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A year ago, same-sex marriage was legal in 18 states and Washington, D.C. Now that number is up to 35 states, and there's a strong possibility that remaining bans will go before the Supreme Court in the year ahead.

While activists in the legal and political battle over same-sex marriage called 2013 a banner year for their cause, they're calling 2014 a "super banner year."

"This moment that we are in is nothing any of us could have predicted," says Kate Kendall, the executive director of the San Francisco-based National Center for Lesbian Rights. "Just barely 10 years ago, there was not a jurisdiction in this country where a same-sex couple could legally marry, and now, just a little over 10 years — 35 states!"

Kendall and other supporters of same-sex marriage are optimistic their side ultimately will prevail, because state laws banning same-sex marriage were struck down this year by federal judges across the country. At the appeals court level, four circuit courts ruled in favor of same-sex marriage. In October the Supreme Court rejected, without comment, petitions to review those lower court rulings.

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"It was the first time that the Supreme Court had the opportunity to say 'we are going to let a whole set of marriage rulings in lower courts stay just the way they are,' " says Ned Flaherty, a Boston-based marriage equality activist who tracks court decisions. "That had not happened before, so it was a new type of progress that had not been seen."

But barely a month later, judges in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals went the other way. They upheld laws banning same-sex marriage in four states: Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee.

That created a new conflict among the circuit courts — some in favor of same-sex marriage, one against. It was a game-changer, says Chapman University law professor John Eastman, who opposes same-sex marriage.

"I think the proponents of redefining marriage are overly optimistic in their anticipation of an ultimate ruling in their favor," Eastman says.

Ultimately, both supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage agree that the 6th Circuit's decision increases the likelihood that that the Supreme Court will have to step in.

Still, there's no way of knowing which cases, if any, the Supreme Court might consider.

Among the couples waiting to hear are Thomas Kostura and Ijpe DeKoe of Memphis, Tenn. They were married in New York two years ago, just before DeKoe, an Army sergeant, was deployed to Afghanistan. Upon his return, DeKoe was stationed at Naval Support Activity Mid-South base in Tennessee, and Kostura says he wasn't sure how he would be accepted as a military spouse.

"What surprised me was how welcoming everyone I met in Tennessee was, and how they themselves respected our marriage," Kostura says. "Really at this point, it's only been the state who hasn't recognized our marriage."

Kostura and DeKoe filed suit along with two other same-sex couples to have their marriages recognized by the state of Tennessee. DeKoe says no couple should have to base a job choice on how a state is going to treat their marriage.

"Yes, in my case it's military, but any couple that marries anywhere should be able to move to Tennessee without a problem," he says.

Amid the speculation about whether the Supreme Court might take a same-sex marriage case, another potential front in the cultural war over marriage slowly is emerging.

In South Carolina, for example, there's a bill that would allow judges and other public officials to refuse to issue marriage licenses if it violates their religious beliefs.

Eastman, the law professor, says he expects similar moves in other states to preserve the traditional definition of marriage as between only a man and a woman.

"As long as there's a fight to redefine the institution of marriage that runs contrary to your human nature, human nature's going to have a way of fighting back," he says.

Eastman says the Supreme Court ultimately could allow different states to have different laws on marriage. The justices are expected to decide in January whether they will hear a case; they may issue a decision by summer.

same-sex marriage

The 114th Congress convenes on Jan. 6 and GOP leaders are preparing their to-do list for the new year, when they will control both chambers. The November elections were a victory for Senate and House Republicans and the change in Congressional leadership will mean a new legislative landscape for President Obama, who entered the White House with a Democratic majority behind him.

First on the list, according to incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, will be the Keystone XL oil pipeline. NPR's Ailsa Chang reported Monday on the tone of that first legislative action.

"It will kind of be the first test for McConnell to see if he holds true to his promise that he'll let both Republicans and Democrats propose amendments to shape bills. He's said he would on Keystone, even contentious amendments."

The most-watched issues going forward will likely be immigration reform and Obamacare. McConnell has promised a vote to repeal the Obama Administration's health care law, telling Roll Call that it was "a very big issue in the election." As for immigration reform, a big sore spot for Republicans who were angered by the President's recent executive action, USA Today referred to it as one of the "tough sell" actions for a GOP-led Congress, calling the issue "politically flammable."

