014 season will be his last. Age and injuries have done what opponents rarely could: Stopped Jeter from excelling. And I imagine he faced a question that all renowned athletes eventually must ponder, from professionals like Jeter and NFL quarterback Peyton Manning, now in the waning days of his career, to Olympians like Michael Phelps: Should you retire at the top of your game or hang on for a few more tries?

Alfred Tennyson had an answer. In "Ulysses," the 20th century British poet with a beard worthy of the Boston Red Sox argued that we should keep going, keep pushing forward, even as twilight settles in. He was writing about a king, but it could have been a famous shortstop: "I am become a name;/For always roaming with a hungry heart/Much have I seen and known . . . and drunk delight of battle with my peers." Nothing is worse, Tennyson implied, than sitting in the stands when you could be out on the field: "How dull it is to pause, to make an end,/To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!"

The poet's big finish might just be enough to persuade Jeter to reconsider: "Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'/We are not now that strength which in old days/Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;/One equal temper of heroic hearts,/Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will/To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

In other words: Batter up.

Julia Keller is an author and critic. Her latest book is Bitter River.

You can read "Ulysses" in full at the Poetry Foundation.

[Editor's Note: This piece references plot points from the first season of House of Cards. If you've been waiting a year to binge-watch it, consider this your spoiler alert.]

When Netflix's groundbreaking online series House of Cards releases its second season to the world Friday — unleashing 13 new episodes about a wily congressman willing to kill to reach the vice presidency — fans will get more than another jolt of TV's most addictive political drama.

They'll also see a series that's redefining just how bad a television antihero can be.

The action centers on Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey's silky smooth Francis Underwood, a Democrat from South Carolina who blends velvety charm and mesmerizing menace like no other character on television.

In the show's second season, his measured, honey-coated drawl even makes a conversation about elevating a junior congresswoman into his old job somehow sound like a veiled threat and comforting promise all at once.

"What if I suggested that you could serve in leadership this term...to replace me as [House Majority] Whip?" Underwood coos to Jacqueline Sharp, a third-term Congresswoman from California played by Molly Parker (Deadwood; The Firm).

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Spacey And Fincher Make A 'House Of Cards'

In California's farm rich Central Valley, where President Obama meets Friday with farmers and others who are affected by the state's historic drought, Todd Allen nods towards a field of brown, baked dirt passing by the right side of his truck.

"Here's a plot of ground that I'm not going to be able to farm. That's 160 acres," he says.

Allen owns a farm about an hour's drive west of Fresno, where half of the country's produce is grown. Usually Allen's fields contain cantaloupe, cotton, tomato and wheat.

"But now because of the drought I'm going to have leave it fallow," he says.

Fallow. Or unplanted. Allen says he's going to have to do that with 450 of his 600 acres and that it could put him out of business.

The drought is forcing hundreds of thousands of acres in the Central Valley to go unplanted this year.

But many farmers, like Allen, aren't just blaming Mother Nature for that.

"Twenty to thirty percent of our water is gone because of a little fish," he says.

That little fish is the delta smelt. You've probably never heard of it. But in California, it's representative of a decades old clash over water allocation.

There's not a lot of water in California. And there are a lot of people who want it: environmentalists, farmers, city folk.

The delta smelt is one species, caught in the middle of the debate.

"It's a convenient boogeyman," says Adam Keats. "It's a scapegoat."

Keats, who's with the Center for Biological Diversity, says the smelt are a key part of a complex ecosystem. They live in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, where much of the Central Valley's water comes from.

They are als, on the endangered species list.

And that means some of the Delta's water that would go to farmers like Allen is instead, allocated to the fish.

The result is a farmer versus fish controversy that's been going on for years in the state. This year, that political fight has enticed Washington.

"How you can favor a fish over people, is something that people in my part of the world would never understand," said House Speaker John Boehner during a visit to California several weeks ago.

He was there to support a bill — introduced by California's House Republicans — that aims to get farmers more water by rolling back environmental laws like the ones that protect the smelt.

Senate Democrats countered this week, with a bill that would give money for drought relief, and allow more flexibility around those environmental laws without gutting them.

Neither is likely to become law. So why all of the effort?

"Politicians don't want to let a good crisis go to waste," says Tom Holyoke, a professor of water and politics at Fresno State University.

He says that's especially true with mid-term elections coming up. Just turn on the TV, where there are ads like this one from Republican Doug Ose, who's standing in the dried out bottom of Folsom Lake: "We're facing a real water crisis here in Sacramento. Where's our representatives?"

The ads illustrate just how much the drought is going to be a part of campaign season. Ose is trying to unseat a freshman House Democrat who just barely won in 2012.

Democrats are doing the same in vulnerable Republican districts, targeting the GOP legislation that puts farmer's needs first.

"Saying 'we should re-allocate water to my constituents' doesn't require a whole lot of courage and is really an act of opportunism," says Michael Hanneman, an agriculture and resource economics professor at UC Berkeley.

He says that type of grandstanding doesn't accomplish anything.

California Governor Jerry Brown would agree. He and some state lawmakers have been annoyed with Washington's involvement — particularly the Republican sponsored bill. Brown calls it unwelcome and divisive.

The state's key water users have made efforts to reconcile their differences. But Hanneman says lawmakers haven't made the difficult, far-ranging decisions that are needed.

"They have stayed away from it. And they have stayed away from it because it's a situation where there's going to be winners and losers. So they don't want to touch it," he said.

But he says, sooner or later, they're going to have to. Barring a miracle-March, this drought isn't going to go away.

The federal government on Friday issued guidelines for banks seeking to do business with the legal marijuana industry, stopping short of a blanket immunity for them, but strongly indicating that prosecutions for such crimes as money laundering would be unlikely.

NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports that the Department of Justice and Treasury Department on Friday sought to "clarify rules for banks trying to navigate the murky legal waters of the marijuana business. Murky, because pot is legal in a growing number of states, but remains illegal under federal law."

"In the absence of specific federal guidance, most banks had kept marijuana businesses at arms' length, denying them loans, checking or savings accounts. [That] meant, like the street-drug trade, many state-sanctioned pot-sellers were doing cash-only trade," Yuki says.

The banks have feared that federal regulators and law enforcement authorities would punish them for doing business even with state-licensed operations.

The Denver Post reports:

"In a joint statement, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, said the move gives 'greater financial transparency' to an industry that remains illegal in nearly every state."

