I wouldn't say a list of specific charges but some general charges. So the one that is the most specific is the claim that in 1996 she went on a spy mission to China to Guangxi province and, you know, spied for the FBI. And, I mean, there's a number of issues with that. I mean, one of them is that I have all kinds of evidence that Sandy did not go to China in 1996. I have the evidence of her passport. I have the evidence of her paystubs.

I mean, she was a full-time employee of the Houston Police Department as a secretary, a clerk typist, when she allegedly was doing the spy work. The paystubs show that she'd taken 11 hours off during the time in question. I've also got a newspaper article that she appeared in. So, I mean, we have a fair amount of evidence that shows that she was not in China in 1996.

Why would the Chinese government be interested in putting your wife in prison if there wasn't something that made them suspicious?

So this is not the police that investigate regular crimes. This is the, you know, China Ministry of State Security. This is a bunch of spies. They don't trust anybody. And in point of fact, I mean, they look at people involved in nonprofit work like my wife with a great deal of suspicion. And the fact of the matter is the state security has sent a number of people to the U. S.  to spy, and the FBI has been catching these people. And I am sure that the Ministry of State Security is just not very happy about that.


They still want the same things they wanted on Tuesday, but because of the heavy-handed security tactics, they're also now saying that they want the Iraqi army and the Iraqi security forces to stop firing on them. What they - overwhelmingly, what you hear is, we are Iraqi. We are the people of this country. Why are you firing at us?We have a right to protest.

And what is the scene tonight?This is Friday. This is typically a day of rest in Iraq. Is - are the streets quiet right now?

Well, the curfew has now been in place, you know, almost 36 hours. There are checkpoints every 300 meters. One of my Iraqi friends actually turned around to me and said, this feels like it was during the height of the invasion and the occupation of Iraq in. . .

Wow.


So why did some members of Congress choose to vote for the bailout bill and some against it. We've got two prominent members of Congress who made up their own minds and made different choices. A little bit later, we're going to talk to Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas who voted against. But first we have Representative Maxine Waters of California, who voted for. How are you?

Hello. How are you doing today?

I'm doing great. So you voted for this bailout bill, why?

This is a rescue effort that has caught everybody by surprise. The fact of the matter is not only do we have to be concerned about our financial institutions and the market, we've got to be concerned about trying to do something to stem the tide of foreclosures and keep people in their homes. And part of this bill had in it a modification plan. We're going to acquire, that is buy up all of these toxic paper, or bad paper from these financial institutions. We then have an opportunity to do the kind of modification that we've been urging all along.

In addition to that, we have small businesses that are at risk. These small businesses that depend on banks for loans to make the payroll will literally go out of business. And we have the smaller minority bank, many of them who had their money invested in Fannie and Freddie when it was taken over, and they've lost all of their investment in that preferred stock. So we're trying to stem the tide of this devastation, to get the market stabilized and to protect the average citizens.


And it all comes down really to these apple trees. The husband, James, is obsessed with apples, growing the sweet apples. She, Sadie, the mother, is - well, she's a drunk. She's looking for applejack. She likes the spitters - not the eaters - the spitters.

Yes, and Johnny Appleseed is a little bit like her drug dealer because he comes along twice a year in his canoe to see how they're doing. And he sometimes takes off the barrels of apples and brings them back pressed for them as cider. And, you know, I don't think he does it maliciously, but he is, as I said, he's a businessman. So he's got a slightly different take on it all.

And why don't you describe what Johnny Appleseed looks like in your novel as you paint him?

Actually, some of the myth is true. He did sometimes wear a tin pot for a hat. His clothing was interesting, shall we say?He often wore a coffee sack that he cut holes out of and a rope for a belt. So, yeah, he was a strange guy. He was actually making all this money, not for himself, but really because he was what they called a Swedenborgian, a very peculiar Christian sect. And Johnny Appleseed spent a lot of time proselytizing. And he'd go on this kind of rant, and a lot of the settlers - I read some hilarious accounts of them going, oh, this guy, we don't understand a word he's saying, but, you know, he's kind of entertaining, so he's harmless.


Well, you're talking about scholarships, and that's interesting. We've seen now at least one major university and many more smaller colleges offering esports scholarships, which is this new development where schools are now getting in on this. And they're recruiting top gamers and - or esports athletes, as they're known. What's in it for a university?Why are they getting in on this, too?

What's funny is it's a really big recruitment tool for them. Typical esports gamers, they over-index with engineers and with math majors. And so they're trying to, you know, bring in sort of the best of the best in those disciplines into the school, and this is a way to do it.

Wow.

At least that's what the gamers tell their mothers.


It sounds like from what you're saying the city leadership including the mayor is very much in support of there being this massive celebration.

I think that's fair to say. It's kind of been interesting to watch this unfold over the last couple of weeks, because the venues that would have been available, Soldier Field, the football stadium just a little ways away from here wasn't available apparently, or couldn't accommodate the Obama Campaign. The indoor arena, the United Center, some thought may be too small, seating 18,000, 20,000. But there's a concert there tonight anyway, so that was ruled out.

And it seemed to surprise city officials to some degree a month or so ago when the Obama campaign said they'd like to do it in the park. But the city has been very accommodating. They have pulled back - and initially Mayor Daley said everybody should come down, even if they don't have a ticket and just be a part of the celebration in the streets and around the park. The police department and the fire department and the emergency management folks for the city kind of pulled back on that and said, we only want people in the are who are supposed to be in the area, let's try to set up an alternative venue. And so that's what they've gone ahead and done in setting up in another section of Grant Park the big Jumbotrons.

Now, I understand that you have already gone and voted today.


Hi, Farai.

So what's the scene like now?

Well the scene right now is, people are still setting things up, they're testing the music system right now and - but it's a beautiful scene, it's a beautiful day here in Chicago. Grant Park, of course, it's on Chicago's lakefront with the skyline as a backdrop. It's a beautiful day weather-wise. I mean, this time of year in Chicago, you could get, you know, temperatures in the 20s or 30s, so our - you know, unusually like today, we have temperatures in the 70s. So it couldn't be better, that means probably we'll have a great big turnout. And some people are already lining up to try to get in. these are ticketed people who are trying to get in. They just wanted to be here so early so they could get the best possible location in front of the stage.

How are things working in terms of how many people are going to be let in, what the ticketing process has been, all of that?


This is News and Notes. I'm Farai Chideya.

For decades, the Big Three auto companies have been an integral part of the U. S.  economy. Now those companies are struggling to survive and pleading for a federal bailout. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler have until Tuesday to submit a restructuring plan to Congress. For more, we've got Jerome Vaughn. He's the news program director for WDET in Detroit, Michigan. Jerome, great to have you back on the show.

Thanks. Glad to be with you.

So what we've been hearing a lot about is basically just a failure of these negotiations to move forward. Before we get to the nuts and bolts of it, from an economic level, how are people in Detroit dealing with what appears to be a reluctance on the part of the federal government to really enter into a bailout?


So I do miss it, but you know, I don't miss it enough to go back anytime soon. I'm not going to volunteer.

When you think about the losses, people who have been killed and some of the ones who've been profoundly injured in ways where they'll never lead an independent life again, do you ever ask yourself the question: Is it worth it?Is that a question you ask yourself?

No, I can never ask that question. Because if I do, then I'll start doubting my orders and doubting my job. But I will tell you this: Up to the point to where we caught Saddam Hussein, you know, one life is too many to lose, but it was worth the lives up until that point. So from that point on to now, as long as catch bin Laden, we free people, and we do our jobs, it'll be worth it. I'm not saying that we should have any American young men and women killed, but as long as we get the job done, then that's the sacrifice we have to make, even if it takes my own.

Well, Jeremiah, thank you.


My father believed the world was divided between those who were mentally and physically strong and those who were weak and lazy. For this, I had to undergo a physical and psychological training.

Can you tell us about those nights in the cellar?

From the age of 6, I had to spend one night a month in the basement meditating on death. I sat on a stool, alone, in the dark, surrounded by rats. And I had a cardigan with small bells on it. I wasn't allowed to let the bells tinkle, as it meant that I was moving. It was one of his exercises.

There are just too many instances of abuse and cruelty to recount - I mean, the way he didn't turn on the heat, the way he made you bathe in his dirty water. He said he gave you his energy that way or something.


Yeah. There was actually at this last Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, there was a talk about a possible Mercurian meteorite.

Would you know it if you found it?

That's the good question. I mean in the case of the Mars meteorites and the moon meteorites, there's actually - we have pieces of evidence from other sciences that can relate to that. And we know that these things are fairly solid. But in the case of a Mercurian meteorite, that would be a little bit harder to do, but it wouldn't be impossible. Hopefully there might be a sample returned sometime in the future.

So there could be around us now and we wouldn't know it.


Over 700 people were killed this week when a stampede took place during the Hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. The sheer volume of pilgrims every year has led to problems before. In fact, over 1,400 people were killed in a similar incident back in 1990. This week, Iran and other regional powers criticized the Saudi Arabian government for poor management of the crowds that come to their holy places. Gary Sick is a senior research scholar at Columbia's Middle East Institute. He joins us now from New York. Thanks so much for being with us, Mr.  Sick.

It's a real pleasure.

What do you read into Iran's outspoken criticism of Saudi Arabia over these deaths?

This is very standard stuff. The Iranians and the Saudis have a running battle about the Hajj. And the worst incident they've ever had was actually back in 1987. In each case, they've blamed the Saudis. And in each case, the Saudis have blamed the pilgrims for misbehaving, for not doing what they were told. And on the previous case, the Saudis broke diplomatic relations with Iran over the incident. And that was only restored a few years later after Khomeini died.


