NPR News

A Utah congressional hopeful will take the stage Tuesday at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla.

Mia Love is the mayor of Saratoga Springs, a small Utah community, but her energy and personal story have Republicans believing she's a winner. If elected, she'd become the first black female Republican in Congress.

Perhaps Love's unofficial audition for a speaking slot in Tampa started when she took the stage at the Utah state GOP convention in April.

Babies need diapers. But it's not always easy for low-income families who might have to choose between buying diapers or paying bills. Federal assistance programs do not pay for diapers, so if parents can't afford them, babies sit in soiled diapers. That's unhealthy, and it leads to fussier babies — which stresses out parents even more.

If there's one thing that HBO's The Newsroom is especially good at, it's portraying journalists who aren't especially good at journalism.

Well, maybe that's not fair. The fact is, they haven't had much opportunity to engage in journalism, since every major story that's come their way has been cracked not through know-how, persistence and telephonic grunt work but through the fortuitous involvement of people with whom the fictional News Night staffers happen to already be good buddies.

The auto industry is big business in Ohio. Billions of dollars' worth of cars and auto parts are made in the state each year. Thousands of unionized auto workers live in Ohio, as do the business owners and employees who make it one of the top auto parts suppliers in the nation.

So, the auto bailout is a hot issue — and a complicated one.

For Republicans in Ohio, the bailout is a tough issue — perhaps because of Mitt Romney's initial stance, or perhaps because of the consensus that the bailout worked.

My friend Stephen J. Bailey is a strong voice for the revitalization of downtown Fort Wayne. He oversees social media and web development for the Downtown Improvement District. He enjoys running and whenever he runs through downtown or the West Central area, he takes a bag with him so he can pick up trash as he goes.

Hanna Pylvainen's debut novel, We Sinners, is about a large — very large — family that belongs to a small religious sect in Finland originating in the dim distant past. The sect, Laestadianism, calls for very strictly regulated behavior — think Amish, with possible overtones of Lutheran, purified by a schism or two. The novel is told from the point of view of family members, each of whom get a chapter, and the story goes forward in time with each person.

After 12 years writing a column on ethics, Randy Cohen is convinced ethics is not a moving target, unique to time or place.

"I believe there are a set of principles that are so profound and so essentially moral that if I were just slightly smarter and slightly more eloquent, I could travel everywhere and persuade everyone that they should apply," he tells Weekend Edition guest host Linda Wertheimer.

Transcript

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

Keith Kenniff writes music for advertising.

KEITH KENNIFF: It was funny. When I first started doing this I, thought of commercials like jingles. Like the Roto Rooter, you know, jingle or something like that.

(SOUNDBITE OF A ROTO ROOTER AD)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (Singing) Call Roto Rooter, that's the name.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Singing) And away goes trouble down the drain.

WERTHEIMER: But Kenniff's music is different

(SOUNDBITE OF AN IPHONE AD)