"It also makes clear that banks would be helping law enforcement with 'information that is particularly valuable' in filing regular reports that offer insights about how marijuana businesses work."

'"Law enforcement will now have greater insight into marijuana business activity generally," FinCEN said in a news release, 'and will be able to focus on activity that presents high-priority concerns.'"

The world's largest solar power plant, made up of thousands of mirrors focusing the sun's energy, has officially started operations in Nevada's Mojave Desert.

The $2.2 billion 400-megawatt Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, which covers five-square miles near the Nevada-California border and has three 40-story towers, where the light is focused, is a joint project by NRG Energy, Google, and BrightSource Energy. The project received a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee.

The plant, which went online Thursday, is to power 140,000 homes. It was dedicated by U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.

The San Jose Mercury News' Siliconbeat blog says:

"Unlike the photovoltaic solar panels that are common on the roofs of homes and commercial buildings, solar thermal technology concentrates the sun's rays to boil water and generate steam. Solar thermal, also known as concentrating solar power, or CSP, is land-intensive, requires access to transmission lines and typically faces several environmental reviews and permitting hurdles before projects can be built in the desert."

Iran's economy may be struggling, but that doesn't mean everyone is suffering.

In a downtown Tehran restaurant, a well-dressed young man who asks to be identified only as Ahmad sits with a friend enjoying a water pipe of flavored tobacco.

Ahmad is a bit vague about what he does – first he says he's in the petrochemical business, then describes himself as an independent trader. He shares the general consensus that President Hassan Rouhani has brought a better atmosphere to the country, but no real economic changes.

Ahmad's own problems, however, might not elicit much sympathy from most Iranians.

"The regulations definitely need to be changed," he says. "Take importing cars to Iran: The tariff is 105 percent on each car. I wanted to import two Mercedes, but you can only think about one."

Income inequality is one problem Rouhani faces, but the Iranian president says better economic times are coming for his country. Iranians are desperate to believe him, but beyond the marginal improvements that come with greater confidence in the new administration, very little has changed on the ground.

Iranians are pinning their hopes on a nuclear agreement and better relations with the outside world — achievements seen as difficult at best.

Another major problem that Rouhani faces in lifting Iran's economy is the opposition of entrenched interests who profit from Iran's isolation. For instance, the powerful Revolutionary Guard is a major economic player.

One graduate student who gives only his first name, Arman, says things hit a low point under former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

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Iran's President Rouhani Gets The Benefit Of The Doubt, For Now

The nominee to be U.S. ambassador to, say, Hungary should be able to explain what the U.S. strategic interests are in that country — right?

But Colleen Bell, a soap opera producer and President Obama's appointee to be U.S. envoy to that European country, struggled to answer that simple question during her recent confirmation hearing.

"Well, we have our strategic interests, in terms of what are our key priorities in Hungary, I think our key priorities are to improve upon, as I mentioned, the security relationship and also the law enforcement and to promote business opportunities, increase trade ..." she responded, grasping for words, to a question by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on Jan. 16. (You can see the full hearing here.)

As McCain tweeted later about the confirmation hearings that day: "You can't make this up."

President Obama used to say that he wanted to rely more on career diplomats to serve as U.S. ambassadors. But the State Department's professional association, the American Foreign Service Association or AFSA, says that he has named a higher percentage of political appointees than his predecessors. He's given plum assignments to political donors such as Bell, who have made headlines recently with embarrassing gaffes at their confirmation hearings.

The AFSA has been so worried about how ambassadors are chosen that it's drawing up a list of basic qualifications for the job: knowing, for example, what U.S. interests are in the country where they are going to work.

The report, to be released later this month, comes at a time when there's been increased scrutiny of Obama's picks.

The AFSA, which keeps track of appointments, says in his second term so far, Obama has named a record number of political appointees, more than half, as compared to other recent presidents, who tend to name donors and friends to about one-third of the ambassadorial posts.

Ronald Neumann, president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, doesn't have anything against political appointees: His father was one.

However, unlike some of the campaign "bundlers" — wealthy fund-raisers who bundle contributions from a variety of donors — getting nominations in the Obama administration, Neumann's father was a professor of international relations, who had traveled and written extensively about the Middle East before serving as ambassador to Afghanistan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia.

"He was an enormously competent appointee who served four presidents, three embassies and two parties, which is kind of unusual," Neumann says of his father. The two men used to joke that they "came into the foreign service together" — his father at the top and Neumann at the bottom.

So Neumann, who like his father served as ambassador to Afghanistan, tries to take an even-handed approach, saying all ambassadors, whether political appointees or career diplomats, need to be vetted properly.

"There is a law, which both parties ignore, about ambassadors needing to be qualified: the Foreign Service Act of 1980," Neumann points out. "People still get through even if they are manifestly not qualified."

There have been some particularly tough confirmation hearings lately, though. The same day McCain quizzed Bell, the Arizona senator was also perplexed when the nominee to become ambassador to Norway, hotel executive George Tsunis, described a party in that country's ruling coalition as "a fringe element." And then there was the recent grilling of Obama's pick for ambassador to Argentina.

At times it's a good idea to have someone with the president's ear out in key countries around the world. But Robert Silverman, president of the AFSA, says most other major powers don't do things this way.

"They send us career professional diplomats as ambassadors," he says, suggesting that "those countries know that career professionals are the people most likely to further their country's interests in the United States. It is a simple matter of sending the right people to the right jobs."

That's why he asked a group of former ambassadors — five political appointees and five career diplomats — to draw up the soon-to-be published list of the basic qualifications for U.S. ambassadors.

Last year, Muslim militias helped overthrow the country's Christian president of the Central African Republic and marauded through Christian areas. Today, the circumstances are reversed, with Christian militias terrorizing Muslim communities and prompting a mass exodus.

French and African peacekeepers have mostly failed to stop the violence as the isolated country of 4 million continues to unravel.

Wazili Yaya, a Muslim, has witnesses the recent violence.

He has been custodian of the Ali Babalo Mosque in the capital Bangui since a wealthy merchant built it 19 years ago. Its painted arches are a testament to a Muslim community that makes up a minority of the population in this mainly Christian country — yet account for the vast majority of its traders and merchant class.

An unlocked door opens on a low white basin. This is where we prepare the corpses, he says. There were 40 this week. He pulls out his cell phone to show photos.