"Republicans are searching for a response that will appease hard-charging conservatives who want the GOP to block the president's action — but that doesn't alienate the fast-growing, politically powerful Hispanic population."

Last week, NPR's Tamara Keith examined the coming year in Congress and how it might signal a change in the President's political tactics.

"As viewed from the left, President Obama agreed to water down every major piece of legislation in those first two years to keep moderate Democrats on board and unsuccessfully trying to get Republican support. The great, new era of bipartisanship never arrived. Six years and two wave elections later, the big Democratic majorities in Congress are gone. Republicans are about to hold more House seats in the 114th Congress than they have since the 1920s. Oh, and they've taken back the majority in the Senate, as well. Will this change President Obama's approach to governing?"

Maybe. NPR's Steve Inskeep sat down with the President before he left Washington for the holidays. Mr. Obama said he was prepared to use his veto power more often but is optimistic for a productive year with the GOP leadership.

"What I've said repeatedly is that I want to work with them; I want to get things done. I don't have another election to run.

There are going to be areas where we agree and I'm going to be as aggressive as I can be in getting legislation passed that I think help move the economy forward and help middle-class families. There are going to be some areas where we disagree and, you know, I haven't used the veto pen very often since I've been in office, partly because legislation that I objected to was typically blocked in the Senate even after the House took over — Republicans took over the House.

Now I suspect there are going to be some times where I've got to pull that pen out. And I'm going to defend gains that we've made in health care; I'm going to defend gains that we've made on environment and clean air and clean water.

But what I'm hopeful about — and we saw this so far at least in the lame duck — is a recognition by both Speaker Boehner and Mitch McConnell that people are looking to them to get things done and that the fact that we disagree on one thing shouldn't prohibit us from getting progress on the areas where there's some overlap."

A deadline is already approaching on February 27th, when the Department of Homeland Security will run out of funding. That deadline was specially planned by Republicans in order to quickly revisit immigration reform once the GOP took control of Congress.

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Mitch McConnell

This year saw some very large corporate mergers and takeovers. Comcast and Time Warner's proposed deal topped the list.

Globally, there was $3 trillion worth of deals announced this year — the biggest year for mergers and acquisitions since the financial crisis. And the trend is expected to continue next year.

It wasn't the number of deals that was impressive, it was the large sums involved. And they involved some big names such as Reynolds American buying smaller tobacco rival Lorillard for $28 billion, and Burger King closing on its deal to buy Canadian coffee and doughnut icon Tim Hortons for $11 billion.

David Harding, who leads corporate mergers and acquisitions for Bain & Company, says, to him, this was all fairly predictable.

"The M&A industry is highly cyclical," he says. "It's a little bit like sun spots."

And this year's flare up, he says, was driven in part by companies' huge cash coffers.

"There is a tremendous amount of capital sloshing around in the world, looking for a home," he says.

“ "The M&A industry is highly cyclical. It's a little bit like sun spots."

- David Harding

Harding says the economy is improving, but companies in the U.S. and Europe are finding it hard to grow "organically," as they say in business circles. So instead, Harding says, they're looking at targeted acquisitions.

In one of the year's biggest deals, Facebook bought messaging software firm WhatsApp for an eye-popping $22 billion. Drug firm Actavis announced plans to buy both Allergan and Forest Laboratories this year, as pharmaceutical companies tried to buy their way into new markets and expertise.

The corporate merger trend is likely to continue, says Harding. The dramatic fall in oil prices is setting the stage for still more mergers among some companies in the energy and manufacturing sectors.

"Shale industry, for example, are going to come under distress, and so they are going to be looking for white knights to buy them," Harding says.

And, he says, selling begets selling. As the value of deals goes up, more companies are willing to sell, creating a collective swell.

"My sense is that 2015 will be a bigger year than 2014," Harding says. "But there will be a falloff at some point in the not too distant future."

Richard Jeanneret, a vice chair at Ernst & Young who advises clients on deal-making, agrees.

"To use a baseball analogy, we're in the early innings," he says.

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Jeanneret says he expects more mid-sized companies to get in on the action next year, making it a bigger year for mergers and acquisitions overall.

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A number of this year's deals — including Burger King and Tim Hortons — caused a big stir because they involved U.S. companies buying smaller firms, and then moving headquarters abroad to avoid paying higher U.S. corporate taxes. The practice, known as tax inversion, prompted the Obama Administration to change the tax rules in September.

