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The stage is now set for the opening act of one of the more spectacular and intriguing theatrical dramas on the planet: the election of a pope.

In Rome, TV camera crews have set up their positions on big platforms overlooking St. Peter's Square and the Vatican, where the secretive process will begin Tuesday.

Bookies are raking in bets, even though veteran Vatican watchers insist that no obvious front-runner has emerged from a wide field of possible candidates to replace Benedict XVI, the first pope to resign in nearly 600 years.

After a tsunami of scandals about clerical sex abuse and cover-ups, Vatican mismanagement and corruption — and more besides — this is the Roman Catholic Church's chance to generate some positive headlines as attention focuses on the mysterious workings of what's known as the conclave.

Conclave — from the Latin for "with a key" — is a historic term that refers to the fact that the cardinals charged with the task of electing a new leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics will do so locked within the Vatican.

Most of the 115 "cardinal electors" will be housed in two-room suites in a guesthouse run by nuns. The accommodation is, by all accounts, modest — three- rather than five-star.

On hand is a team of cooks, doctors (the average age of this group of cardinals is 72), priests (to take confession) and technicians to enforce a communications blackout, both in the guesthouse and the Sistine Chapel, where the balloting takes place. The Vatican is determined to prevent any outside interference — or news leaking out from a tweeting cleric.

"The phone doesn't work, the TV doesn't work. They have no e-mail, they have no Internet, they have no cellphones," says Father Thomas J. Reese of the National Catholic Reporter, who is an authority on the workings of the conclave.

On Tuesday morning, the "cardinal electors" will celebrate Mass in St. Peter's Basilica. Then, mid-afternoon, they walk into the Sistine Chapel in procession while singing prayers, and take their places.

Within the chapel, the scene must surely be stunning — a throng of cardinals, wearing blood-red robes, sashes and crucifixes beneath the pulsating blue, silver and gold hues of the Renaissance frescoes that adorn the Sistine's vaulted ceiling.

Mayor Mike and his public health edicts are having a rough ride.

On Monday, a state judge in Manhattan struck down New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's rule capping soda sizes. And lawmakers in Mississippi are taking the backlash against government regulation on food marketing one step further.

A bill now on the governor's desk would bar counties and towns from enacting rules that require calorie counts to be posted, that cap portion sizes, or that keep toys out of kids' meals. "The Anti-Bloomberg Bill" garnered wide bipartisan support in both chambers of the legislature in a state where one in three adults is obese, the highest rate in the nation.

The bill is expected to be signed by Gov. Phil Bryant, a Republican. It was the subject of intense lobbying by groups including the restaurant association, the small business and beverage group, and the chicken farmers' lobby.

Mike Cashion, executive director the Mississippi Hospitality and Restaurant Association, says the bill is a direct reaction to Bloomberg-style government intervention in public health.

"If you look at how menus have changed, whether it be in fast food or family dining, you are seeing more and more healthy options," Cashion says. "Not because of legislative mandates or regulatory mandates, but because of consumer demand. Our industry has always been one to respond to the marketplace."

Rep. Gregory Holloway, a Democrat, ushered the popular bill through the state House. He says the goal is to create consistency in nutrition laws across the state. "We don't want local municipalities experimenting with labeling of foods and any organic agenda. We want that authority to rest with the legislature," Holloway says.

But the measure does have detractors in Mississippi: local politicians who say it steps on an ideal Mississippians hold dear — the ability to govern themselves.

Chip Johnson, mayor of Hernando, Miss., near the Tennessee border, is no fan of a soda ban, but he doesn't like the anti-Bloomberg bill, either.

Hernando has built biking and walking paths all over town, and has received national attention for the work. Johnson bristles at the legislature's efforts to dictate what he can do in pursuit of a healthier community, including restricting the ability to put nutritional information on menus.

"You know what? If little Alligator, Miss., wanted to do that, that's up to the people that live there. It is not up to the state to tell the people at the local level what to do," Johnson says. "They're just using this to mask what the bill is really about, which is about taking away home rule."

Johnson says he resents that the measure even puts some restrictions on a town's ability to zone where a restaurant can go.

Still, the bill passed the state Senate, 50-1, and the state House, 92-26.

This piece is part of a partnership of NPR, Mississippi Public Broadcasting, and Kaiser Health News.

Like the famous cherry blossoms forecast to bloom in a few weeks, this time of year is also marked by the arrival of competing, partisan federal budget proposals that political foes immediately declare dead-on-arrival, though not so dead that they can't be used as campaign fodder.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) got the process underway Tuesday by introducing the House Republican budget for the coming fiscal year, DOA because it has no chance of getting through the Democratic Senate or to be signed by President Obama.

Ryan, the GOP's nominee for vice president, did this last year, of course. The big difference between his new plan and his old one is that this year's would balance federal spending and revenues in 10 years, not nearly three decades. In fact in 2023, the new proposal runs a small surplus. But other than that it's almost an exact repeat of the budget from last year, right down to the title - "The Path to Prosperity."

How is it possible that this year's proposal would lead to a surplus by 2023 when the last one didn't reach balance until 2040? It has $600 billion dollars in tax increases.

No, Ryan hasn't done a "Jedi mind meld" with the president, as Obama might put it. He's just banking the new revenue from the fiscal cliff deal, which allowed tax rates to rise on the wealthiest Americans.

But many features that made the previous year's GOP budget dead on arrival in the eyes of Democrats are still there.

They include repealing Obamacare (even though Ryan counts on $716 billion for deficit reduction from that) and changing Medicare for future retirees so they would buy health insurance in the private market with "premium support" from the government instead of the current system in which every senior is automatically enrolled in a single-payer insurance system.

The Medicare proposal, you may recall, is the one Democrats successfully attacked during the 2012 campaign by saying Ryan wanted to "end Medicare as we know it." Those aspects remain objectionable and we can expect to see Democrats go after Medicare changes again when everyone returns to the campaign trail in 2014.

On Wednesday, the Democrats in control of the Senate are scheduled to release their own proposal, which will, in turn, be DOA. That's because it will include what Democrats call a "balanced" mix of spending cuts and tax increases, about $975 billion in cuts (some of which Republicans deride as budget gimmicks) and $975 billion from closing tax loopholes. Republicans adamantly oppose raising taxes.

Then, in April, the president is expected to unveil his own budget, nine weeks later than the February deadline. It hardly matters, however, since that budget will be DOA, too. The president almost certainly will offer a budget that, like the Senate Democrats' plan, includes tax increases along with spending cuts.

But Washington is one of the few places where hope springs eternal, that DOA proposals will breathe new life into partisan causes. In this case, Ryan said, it's the starting point for negotiations and a flag planted in the ground:

"This is our offer. This is our vision. And what you do is you actually show the country what you believe in."

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

An American history textbook used by some schools in Louisiana's voucher system has caused a bit of a stir over passages describing 1960s counterculture. America: Land I Love teaches eight graders that during the '60s, "Many young people turned to drugs and immoral lifestyles; these youth became known as hippies. They went without bathing, wore dirty, ragged, unconventional clothing, and deliberately broke all codes of politeness or manners... Many of the rock musicians they followed belonged to Eastern religious cults or practiced Satan worship." This is only the latest outcry over textbooks used in Louisiana voucher schools. Other textbooks claim that "[t]he majority of slave holders treated their slaves well" and "[d]inosaurs and humans were definitely on the earth at the same time and may have even lived side by side within the past few thousand years."

"I don't think I'm particularly good at research. For better or worse, I write about myself," says Sarah Manguso, author of The Guardians, in an interview with Guernica.

Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is writing a book called A Happy Holiday IS a Merry Christmas, according to The Associated Press. In a statement, Palin says, "This will be a fun, festive, thought provoking book, which will encourage all to see what is possible when we unite in defense of our faith and ignore the politically correct Scrooges who would rather take Christ out of Christmas." The book is slated to come out in November. There's still no word on the Palin family's fitness book we were promised last year.

In n+1, Rachel Aviv writes about Princeton psychologist Julian Jaynes, who used The Iliad and The Odyssey to trace the origins of human consciousness: "Drawing on evidence from neurology, archaeology, art history, theology, and Greek poetry, Jaynes captured the experience of modern consciousness — 'a whole kingdom where each of us reigns reclusively alone, questioning what we will, commanding what we can' — as sensitively and tragically as any great novelist."