There are over 2,800 official emojis. You know those little icons you use to spice up your texts - a cow, a doughnut, a queen, and my personal favorite, the eye roll. The Unicode Consortium, the nonprofit that oversees emojis - yes, there is such a thing - has been criticized for its lack of diversity and inclusivity when it comes to LGBTQ or religious expression. And now they're under fire for one more - the afro. That's right. Of the more than 15 hairstyles offered in emoji form, not one is an afro. Rhianna Jones wants to change that. She's a freelance writer based in New York. And she joins me now from our studios there.

Rhianna, welcome.

Hi, Lulu. Thank you so much for having me.

It is an absolute pleasure to have you. Let's talk through this. There's already been some diversity in the emoji world. We have different skin tones included in emoji form. But why do you think an afro should be included too?


I Hope I didn't butcher your name too much. I apologize if I did. This book delves deeply into all of the political powers struggles involved in the building of our nation's capital. Really briefly, first talk about how the capital was moved from Philadelphia to Washington.

Well, first, let's frame it a bit by way of saying that we got our capital on the Potomac River thanks to the politics of slavery and thanks to the hard physical labor of enslaved African-Americans in the 1790s. There was a terrific political battle in the early 1790s over where the nation's capital was going to be. Think of the United States as a - just a collection of little mini-states mostly at odds with each other and without any great unifying national symbol. The capital was supposed to be that unifying symbol.

Congress originally voted to place the capital in Pennsylvania, a free state in the north. However, as you can imagine, Southern slave owners were irate at the prospect of a free-state capital that would set freedom as the national paradigm. They lobbied very aggressively for a Southern capital. There were 32 different sites originally considered, but the capital wound up on the Potomac thanks to probably the country's first real backroom deal cut between Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton.

Well, in fact, you talk a lot in the book about what you call corruption that surrounded the establishing of the capital where it was, and you mention, as you've just now done, that there were presidents involved - Jefferson, Washington, Madison and Hamilton. So how much was the corruption a part of this?


(Singing) I don't need much to be happy. Four walls and a roof overhead. Books and food in my belly, cool sheets upon the bed. A fire that warms up December. The sound of a thaw in the eaves. Sometimes it's hard to remember how tough we are to please. All in good time, somehow I find days that still shine with a light. All in good stead, I'm safe and I'm fed. With dreams in my head, goodnight. The feel of my hand being taken, driving at night all alone. The breeze on a warm summer evening and coming home.

(Singing) All in good time, somehow you find days that still shine with light. All in good stead, you're safe and you're fed. The dreams in your head, goodnight. Don't need much to be happy. A friend to soften a fall. Something to show for my labors. After all, I had to learn to be grateful, I had to learn how to see. Mistakes that might have proved fatal are gifts I now receive.

Thank you.

They don't make them this way anymore, but that would've been on the second side of the album?


Today, Turkey formally requested NATO to deploy Patriot missiles on the border with Syria. And while the new anti-government coalition wins friends in foreign capitals, it gets a mixed reception from rebel groups inside Syria. NPR correspondent Deborah Amos joins us now by Skype from southern Turkey. And Deborah, always good to talk with you.

Thank you, Neal. Glad to be here.

And some European nations are already considering Turkey's Patriot missile request. If fulfilled, will that effectively establish a no-fly zone over parts of - over northern Syria?

NATO officials are downplaying the no-fly zone aspect of this. But there is no doubt that if there are Patriot missiles on the border, the Syrian air force will think twice about bombing any city close to that border. That is already happening on this - on the Turkish border. There are towns now that are under the umbrella of Turkey.


Well, up until about two decades ago there were no rights for crime victims. Victims were treated basically as another part of the evidence of the crime. So, really we've seen a great development in crime victims' rights in the criminal and juvenile justice systems since that time.

Who pioneered that change?

Really, it was driven by the experience of victims and survivors themselves. Like the example of Miss Hawkins, who turned the worst event in her life into a catalyst to make a difference for other people, so that other people wouldn't have to go through the same thing that she went through, that's the story of the Victims' Rights Movement. It has been people who felt that they were so poorly treated by the criminal justice system, that they had to make a difference and make sure it would be better for the next person.

How would you define victims' rights?Just you know, what do you think victims' rights really means?


To the tax issues that tanked a lot of the nominees that couldn't go forward. Some of the most common errors are incorrect or missing social security numbers. It sounds so simple, and yet, that something that catches a lot of people. The incorrect tax entered, based on your taxable income and filing status; math errors!Math errors is a huge issue for a lot of people. That's why it's important that if you can to e-file, because that will eliminate one of the major errors people make, which is in the math. And if you make less than $56,000 a year, you can get your taxes e-filed for free. You have to go to the IRS Web site to do it. But also this year for the first time, you can e-file even if you don't meet that. Now, you don't get the tax software that goes along with it that sort of walks you through, but if you already know how to do your taxes and you don't want to pay extra, you can e-file.

OK, let's talk about an issue that seems to be the third rail for a lot of political appointees or nominees, and that is the nanny tax. What should we, ordinary people, know about this kind of tax. . .

When we're hiring people to do stuff around the house?

Well, here's the thing: Most people are not going to have this problem.


And what makes them so good at invading?

Well, they share a suite of traits with a lot of the world's worst invasive ant species, one of which is that they are what's called super-colonial. And on a continental scale they can be called uni-colonial. What that means is that colonies don't recognize boundaries. There's no (unintelligible) population there's no aggression between crazy ants. All individuals in the population treat other individuals in the population as members of the same colony.

So you can take ants from any population in Texas, introduce them into another population in Texas or - I haven't tested this - but probably other parts of the Southeast, and they will join and work together. So that's - it really cuts down the costs of interest-specific competition and can allow the more efficient use of space in the environment they're in.

They also rely very heavily on sugary resources that they get from homoptera insects, things like aphids and mealy bugs. And they seem to be very good at exploiting these resources, which helps maintain their populations at very high densities.


What sorts of things have you been doing?What has Save The Children been doing?

Well, obviously, we focus on children, but we're looking at livelihoods. You know, I was saying that fishing boats have been destroyed and people are now really struggling. So we'll be working with fishermen to try to support them to repair their boats. We're repairing schools that children can go - try and go back to school. Over 3,000 schools were damaged, meaning that over a million children are now not being able to go back to school.

So we are really still working around the clock to do what we can to make sure that families can get back on their feet.

Now, this is a holiday week and the Philippines is a predominantly Christian country. Has there been any Christmas celebrating going on?


That poem is called "A Flower Song For Maidens Coming Of Age. "It was written in 1440 before European contact in Mexico. And it's from a collection of Mayan poems - extraordinary. Tell me about why this poem resonated for you. It describes a moon ceremony.

It was such an important revelation to have come across this poem. I cried. I cried for two days - the whole week because, as you know, colonization basically eradicated all of our written documentation in the Americas. All of our traditions have been passed down through word of mouth. But to have written documentation that women have been honoring the moon and celebrating their bodies and their transitions, their milestones in this way, I really felt like my ancestors were watching over.

And you wrote in the afterword to this book that you really wanted young women to find their own way to connect with their roots. Why?

Well, I think it's important for any person, really, but young girls in particular who come from marginalized communities to find their - not only their roots but the meaning and the legacy of wisdom and power that comes from those traditions. And Celi, because she's bicultural and multiracial, she has all of these beautiful intersections happening that I really tried to play up in the novel because I wanted children that are just like Celi, who are multiracial and bicultural, to see themselves and their hybridity in all of its beauty and all of its power.


That's because they're dark horses, Tony. I don't who they are.

I know who will not be in the final four this time around. My beloved Bruins from UCLA, they're not going anywhere this year.

Serves then right.

Yeah. They had their chance, right?


Correct. These are not embryonic stem cells. These are what we would call neural stem cells. In other words, these are stem cells that come from the nervous system.

And why - and, I guess, you give them a little - they have a little head start knowing they're going to be neurons from being injected.

Exactly. Well, they, you know, they have a head start in knowing at least that they're meant to be living in the nervous system, which means that there's a little bit of built-in safety and stability that may not quite exist in cells. They can become and kind cell to.

And how long are they effective for in the life of the mice they're injected into?


I'm doing great. So when you think about. .

You're doing better than the economy, right?

I guess so. You know, when you think about what Marcus Mabry just said, he said, this is a Wall Street issue, not a Main Street issue. Do you agree with that?

Not at all. I mean, I think he's basically right that it hits Wall Street harder than it hits Main Street, but it does hit Main Street too especially if you are an African-American and had already bumped up against a stringent credit requirement. I think that there is going to be - there's going to be several restructurings, and one thing that needs to happen is we need to talk about people's right to have access to credit and the ways that people are judged as being credit worthy.


Because they need to. They need to become the number two search-engine in the world. Google is number one. Microsoft's MSN's portal is a lame duck in the number three position. This would give them a better search-engine opportunity, which would increase the amount of online advertising dollars, which is where everyone is going and why this would make a lot of sense to do.

So are they going to take the offer, you think?

You know, I hope so. It would be nice to see. You know, I would like to see Yahoo stay independent, but I don't know. I mean, they're talking about a thousand layoffs, Farai. So if it can stop people from losing their job, I'm all for it.

All right. Well, Mario, thanks a lot.


