House Deputy Whip Tom Cole (R-OK) told NPR's Steve Inskeep today on Morning Edition why he's supporting the now-delayed Republican debt limit plan, championed by Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). Cole needs to help find 218 votes to pass the plan in the chamber and he admits while there are some "challenges" facing him, he believes the vast majority of the Republican conference is behind Boehner's plan. He seems confident that he probably won't need Democratic votes to pass it.

Researchers who analyzed Medicare claims before and after the addition of prescription drug coverage in 2006 found the benefit trimmed about $1,200 a year that would have been spent on care in nursing home and hospitals.

The savings on medical care was calculated by comparing people who had little or no drug coverage before Medicare Part D was offered with those who had pretty good benefits all along.

Deprived of food long enough, the bodies of starving people break down muscle tissue to keep vital organs functioning. Diarrhea and skin rashes are common, as are fungal and other infections. As the stomach wastes away, the perception of hunger is reduced and lethargy sets in. Movement becomes immensely painful. Often it is dehydration that finally causes death, because the perception of thirst and a starving person's ability to get water are both radically diminished.

On Tuesday, Mexico convicted a 15-year-old boy of beheading four men as a hired hit-man for a Mexican drug cartel. Edgar Jiménez Lugo, who was nicknamed "El Ponchis," was arrested in December, when police caught him trying to smuggle weapons and drugs through an airport.

The New York Times reports:

The tomato is in trouble. The tomatoes in Big Macs and Taco Bell tacos and in supermarkets, especially in the winter, all come from the same place: South Florida. "Tomatoland," Barry Estabrook calls it – that's the title of his new book. Those tomato fields are "ground zero for modern-day slavery" – that's what the Chief Assistant US Attorney there says. And there's one other problem: those tomatoes taste like cardboard.

William Kristol is editor of The Weekly Standard.

Jonathan Cohn is a senior editor at The New Republic.

Few arguments seem to bother conservatives more these days than the suggestion that we could spare student loans and other valuable government programs by raising taxes on the very wealthy.

During summer vacation, part of me wants to spend my hard-earned sheckles traveling the world and eating amazing food. The other part of me just wants to lie on the couch with a good book. Now, thanks to five delicious new food memoirs, I can do both.

The books — written by a reluctant, bad-girl chef; an avant-garde restaurateur; a slacker with a love of roast chicken; a Mideast war correspondent; and an American in Paris — are about love affairs with food, and the journeys that led their authors into the kitchen.

Kathy Little and Debbie Walker stand in Walker’s front yard, 50 feet from the ash landfill at Louisville Gas & Electric‘s Cane Run plant. They watch as heavy machinery backs up, pushing ash from one pile to another.Both women have lived in the neighborhood for decades—Little for 33 years, Walker for 23. Walker says she used to be able to see Indiana from her window. Now, she just sees the mountains of coal ash.

Now that the U.S. has recognized the rebel government in Libya, the Transitional National Council, as it is known, wants access to the country's frozen assets. The rebel representative in Washington, D.C., also wants his office back; until earlier this year, Ali Aujali was the Libyan ambassador, but he hasn't been able to get back into his office for months.