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Robert Siegel talks to NPR's Steve Inskeep about today's vote in the Senate on the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill.

Noah Adams talks to EPA Administrator Christie Whitman about two recent Bush administration decisions: to rescind arsenic standards put into place in the final days of the Clinton administration, and to reverse a position on carbon dioxide regulations. Whitman says that both decisions were based on balancing needs -- in the arsenic case, health and affordable water; in the carbon dioxide case, energy demands and greenhouse gas limitations.

As an agnostic singing in a choral society each week, Stacy Horn is often puzzled by the words and their meaning, but loves the music. She says she respects people who believe in the words behind the music -- despite no connection to them. Horn is the author of Waiting for My Cats to Die: Morbid Memoir.

Commentator Judy Muller says she winces when she hears words such as 'efforting,' and she wonders how so many nouns are being turned into verbs.

NPR's Michael Sullivan reports on a bribery scandal that is tearing at India's government. The president of the main governing party has resigned, and the scandal has put in jeopardy the administration's coalition government.

NPR's Jason Beaubien reports that a plaque was erected in the New Hampshire State House to honor the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. The 12-member group fought in the Spanish civil war to support the Loyalist government. But some say the plaque is memorializing Communists and Communist sympathizers.

Brenda Tremblay of member station WXXI reports that many people in the city of Rochester, New York, are reading the same book. People in supermarkets and malls wear pins that say they're reading, A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines. Its the story of a young black man wrongly sentenced to death. Rochester's mayor says its allowing residents to talk about race relations in a way they'd usually avoid.

Fighting has flared up again in the Balkans, in a demilitarized zone between Kosovo and Macedonia. NATO troops in the area are attempting to suppress that violence between ethnic Albanians and Macedonia security forces. But even as the region heats up, the Bush administration is moving to trim the ranks of Americans now on a peacekeeping mission in neighboring Bosnia. President Bush has said he wants the European Union to shoulder more of the burden in the region. NPR's Tom Gjelten reports.

Commentator John Ridley is a self-proclaimed 'tactionist.' He's on a mission to touch interesting people and things, and gather fascinating stories in the process. Next on his 'touch-list:' a nuclear warhead. Unfortunately, the officials at Los Alamos are unimpressed by his unique hobby.

Host Melissa Block talks with Houston singer/songwriter Eric Taylor, whose country-folk songs have been called "little movies." He's got a new album out, Scuffletown, and he says he enjoys writing songs like stories -- as long as he doesn't give too much away to the listener.