The president of the United States, the leader of the free world, who's the person who is in a best position of any human being on the planet to help Baltimoreans who need help, instead of doing so is using his office to beat down an American city.

NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez is following the story. He's in our studios. Good morning.

FRANCO ORDOÑEZ, BYLINE: Good morning.

So the president grabs attention. Everybody takes the bait. But why does he do it now?


The weather forecast is planning for 600 millimeters of rainfall in the coming days, which is twice as much as the quantity of rain we have seen in Beira after the first cyclone, which is really concerning because in Beira, the situation was very bad. So if the weather forecast turns out to be correct, the health and sanitation situation here will worsen, and it will be harder to access areas with food as well.

The recovery effort after Cyclone Idai was already facing a funding shortfall. Do you think relief organizations will have the resources they need to respond to another disaster?

We definitely need more support from the international community. We are expecting that our financial need will raise very quickly as we see that the situation is worsening now in the north of the country. But we are able to respond nonetheless because we already had means on the ground. We had a team that was quickly able to deploy. And we have two helicopters that just arrived today in Pemba. And we'll be able to fly as soon as tomorrow if the weather permits.

What do you think are going to be the biggest concerns in this region going forward?


Yeah.

Some old steelworker or some young hip-hop kid.

Racial moment, that's nice.

You know, and everybody wants to know what people are thinking about race.

It's like racial moment versus the senior moment.


Yeah, I believe there's a certainty of it. I started out my career as a journalist covering races in Mississippi, and every year people would try to give black people bad information, and we at the local black newspaper would find ourselves, you know, working with the NAACP, trying to get out good information. They would go through black neighborhoods and pass out flyers saying don't forget to vote on Wednesday, for instance. I'm sure that tactic, which is one of the tried and true, will be tried again somewhere in this country.

Well, Benjamin Jealous, thank you so much.

Thank you. It's a real pleasure.

Benjamin Jealous is the president of the NAACP.


One of the main things that the sheep people face is the predators. And coyotes, wolves will impact your herd and kill lambs and so forth. It's kind of hard to imagine. But, at one point, I was trapping as many coyotes in a year as when I had sheep running on the land. And this is one of the things that this Barrasso bill seemed to address is the threshold level and not letting that level be like a mirage that you never really get there.

I apologize in advance for my city kid naivete, but isn't there something you can do to prevent the coyotes from getting to your - do I say flock or herd?

It's difficult. You got to remember, you know, it takes 30 acres to run a cow on my place. And you just can't be every place at once. So consequently, the cows have to kind of take care of themselves. And predators are very hard to offset in that instance.

How would increased state involvement, which is called for in the Barrasso bill, improve things as far as you're concerned?


You know, he wrote that in all caps. This tweet was then followed by a statement from Taiwan's government that contradicted what Trump had just tweeted, saying that the call between the two leaders was set up by both sides in advance. Soon after that, Trump seemed to dig himself an even bigger diplomatic hole by tweeting (reading) interesting how the U. S.  sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment, but I should not accept a congratulatory call.

So from his Twitter posts, it does seem like he's genuinely flummoxed about why his conversation with Taiwan's president was seen as such a big deal. On the other hand, though, it's certainly possible that this could have been a calculated signal that Trump's team of advisers was sending to China's leadership. It's important to mention here that Trump's advisers on China are a very hawkish group. They've written, in the past, about the importance of Taiwan. And it's likely they would approve of testing China's leadership like this.

Thanks very much, NPR's Rob Schmitz.

Thanks.


So we really need to do research and try to pin that down. Another thing that's critical is - so what is the long-term prospect for our cities and our ports?How much is the sea level going to rise?What are our coast lines going to look like?Well, that depends upon how fast Greenland and parts of the West Antarctic ice sheet melt. That's a big unknown.

There was a piece appearing in the New York Times this week that described new research that basically found even if we curb emissions now, climate change will likely continue until at least the year 3000. Do you feel like there is any solution?Can we ever go back?

We should not think about the fact that we're going to be pristine and back what we were like before the industrial revolution. I think we have to have a different notion. We have used the industrial revolution to get rich. We've improved our quality of life. Now, those very techniques are reducing the quality of life through environmental side effects. Let's try to prevent it from getting a lot worse.

So while we can't stop a few degrees of warming on top of where we already are, we can stop the 10 degrees. My notion is do as much as you can, as fast as you can, as fairly as you can, and as cost effectively as you can, and don't get hung up on the numbers because three degrees is a lot better than six, and 10 degrees is dramatically worse than any other numbers.


Governor Mike Pence endorsed Ted Cruz yesterday in Indianapolis, although he also had kind words for Donald Trump. Mr.  Trump has also been endorsed by perhaps the best-known Hoosier on the planet. Forgive me Cole Porter. We mean Bobby Knight, the legendary Indiana University basketball coach. Coach Knight is celebrated for winning national championships, running an honest program and holding his players to high academic standards. He's also famous for having a titanic, chair-hurling temper. He is not known for political endorsements or being involved in campaigns.

I think that I'm like millions of Americans today that would like to see some things done that take us back to where we want to be, where we can really be proud of America, we have leadership that enables us to do that. I think I'm just one of millions of people. I'm not out there by myself. I just want to see us be the very best that we can possibly be and be thought of worldwide by the very best there is.

What did you hear Donald Trump say that convinced you you wanted to help him?

Well, Donald Trump didn't say anything that convinced me 'cause I went through people and people that were involved and least - involved themselves in the election. I made a little chart. I put together the things that he's done in life. And Donald Trump has created more jobs than all of the other candidates and politicians in the country. That's huge. That's important. That was a big thing for me to put down on my checklist.


How big a deal is this for you, Freddie Hubbard?Is this sort of a moment of, you know, am I able to do and be what I once was or am I having to accept that time has put me in a different place?Are you sort of at that?

So much that because you have to realize at one time or another in your career when you get a little older, you can't do the things that you did before. Now, it's been very hard for me to accept that. I never - I felt like - I always felt like I could blow it and nothing would never happen until this happened. So now, it's - no matter how hard I practice, it just seem like I can't do the plays I did. But people tell me, they say, man, you don't have to prove nothing. All you have to do is play good enough to get your point across because you're not going to play like - I'm not going to play like I did when you played those earlier records. And I'm just - it's hard for me to accept that, you know, all I want is young (unintelligible) getting off on me, you know.

Let's go back to 1964. This is "Breaking Point. "

See, I was trying to play like a saxophone.


So, yeah, just for the people who don't know, New Faces is a place where, like, up-and-coming comedians can perform in front of agents and people who can, like, change their life essentially, right?So his set was 50% I'm bad at sex, I'm, like, kind of pudgy and I feel weird about it - right - and, like, very, very well-mined place for comedy. And the other 50% of his comedy was about how he's from Mechanicsburg, Pa. , and he just moved to New York. And he's sort of, like, straddling the line between his, like, racist stuff - his uncle's posts on Facebook - and, like, the aggressively woke friends he's making now in New York and just sort of trying to traverse the two worlds.

And his set got - you know, I put him on the list because his set got a lot of laughs. He has great, like, timing. And, like, the aggressive energy that's in his podcast was sort of, like, shaved off just enough, you know?

Did you hear him make any actual racist comments during his set?

Every sort of, like, racist comments were sort of, like, couched in, like, oh, my uncle just hates Kaepernick - like, that sort of thing - like, in the voice of.


So how do you think we should be thinking about this?I mean, are you personally prepared to say this warrants an impeachment inquiry at this point?And we only have - I beg your pardon - about 30 seconds left.

Well, I don't think there's any question that this whole issue needs to be investigated. And frankly, the Republicans ought to be working with the Democrats on this issue. This is a question of checks and balances. Are we going to prevent a president and limit a president from abusing his powers as president?That's something that's not just in the Democrats' interest. It's in the Republicans' interests because one of these days, there'll be a Democratic president, and they will be very concerned if that president behaves as this president is and is not held accountable.

That was Leon Panetta. He's a former director of central intelligence. He's a former secretary of defense and has held a number of important posts, as we have said.

Mr.  Secretary, thank you so much for speaking with us once again.


(Singing) Don't act surprised, It ain't like you didn't know. It's been a long, long time comin' And it's time for me to go.

Tryin' to split things up Could drive us crazy.

So where'd that song come from?

That song - Frank Rogers is my producer, and we got together - it was the first time we had met each other, we were talking about what kind of record I wanted to make. And I told him I really wanted to make a country record, and that was the first song we wrote together.


The best story.

Just another story.

Really quickly, the New York Jets have announced their new head coach, Bill, and I know that that is a subject of your next wonderful column. Give us a sneak preview.

Well, yeah. Buddy Ryan's son, Rex Ryan, had his first conference yesterday, and you know, he was so enthusiastic I was ready to snap on the pass.


Will you try and legislate in spite of the president instead of with him?I mean, it seems that he is distracting from what the Republican Congress is trying to do.

Oh, absolutely. I think we'll move forward without that. I think that the president can certainly - I mean, it would be helpful, obviously, if the president makes that pivot - and I certainly hope that he does - where he's certainly more deliberate, more thoughtful in his approach - certainly gets off this Twitter stuff (laughter) - where, you know, I think that, as commander in chief - and I've said this before - that the men and women who serve this country in uniform want to see a president focused on the fact that we're a nation at war and not in a Twitter war with Rosie O'Donnell.

