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House Republicans are taking a Solomonic approach to relief for areas ravaged by Superstorm Sandy.

Having already split financial aid for the Northeast into two votes, House leaders are now splitting the second package itself into two, giving conservatives the opportunity to oppose spending provisions they don't like.

Even so, a funding package of about $50 billion is expected to pass Tuesday. It's proven to be too politically dicey to vote against assistance for regions devastated by disaster.

"Those in coastal districts understand, we need the money and they're going to need the money [after some future disaster]," said an aide to Rep. Jon Runyan, R-N.J.

But the willingness of some House members to vote against aid in the face of a historic disaster has shown that the politics of relief are starting to shift. It might still be impossible to block federal rebuilding assistance, but there's a growing desire to take a different approach to the next set of disasters.

"The ad hoc, blank check approach that we've had for the last few decades is not one that we think is working very well," says Ray Lehmann, a senior fellow with R Street, a conservative think tank.

History Of The Vote

Speaker John Boehner angered Northeastern members of his own caucus by failing to take up a Senate-approved disaster relief package before the previous Congress' term ended early this month.

In response to their protests, Boehner decided to hold separate votes on Sandy relief. The first installment of $9.7 billion to help pay flood insurance claims came Jan. 4. It passed easily but drew 67 "no" votes from House Republicans, who received a great deal of criticism in the media — and from some of their colleagues.

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On October 24, 2011, I had a bad day.

I honestly forget why. It was a Monday; that should be enough.

So as I've explained once before, I reached out on Twitter and asked for "feel-happy music." Recommendations overwhelmed me to the point where I rolled them up into a Spotify playlist I called, fittingly, "Begging The Public For Joy." That playlist currently has 659 subscribers, meaning that more than 600 of you are keeping track of it and perhaps use it to improve your own moods at times. I've listened to it over and over (and over) myself, and other than the significant soul blow it took when Spotify apparently lost the rights to "Don't Carry It All" by The Decemberists, it's aged very well. Some of it was music I knew well, but some of it I didn't know at all and now think of as essential — Melissa Ferrick's "Everything I Need," for instance.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar intends to step down at the end of March, his office confirms to NPR's Jeff Brady.

Word of Salazar's plan broke over night. According to The Denver Post, the former senator from Colorado intends to "return to Colorado to spend time with his family."

As the Post writes:

"Salazar has said in his four years he is most proud of improving the relationship the federal government has with American Indians, cleaning up the oil and gas program after former departments were plagued with scandal and nepotism, and broadening a clean energy agenda.

"The secretary established seven new national parks and 10 new wildlife refuges. He also launched 18 utility-scale solar energy projects on public lands. ...

"He has also dealt with several natural and environmental disasters, including the explosion of a BP-operated deep water oil well, Deepwater Horizon, in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. ...

"In his push to grow regulations for domestic energy production on federal lands — particularly post Deepwater Horizon — he often tangled with House Republicans, many of whom have called him one of the worst Interior secretaries in the history of the United States."

After five days of airstrikes aimed at Islamist rebels, French troops are engaged in their first ground battles with those forces in Mali, according to several news outlets.

France 24 reports that "French special forces began fighting on the ground with Islamist rebels in central Mali on Wednesday, according to regional security sources, six days after the European power launched an air offensive in the country."

The BBC writes that "French troops have been fighting Mali's Islamist rebels in street battles in the town of Diabaly, Malian and French sources say. In the first major ground operation in the conflict, French special forces were fighting alongside Malian troops."

Meanwhile, "foreign workers at a gas field in Algeria were believed to have been kidnapped Wednesday in what the U.K. government described as an 'ongoing terrorist incident,' " NBC News reports. Reuters says there may be more than 40 hostages, and that Americans may be among them. It adds that "the raid, claimed by an al-Qaida affiliate, came after Islamists had vowed to retaliate for France's military intervention in Mali."

We reported Monday that the militants had vowed to "strike at the heart of France. ... In Bamako, in Africa and in Europe."