All the bodies show signs of violence far beyond what was needed to kill: castrations, decapitations, machete wounds to the head.

Each time he gets a body, he takes a photo of it.

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One of the biggest problems facing low-income families in the U.S. today is a lack of affordable housing.

According to a recent report by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard, more than 7 million low-income households now spend more than half of their income for rent, which leaves little money for anything else. And the situation is expected to get worse.

Now, a coalition of nonprofit groups is trying to turn things around with a new, more business-like approach to buying real estate. They hope to preserve housing units that low- and moderate-income families can afford.

Christopher LoPiano is senior vice president for real estate at Community Preservation and Development Corp., a nonprofit that develops, owns and operates affordable housing in the Washington, D.C., area and Virginia.

LoPiano says it was frustrating when his group made offers to buy eight properties in Virginia over the past few years and got the same answer every time.

" 'No, thank you.' That's what kept happening to us," he says. " 'No thank you.' "

It wasn't the price. LoPiano says his group was competitive with other buyers when it came to price.

"What we're not competitive on is closing quickly," he says, "because we're dependent upon public financing, and public financing just takes longer."

LoPiano says such real estate deals often involve government bond issues and housing tax breaks, which can take months, even a year, to be approved.

"And sellers in today's market are not willing to wait that," he says.

So LoPiano's group and a coalition of other housing nonprofits, called the Housing Partnership Network, decided it was time to get creative — to do what private investors have done for decades. They became the first nonprofits to form what's called a real estate investment trust, or REIT. It allows investors to pool their funds to buy property and collect dividends — and involves no public financing.

The nonprofit groups figured they could offer potential investors a modest return on their money — about 5 to 7 percent. It's less than what they'd get from a private-sector REIT, but the groups also appealed to investors' desire to preserve affordable housing. And they got several big ones — Prudential, Morgan Stanley, Citibank and the Ford and MacArthur foundations — to chip in an initial $100 million.

LoPiano says the nonprofits' new REIT has been a "game changer."

Dollar For Dollar: Adventures In Investing

How To Invest In Real Estate Without Being A Landlord

Here's a conundrum.

The Golden State ranks as the second best place for a woman to achieve economic security, according to 14 key measures. That's according to a study from the Center for American Progress.

Paid family leave? Check!
Great early childhood education? Check!
Paid sick leave? Check!

However Hispanic women in the state only make 44 cents to every dollar a white man makes. That makes the 6.6 million women, or 17 percent of the entire state of California, the lowest paid population, of any race, in any state.

Let me say that again.

Hispanic women, in a state where the number of Latinos is poised to surpass non-Hispanic whites this March, are on average earning the lowest amount of any women, anywhere, in the United States.

The pay disparity is especially ironic in California, where women as a whole make amongst the highest wage nationwide at 84 cents to every white man's dollar. The national average for women is 77 cents.

So what's going on?

Anna Chu, the researcher who conducted the study, says part of it has to do with the types of jobs they are working. "A lot of times we find that many women of color are not working in high paying industries."

In fact, two of the top three industries women in California work in are social services and retail, areas not exactly known for their lucrative earnings potential.

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Italy's Prime Minister Enrico Letta will step down after his own party launched a no-confidence vote against him, paving the way for the young and popular mayor of Florence to assume the post.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

"Mr. Letta's resignation brings an end to a government that is barely 10 months old and has teetered on the brink of collapse virtually from its birth. It will clear the way for [President Giorgio] Napolitano to ask Matteo Renzi to try to form a new government."

Scotland, as we've told you previously, is voting later this year on breaking away from the U.K.

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond had said that the new country would retain the pound as its currency and take on a portion of the U.K.'s debt. Britain's message today [Thursday]: Not so fast.

"If Scotland walks away from the U.K., it walks away from the pound," said Chancellor George Osborne. [You can watch his comments here.]

Osborne's remarks were supported by members of all three major parties: the ruling Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, as well as the opposition Labour. The chancellor's comments came after recommendations made by Sir Nicholas Macpherson, the senior civil servant at the Treasury. He said a currency union with an independent Scotland was "fraught with difficulty."

Salmond, Scotland's first minister, supports independence, and he reacted angrily to Osborne's remarks, calling them "bluff, bluster and posturing." And, he said, if there was no deal on the pound, there won't be a deal on the U.K.'s $2.67 trillion debt, either.

"All the debt accrued up to the point of independence belongs legally to the Treasury, as they confirmed last month – and Scotland can't default on debt that's not legally ours," he said in a statement. "However, we've always taken the fair and reasonable position that Scotland should meet a fair share of the costs of that debt. But assets and liabilities go hand in hand, and – contrary to the assertions today – sterling and the Bank of England are clearly shared UK assets."

Osborne's remarks mark a hardening of the anti-independence posture by the U.K.'s politicians. Just last week, Prime Minister David Cameron made a speech in which he urged the rest of the U.K. – England, Wales and Northern Ireland – to tell Scottish voters to reject independence when they vote in September.

"If we lost Scotland, if the U.K. changed, we would rip the rug from under our own reputation," he said. "The plain fact is we matter more in the world together."

It's unclear what a "yes" vote for independence would mean economically. Diageo, the company that owns whisky brands such as Johnnie Walker, says it would make no difference, a comment echoed by the head of Barclays bank. The head of the oil giant BP, however, says independence would create "uncertainties."

Polls show that support for independence is low, but many Scots are still undecided.

Comcast, as we reported earlier, wants to buy Time Warner Cable for about $45 billion. The deal, which Comcast confirmed this morning, would bring together the nation's No. 1 (Comcast) and No. 2 (Time Warner) cable companies.

NPR's David Folkenflik filed this report for our Newscast Desk:

"If the deal goes through, Comcast will serve about thirty million American households in cable tv alone

"The news was broken by a reporter for one of Comcast's many television properties — CNBC. Comcast also owns NBC and Universal studios. The purchase would stave off a lesser bid for Time Warner by a smaller rival, Charter, and it would give Comcast more leverage when it negotiates with the parent companies of such major cable channels as Fox News and ESPN over how much to pay to carry their programming.

"Federal anti-trust lawyers at the Justice Department are likely to review the deal, which would mean fewer players competing to win cable franchises from regional and local governments.