And so I think - I hope that this president can self-correct - this presidency can stabilize. But the Congress needs to move forward with policies that matter to the American people. And the president is doing something important right now in having visited Saudi Arabia - and to strengthen our alliance with Saudi Arabia, to counter that Iranian - Syrian, certainly under Assad, and Russia axis of power that is strengthening.

You know, you're talking about Twitter, but there were reports last week that the president disclosed sensitive intelligence information from Israel to Russian diplomats in an Oval Office meeting. You're a veteran. Do you have any concerns about the president's national security judgment, just briefly?


My final thing is this, and I appreciate your coming on, one of the cornerstones of the president then-candidate Obama's approach to the people was that he would reach across the aisle, and there have been questions as to whether he really reached across the aisle effectively as far as the stimulus is concerned, fair or unfair?

I think he was effective. I mean, I'm not sure he ever could have expected to win a lot of people over but he had to be seen as trying. A budget after all like this stimulus economic recovery plan is actually a budget measure. It incorporates the priorities of the majority party, and the Republicans and Democrats have very different ideas of how to handle spending and taxes. So he was never going to get a lot of votes, but he tried. And he clearly, he tried not just stylistically but substantively. And what your listeners have to remember is that there are very moderate Republicans left in Congress. There's very few people left to deal with because Democrats have been so successful at the polls for the last two cycles.

I've got about 15 seconds for this, would you say that the president - this president - is under more public scrutiny that either of his recent predecessors?

Well, any president is under scrutiny, but I think yes. I mean, he's a ground breaker. He is the first African-American president that alone would bring him more scrutiny.


. . . For your research on pulsars and for being a leader in the scientific community. So what does this latest accolade mean to you?

Well, it left me speechless when I got the news because I never, ever dreamt of this, I must admit. And it's a vast sum of money, as well, which. . .

. . . Is, really, I think, a bit hard to believe.

It certainly is. A lot has changed for women in science, but, as I'm sure you know, a lot hasn't. And I think the fact that you're giving away the money for scholarships may be a nod to the fact that it's still hard for certain people to break into the field.


Now you know, in this country the housing crisis particularly fed by the subprime mortgage crisis, led to the recession in a - to a large degree. Back in 2007, you did a presentation about Latin America and the Caribbean building what you called an immune system against that kind of housing mortgage-related crisis. What did that involve?

Well, it follow in the several crisis that Latin America had in the 1990's. Bank regulators and supervisors were particularly cautious. So Latin America built perhaps a stronger than in the past certainly, and comparatively to other regions, the stronger frameworks of bank regulation supervision. The systems in Latin America became more conservative and as a result they did not get into these new fashionable instruments - sophisticated instruments - that became popular in the U. S. , in the developed markets.

As a result of being perhaps significantly behind these innovations, the Latin American's financial systems now find themselves with better quality loans, more resilient banking systems, better capitalized. It doesn't mean that this crisis will not affect domestic markets. It will affect but - but the domestic markets are in a better position to absorb the - what's coming to them.

Our final question is this, and I only have about 10 seconds for you to answer, are you confident that things will improve in Latin America, perhaps more quickly than in the United States or elsewhere?


I want to ask you about a few sounds, and if you could begin by re-creating them. The first is -and I'm going to sign on to your language here - the breathy-voiced, long, low, back, unrounded vowel with advanced tongue root.

Aghhhh!

(Laughter)

I can't even do it without rolling my eyes. They automatically go right up to the roof.


Blowing on them?

Yeah.

Well, it depends on how cold it is. You know, that's probably the toughest thing is the fingers. I mean, your fingers get to the point they just don't want to work. I suppose there's electric gloves and there's motorcycle gear. You can buy whole heated suits and stuff and have a battery pack on you. But as long as you're hustling and you're moving, it doesn't seem to affect you as much.

So if they make the movie about the heating, ventilation and air conditioner man, who plays the hero?


You have an exchange in this book that you quote with Ed Crane, who's head of the Cato Institute. And I want you to get to talk about the substance of that, but I also - I have to begin by saying there's a part of me that's thinking, I wouldn't imagine two people less likely to be in friendly communication than Ralph Nader and Ed Crane.

Well.

But I'd be wrong.

Look what he told me. He said, Ralph, I'm against all corporate subsidies. I'm against unconstitutional wars. I oppose the Patriot Act. And I think the Federal Reserve is running amok. I said, Ed, that's a pretty good start.


President Obama in Elkhart, Indiana, today says he will create an independent, bipartisan board to oversee spending and to ensure that the money isn't wasted. The high school auditorium in Elkhart was filled to capacity for President Obama's town hall meeting. According to the Elkhart Truth newspaper this morning, the line to get in was longer than a football field. People waited for hours in predawn frigid temperatures. The president chose Elkhart to sell his stimulus plan because it's one of the cities that has suffered the most in this recession. Elkhart's unemployment rate is 17 percent. Earlier, I spoke with the managing editor of the newspaper, Greg Halling.

So, 17 percent unemployment rate; tell us more about how the economy has affected Elkhart.

What you see is, in Elkhart, is just everywhere you look, people who have held jobs, who've been able to take care of their families, basically, their entire lives, for the first time, being forced to go to food pantries just to make sure that they can make ends meet.

So, with a 17 percent unemployment rate in Elkhart, the people must be pretty desperate. How much faith and how much hope are they pinning on the stimulus package?


How long has this been going on, and how did it start?It sounds like there's a culture of this.

Well, that's a great question. We've seen the number of arrests, at least for juveniles, ticking up in Pinellas in the last few years. It does spread very socially. They're sharing everything from what they're in to who they can pick up to who needs a ride to cop sighting - you know, stay inside, the narcs are out - on Facebook, on Instagram. One girl was arrested after an Instagram photo appeared of her inside the car that police were looking for with the caption, GTA squad, just grand theft auto.

Sounds like they're almost seeing it like "Grand Theft Auto" videogames.

Perhaps, it's been brought up before. But it certainly seems like a real life one playing out on our streets. And it's very dangerous. Kids in stolen cars in Pinellas crash every four days. We've had, you know, horrific t-boning accidents, where police cars go up in flames. We've had kids themselves getting injured.


Oh, yeah. The kids who were studied were in the one-and-a-half years to five-year range. In each case, it was only one parent deployed. They all lived on the same Marine base, which was actually Portsmouth, Virginia. They were all enrolled in a base-supplied childcare program, which allowed them to be studied more closely.

There was one atypical thing, by the way, which is that the deployments were shorter than one would expect. The average was only three and a half months, and we know that many deployments are a year or a year-and-a-half or even longer than that.

And still, even though it was a short deployment, the researchers still saw negative consequences.

Yes, yeah. The whole question of behavioral change was studied by having both parents and teachers fill out questionnaires about the child's behavior. And these kids were compared with other kids on the same base. The only difference is, the comparison kids didn't have a parent deployed to a combat zone.

And what were they measuring, what kinds of behavior?


You know, Renee, this was the week Kamala Harris found out what happens when a candidate breaks out in a debate and gets in the face of the frontrunner. You get a bump in the polls, but it comes with a lot of attention, much of it critical. And people take a longer look at your own positions on, say, busing and other issues as well. And we also saw headlines about how she and her husband made their money. We see folks on Twitter questioning her racial origins, which, by the way, caused her rival candidates to rally around in her defense, including Joe Biden.

And what about Joe Biden?He's trying to recover ground lost in those debates.

He's been doing television interviews and trying to talk about his sort of multipart position on busing over the years, and talk about his endorsements from African Americans who are local and state officials in key states. It's very early. The field is shifting. And if Biden can ride his ship in time for the debates at the end of this month, he'll still be the one the other candidates are coming after.

NPR senior editor and correspondent Ron Elving, thanks for joining us.


I'm just over the line. I'm near Heartbreak Hill, actually, and was out on the root of the race earlier today. But no, I'm - it would be very, very difficult to get down near the finish line on any marathon day at this hour.

And certainly at this point not safe to go anywhere near the Boston Marathon, and I assumed it's advisable that if you are in Boston you stay well away from the scene. Tell me about what kind of things you're seeing or what kind of reports you're seeing about the site itself, what it looks like.

The site itself looks like - I mean there is grey smoke on - these are just the images that are coming out of the area now. (Technical difficulties) been wall-to-wall people just an hour ago is now basically emptied out except for authorities. The place - the streets are littered with signs meant to be cheering on runners, water bottles and so on, and seems to be covered in a kind of grey dust. And we saw the windows on storefronts completely shuttered out, sidewalk stained with blood. From reports - eyewitnesses down there anyway, reporting, it seems that there were some very, very injuries.

I've been watching. They've been replaying on the television networks over and over at least one image - a video image of at least one of the explosions and they don't seem to show the next one. Do we know how far apart they were - a matter of seconds, was it?


So I guess you could be arguing that they're just coming down to realistic levels.

Yeah, I could be arguing that.

All right. Well, let's talk about what this means in relation to the president's recently announced housing rescue package. Now, I understand that it's only applicable if you have a loan of less than $417,000. In other words, not a jumbo loan, and if you're only five percent underwater.

That's right. It does include people who have not defaulted yet, which is a good thing, and it's focused on the right target. The right target is this auctions market, which has gotten clogged. That's really by and large - it's all over the country, but it's particularly in low states, in these four states, and it's at the low end of the market. So most of the properties that are in foreclosure or a lot of the properties in foreclosure are actually within that conforming limit.


So this prosecution brings together a lot of theories that are very sexist that would justify massive control of pregnant women on grounds that they owe a duty to their fetuses to behave in certain ways and that - and ultimately make pregnant people vulnerable to prosecution for just about any kind of conduct that can be deemed risky.

