All Things Considered

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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

And now it's time for our regular Friday political observers, columnists David Brooks of the New York Times, and joining us from NPR West in Culver City this week, E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post and the Brookings Institution. Welcome back to both of you.

E.J. DIONNE: Good to be with you.

The road to any big event, be it a family reunion, a graduation, or the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, is often pockmarked with screw-ups, flubs, and insensitive oversights. Robert Siegel and Audie Cornish catalog a few of the gaffes leading up to the London games, including torch flame-outs, missing hurdles, and the resurrection of the apartheid-era South African anthem.

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I'll Have Another will not have a shot at the Triple Crown. His trainer noticed inflammation in the horse's leg, so the winner of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness will not race in tomorrow's Belmont Stakes. In fact, he's being retired from racing altogether.

NPR's Mike Pesca joins us now. And, Mike, what more have you learned about this injury?

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For us, there can be no dispute that God has been and continues to be revealed through the faithful and often unsung witness of religious women in the United States. So reads a recent letter written by the Franciscan Friars of the U.S. expressing support for the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The LCWR represents most of the country's nuns and it's now the subject of a Vatican investigation for encouraging, in the Vatican's words, radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.

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This week, the Wall Street Journal has reported on some of the emails that Mitt Romney wrote when he was governor of Massachusetts and those emails document his very active role in getting the Massachusetts health care plan passed, including his strong advocacy of the individual mandate, the requirement that people buy health insurance.

Joining us now from Boston is Journal's senior editor, Mark Maremont. Welcome.

MARK MAREMONT: Thank you, Robert.

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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

And I'm Audie Cornish. What's scarier than a government that can't get anything done?

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Imagine dealing with 17 Congresses instead of just one. That makes things more challenging.

With recent news that even Paris has one, food trucks are certainly in vogue these days. In the U.S., they're now spreading from the hot scenes in Los Angeles and New York to smaller cities, like Milwaukee and Madison. Even school systems are jumping on the food truck bandwagon.

Lizzie Skurnick writes the "That Should Be a Word" column for the New York Times Magazine.

England has always reveled in its drawing-room dramas, from Jane Austen's social minefields to E.M. Forster's Howards End to Upstairs, Downstairs — and yes, the blockbuster Downton Abbey.

Federal election law has required the public disclosure of campaign donors for nearly 40 years.

But this year, outside groups are playing a powerful role in the presidential election. And some of them disclose nothing about their donors. That's despite what the Supreme Court said in its controversial Citizens United ruling two years ago.

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You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.

For many kids, summer means no homework, playing outdoors and, of course, traveling. Our children's music reviewer, Stefan Shepherd, tells us about a new album inspired by a trip down America's original interstate highway.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CAN YOU CANOE?")

The United States named its 19th poet laureate today: Natasha Trethewey, a professor of English and creative writing at Emory University in Atlanta. She is the nation's first poet laureate to hail from the South since the initial laureate — Robert Penn Warren — was named by the Library of Congress in 1986.