"Time Warner Cable itself is a remnant of an even larger mega-deal - the creation of AOL Time Warner — now considered one of the worst mergers in U.S. history."

Fifteen years ago an unwelcome viral visitor entered the U.S., and we've been paying for it ever since.

The U.S recorded its first case of West Nile virus back in 1999. Since then, the disease has spread across the lower 48 states and cost the country around $800 million, scientists reported this week in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

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In America, total student loan debt tops $1 trillion and a four-year college degree can cost as much as a house — leaving many families wondering if college is really worth the cost.

Yes, a new study of young people finds. The study, released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center, looks at income and unemployment among young adults. Paul Taylor, executive vice president of special projects at Pew, says it's pretty much case closed when it comes to the benefits of going to college.

"In a modern, knowledge-based economy, the only thing more expensive than going to college is not going to college," he says.

College-educated young adults make more

Six months after Democratic Mayor Bob Filner left office in disgrace because more than a dozen women had stepped forward to accuse him of sexual harassment, San Diegans have chosen a Republican to take over.

On Tuesday, "Kevin Faulconer was elected by a wide margin over fellow Councilman David Alvarez," our colleagues at KPBS report. "The veteran Republican councilman soundly defeated his Democratic opponent 55 to 45 percent (with 86 percent of the vote counted.)"

The U-T San Diego says Faulconer's victory marks "a new chapter for the city" after Filner's "scandal-plagued tenure." Also, the U-T says:

"A Faulconer victory breathes new life into the local Republican Party by restoring its control of the mayor's office that its candidates have occupied for much of the past four decades. Faulconer also becomes the only Republican mayor of a top 10 U.S. city, making him one of the party's highest-profile leaders in the state.

"The results dashed the hopes of Alvarez to become San Diego's first Latino mayor and its youngest in nearly 120 years."

Michelle and Barack Obama found just the right spot to seat a gent going stag to Tuesday's state dinner: They plopped French President Francois Hollande down right between them in a giant party tent, and put the pshaw to all that drama about his solo trip to the U.S. after a very public breakup from his first lady.

The A-list guest roster for the biggest social event of Obama's second term - flush with celebrities, Democratic donors, politicians and business types - mostly tried not to go there, tactfully avoiding talk about "l'affaire Hollande."

"I don't get involved in those things," demurred actress Cicely Tyson, who at age 80 said she's been to plenty of state dinners over the years.

Former NAACP official Ben Jealous was nothing but admiring of the French intrigue.

"I think the French are way cooler than we are on a whole lot of fronts," he said, including way better gossip.

On a frigid night, the evening's pomp and pageantry were all designed to wrap Hollande in a comfy blanket of warmth, from the moment he stepped out of his limo and onto a red carpet on the White House north portico. The Obamas were there on the front steps to greet him, the first lady clad in a black and liberty blue silk gown by Carolina Herrera.

The dinner's celebrity quotient included actors Bradley Cooper, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Mindy Kaling and Tyson. Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert somehow managed to snag a seat right next to the first lady. There were plenty of politicians, per usual. And in a midterm election year, the Obamas invited in more than two dozen donors to Obama's campaigns and the Democratic Party. Among them were Irwin Jacobs, the Qualcomm Inc. founder who has given more than $2 million to pro-Obama super PACs, and Jane Stetson, the Democratic National Committee's finance chair.

One of the most frequent phrases of the night was "un peu." As in, nope, don't speak much French.

A few brave souls ventured out of their comfort zones to try a word or two.

"Oui, oui, oui," declared the Rev. Al Sharpton, sounding like he was reciting the nursery rhyme about the little piggies.

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson said wife, Michelle Rhee, taught him a couple of French phrases en route to the White House and declared, "I'm ready to bust 'em out."

Here goes: "bonsoir" and "bon appetit."

Bronx-born singer Mary J. Blige, the evening's entertainment, paused for a second when asked whether she had a French connection, then ventured: "Um, my last name is French."

When it finally came her time to sing - past 11 p.m., on a school night, no less - Blige belted out "Ain't Nobody" with such gusto she had both Obamas rocking in their chairs.

Obama, in his dinner toast, was deliberately sparing with his French.

He welcomed the guests with a hearty "bonsoir" and then confessed, "I have now officially exhausted my French."

He then delivered the requisite praises of all things French - "especially the wine."

Hollande delivered a good portion of his remarks in respectable English before switching back to French.

"We love Americans, although we don't always say so," he told the crowd. "And you love the French, but you're sometimes too shy to say so."

Amidst all the pleasantries and tactful chitchat, there was the occasional moment of candor.

Cosmopolitan editor Joanna Coles, asked about her KaufmanFranco black dress with a leather bodice, told reporters, "I was hoping it wasn't too slutty."

Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., drew a blank when reporters asked who designed her vibrant green dress. She called on her husband, Cass Sunstein, to check the label, and later dutifully reported Badgley Mischka.

Across the room from Hollande and Obama, veep-and-veep sat shoulder-to-shoulder: That would be Vice President Joe Biden and Louis-Dreyfus, star of HBO's comedy Veep.

The White House did its straight-faced best to keep the attention on anything but Hollande's personal life, preparing an outsized dinner-for-350 in a heated pavilion on the South Lawn that had patches of greenery and vines dripping from the ceiling.

The evening's four-course dinner celebrated American cuisine. The main course: dry-aged rib eye beef from a family farm in Colorado, with Jasper Hill Farm blue cheese from Vermont. And about that decadent dessert: The chefs used a paint sprayer to distribute a micro-thin layer of chocolate over the creamy ganache cake.

In the kind of awkward timing that gives protocol officers ulcers, the White House last fall invited Hollande and his longtime girlfriend, Valerie Trierweiler, to come for a state visit, the first such honor for France in two decades. But then just weeks ago, the two abruptly split after a tabloid caught a helmeted Hollande zipping via motorcycle to a liaison with actress Julie Gayet.

Six months after Democratic Mayor Bob Filner left office in disgrace because more than a dozen women had stepped forward to accuse him of sexual harassment, San Diegans have chosen a Republican to take over.

On Tuesday, "Kevin Faulconer was elected by a wide margin over fellow Councilman David Alvarez," our colleagues at KPBS report. "The veteran Republican councilman soundly defeated his Democratic opponent 55 to 45 percent (with 86 percent of the vote counted.)"

The U-T San Diego says Faulconer's victory marks "a new chapter for the city" after Filner's "scandal-plagued tenure." Also, the U-T says:

"A Faulconer victory breathes new life into the local Republican Party by restoring its control of the mayor's office that its candidates have occupied for much of the past four decades. Faulconer also becomes the only Republican mayor of a top 10 U.S. city, making him one of the party's highest-profile leaders in the state.

"The results dashed the hopes of Alvarez to become San Diego's first Latino mayor and its youngest in nearly 120 years."

Fifteen years ago an unwelcome viral visitor entered the U.S., and we've been paying for it ever since.

The U.S recorded its first case of West Nile virus back in 1999. Since then, the disease has spread across the lower 48 states and cost the country around $800 million, scientists reported this week in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

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Tom Brokaw, the NBC News correspondent who for years was one of America's favorite news anchors, has been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer that affects blood cells in bone marrow, the network says.

Saying that Brokaw "and his physicians are very encouraged with the progress he is making" as he undergoes treatment, NBC released a statement on Brokaw's behalf. Here it is:

"With the exceptional support of my family, medical team and friends, I am very optimistic about the future and look forward to continuing my life, my work and adventures still to come."

"I remain the luckiest guy I know."

"I am very grateful for the interest in my condition but I also hope everyone understands I wish to keep this a private matter."

Six months after Democratic Mayor Bob Filner left office in disgrace because more than a dozen women had stepped forward to accuse him of sexual harassment, San Diegans have chosen a Republican to take over.

On Tuesday, "Kevin Faulconer was elected by a wide margin over fellow Councilman David Alvarez," our colleagues at KPBS report. "The veteran Republican councilman soundly defeated his Democratic opponent 55 to 45 percent (with 86 percent of the vote counted.)"

The San Diego Union-Tribune says Faulconer's victory marks "a new chapter for the city" after Filner's "scandal-plagued tenure." Also, the Union-Tribune says:

"A Faulconer victory breathes new life into the local Republican Party by restoring its control of the mayor's office that its candidates have occupied for much of the past four decades. Faulconer also becomes the only Republican mayor of a top 10 U.S. city, making him one of the party's highest-profile leaders in the state.

"The results dashed the hopes of Alvarez to become San Diego's first Latino mayor and its youngest in nearly 120 years."

Carnival in Rio de Janeiro is a glittering affair that attracts tourists from all over the world. There is, however, a murky and sometimes violent underbelly to the celebrations that recently came under the spotlight after the murder of a top samba school official.

One evening last month, Marcello da Cunha Freire was leaving his office in Rio's Vila Isabel neighborhood when a car pulled up next to him.

"I was here just beside where it happened," says a witness who doesn't want to give her name for fear of reprisals. "I suddenly heard gunfire. I shut the door and hid and after a few minutes I heard at least six more shots. There was a lot of confusion, people shouting."

According to police, unknown assailants in a car opened fire on Freire, hitting him with three bullets. He was taken to hospital where he later died.

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Michelle and Barack Obama found just the right spot to seat a gent going stag to Tuesday's state dinner: They plopped French President Francois Hollande down right between them in a giant party tent, and put the pshaw to all that drama about his solo trip to the U.S. after a very public breakup from his first lady.

The A-list guest roster for the biggest social event of Obama's second term - flush with celebrities, Democratic donors, politicians and business types - mostly tried not to go there, tactfully avoiding talk about "l'affaire Hollande."

"I don't get involved in those things," demurred actress Cicely Tyson, who at age 80 said she's been to plenty of state dinners over the years.

Former NAACP official Ben Jealous was nothing but admiring of the French intrigue.

"I think the French are way cooler than we are on a whole lot of fronts," he said, including way better gossip.

On a frigid night, the evening's pomp and pageantry were all designed to wrap Hollande in a comfy blanket of warmth, from the moment he stepped out of his limo and onto a red carpet on the White House north portico. The Obamas were there on the front steps to greet him, the first lady clad in a black and liberty blue silk gown by Carolina Herrera.

The dinner's celebrity quotient included actors Bradley Cooper, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Mindy Kaling and Tyson. Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert somehow managed to snag a seat right next to the first lady. There were plenty of politicians, per usual. And in a midterm election year, the Obamas invited in more than two dozen donors to Obama's campaigns and the Democratic Party. Among them were Irwin Jacobs, the Qualcomm Inc. founder who has given more than $2 million to pro-Obama super PACs, and Jane Stetson, the Democratic National Committee's finance chair.

One of the most frequent phrases of the night was "un peu." As in, nope, don't speak much French.

A few brave souls ventured out of their comfort zones to try a word or two.

"Oui, oui, oui," declared the Rev. Al Sharpton, sounding like he was reciting the nursery rhyme about the little piggies.

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson said wife, Michelle Rhee, taught him a couple of French phrases en route to the White House and declared, "I'm ready to bust 'em out."

Here goes: "bonsoir" and "bon appetit."

Bronx-born singer Mary J. Blige, the evening's entertainment, paused for a second when asked whether she had a French connection, then ventured: "Um, my last name is French."

When it finally came her time to sing - past 11 p.m., on a school night, no less - Blige belted out "Ain't Nobody" with such gusto she had both Obamas rocking in their chairs.

Obama, in his dinner toast, was deliberately sparing with his French.

He welcomed the guests with a hearty "bonsoir" and then confessed, "I have now officially exhausted my French."

He then delivered the requisite praises of all things French - "especially the wine."

Hollande delivered a good portion of his remarks in respectable English before switching back to French.

"We love Americans, although we don't always say so," he told the crowd. "And you love the French, but you're sometimes too shy to say so."

Amidst all the pleasantries and tactful chitchat, there was the occasional moment of candor.

Cosmopolitan editor Joanna Coles, asked about her KaufmanFranco black dress with a leather bodice, told reporters, "I was hoping it wasn't too slutty."

Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., drew a blank when reporters asked who designed her vibrant green dress. She called on her husband, Cass Sunstein, to check the label, and later dutifully reported Badgley Mischka.

Across the room from Hollande and Obama, veep-and-veep sat shoulder-to-shoulder: That would be Vice President Joe Biden and Louis-Dreyfus, star of HBO's comedy Veep.

The White House did its straight-faced best to keep the attention on anything but Hollande's personal life, preparing an outsized dinner-for-350 in a heated pavilion on the South Lawn that had patches of greenery and vines dripping from the ceiling.

