State and National News

Syria's foremost proponent of nonviolent protest says he's returning to Damascus this week and will keep delivering his long-standing message despite the country's worsening bloodshed.

Sheik Jawdat Said is an 81-year-old Islamic scholar whose books and teachings helped inspire young Syrian activists to challenge the regime in peaceful protests last year.

Lee Smith is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard.

The man who reportedly shot and killed five people Wednesday in Seattle, before taking his own life, changed about five years ago into a mentally ill individual who was "really angry toward everything," his brother tells The Seattle Times.

Rand Slim is an adjunct research fellow at the New America Foundation and a scholar at the Middle East Institute.

The massacre in Houla, where Syrian military forces and allied militiamen massacred more than 100 civilians in cold blood, leaves no doubt about the intentions of President Bashar Assad's regime: survival at any cost and through any means. Assad does not have a Plan B.

Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.

In his State of the Union speech in 2011, President Obama referred to "small business" five times and alluded to it seven more. Progress in America is measured, he said, "by the prospects of a small business owner who dreams of turning a good idea into a thriving enterprise." In this year's address, the mentions were down to three.

Jonathan Cohn is a senior editor at The New Republic.

Looks like the Mitt Romney campaign has found yet another way to manipulate the truth. This time it's about how his record as a job creator compares to President Obama's.

The Scripps National Spelling Bee is down to the 50 semifinalists. Today at 10:00 Eastern, they'll compete in the semifinals (broadcast on ESPN2), and then tonight at 8:00, they'll hold the finals (broadcast on ESPN). You can also follow an online streaming version at ESPN online, but to be honest, it's an extremely cumbersome process that I haven't yet gotten to work for me.

This week in the New York Times Magazine, Adam Davidson looks at what's driving art prices higher and higher. The trend raises a simple question: Is art a good investment?

The number of jobs on private employers' payrolls grew by a modest 133,000 positions from April to May, according to the latest ADP National Employment Report.

ADP's monthly report is sometimes a decent barometer of what the Bureau of Labor Statistics will say when it issues its employment estimates. We're due to hear from BLS about the May employment situation on Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET.