Leslie Savan blogs for The Nation about media and politics.

Right before a break on The Daily Rundown the other day, host Chuck Todd was talking about the debt deal and mentioned "unemployment lines." Then he announced, "Coming up: Did Washington take its eye off the ball of what really matters?"

A new Franklin County non-profit that helps students with the cost of playing on public school sports teams wants to be a model for other communities.

It's odorless, tasteless, invisible and deadly. And it occurs naturally. Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer, according to Timmy Green, a radon specialist for the Lake Cumberland District Health Department and environmental services officer for the Green County Health Department. The No. 1 cause of lung cancer is smoking.

The PTA at Lexington's Liberty Elementary School plans to pony up roughly $4,000 this school year to keep Liberty's Reading Is Fundamental program in operation despite federal funding cutbacks.

Short of longtime television show ER, fine arts and hospitals may seem an unlikely couple. But at the University of Kentucky, acting is crucial to educating medical students, as instructors bring in trained actors to help future doctors become accustomed to speaking with patients in their quest to diagnose what ails them.

Diana Nyad attempted it once before. It was 1978 when she was 28, but 42 hours into what's supposed to be a 60-hour swim, her team pulled the plug. Nyad, a world-class endurance swimmer, had been defeated by nature: the water temperature was a tad cool and the wind produced sizable waves.

David Kenner is an associate editor at Foreign Policy.

Something was stirring in the Syrian city of Hama. The Assad regime appeared to be losing control; it had issued vague warnings about an Islamist takeover, but had gone ominously silent for over a week. A government-planned trip to the city was canceled. Syrian officials warned privately that any attempt by intrepid journalists to visit Hama would be "life-threatening."

John B. Judis is a senior editor of The New Republic and a Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.