The evening's four-course dinner celebrated American cuisine. The main course: dry-aged rib eye beef from a family farm in Colorado, with Jasper Hill Farm blue cheese from Vermont. And about that decadent dessert: The chefs used a paint sprayer to distribute a micro-thin layer of chocolate over the creamy ganache cake.

In the kind of awkward timing that gives protocol officers ulcers, the White House last fall invited Hollande and his longtime girlfriend, Valerie Trierweiler, to come for a state visit, the first such honor for France in two decades. But then just weeks ago, the two abruptly split after a tabloid caught a helmeted Hollande zipping via motorcycle to a liaison with actress Julie Gayet.

Kayla Williams and Brian McGough met in Iraq in 2003, when they were serving in the 101st Airborne Division. She was an Arabic linguist; he was a staff sergeant who had earned a Bronze Star. In October of that year, at a time when they were becoming close but not yet seeing each other, McGough was on a bus in a military convoy when an IED went off, blowing out the front door and window.

"Essentially a piece of shrapnel went through the back of my head, burrowed the skull from the back of my head past my ear, out through where my eye is, and while doing this it also ripped some brain matter out," McGough tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

He was left with physical and cognitive problems he's still recovering from, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder. He has experienced periods of depression, paranoia and rage.

Williams and McGough started seeing each other early in his recovery, after they had returned to the U.S. They've stayed together in spite of the obstacles, including the rages that he directed at her. They married in 2005, just days before she went on a book tour to promote her memoir, Love My Rifle More Than You, about being a young woman in the Army serving in Iraq. Now she has a new memoir about her relationship with her husband, Plenty of Time When We Get Home: Love and Recovery in the Aftermath of War.

Dr. Kevin Fong works on "the edges" of medicine — researching how humans survive extremes of heat, cold, trauma, outer space and deep sea. "We're still exploring the human body and what medicine can do in the same way that the great explorers of the 20th century and every age before them explored the world," he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

In his book Extreme Medicine, Fong describes how avant garde medicine is challenging our understanding of how our bodies work and the boundary between life and death.

"You're taking this headlong plunge into the unknown hoping only that good fortune and survival might lie in wait," he says.

Fong is an anesthesiologist who is also trained in intensive care medicine. He's the founder of The Center for Altitude, Space and Extreme Environment Medicine, at the University College London, where he's also a professor of physiology.

In the heart of New York City's Spanish Harlem, women from Morocco to Mexico arrive before dawn to crank up the ovens at Hot Bread Kitchen.

Despite their different cultures and languages, this non-profit training bakery says most of its participants have one thing in common: they all grew up learning how to bake traditional breads.

To work at HBK, women and men have to be foreign-born and low-income. And they have to want to become financially independent through a baking career. At the kitchen, they have the chance to take what they know and blend it with language lessons and commercial baking and management to shape their futures.

HBK is one of a growing number of non-profit kitchens which double as training centers and commercial businesses — like La Cocina in San Francisco and Hope & Main in Rhode Island. The trend has been spurred by a growing awareness of business opportunities for local food entrepreneurs and donors' willingness to give the less-advantaged a better shot at tapping those opportunities.

The Salt

San Francisco Kitchen Lends Low-Income Food Entrepreneurs A Hand

Wednesday, the American women's hockey team meets its arch rival Canada on the ice in Sochi at the Winter Olympics. It's an early round game, but when it comes to these two teams, which are expected to meet in the gold medal game, there's no such thing as a low-stakes match.

When they meet on the ice, things get heated: A match between the two teams in late December turned into a brawl. After the "melee," the referees handed out 10 fighting majors and other infractions.

Tuesday's protest is unlikely to have the same effect. It doesn't have the backing and reach of Internet powerhouses, the way the SOPA strike did. For example, while Google reportedly supports the bill — and sent out an email today about it to a few million users — Google isn't talking about it on its homepage.

And the end result won't be as drastic: Lawmakers aren't voting on this immediately, though it already has significant bipartisan support in the House.

"We're not expecting this to stop a bill that's about to pass, like in the case of SOPA and PIPA," April Glaser of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told NBC Bay Area last week.

But Segal says the organizers hope the protest will show lawmakers "that there's going to be ongoing public pressure until these reforms are instituted."

The USA Freedom Act could end government mass surveillance programs like the NSA's call records collection, the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in November. But it also warned that "the NSA has a long history of twisting the language of statutes to argue for surveillance authority."

The bill's two sponsors — Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis. — weren't always working alongside open-Internet activists. Leahy authored PIPA, one of the bills at the root of the 2012 protests, and in 2005 Sensenbrenner introduced the USA Patriot Act, which the Freedom Act would amend. Sensenbrenner said last July that he was "extremely troubled" that the FBI had used the Patriot Act to justify collecting phone records in bulk from Verizon.

All Tech Considered

Feds Can't Enforce Net Neutrality: What This Means For You

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This is the second in a very occasional series of posts in which we interview inanimate objects during fever dreams. This particular interview is with a paper bag that actor Shia LaBeouf put over his head during the premiere of Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac: Volume I at the Berlin International Film Festival.

What's that written on you?

It says "I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE."

Huh.

I didn't write it.

No, I know. I'm just ... I'm thinking about it. It's perplexing.

You're telling me. You get to get up and leave this interview and never think about me again. This is permanent marker. Permanent.

So the intent is not to attract attention?

You're asking about the intent? I'm a bag. Ask me a bag question.

Oh. Sure. So ... how long have you been a bag?

Are you serious? This is your question? Why am I even here?

No, no, no. Sorry. So what were you doing before the film festival?

I was folded up, Cronkite.

Oh. Right. Okay. Well, was it fun being part of the festival?

It was ... well, I don't want to get philosophical.

That's okay. That's okay. Everybody wants to know how you feel.

The thing is, it's not what I was made for, you know? A bag, you know, its true purpose is to hold things. And I'm sort of a special bag; I'm a little bigger than a lunch bag, or what we call a "peewee," and I'm smaller than a big grocery bag, which we call a "venti." I'm right there in the middle. I'm good for takeout, I'm good for, like, picking up a few groceries on the way home. What I am not made for is being part of some actor's publicity stunt.

Gee ... that's sort of sad.