That change scuttled the year's biggest announced deal — drug maker AbbVie's plans to buy UK-based firm Shire for $54 billion. AbbVie publicly criticized the Obama Administration.

But Jeanneret says tax inversions were not a major factor in this year's deals.

"It makes for great fodder," he says. "It's clearly been present in some very large transactions, but the reality is the volume is extremely low."

In the past, some companies have been burned by bad deals. But Jeanneret says companies are vetting deals more carefully than they did a decade ago.

"At that time they were responding to market pressures to be bigger," he says. "Now the marketplace wants greater focus."

So sometimes that means merging. But other times — as was the case this year with eBay and Hewlett-Packard — it means spinning off old acquisitions that didn't work out.

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Burger King

If you could make a lot of bourbon whiskey these days, you could be distilling real profits. Bourbon sales in this country are up 36 percent over the last five years.

But you'd need new wooden barrels for aging your new pristine product. Simple white oak barrels, charred on the inside to increase flavor and add color, are becoming more precious than the bourbon.

Making these barrels is a very old craft, almost an art, called cooperage. The Scots-Irish who settled in Appalachia could do this. Cut the white oak boards into staves, steam them to bend, make metal hoops to hold the barrel tight.

My first stop to see this process is the small town of Lebanon, Ky. This cooperage is one of several owned by a company called Independent Stave. It's based in Missouri and it's the largest maker of whiskey barrels in the world.

As the barrels take shape they are carried, rolled, and conveyed – sometimes overhead – to the different work stations. Starting out as a collection of oak staves, they are fitted together, steamed, bound with steel and seared with flame before arriving at the end ready for inspection.

"The barrel has water and air in it," says Leo Smith, the supervisor for the last stop on the production line. "They're looking for any kind of leak or defect in the barrel. He's gonna put a plug in that barrel where it's leaking to stop that leak."

The plug is a simple piece of cedar, whittled by hand.

Independent Stave is a family-owned company and they don't talk much. I can't ask how many people work here in Kentucky or how many barrels they make. But the plant manager, Barry Shewmaker, does say, in the last two years production has doubled.

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"Once we have the toast layer we'll let the barrel ignite," says Paul McLaughlin of Kelvin Cooperage in Louisville, Ky. Noah Adams/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Noah Adams/NPR

"Once we have the toast layer we'll let the barrel ignite," says Paul McLaughlin of Kelvin Cooperage in Louisville, Ky.

Noah Adams/NPR

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"We're seen an increase and it looks like there's no end in sight," Shewmaker says.

Independent Stave makes barrels for the big distilleries – Kentucky brand names you might have tasted — and so far Independent is staying steady with demand.

But there's another need for oak barrels: very small craft distilleries starting to make bourbon, vodka, gin or rum. Their output is low – sort of like a drop compared to the big brands– but someone does have to make the barrels.

Kevin and Paul McLaughlin moved to Louisville from Scotland and are joint presidents of Kelvin Cooperage here. For more than 20 years they've been crafting wine barrels, and they buy used bourbon barrels to fix up and sell to the whiskey trade in Scotland and Ireland.

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Aging bourbon at a distillery in Kentucky. Paul Joseph/Flickr hide caption

itoggle caption Paul Joseph/Flickr

Aging bourbon at a distillery in Kentucky.

Paul Joseph/Flickr

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But now a different market has come right to them: They're making white oak barrels for the newly-rising craft distillers. Paul McLaughlin takes me to watch the charring process – they put oak scraps in the finished barrel – and soon we see the flames. In the beginning it's called toast.

"We start smelling kind of a baked bread — that's what we like, that's when we know we're getting the toast layer and once we have the toast layer we'll let the barrel ignite," says Paul McLaughlin. "You get baked bread, you get marzipan — really nice smells."

There may be as many as 700 small craft distillers in the U.S. today, and that number is going up fast.

"Some of them call and say I'm making whiskey I've got my stills going and I need barrels and I didn't think there would ever be a problem getting barrels," Kevin McLaughlin says.

At the Kelvin Cooperage in Louisville they are working overtime. But the company estimates that in 2015 they could sell all the barrels they could make, 10 times over.

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