Marshae Jones is African American. What is the relevance of race in your view?

Racism is what caused the notion that using drugs during pregnancy, which is a health problem, could be turned into a crime to prosecute pregnant women and mothers. We can trace that to the so-called crack epidemic at the end of the 1980s, early 1990s. And the first women who were prosecuted were black women who smoked crack cocaine during pregnancy.

And the vast majority of women who were prosecuted among hundreds of women were black women, even though there is evidence that drug use during pregnancy is not more likely to happen in any particular racial group or economic group. And so this was clear targeting of black women, which I believe is part of a long history of devaluing black motherhood in particular and also a result of discriminatory behavior in hospitals, where hospitals were much more likely to turn in black patients for using drugs during pregnancy than white patients.


This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Michel Martin. Immigration, both legal and unauthorized, has been a central issue for Donald Trump since he announced his candidacy for president. Last week, he announced his plan for an overhaul to the current system, which emphasizes family ties and employment, moving to a system that would prioritize certain education and employment qualifications.

Overshadowing all of this, however, is the huge backlog of immigration cases already in the system waiting to go before the courts. More than 800,000 cases are waiting to be resolved, according to The New York Times. We wanted to get a sense of how the immigration courts are functioning now and how the new system could affect the courts, so we've called Jeffrey Chase. He is a retired immigration judge in New York. He worked as a staff attorney at the Board of Immigration Appeals. We actually caught up with him at the airport on his way back from a conference on national immigration law, which was held in Austin, Texas.

Mr.  Chase, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. Yeah, it seems appropriate to be at JFK Airport talking about immigration. So. . .


Right. We're all talking about the wrong thing anyway. Most gun deaths are caused by the guns that people aren't trying to ban right now. You know, we're focused again on assault rifles. They don't kill that many people. In the spectacular shootings, we see the use of so-called assault rifles. But it's - handguns are responsible for most of the gun-related suicides. And that's half the - half the gun deaths in this country. And in the low-level street violence that you see in many cities, it's mainly a handgun issue. So we're not even talking about the things that are causing most of the deaths. But in the media climate in which we exist, these spectacular events get all of the attention. And the shootings on the streets of Chicago - one dead, two dead at a time - they don't get any attention. But that's the - that's the - that's the real center of the gun problem in this country.

Do you think the shootings we saw in San Bernardino do represent something different in - forgive me - the mass-shooting scenario. . .

Right.

Something different than what we've seen, and for that matter - obviously it's speculated at this point - but people who might not have been directed by any kind of authority overseas but inspired by something like that?


Is there a danger of South Koreans becoming too complacent?

I think that they do talk about that. But there's also reality, which is when you have this incredibly materialistic society, it's literally a, you know, (speaking Korean) style (speaking Korean) land, then, you know, the reality of this war with this nation under Kim Jong Un kind of doesn't strike anyone as a realistic thing. And, yes, there is a danger to it. But at the same time, life does go on. And life is a very, very, very fast and active one in South Korea.

So we've been talking about war. What about peace?Do the South Koreans even think about the possibility of detente anymore, the possibility of the border reopening?

I mean, I think the issue of one Korea reunification is one of those politically manipulated one. You know, the left parties used it. The right has used it, certainly, in South Korea. So it's almost like this sort of symbol whenever they need to use sort of national security in order to unite people or get their agenda across. So it's almost become a tired one, where everyone - if you were to talk to them and you interview South Koreans, they'll all say, reunification is necessary. Do they want it?They would pause. Do they want to pay for 25 million North Koreans?Do they want refugees?They don't really want that.


Yeah. And is the money - is it as big as drug money, for example?

Much more. I mean, I made drug trafficking for years. But here, we are talking about money that there's no comparison with drugs. Just to give you an idea for two reasons. First of all because these are money that's collected in advance and without risk. It's a typical business without risk because when you put 500 people in a boat, like, 20-meters long and 4-meters large and cost a few thousand euros, you get something like 1 million euros, 800,000 euros for each boat with a cost that is very, very low. And you don't risk anything because basically, you don't care if the human good - the good that you are. . .

Yeah.

. . . Trafficking arrives or not. It's not the same with drugs because is if a load of a drug is lost, of course, there is a real problem. Somebody must pay it. If 100 people died in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea but they pay in advance, there is not any kind of problem for them.


All right. Just quickly, before we let you go. Do you have any plans to try to catch up with Senator Obama's family on or after election day?

Oh, I don't know if I'm going to make it, because there's a huge media presence here already, and I think everyone's just waiting just to catch up with his grandmother.

Other reporters will be there, right outside her house?

Oh, absolutely. They were right outside her house during his delivery of the speech, during the Democratic Convention. And if I get the chance and manage to wiggle my way through the crowd, hopefully I might get a chance to speak to her. I have spoken to his stepsister, Auma Obama, and - in the past. So, you know, who knows?If I get that opportunity, yes, definitely, I will want to speak to them, and maybe speak to you later about what they said.


Are you going to continue the protest?

Well, if they're going to be held, I suppose maybe, yes. But actually, it was meant for these concrete elections. Of course, it was not the only subject that was brought up. Also, the power being held by one party for, like, 19 years, yes. So of course, when election ends, it doesn't mean that the problem goes away.

So of course, it did come to notice to all the Muscovites, at least. A lot of people in Russia actually also protested in other cities. They were saying, thank you, Muscovites, for putting our words out there, for making it noticeable at least. That's the least we can do. I mean, the citizens, just the citizens.

Yeah. Do you have any concern that by going to protests that police have your picture, that you can be identified, that - I mean, we're using another name, not your name with you. But. . .


. . . you see the more segments you have, the more you can twist.

The more you can twist. So we have a bone difference. But the question that intrigued Philippe Gailloud and Fabian de Kok-Mercado was why don't owls get strokes?And Philippe Gailloud actually studies disease caused by artery damage. And so he knows first-hand that in humans, if you tried to turn your head like that, you would damage your blood vessel that would cause a clot and you might get a stroke. And beyond that, let's say that didn't happen, the other problem is that if you twisted your neck that much, your arteries, which bring blood to your brain, important, would be pinched off. So how to the owls get around this?And that's what these researchers looked into this week, and that's what the Video Pick of the Week is about.

Great. So why don't we see dead owls all over the place from turning their neck?

Correct. That's exactly what he said. Why are there not dead owls lying all over the forest for was the way that Dr.  Gailloud puts it.


The American Medical Association has largely stayed on the sidelines of political fights over the past 30 years or so. But a North Dakota law set to go into effect next month is spurring the doctor's group to get involved now. The law will require doctors in North Dakota to tell patients that medically induced abortions can be reversed. Now, there's no scientific evidence to support that claim, and the AMA is taking the state to court over it and another existing abortion law. Julie Rovner covers health policy at Kaiser Health News. She joins us now.

Welcome back to the program, Julie.

Thanks for having me.

We just described one of these laws. What's the other one, and why is the AMA concerned about it?


Given that President Trump pulled the U. S.  out of this deal a year ago, why has Iran just now decided to do all this?

Well, there's a couple of reasons. One, as you mentioned, the U. S.  isn't the only party to the deal. And so after the U. S.  pulled out, Iran wanted to give the other parties, which are Russia, Europe and China, time to maybe provide some sanctions relief, to provide it a reason to stay in. After a year, that hadn't happened. And so Iran has been putting pressure, particularly on Europe, to try and get something in exchange for agreeing to abide by the deal.

The other big thing that's going on is that the U. S.  is dialing up this maximum pressure campaign. And Iran is kind of exerting the same campaign back. You know, they are starting to be increasingly provocative in a number of arenas, and the nuclear arena is one of those.

And does this mean that the deal is likely to totally fall apart soon?


Now, you mentioned play acting. Is there any evidence to show that there's an interesting crime stories that can lead to some people to actually, you know, commit crimes like copycat?

Well, of course. And this is a concern. I wrote a book on violence in a workplace a number of years ago. And whenever, we see an act of violence in the workplace, there's always going to be a copycat somewhere in the country. Let me just quickly say this though. We saw in the inauguration of our new president, Obama, an amazingly hopeful thing. More than a million people, I don't remember the exact number, stood together and there wasn't one arrest.

That's right.

Now, that is an amazing thing. Nowhere in America does that take place except there. So, we have to be thinking that his words choose hope over fear demonstrated with more than a million people staying together and no crime being committed, you know, is a story for the future of hopefulness. But I think that speaks to another element of why we're fascinated with crime, Tony, and that's the sense of compassion. Either you believe people are good or believe people are bad, I believe people are good. But I think that one reason that we are interested in crime is because it allows us to feel our compassion, not only a compassion for the victim but sometimes compassions for the perpetrator.


I have to ask, Margaret - because you are also on the board of the White House Correspondents' Association - a moment this week when Sarah Sanders, the press secretary, declined to answer a follow-up question from NBC's Hallie Jackson, called on Jordan Fabian, a reporter from The Hill. He said, go ahead, Hallie. Has it reached a point where White House reporters should stand together and refuse to go along with the way the White House conducts briefings?

I have long encouraged both on the board - I just finished my term this week - and just individually as a reporter have long encouraged reporters to take care of each other in the briefing room. I think we did this at times during the Obama administration when there were reporters whose desire for questions was getting skipped over. And it's an option we have now. We can all be good neighbors to each other, and we can all help each other to be allies in our shared mission, which is to help provide information to the American public on burning questions of the day.