And he cut holes. He cut holes in my side. He cut holes for his little eyes, and he wrote all over me — I can see it when I look in a mirror — and now I'm ruined for actually holding anything. I can no longer do bag work. I'm like some kind of monster.

Do you talk to your friends about it?

I don't have a lot of friends. I'm in a dumpster right now.

Oh my gosh, are you okay?

It smells.

Can I ... do you need me to contact your family and tell them where you are?

You don't want to talk to them.

Why not?

My mother's an old bag.

Er.

That was a joke.

Oh, oh, right. Sure.

See? I'm funny. I can do comedy. I'm wasted sitting here in this dumpster with writing all over me. That dude, I swear.

When the federal government hits its debt ceiling at the end of the month, don't expect another big red-on-blue confrontation.

The appetite in the House Republican conference for that kind of debt-defying standoff isn't what it was last fall when the nation was hit by the double whammy of the debt limit and partial federal government shutdown.

And the House GOP can't even agree on what points to negotiate with President Obama — who has said he's not willing to negotiate on the debt ceiling anyway.

As a result, there's now the possibility that the GOP failure to find intraparty agreement may lead to the very thing Obama has been wanted all along — a clean debt ceiling bill. But he would get it by default, so to speak.

Steve Bell, a fiscal expert at the Bipartisan Policy Center and former Republican Senate aide who's familiar with House Republican discussions, says the two likeliest options at this point are a clean debt-ceiling bill or legislation linking an increase in the government's borrowing authority to restoration of recent cuts to military pension benefits.

The lowered cost-of-living adjustments for retired military was part of the budget agreement reached last year by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

"It was the only entitlement savings in the whole damn plan that Murray and Ryan put together," Bell said. "Republicans and Democrats alike have been trying to kill it," even though Pentagon officials have said the modest COLA reductions are essential for the military to maintain its war-fighting readiness over the coming decade. Growing pension costs are crowding out other defense spending.

"I think the one thing they will do will be disheartening," Bell said. "They will pass the debt bill on time and they will attach to it a reversal of the only retirement savings in the entire... budget plan. So for guys like me who've been doing this since 1979, this a time when you have a choice between crying and laughing. And I'm just laughing. You can't blame it on one party or the other."

The smart money is on the debt ceiling being raised perhaps for as long as a year. That would put the next vote to raise it safely past the mid-term elections and perhaps into the next Congress. If the vote came just after the elections instead, it would mean a lame duck Congress, with its many retiring members, would vote on a higher debt ceiling — removing the controversy at least from the new Congress' immediate to-do list.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Budget, also expects that a debt-ceiling boost will happen in a remarkably straightforward way given the turbulence of recent years.

"It looks as though the debt ceiling is likely to be increased without any last minute soap operas," she said. "Ironically, it looks like it will be a clean debt ceiling increase because Republicans are having such a hard time coming up with any viable policy to attach to it," she said.

Instead of a protracted fight, then, what House Republicans are up against is time, the House calendar to be exact. The House only has one full work day this week since the House Democrats' retreat starts Wednesday and goes through Friday.

The House is out the following President's Day week and returns the Tuesday of the last week of February. That leaves no time for dawdling on on their return since Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has said the debt ceiling must be raised by Feb. 27 if the nation is to avoid a historic default on its obligations.

One thing a clean debt-ceiling bill, or one with legislation restoring the full military pension COLA, would do is make it likelier House GOP leaders could get most Democrats to join with a few dozen Republicans to reach the 218 votes needed to pass a debt-ceiling hike.

MacGuineas, a debt hawk, is glad to see the end — at least for now — of the recent practice of holding the nation's credit rating hostage. But she fears what may happen now, or won't happen, now that policymakers have don't have the "forcing mechanism" of raising the debt ceiling to make them consider the nation's indebtedness.

"The debt ceiling used to be used as a reminder that we had to focus on debt levels when they were too high," she said. "But at this point, Congress is unable to make any real policy progress that the debt ceiling is likely to be lifted without any effort to try to get control of the fiscal situation."

It's been nearly four years since activists engaged in a battle over a Supreme Court nomination, and a tepid one it was.

Republicans barely pushed back on President Obama's 2010 nomination of Elena Kagan, his second appointment in as many years. She was confirmed by the Senate, 63-37.

At the time, influential Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona acknowledged the problem inherent in pursuing a high court battle: The GOP had only 41 Senate votes, making it "pretty difficult" to sustain a filibuster against Kagan, or any Obama appointee.

That could change by year's end.

Republicans are growing increasingly confident that they can win control of the Senate this fall — and with it the power to block, or at least bedevil, Obama's efforts to fill potential Supreme Court vacancies during his last two years in office.

That prospect means that interest groups including the National Rifle Association, the conservative Committee for Justice, and the liberal People for the American Way are starting to fire up their message machines in what all view as a singular opportunity to shape the high court going forward, given its current makeup.

The Committee for Justice last week asserted that "filibustering a bad nominee will not be an option" without a Senate takeover, warning that Democrats could expand the "nuclear option" to the president's Supreme Court nominees. At People for the American Way, Marge Baker said retaining Senate control is necessary to prevent Republicans from solidifying what she characterized as a court that "tilts more and more toward corporations and the powerful."

Both arguments aim directly at each party's base. And while Supreme Court appointments don't rank high on lists of voter priorities in either party — health care, unemployment and budget concerns are usually the most cited by voters — the issue could play a role in determining the outcome in several close races.

"I'm not going to tell you that I expect this to be a first-order issue, but it may inform and affect the first-order issues," says Ed Whelan, of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. "Issues like Obamacare, for example, or how the president might be using, or abusing, executive orders."

"It's an additional argument to rally the respective bases to turn out," he said.

Seasoned Justices, But No Retirees Yet

Two of the four oldest justices on the court, which leans conservative 5-4, are liberals. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is 80 and has survived two bouts of cancer; Justice Stephen Breyer is 75. Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia is 77, as is Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative considered a swing vote on some issues.

Those facts suggest that a vacancy is not outside the realm of possibility, though no one has indicated plans to step down from his or her lifetime appointment, including Ginsburg. She (and Breyer, to a lesser degree) have consistently dismissed pressure to step down from progressives anxious to guarantee that Obama picks her successor.

In attempting to rally the party faithful around the high court issue, Committee for Justice President Curt Levey has warned Republicans that it's not just liberal justices Obama may have an opportunity to replace but also any of the five justices he characterizes as "center-right."

