Weekend Edition Saturday

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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Time now for your letters.

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SIMON: First, a correction from last week, when we followed up on Wade Goodwyn's story about a miscarriage of justice in Texas. Michael Morton was accused of murdering his wife in 1986, convicted a year later and put in prison. DNA evidence cleared him just last year. Mr. Morton is pursuing a case against the prosecutor for withholding exculpatory evidence from his trial, not DNA evidence, as we mistakenly said. The Texas Supreme Court has appointed a court of inquiry to investigate.

Most Americans give politicians low marks for sincerity and see every decision they reach as a cold, poll-driven calculation. Often enough, it is. Politicians, after all, have asked pollsters where they should spend their summer vacations.

Yet when pundits and interest groups urge politicians to change their minds and they do, they're assailed for flip-flopping.

Both President Obama and Mitt Romney have faced that charge several times, on several issues, including the president's new support for gay marriage, and Romney's current opposition to abortion. Journalists always have to be skeptical. But I wonder if it's too easy to automatically see political calculation as the only force that changes a politician's mind or heart.

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President Obama made a personal statement in a TV interview this week. He didn't call for any new laws or initiatives. But many Americans seem to hear his statement as a truly significant moment in American history. Novelist and screenwriter Armistead Maupin joins us. Mr. Maupin is best known for his breakthrough "Tales of the City" series. He joins us from member station KQED in San Francisco. Thanks so much for being with us.

ARMISTEAD MAUPIN: Oh, it's a pleasure, Scott.

SIMON: How do you feel about what the president said?

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Are you calling 911 or you just glad to sit down? Mayor Michael Bloomberg released a study this week that shows that 38 percent of the calls received by New York's emergency services are mistakes - mobile phones that dial 911 when a user jostles a phone in their purse or pocket. The popular term for such calls is pocket or butt calls.

But it's a serious problem. That's about 4 million calls a year, which can tie up emergency services. In fact, the report was released only after a lawsuit was filed by the New York firefighters union, which wants to show how the proliferation of cell phones has increased and complicated their workload.

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This morning we remember a man who stood up to George Wallace before the eyes of the world. Nicholas Katzenbach became attorney general in the Johnson administration and played a pivotal role in much of the civil rights history of the 1960s. He died this week at his home in New Jersey at the age of 90. NPR's Debbie Elliott looks back at his life.

[Roman Totenberg was a child prodigy who became a violin virtuoso, as well as a master teacher who passed along his command of craft and his love of music — and life — to thousands. He was also the man you wanted to sit next to at the table because he was so funny. Totenberg died this week at the age of 101, surrounded by loving family, friends and students. We asked his daughter, Nina Totenberg, for this remembrance. — Scott Simon]

My father's death was as remarkable as his life. Last week, as word spread through the music community that he was suddenly dying, his former students began flocking to his home, driving sometimes hours through the night to get there. We even had to dissuade a Polish violinist and composer from hopping a plane for the States.

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This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.

The French presidential runoff is tomorrow. President Nicolas Sarkozy and his opponent Socialist candidate Francois Hollande represent two different visions for their country.

NPR's Eleanor Beardsley sends this report.

ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: If you want to understand what this French election is all about, you just needed to be in Paris on May Day. May 1st is Europe's Labor Day. No one went to work. Everyone, it seemed, poured into the streets with their hopes and fears about the future.

MARINE LE PEN PRESIDENT, FRONT NATIONAL: (Foreign language spoken)

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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Time now for your letters.

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SIMON: The name that kept popping up in our email box this week was Michael Morton. He was the subject of a report last Saturday by NPR's Wade Goodwyn, who told the story of how Mr. Morton was convicted in 1987 of murdering his wife, Christine, near Austin, Texas. He was innocent, but served almost 25 years in prison.

KEN ANDERSON: As district attorney at the time, and as woefully inadequate as I realize it is, I want to formally apologize for the system's failure to Mr. Morton, and to every other person who was adversely affected by this verdict.

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This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.

When Hilary Mantel's new book opens, the spark has gone out of Henry the VIII's marriage; second marriage, in fact. Anne Boleyn hasn't given him a son. Now, he finds the sharp remarks she makes that used to charm sometimes come at his expense. His roving eye begins to settle on Jane Seymour, another woman at court. But in Henry's time, a monarch doesn't go to a marriage counselor or divorce lawyer, not when Thomas Cromwell is the king's chief advisor.

One of four versions Edvard Munch made of his masterpiece, The Scream, one of the most recognizable works of art in the world, was auctioned at Sotheby's this week for a record-setting price: $119 million.

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President Obama tried to best the face on yesterday's jobs report. He told students at a Virginia high school that private employers have added more than four million jobs over the last two years, but he acknowledge recovery is not happening fast enough.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: There's still a lot of folks out of work, which means that we've got to do more. If we're gonna recover all the jobs that were lost during the recession, and if we're going to build a secure economy that strengthens the middle class, then we're gonna have to do more.

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This week, the British Parliamentary committee that was convened to investigate accusations of phone hacking and executive misconduct at Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., delivered its findings. And the headlines it created make uncomfortable reading for a media magnate who has been under the microscope for 18 months now.

MPs accused News Corp. as a whole of what they call willful blindness. And they went on to make some further damning observations on Rupert Murdoch's own competency.

Here's Labour Member of Parliament Tom Watson.

TOM WATSON: In the view of the majority of committee members, Rupert Murdoch is not fit to run an international company like BSkyB.

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A famous trio has lost a member. Whether you knew him as Adam Yauch, Nathanial Hornblower or MCA, he brought a distinct sound to a genre-bending band.

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BEASTIE BOYS: (Singing) ...if what you get is what you see, c'mon...

SIMON: MCA was a founding member of the Beastie Boys, a band that helped make hip-hop mainstream. Now, before they rapped, the Beastie Boys were just punks.

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SIMON: Then came "Cooky Puss," a song on an album whose title you won't hear on this program - with lyrics that we shouldn't play, either.

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BEASTIE BOYS: Yo, I said I'm calling you late...

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This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. The federal corruption trial of John Edwards continued this week in Greensboro, North Carolina. Government witnesses painted an ugly portrait of the former senator and presidential candidate. But the prosecution may have been less successful in making the case that he deliberately violated campaign finance law. North Carolina Public Radio's Jeff Tiberii was in the courtroom.

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has left China after a diplomatic roller coaster of a trip fraught with human drama. Now, this revolved around the fate of Chen Guangcheng, the blind dissident who is still in a Beijing hospital. But last night, China indicated that it would let Mr. Chen apply for permission to study overseas, hinting at a way out of the crisis that had overshadowed the summit Secretary Clinton had gone to China to attend. Our Beijing correspondent Louisa Lim joins us. Louisa, thanks for being with us.

LOUISA LIM, BYLINE: Hello, Scott.

SIMON: Mr. Chen had indicated that he wanted to leave on Secretary Clinton's plane. Was that, as far as you can tell, ever in the cards?

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Time now for Your Letters.

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SIMON: Many of you were moved by our story about the Soldier Ride, a four-day cycling event organized by the Wounded Warriors Project. Iraq War veteran Sergeant Michael Owens spoke about why he rides.

SERGEANT MICHAEL SULLIVAN: I think it's really important for warriors and veterans like myself to be able to know that we can still do the same things we did before, or new things that we never tried before.