Margaret Talev, who covers the White House for Bloomberg, thanks very much. I hope you get some time to rest up this weekend.

Thank you so much.


Not too much yet. Police have said that they range in all ages. Former El Paso congressman and now-presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke told reporters yesterday that he spoke to the wife of a soccer coach who was wounded while fundraising for his team at the Walmart. Mexican officials have also reported via Twitter that there are six Mexicans injured, including a 10-year-old girl, and three others are among the dead.

I mean, this must be an incredibly difficult time in El Paso right now, you know, something this horrific happening. There were so many families at the Walmart, as you mentioned. And it is now being investigated as a potential hate crime. So I'm wondering - how have the people there reacted to this terrible tragedy?

Well, El Pasoans have by and large reacted in the same way they've responded to the rush of Central American families who have arrived - who have been arriving at this city for months now. Hours after the shooting, there were long lines at blood donation centers. I visited a school where families were gathering to get information about missing loved ones. I saw El Pasoans show up to that school with truckloads of water. There is an interfaith vigil organized tonight at a local park. And both the mayor and the U. S.  congresswoman who represent El Paso has said this is - that this crime isn't reflective of the welcoming character of this city.

That's reporter Monica Ortiz Uribe in El Paso. Thank you very much.

You're welcome.


So first, he doesn't read French. And I was very scared. I have to tell you. The man, as you know, is very rich. And he's super well-known. And he cares about his image. And he has - you know, he can hire very good lawyers.

(Laughter).

And I was very, very scared because I wrote about his thoughts. I wrote about his sentimental life, about his sex life. You know, I'm - here I am, a woman, a heterosexual French woman, writing about a British gay artist. How do I dare?I was very, very scared - my husband, too. He thought, you know, there would be a. . .

(Laughter) You'd be bankrupt.


I find it interesting that the thing that I think is their signature model, which is the pinching effect, they didn't care about or seem to want to protect that.

It was - so the pinch to zoom, it's something that they've litigated with HTC against, I believe, in the past. They were using - they had a handful of other different user interface features. There's one, double-tap to zoom, so when you double-tap, say, a little article on the New York Times homepage, it'll, you know, expand to take up the full screen.

And that was in the core - the jury agreed that was something they owned.

Correct.


So he did leave some wiggle room because he said that there are all kinds of good reasons for the government to want to include the citizenship question on the census. But the reason that the government actually gave was a pretext; it was a fake reason. And so this leaves open the possibility of coming back and saying, from the government, here's our new reason. Is this good enough for you, Chief Justice Roberts?And since he's the controlling vote, what he thinks on that question is likely going to be determinative.

But can they come back if, essentially, they were rejected because their previous reasoning was seen as disingenuous?

Well - so I think that, legally, there is a way to make an argument that the opinion the court issued last month did not completely close the door. But it's still going to have to convince a number of judges that it is a good enough reason and not yet another pretext.

There's also been talk about the president circumventing all of this by issuing an executive order. Is that realistic?Is that legally viable?


He went to his local bar and he didn't sit on the sidelines there. He took center stage and actually played a kind of Balkan fiddle called a gusle. And everyone stood around and clapped and applauded him. And he was sitting under a portrait of Radovan Karodzic, this man who was the hero for most of the people in the bar. And not one of them spotted the resemblance.

He lived across the stairwell in his block of flats from a woman who worked with Interpol. And her - every time she went into work, she logged on to her computer and saw the world's most wanted, including Osama bin Laden and Radovan Karodzic. And the penny never dropped. It was like a long-running performance that only came to an end really when his brother made a vital slip.

He made a phone call, right?What happened?

He made a phone call. And he used a SIM card that he shouldn't have used. It was one that was on the files of the people chasing Karodzic.

To put you on the spot a bit, does a sentence like this that comes 21 years after the Srebrenica massacre serve as a deterrent to alleged war crimes being committed today, let's say in Syria and/or Iraq?


And that - you know, that - it totally imbued his soul. He was - you know, I've been in the presence of a lot of great men. And almost all of them preferred to talk about themselves. He wanted to talk about you. And that's what made you fall in love with him.

Yeah. I don't want to draw everything to what's going on now. But, you know, you would have dinner with President Bush. You would talk about things. Did - can we draw distinctions between the kind of president he was and what we see in the country now?

Oh, Scott, there will be time for that conversation. And I'm sure it's being held. And of course there's - we're in a very different world now. But I think George - I can almost hear George Bush right now saying, now, now, let's not have any of that. He. . .

Yeah.


But you can imagine that if you don't exercise, you might lose it. So we haven't studied that, per se, but we were more interested in how the muscle can store and utilize sugar and fat as energy sources when it's working. And so those were the particular proteins and genes that we were studying.

So lest anybody think that this is a trait like Lamarck thought many years ago, that you're going to pass down the - that your DNA, from usage, has changed and you pass that down to your offspring, that's not what happens here.

Well, these chemical marks disappeared after exercise. . .

Yeah.


The resignation of Michael Flynn as national security adviser came after leaks from anonymous sources inside the intelligence community. Anonymous sources have always been a source of tips for reporters, but they've been especially prominent in the first days of the Trump administration. Last night, President Trump called the American news media the enemy of the people. NPR's David Folkenflik joins us. David, thanks for being with us.

Always.

When The Washington Post broke this story, they cited nine current and former officials and said they spoke on condition of anonymity. What kind of editorial decision-making goes in to having a report like this appear?

You can be sure that this rocketed up to the very top of the news hierarchy at a newsroom like The Post. Just the very fact that they took nine sources that they clearly went out of their way to try to check, cross-check, double-check and question what they were about to report that the stakes were that high, that the ramifications of what they were going to report would be so significant that they were going to take this very seriously indeed. And I think you can see that by the solidity of the reporting as far as we know so far. And I think that's also a reflection of how uncertain this story has been to date. You know, if - you may remember before the election, The New York Times had reported that the FBI had found that there were no signs of, you know, such contacts. And I think on this subject, there's a care being given by The Post, by The Times and by other serious news organizations.


If you thought the fight over the FBI's Russia investigation couldn't get any more contentious, this past week, of course, it did. The White House has refused to declassify a competing Democratic memo that challenges claims made by the Republicans alleging bias and abuse in the FBI. President Trump had given the OK to release the GOP memo. Both documents are products of infighting within the House intelligence committee. Jamil Jaffer was a lawyer in the White House under President George W.  Bush. And he was senior counsel to the House intel committee. He joins us from Colorado today. Welcome to the program.

Thanks. Good to be here, Lulu.

You've called this a, quote, "massive strategic miscalculation on the part of the White House. "Why?

Look. I mean, part of the challenge here is the president is alleging that there was massive corruption at the FBI, at the Justice Department - an attempt to engage in political surveillance. And by allowing one side's memo to come out - the House Republicans' memo to come out - without releasing the House Democrats' memo, it plays into that partisan narrative. And as a result, it discredits the ability to make the point that there was - whether there was or was not, in fact, problems with the FBI.


No. But what about the misinformation campaign that we keep discovering more about, hacking, what seems to be just a lot of Russian involvement on a lot of different fronts?Why - what is the Russian interest in causing unrest or consternation in the United States or Western Europe?

Well, actually, I think that causing unrest and consternation is an end in itself. And part of it - part of the goa; is psychological. You know, all of us are interested in seeing our worldviews affirmed. And Russia's worldview - the Russian - the contemporary Russian ideology is that the whole world is rotten. Everybody is corrupt. Everything is for sale. Elections and the United States are just as rigged as they are in Russia. And so sowing the kind of disruption that Russia is sowing first and foremost pursues the goal of affirming that view.

Much of your book is devoted to the stories of four Russians who'd hoped that when the Soviet Union came undone, free speech and democracy would take hold. What happened instead?

Well, actually, those four Russians were much too young to hope for anything when the Soviet Union collapsed. They were preschoolers or kindergarteners when the Soviet Union collapsed. But what happened - and I was interested in them because they came of age - you know, they - or they became human beings in the 1990s, a period that is variously portrayed as a flowering of democracy or as a period of chaos and, you know, robber barons and that sort of thing.


Great to be here.

And a little background: It's been almost 20 years since the end of Guatemala's so-called Dirty War. General Rios Montt is now 86 years old. Some might wonder if justice delayed is justice denied.

Well, this obviously has been a really long time in coming for the victims of the crimes in Guatemala, and for their country, as well. I think the victims who had an opportunity to testify in the trial proceedings would say that justice ultimately was not denied, as a result of this really historic outcome, that I don't think anybody expected to happen.

Why?


Some of that is after 9/11, but you know, a lot more flags and a lot more talking about America's mission to do good around the world. You hear it from secretaries of state down to ordinary people. That's new. That wasn't there before.

But there's also pushback to that too. So there's a bit more - I noticed a little bit more serious engagement among people in the - certainly in Washington and policy circles who are talking more about how the U. S.  and the world should interact. There wasn't much of that before. It was more the U. S.  sort of saying we should do this, this is how it's going to be, we're laying down the law.

So there's changes going on, but these changes are mirrored by changes all over the world. So there's nothing particularly unique about what's going on in the U. S.

I remember speaking to you, I think it was about two and a half years ago, and you were reporting on - from one of the most stultified regions in the world, where nothing seemed to change, decades of ossification in the Arab societies around the Middle East. And you now live in one of the most, for better or for worse, dynamic places in the world.


