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In recent years, companies ranging from JPMorgan Chase to Walmart to Boeing have announced special hiring programs for veterans. Seattle coffee giant Starbucks is the latest.

All of these companies are trying to bring down a stubbornly high unemployment rate for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. But to succeed, companies have to take the time to understand the skills of service members.

For 37 years, Carrol Stripling served in the U.S. Army, both active duty and reserves, mostly as a paralegal. She retired from the military in 2011, and then worked for the state of Washington until she got laid off this year.

Stripling says she faces a trifecta of possible obstacles: She's 62 years old; she has a military background; and as a woman, she's not who people think of when they imagine a veteran.

"It's real hard for veterans to say, 'I need help,' because we're taught from the very beginning to be self-reliant," Stripling says. "So it's difficult to say, 'I'm failing at this.' And basically, I feel like I'm failing at this."

Rob Porcarelli is a staff attorney at Starbucks who helped dream up the plan announced Wednesday. Starbucks will hire at least 10,000 veterans or their spouses over the next five years.

Porcarelli was a prosecutor in the Navy in the 1990s. But when he started hunting for a civilian job, he encountered prejudice. "In one interview downtown, the head of the department said, 'You know, Rob, I think you're going to find more of the intellectual type in the law firm environment.' And I remember thinking, 'Maybe he's joking. Did he just call me and all my friends stupid?' "

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates sits on Starbucks' board. He says sometimes people coming out of the service have a hard time translating their skills. That's why the company will have a recruiter specialized in hiring service members.

"It may be a little tougher for business at the beginning of the process, but I think the long-term benefits are tremendous," Gates says. The jobs will range from making lattes to supply chain management.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz says it's complicated to tease out why transitioning back to civilian employment is hard, but companies can help.

"Businesses and business leaders have an obligation and a responsibility to do something about that and to meet these people more than halfway," Schultz says.

The Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University estimates that a few hundred thousand veterans have been hired through targeted programs in the past two years. That's probably shaved a percentage point or two off their unemployment rate.

But Russell Burgos of Pepperdine University, who himself is an Iraq War vet, says it's hard to pin down the numbers. "We don't know how many people apply for jobs at job fairs, how many fill out applications, how many are hired, and I think most importantly, what the employment outcomes of those who are hired turn out to be," Burgos says.

That's why Starbucks plans to have a program manager to help with veteran retention, and the company says it will provide updates on hiring.

Stripling, the Army vet, says she's applied to Starbucks before. but not as a barista. "I've already done my entry-level career," she says.

This summer, she applied there for paralegal positions. And even with her decades of experience, she didn't get a response. She plans to apply to Starbucks again. And this time, she hopes she'll get somewhere.

The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments Wednesday in a case questioning the use of prayer at government meetings. But first, the marshal will ask "God" to "save the United States and this honorable court."

In 1983, the high court ruled that legislatures could begin their sessions with a prayer, as long as there is no attempt to proselytize or disparage any faith, and as long as the process for selecting the prayer-giver is not discriminatory. Since then, dozens of other cases have tested the constitutionality of prayers at government venues other than legislative sessions, with often conflicting rulings in the lower courts. Wednesday's case could produce some guidelines for the future. It involves almost exclusively Christian prayers that took place at one town's board meetings in upstate New York.

Until 1999, the town of Greece, N.Y., opened its board meetings with a moment of silence. But when John Auberger was elected supervisor, he instituted formal prayers, given by a rotating group of clergymen — a group that until 2008 was exclusively Christian. Often prayers were "in the name of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who lives with you," for instance.

Two women objected to the prayers at board meetings and sued to stop the practice. One is an atheist; the other, Susan Galloway, is Jewish.

Galloway doesn't object to nonsectarian prayers, but she says that prayers alienate people from their government when they are connected to a particular religion. She has felt uncomfortable, she says, when she does not bow her head or stand as invited to do during the prayers.

"I don't feel like ... I'm welcome at my town government anymore," Galloway said in an interview with NPR. "My grandmother had to leave Russia because of the Cossacks. My father had to leave Germany because of Hitler." She feels strongly that Americans must "make sure that our government and religion are separate, because we are a diverse country." This is necessary, she says, to recognize diversity and "protect the minorities' rights."

Supervisor Auberger is no longer granting interviews, but earlier this year, in an interview with PBS, he explained why he instituted and has fought for prayers at board meetings. "Our Founding Fathers believed in the right for us to pray and have that freedom of expression in prayer," Auberger said, and the town of Greece is simply continuing that tradition. There are no guidelines for what prayers are appropriate, he said, because that would amount to censorship.

So, what if someone were to say, "Believe in Jesus or you'll burn in hell"?

"We could not object," Auberger says, "because our purpose is to allow ... a freedom of expression in their prayer."

The town of Greece has in fact become more diverse in its prayers since the lawsuit was filed in 2008. Among those who have offered prayers are a Jewish layman, the leader of a Baha'i assembly and a Wiccan priestess. But the prayers are still overwhelmingly Christian.

"The houses of worship in the Greece community are predominantly Christian," says lawyer Tom Hungar, who represents the town, and the prayer-givers who volunteer will inevitably reflect that make-up. "But anyone is free to pray," he says, and "the plaintiffs in this case were both offered the opportunity to deliver invocations."

"The plaintiffs don't want to give the prayers," responds Douglas Laycock, who represents those challenging the prayers. The town's claim of equal access, he says, is a myth — the board never announced that all comers were welcome to deliver the invocation, nor does it publicize its policy.

"The prayers here advance Christianity and they proselytize Christianity," Laycock says.

Laycock, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and one of the nation's leading scholars in this area, will tell the justices that town board meetings are very different from sessions of the legislature. Often the board meetings include high school classes, community members who are being honored, and those seeking action from the board.

"The way these meetings are structured, everyone is drawn into participation in the prayer," says Laycock. "You're either part of the prayer or you're visibly outing yourself as a religious dissenter." Ultimately, the challenge is "about protecting religious liberty for everybody, not just the majority but also the religious minorities," he says.

And if the town wants to have prayers at the beginning of meetings, Laycock contends, it should have guidelines for nonsectarian prayers.

But lawyer Hungar, representing the town, counters that the Supreme Court has said repeatedly that the courts should not be in the business of parsing prayers. "Government is not supposed to be in the business of telling prayer-givers what the content of their prayers should be," he says.

The history of this country, Hungar observes, began with public professions of religion. Indeed, prayers opened sessions of the first Congress — the Congress created by the same Constitution that included, as its First Amendment, a ban on government establishment of religion.

Does a citizen of any country, not just the good ole U.S. of A., have an obligation to support its national teams? For goodness sake, it's just a game, not Horatius at the Bridge standing between us and national defeat.

The fact is, too, that because the U.S. is so powerful, our team is usually the favorite, and, hey, it's natural to root for the underdog. Somehow I don't think it makes you a traitor if, say, you take a liking to somebody like itsy-bitsy Lithuania when it battles our juggernaut of NBA all-stars in international basketball competition. After all it's not the Nationalism Broadcasting Company that brings us the Olympics.

Click on the audio link above to hear Deford's take on this issue.

Democrat Terry McAuliffe won the hotly contested Virginia governor's race, defeating Republican Ken Cuccinelli, who was supported by the Tea Party.

The race turned out to be far closer than polls heading into Election Day indicated. That suggested that voter turnout may have failed to reach the levels Democrats had hoped to achieve and that the Affordable Care Act may have hurt the Democratic effort.

McAuliffe, a 56-year old entrepreneur and former Democratic National Committee chair, prevailed in a contest that was particularly negative. His win was the first time a Virginia gubernatorial candidate of the same party holding the White House won since 1977.

The Democratic victory reinforced the state's shift from red to purple. President Obama won the state twice, the first Democrat to win the state since 1964.

Democrats framed the race as a referendum on Cuccinelli, 45, who they labeled an extremist based on his record as the state's attorney general.

After the government shutdown, Democrats hastened to tie Cuccinelli to that as well. Virginia has a large population of federal government workers and contractors who were adversely affected by the shutdown.

Democrats also hit Cuccinelli hard for opposing abortions in virtually all cases which allowed Democrats to attack the Republican as anti-women.

That line of attack proved particularly effective in contributing to a yawning and consistent gender gap favoring McAuliffe that topped 20 percentage points.

Republicans, meanwhile attempted to paint McAuliffe as an unethical businessman, attacks which never appeared to take hold even though McAuliffe wasn't exactly a popular Virginia figure.

They also tried to link the Democrat to the troubled Affordable Care Act, with Cuccinelli, the state's attorney general, arguing that voting for him would provide a firewall against the health-care law in Virginia.

There was polling evidence that Virginia voters were voting not so much for McAuliffe as against Cuccinelli.

Cuccinelli did get some help from some national Republicans like senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio as well as Gov. Bobby Jindal who visited Virginia to campaign for him.

But McAuliffe got far bigger names to campaign with him. In the campaign's final stretch, President Obama and Vice President Biden made appearances at rallies with him. McAuliffe who is close to the Clintons also drew both former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, to rallies.

McAuliffe's victory represented a personal vindication. Four years ago he was trounced in the Democratic primary for governor by Democrat Creigh Deeds who went on to lose badly to Republican Bob McDonnell.