The Issues At Stake

The machinations surrounding the potential Supreme Court vacancies are heightened by recent events: the president's Affordable Care Act, upheld by the high court in 2012; the court's 2010 Citizens United decision, which allowed corporations and unions to spend unlimited money on campaign ads and other electioneering tools; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's decision to eliminate filibusters for presidential nominations — with the exception of Supreme Court nominees; the evergreen issues of guns and abortion.

Both sides see opportunity.

"In a number of ways, the court will definitely figure into the 2014 elections, and we see the issue as a winning one for progressives," says Baker, of People for the American Way. "We start with outrage over Citizens United, which has only grown in four years."

The NRA and conservative group also see political promise in the fight, especially in close races where motivating just a sliver of the base has the potential to make a significant difference.

"An American citizen who is a member of al-Qaida is actively planning attacks against Americans overseas, U.S. officials say, and the Obama administration is wrestling with whether to kill him with a drone strike and how to do so legally under its new stricter targeting policy issued last year," those officials tell The Associated Press.

The wire service writes that "four U.S. officials said the American suspected terrorist is in a country that refuses U.S. military action on its soil and that has proved unable to go after him."

The Washington Post, which has followed up on the AP report, writes that "U.S. officials" it has spoken with "said that no decision has been reached on whether to add the alleged operative to the administration's kill list, a step that would require Justice Department approval under new counterterrorism guidelines adopted by President Obama last year."

CNN writes that a senior U.S. official says "high-level discussions" are under way about "staging an operation to kill an American citizen involved with al-Qaida and suspected of plotting attacks against the United States."

That network adds that the official "declined to disclose any specific information about the target or the country the suspect presides in."

The Post writes that "U.S. officials have not revealed the identify of the alleged operative, or the country where he is believed to be located, citing concern that disclosing those details would send him deeper into hiding and prevent a possible drone strike."

The AP says it "has agreed to the government's request to withhold the name of the country where the suspected terrorist is believed to be because officials said publishing it could interrupt ongoing counterterror operations."

One year ago, the Justice Department drew up a "white paper" defining when it believes an American citizen overseas can and cannot be the target of a U.S. drone strike. As NPR's Carrie Johnson reported last February, "the document says the U.S. doesn't need clear evidence of a specific attack to strike." The definition of what poses an imminent threat appears to be "a little stretchy, like a rubber band," she added. She also said that the memo makes the case that the U.S. government "doesn't have to try all that hard to capture someone" if they are in another country and trying to grab them would be an "undue burden."

Three months later, in May 2013, President Obama said in a policy address that:

"I do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S. citizen — with a drone, or with a shotgun — without due process, nor should any president deploy armed drones over U.S. soil.

"But when a U.S. citizen goes abroad to wage war against America and is actively plotting to kill U.S. citizens, and when neither the United States, nor our partners are in a position to capture him before he carries out a plot, his citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be protected from a SWAT team."

At 88 years old, and after seven decades in the business, Los Angeles radio host Art Laboe is still at it.

Six nights a week on The Art Laboe Connection, Laboe takes requests from his loyal listeners, who tune in on more than a dozen stations in California and the Southwestern United States.

This week, he'll be hosting his annual series of Valentine's concerts, featuring the "Oldies But Goodies" he's played for decades.

Laboe, with his welcoming baritone voice, has won his share of accolades over his long career. Among others, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1981 and a spot in the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2012.

But it's the adoration of Laboe's fans that keeps him going.

"You have a beautiful, handsome voice," caller "Leticia" recently told Laboe on the air. "You're in the right field."

Somewhat flustered, Laboe replied, "You've got me blushing."

In Love With Radio From An Early Age

Swiss voters narrowly approved a referendum to impose strict quotas on immigration, effectively ending a "free movement" agreement with the European Union.

The measure passed by just 50.5 percent of the vote. Switzerland, which is not part of the EU, nonetheless has adopted many of the union's policies.

A coalition led by the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP) spearheaded the 'yes' vote.

The BBC reports that the referendum "has shown up traditional divisions, with French-speaking areas against the quotas, German-speaking regions divided, and the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino firmly in favour."

The British broadcaster says:

"The vote comes amid increasing debate across Europe about migration and the impact of free movement of people."

"Switzerland's economy is booming at the moment, and unemployment is low, but many Swiss worry about immigration."

"A quarter of the eight million-strong population is foreign, and last year 80,000 new immigrants arrived."

"Since 2007, most of the EU's 500 million residents have been on an equal footing with locals in the Swiss job market - the result of a policy voted into law in a 2000 referendum."

What I love so much about this book — the trick of it — is that Widow Basquiat is not only about Jean-Michel. It's also about Suzanne Mallouk's experience of Jean-Michel. In working with Clement, she refuses to spin the requisite mythology and reclaims ownership of at least one part of the Basquiat narrative: her own. And by committing Mallouk's story to paper, Clement sets the stage for Suzanne to be seen and understood as a subject in her own right, an artist digesting another artist, not simply another object of Jean Michel's constant craving. Seen through this lens, Widow Basquiat can be read as a powerful female coming of age story.

In the so-called "memoir," Mallouk is watching Basquiat, yes — and we see him grasp the nettle and release it because he cannot stand the pain, we see him die by his own hand in a battle he thought he could win. We see Mallouk seeing him, but we also see her seeing herself. He loves her, he hates her; he trusts her, he blames her for his pain. He is loyal, he sleeps around; he gives her expensive gifts and then demands them back. But all of this comes from the perspective not of a worshipful acolyte, a writer looking to paint a portrait of a famous man, but of a young woman looking back at a great affair — facing the choices she made to love, to stay, to understand, to grow and, ultimately, to walk away.

Widow Basquiat is a portrait of two artists. Mallouk is one of them, and here Basquiat is her endlessly enigmatic muse. It's a harrowing, beautifully told love story about two seekers colliding in a pivotal moment in history, and setting everything, including themselves, on fire.

Rebecca Walker is the author of Ad: A Love Story.

In an open dump, in a village outside of Tacloban in the central Philippines, we're sloshing through rainwater and leachate — that's the goo that comes out of rotting trash — while Tim Walsh surveys the site.

"Just walk on the dry bit," he says. "I've got used to the smell over the years and you get immune to it. But for most people the smell of decaying rubbish is not really very pleasant."

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