Well, what we hear is a lot of relief, really, that this relentless countdown to all-embracing war, civilians may be averted. But, of course, people are still afraid because what is not off is this war on terror. There are a number of listed terror organizations in Idlib, formerly called Al-Nusra and other groups. And they will be hit with air raids. They will be moved out of this buffer zone that you just described. They will be fought. And hundreds of thousands of civilians can still end up in the crossfire.

How do you establish and enforce a nine-mile demilitarized zone?

Well, the idea of Russia and Turkey is now that Nusra and the other extremist groups will either voluntarily go from this zone, or they will be forced out by other groups and that Turkey and Russia have agreed that there will be an enforcement of this.

The possibility of a battle in Idlib is figured to be probably the last battle of the Syrian civil war that's been going on for a number of years now. Does this agreement avoid that battle or merely postpone it?


And then I decided to come out. Now it's been going on several hours. I'm several streets away from the Champs-Elysees, Scott, but the people - it's like it's the second revolution coming because people are turning over - they're building barricades in the street. We're still - we've got helicopters overhead. They're still firing tear gas. And everyone around me is wearing a yellow vest.

Now, fuel prices have gone up - I have read, I think - 23 percent over the past year. And protesters blame the government for this.

Well, the government - the French pay some of the highest gas prices in the world, like, about more than $6 a gallon, Scott. And the government says it's going to raise the taxes again in January to finance the transition to an ecological economy - you know, more environmentally friendly fuels.

And, you know, for people who have to drive to work - blue-collar workers, just everyday people - this is outrageous. They say they can't make it anymore, so they've come out into the street. And, Scott, this movement has no leaders. There are no unions behind it. There are housewives. There are retirees - regular people. There are people who have never protested before. So it's turned into a movement. No one knows where it's going to go now.


I think we overstate this, right?I really do. I think we overstate the threat that primaries pose, No. 1, to members. No. 2, what I would suggest is, OK, so what?That's your job. It's comes with the territory, right?And last time I checked, the Constitution wasn't written so that members could win re-election without threat, right?That's not the point.

The whole point - the whole basis of our regime of democratic accountability is so that members are held accountable for the decisions they make in office, not to push those decisions off elsewhere so that they can just keep winning. The only place where our views and our concerns are adjudicated in this wonderful nation of ours is in Congress. It's the only place. And if Congress isn't doing that, then Congress isn't doing its job.

So you seem less concerned that the president is overreaching than that the Congress is sitting on its hands.

I think that is the much bigger concern. The president most certainly it appears to be overreaching, right?I mean, this law has been passed presumably not to do end runs around Congress when the president can't get what he or she wants. So if you want funding, it seems to me, the best way to get it is to actually bargain and haggle and try to - and refuse to sign bills that don't give you that funding.


Well, right. He was famously portrayed by Schwarzenegger in the early '80s. And that image sort of holds true for the comics. He was a muscle-bound hulk. Conan the Barbarian was the main figure in a huge sub-genre of, like, sword and sorcery comics.

So what's the profile of a comic-book reader?

I don't know if I want to profile all comic-book readers, but these specific titles, Spider Man and Conan the Barbarian, are pretty escapist. You know, there's a wide world of comics out there at this point, but. . .

Right. Right. So does it say something that he doesn't choose Superman or Batman, kind of your obvious choices?


Let me follow up on a couple of things. Attorney General Sessions and the Justice Department announced the change on affirmative action and a big vow a crack down on leaks, following the leak of White House - of transcripts from White House conversations between President Trump and prime minister of Australia and the president of Mexico.

Yes. Now, Jeff Sessions, despite his very public dispute with the president, who has been unhappy with him publicly, continues to be quite busy at the Department of Justice. The affirmative action issue is not quite clear. The Department of Justice claims there was less to that story than was originally claimed, that, in fact, they're merely looking at a single lawsuit, not looking to overhaul American policy to attack affirmative action broadly across the country.

On Friday, Attorney General Sessions announced this wide-ranging effort to root out leaks, which have been very rampant in the - under this administration to the great displeasure of the president and those in his orbit, announcing that he will re-evaluate the Department of Justice's guidelines on how they deal with leaks and potentially seek to target journalists more than is already done.

And we should note, to be fair, the Obama administration targeted at least one journalist, James Rosen, who was - phone calls from. . .


Yeah. So, I mean, you know, I had gotten drunk once or twice. I actually bartended one of my mother's parties for her - the faculty of the English department of the local college. And I loved. . .

He always makes that point.

Well, I was 12, you know, I was old enough to serve alcohol. You didn't have to be. . .

You were bartending at the age of 12?


Well, what we're flying in are what people call the Van Allen radiation belt - have to get a plug-in for Iowa, there, since Van Allen was from the University of Iowa. And this is a region of, sort of, doughnut-shaped, very energetic particles which surrounds our planet. There's actually two of them, sort of these rings around us, which are very high-energy particles. And that - when they're that high energy, we call them radiation. And this is a - this radiation can damage satellites or be unhealthy for astronauts. And so it's a region that most satellites try to avoid or spend as little time in as possible. But we want to understand how they work better, so we had to build something that could go there and live there.

And this transfer of energy in these belts is actually what's causing the noise, right?

Exactly so. It's quite an interesting process. The waves are kind of like a - almost like a catalyst or a carrier of the energy. So they come about out of lower energy electrons, we know, and the grow up. And then they give their energy up as they fade away into higher energy electrons, which become the energetic particles that we called the radiation belts. So they kind of are a transport mechanism, if you will, from low energy to high energy, and thereby help create the radiation belts.

And where does the energy come from in the first place that feeds these belts?


So in 2006, a farmer named Shikharam Chaudhary was apprehended by forest rangers at Chitwan. They suspected him of helping his son bury a stolen rhinoceros horn in his backyard. So they took him back to the jail inside the park, and they interrogated him for a little over a week. And nine days later, Shikharam was dead.

Seven eyewitnesses in the jail said that he was being tortured. He was waterboarded. He was beaten and treated in really awful ways by the guards there. And as we found in our reporting, WWF stepped in. And they lobbied for the charges that were filed against the rangers in question to be dropped. And when they ultimately were, they celebrated the ruling.

So just so I understand, what is the link exactly between the actions of these rangers and the WWF?

So WWF funds, equips, trains and otherwise supports these forest rangers at national parks. Our investigation looked at six different countries in Africa and Asia. These forest rangers are employed by the government. But often there isn't that much money to make sure that they have supplies and training and everything else they need to do their job. So WWF often steps in to fill those gaps. And they provide them with everything from uniforms to cars to knives and riot gear and other things that can be used as weapons.


Good morning.

Good morning.

So your reaction to this meeting - the president seems to rely on his own brand of personal politics to get things moving.

Absolutely. And Kim Jong Un knows this. That's why he's been trying very hard to separate President Trump from his advisers because he thinks there is a deal to be had by just directly dealing with the president. There are a couple noteworthy things that came out of this meeting. I noticed that Trump - President Trump saying that speed is not the object here because he's looking for a comprehensive deal. And then he hinted that sanctions could be lifted during the working-level negotiations.

This is a departure from the Trump administration's previous stance that sanctions would be lifted only after denuclearization. So I think the bottom line is President Trump is looking for a deal. And potentially, now that working-level negotiations are going to resume, there is a deal to be had.


So how did this come to your attention?

It was actually something that I feel like I had noticed being in sort of tourist-heavy destinations myself. It turns out that this is actually a phenomenon that's happening around the world. Barcelona, Paris, Tokyo are receiving floods of visitors that, in many cases, they just can't handle. So the number of international arrivals around the world - so the number of people going to a country that they're, you know, not a citizen or a resident of - has gone from 70 million in 1960 to 1. 4 billion today. So just really astonishingly explosive growth.

So you've talked about the root cause of this. And one is just that there are more people who are able to travel - right?- a larger middle class. But you also talk about business trends that have contributed to overtourism, especially new media. What can you tell us?

So there are sites like Airbnb and VRBO, which have increased what we might think of as the carrying capacity of certain cities. They've decreased the cost of staying in them, and they've allowed residents of those cities or property owners to rent rooms out, where all of a sudden it's just a lot easier to get a room; many more tourists can stay there.


Well, he's a remarkable individual. He has transformed Indian politics. He has led his party from a very low level in parliament to an enormous majority. He has a party that is the largest single party in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian Parliament. He is seen as a transformative figure. He's also seen as a divisive figure because of his past, but he has promised - and some of the early indications are - that he's not allowing that extreme element within his party a powerful say in government.

You have come out with a study at the Atlantic Council that demonstrates some of the economic costs of the arms race, which includes not just the cost of the arms and the cost of maintaining the vast military structures, but the deficits that have been created - lost opportunities for tourism and other industries. Try and sketch that out for us, if you could.

Yes, the current trade is only $2 billion. Economics 101 dictates that you trade with your neighbors. It makes no sense for them to have trade with distant countries. But, if they were to go back to the level of trade that they had at the time of independence in 1947, you could have between $40 and $100 billion worth of trade between the two countries. And more important - if they open their borders to each other, you would have tourism trade. You would have religious tourism from both sides and you would have trade with Central Asia through Afghanistan.

And if India is going to become the major power that it wants to be in the region and on the global stage, it will need every ounce of energy.


Yeah, it's a peculiar thing. What John McCain has said was that his vote was consistent with his early view that we ought not be limiting the military options available, and that those options ought not be constrained and that using enhanced interrogation techniques are something that is useful to the military. But that, of course, contradicts what he has been saying on the campaign trail all along, which is that he's opposed to torture and opposed to these sorts of things. So there's a real inconsistency there, but John McCain seems to think that there is some way to reconcile his position.

