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Would Tennessee whiskey by any other name taste as sweet?

A debate in Tennessee simmers over a legal definition of what makes Tennessee whiskey "Tennessee."

The state legislature passed a bill last year saying whiskey can be labeled "Tennessee" only if it's made in the state from a mash that's 51-percent corn, trickles through maple charcoal, and is aged in new, charred oak barrels.

There's some precedent in the spirits world. A sparkling wine is champagne only if it's from the Champagne region of France, Scotch whisky is from Scotland, and tequila from blue agave grown in Mexico.

The Brown-Forman Corporation, which makes Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey in Lynchburg, likes the law. They credit their founder, Mr. Daniel, with steeping his mash in maple charcoal to "mellow" the drink. Jack Daniel's sells about 90 percent of the Tennessee whiskey in the world, and Jeff Arnett, their master distiller, has said, "We shouldn't do anything that would make Tennessee whiskey an inferior product."

But Diageo PLC — a British company, wouldn't you know, that owns Smirnoff Vodka and Johnnie Walker scotch — bought the George Dickel distillery, which has been making what they consider equally Tennessee whiskey since 1870.

A Diageo spokesperson says, "We're in favor of flexibility that lets all distillers, large and small, make Tennessee whiskey the way their family recipes tell them."

There is a history of Tennessee families making whiskey, licensed or not, that goes back to moonshining days. And there are small-craft distillers today — artisanal moonshiners, if you please — who make whiskey "according to our own methods with our own ingredients of choice and our own techniques," as Phil Prichard of Prichard's Distillery says. They believe they're as Tennessee as Mr. Daniel.

So some representatives now have what sounds like lawmaker's remorse for the bill. Rep. Ryan Haynes, who chairs the state government committee, now says, "It's wrong for the government to codify recipes."

This week, they moved the matter to summer study. Sounds like a nice summer. Study Tennessee whiskey on a porch, at twilight, over Lookout Mountain, a small glass in hand — and watch the sheriff chase those artisanal moonshiners.

An Oregon woman was looking at her Halloween decoration last year when she found a letter written by an inmate from one of China's re-education-through-labor camps. The letter spoke of brutal forced labor in the camp.

It was the latest in a series of incidents dating back to at least to the 1990s in which Chinese political prisoners in such camps smuggled out letters in products assembled for export to the U.S.

Early last year, China said it was abolishing these camps, though as NPR's Frank Langfitt noted at the time, "When the Communist Party makes such sweeping policy statements, it pays to be a little skeptical."

And though the U.S. maintains a list of goods made by forced labor in China, including electronics, shoes and clothes, these products still find their way into the U.S. — and American homes.

The U.S. government is trying to address the problem, says Ken Kennedy, the director of the forced labor program under the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Progress, however, has been limited. Still, there have been successes: In 1992, a U.S. company paid a $75,000 fine for knowingly importing machine presses that were made in a Chinese labor camp. In 2001, a Chinese manufacturer pleaded guilty to producing metal clips with forced prison labor and paid a $50,000 fine.

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One candidate talks fondly about castrating hogs in her youth and suggests that could be a useful skill in Washington.

Another fires semi-automatic weapons at a 2-foot-high stack of paper representing the Affordable Care Act before feeding it through a wood chipper.

There's this strange story about my family that doesn't often come up in casual conversation. We don't talk about it much. I had to prod them when I donned my headphones and stuck a microphone in their faces to do this story. But as soon as we share, people shout "Why didn't you tell me about that before?"

Here it is: my great, great, great uncle introduced baseball to Japan.

No one in my family knew for generations, and in 2000 a fleet of Japanese people came to our farm in rural Maine and surprised us with an invitation to visit their country to promote the legacy of Horace Wilson: a man my family had more or less forgotten.

We had to enlist our oldest relative just to identify him in the portrait from around 1860 that hangs in our house (and is at the top of this story). We weren't sure which brother he was. Mustache, no mustache? Furrowed brow or contemplative gaze?

Here's what the Japanese told us about our uncle: after he left the farm and fought in the Civil War, Horace traveled to Japan in 1871 for reasons we've never uncovered. He then taught at what would become Tokyo University.

As the story goes, he taught his students a game at recess involving bases and a bat and, with that, brought baseball to the country. While Horace wrote home to Maine every now and then, he never once mentioned baseball, or even Japan.

Instead he spent his time urging his younger brother to keep up his correspondence:

"Your very pleasing letter came when I had not heard from home for a month. It made me smile right out loud."