All Things Considered

Two years ago, Robert Bennett, a Republican senator from Utah, was voted out of office at the state's Republican convention. Bennett's friend, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, has worked hard over the past year to avoid the same fate at today's state convention. Weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz talks with NPR's Howard Berkes about the results of today's convention vote.

Yesterday, three members of the Secret Service resigned, bringing to six the number of agents who have lost their jobs as a result of the prostitution scandal that rattled the agency last week. Weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz speaks with news analyst James Fallows of The Atlantic about that story and others.

Melissa Block speaks with our regular political commentators, E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution, and David Brooks of The New York Times.

A video appeal to the wife of Syrian President Bashar Assad asks her to persuade her husband to stop the killing. The campaign for Asma Assad to "stand up for peace" was started by the wives of British and German ambassadors to the United Nations. Melissa Block talks with Joan Juliet Buck, the last American journalist to spend time with the Assad family before the latest civil strife began in Syria.

This week, music is bringing Americans and Russians together in a way that policy discussions never can. And don't call that a cliche in front of the music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

If U.S. relations with Russia have hit a sticky patch over Syria and other issues lately, that didn't stop the Chicago Symphony from thrilling a Russian audience this past Wednesday night, just as it did on its last visit — to the then-Soviet Union in 1990.

Investigators in New York City are ripping up the basement of an apartment building in hopes of solving a decades-old mystery: What happened to 6-year-old Etan Patz? The first-grader was walking alone to his school bus stop when he disappeared. Melissa Block talks to journalist Lisa Cohen, author of After Etan: The Missing Child Case that Held America Captive.

Our story begins last month inside a busy Washington, D.C. subway station plastered with posters of giant dollar bills. One of them says: "Tell Congress to stop wasting time trying to eliminate the dollar bill." Another asks: "Do you heart the dollar?"

Political fights in the nation's capital normally involve billions or even trillions, not single dollars. What's going on here?

I'm an English professor, and I spent the first 15 years of my career trying to write like one. You might be surprised by what that's like. We don't emulate the fiction writers we most admire. We too rarely practice what we preach to our composition students — namely that good writing is simple and direct. In fact, we're notorious for maze-y sentences and ugly jargon. The point seems less to attract readers with clear prose than to smack them over the head with a sign that says, "Aren't I smart?"

Newly-published photos show U.S. troops in Afghanistan posing with the dead bodies of insurgents. The incident, first reported by The Los Angeles Times, occurred in 2010. It's the latest setback for the military's counterinsurgency strategy, which depends on winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.

Argentina's Congress is expected to approve a bill to nationalize the country's largest oil company. Melissa Blocks talks with Simon Romero, the Brazil bureau chief for The New York Times.

Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

And I'm Audie Cornish.

We have new information now in the investigation of Secret Service misconduct. Agents are alleged to have hired prostitutes before President Obama's visit to South America last week. The Secret Service director has been talking with members of Congress, and NPR's Ari Shapiro joins us now to tell us what he's hearing. Hey there, Ari.

ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: Hi, Audie.