So here's the huge question. Is waterboarding legal?What do you think?

Well, you know, that's a great question. You know, if you sort of go back and look at the history of waterboarding, at least in America with respect to prosecutions and laws that have been passed up, you get the growing sense that it is unlawful, that it is illegal, that it's you know, a violation of the U. N.  declaration of human rights. It's a violation of the U. N.  Convention Against Torture. It's a violation of the United States Detainees Torture Act of 2005. The CIA has said that it has not used this since 2003. It prohibited the use in 2006, and so on and so forth. So you would think that there seems to be some consensus growing that it is unlawful. And yet the attorney general has yet to define waterboarding as torture and illegal.

So why is it so hard to determine whether it's torture or not?


So, you know, Emily, when your sister is in and out of the hospital, and you're bringing her books, you talk about teaching her about emotions. Can you just give an example of what you mean by that?Like, what is a conversation you had to have with your sister?

Well, it mostly happened, like, your emotions are biological events that happen in your body. It's physiological, real. Emotions are not just in your head. They are all over your body, in your chemistry. So she's reading these books, and she sees the word rage on the page and spontaneously bursts into sobs. And she calls me on the phone, and is like, your book here says that feelings are physical.

I was like, you're a choral conductor who expresses emotion through your body. You practice yoga. And she still, sort of, had not put it together that just because you've dealt with the stressors, that doesn't mean that you've dealt with the physical event of the stress in your body.

One of the lessons in your book is about completing the stress cycle. I loved this analogy of yours, this idea of a lion. Explain the concept of completing the stress cycle through the lion, Emily.


Well, again, these Italian researchers, the one who did the randomness stuff, looked at this and thought, we can write this up as a simple mathematical description. And they did, and it plays out in a simple way. And that's what led them to their paper in a physics journal that says, we're better off choosing politicians at random, because otherwise, we're all far too prey to this universal plague of stupidness.

That's - what better place to end it, Marc. Thank you very much. Marc Abrahams is editor. . .

. . . and co-founder of the Annals of Improbably Research. . .

Thank you, Ira.


No, he has not. And. . .

How are you going to get him to do it?

Well, I'm not worried about process. We expect to be able to get all the information we want. It'll be sooner or later. I hope it'll be sooner, not later. But I can guarantee you one of the things that we can guarantee is we're not going to sit idly by and allow this kind of obstruction.

If everything goes the way you would like it to unfold in the House - if the president is impeached and then Republicans in the Senate protect him, does that end up playing right into the White House's hands?


Like what, as you see it?

Well, there are a few things. First of all, ABC did try to get the case dismissed in the early going and the judge declined to do that. They tried to remove the case to federal court, which is a pretty well accepted strategy. But they couldn't remove it to federal court. So they were going to end up trying the case, really, in the plaintiff's backyard. So I think that those were risks combined with the fact that there's obviously a great deal of sort of free floating anti-media sentiment out there these days, which is hard to quantify. And the amount that was being requested by the plaintiff was, you know, billions, literally, billions of dollars.

Does a large settlement like this just embolden other people to sue media companies?

Well, I think that after we see a large verdict or a large settlement, we do tend to see an uptick. Many plaintiffs and their lawyers think that maybe media entities are easy get-rich-quick targets. I think that's a mistake.


It sounds like he would have a great personal incentive to keep good relations with Russia.

Well, he's a very outspoken and always been. I mean, he was the oligarch who funded the Orange Revolution. Which is, you know, basically the Ukrainians - the Orange Revolution - they realized that they are not Russians, and they are Ukrainians. So he's - among the oligarchs, he's the most pro-Western oriented. At the same time, you know, also among the oligarchs, he has the biggest holding in Russia. So that's - that's going to be an interesting - an important dimension, I believe Because he could be the man who can make an agreement or strike a deal both between the European Union and Russia. Now, how he's going to do that is a different question, and I think it's not going to be that easy.

Have you had the chocolate?

Oh, the chocolate is good actually, decent quality, which, you know, when - when we're speaking about quality that's, you know, European standard, if you like.

Does he have good relations with President Putin?Do we know anything about that?


All right. Just quick hit. If you had one thing that you wanted the administration to accomplish with technology in its first term - if there's more than one, but you know - what's your one fantasy, quickly?

Oh, my gosh. Oh, gosh, Farai one?You're putting me on the spot?I would have to probably say stem education - Science, Technology, Engineering and Math education. If they could funnel more money into our teachers and into our kids becoming the future engineers and scientists, then the innovation will take care of itself.

All right, Mario. Great. Thank you.

Thank you, Farai.


The New York Mets lost 7 to 1 to the Milwaukee Brewers on Wednesday, but the real loser was their mascot, Mr.  Met. Mr.  Met has a huge white baseball of a head dappled with red stitching and embellished with a perpetual grin.

But as he left the playing field Wednesday night, Mr.  Met flipped a middle finger to a group of fans who posted it on Twitter - busted, Mr.  Met. The club apologized, and the team employee in the Mr.  Met costume that night has reportedly not returned. There were reports that fans heckled him, which fans deny.

The Mr.  Mets middle finger controversy poses a physical and philosophical question. Mr.  Met has four fingers on each hand. How can you say that any of them is a middle finger?Anyway, flipping the bird in New York, isn't that just how they say good morning in Queens?

(Singing) Well, everybody's heard about the bird - bird, bird, bird, the bird's the word. Well, bird, bird, bird, bird is the word. Well, bird, bird, bird - the bird is the word. Well, bird, bird, bird, bird is the word. Well, bird, bird, bird - the bird is the word. Well, bird, bird, bird's the word. Well, bird, bird, bird - the bird's the word. Well, bird, bird, bird, bird is the word. Well, bird, bird, bird's the word. Well, don't you know about the bird?Well, everybody knows that the bird is the word. Well, bird, bird, the bird's the word. . .


. . . Skeptical that the style of these debates does much. It does kind of feed the reality TV-ification (ph) of our politics in the sense that it's more about entertainment. One thing I do think we're all watching for, though, is to see where - what the Democratic Party ultimately is going to stand for in the 2020 election.

You still have this immense sort of intellectual debate going on in the party of whether it's going to move more to the left and be a more progressive party or hold on and try to reclaim or be the party of the center. And we simply don't know the answer to that question yet. And whether the nominee is someone like a Joe Biden or someone like a Bernie Sanders or an Elizabeth Warren is going to be two dramatically different Democratic parties and two dramatically different general elections.

So I think the big topics that we've been hearing a lot in these debates is health care. One thing I think we're going to hear a lot more about in this debate is immigration just because that is an issue that has increasingly been captivating the public because of what's been happening at the U. S. -Mexico border and because of President Trump's immigration policies.

And just briefly, what do you make of the fear that some Democrats have expressed that much of what's being talked about at these debates are sort of the pet causes of the left, which are just not relevant to the general electorate?


Well, it's a toolkit, and so what we think it is it's multifunctional, depending on what the particular need is for the attackers. They probably use this in multiple operations, a variety of operations, and so depending on what they need for a specific target, what they want to steal, they will only download those particular modules to the system.

So in some cases they may be wanting just documents, and so they'll just, you know, download a module that does that. If they want to be listening to meetings that are happening in a room, want to be monitoring email of who's communicating with who, then they would download, you know, those kinds of modules.

Who's the they behind this?

Well, that's the mystery. You know, if we look at where the infections are occurring, and you mentioned that it's primarily in the Middle East, there have been a scattering of infections in Hungary, Austria, Hong Kong, but they're mostly in Iran, places like Syria, Sudan as well, Lebanon, and some cases in occupied West Bank and inside Israel. But the inside Israel ones may be unique for specific reasons.


When you think about what that would look like, give me one example, one small example of how you. . .

Well, first thing we have to say is something in the neighborhood of 40, 50 to a $100 billion must be spent on foreclosures. And it must be done this way - we're going to use the FDIC Sheila Bair plan because she has shown working with IndyMac that she knows how to do loan modifications. And that has to be written into the bill.

And then the other thing that you have to do is, you have to develop criteria for who is going to get this money and why they're going to get it, what kind of reporting they have to do, and some prohibitions against being able to get the money if you don't do certain things. For example, we can't be giving bailouts to CEOs who have big stock options and bonuses and all of that has got to be written into the tough legislation.

All right. Well, congresswoman, thank you.


I don't think it's new that they're supporting Assad at all. I mean, they have been pretty consistent from the beginning of the uprising, initially peaceful protest against the regime. And then as it descended into civil war, Russia has all along provided weapons, provided support, political and diplomatic efforts to shield Assad's government from action, for example, at the United Nations where Russia has a veto. I think what's new now is that they're looking at the situation in Syria as becoming more and more dire.

But you know, there's a difference between U. N.  vetoes and supplying - and military supplies and actually putting your own combat personnel or potential combat personnel on the ground.

I think that they're looking at the situation and understanding that right now there's a real danger that Assad's government can fall. And if that happens, what will replace that and how do you prepare for that when you're invested as heavily as they have been?Again, this is not new support. They've always had the naval base there. They've always had advisers on the ground. I've heard a lot over the summer about the increasing Russian concern about the imminent fall of Assad.

Well, the U. S.  had - at least as far as we can judge - had considered the potential fall of Bashar al-Assad to be good news and something that could lead to a better situation.