The Republican ticket is complete now that Mitt Romney chose Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate. NPR's Ken Rudin and Sergio Bustos, of The Miami Herald, discuss what the Ryan pick means for the presidential race.

It seemed normal enough when President Obama chatted with a coffee shop patron about beer in Iowa Tuesday. The president has shown he's a fan of beer — and it's the most politically expedient, "everyman" beverage a candidate can drink. But then the president told a man at Knoxville, Iowa's Coffee Connection cafe that he travels with his own home-brew — and gave him a bottle to prove it.

The world of competitive Scrabble was jolted yesterday: One of the games' most promising players admitted he was hiding blank letter tiles.

As Mark wrote last year, a similar accusation of cheating was made at the World Scrabble Championships in 2011. But officials refused to strip search the man as an opponent demanded, because there wasn't sufficient evidence.

Transcript

JOHN DONVAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm John Donvan.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the 2012 presidential and congressional elections will be the most expensive on record, at an estimated cost of nearly $6 billion. Federal Election Commission Chairman Michael Toner says politicians should spend even more.

The first excerpts are out from journalist Joe Posnanski's upcoming biography of former Penn State head football Joe Paterno.

As a new school year begins, it’s not just students who have homework due – Hoosier school corporations are required to submit new teacher evaluation programs to the state Department of Education by next month.  But some legislators say they are concerned about the effectiveness of the evaluations.

The state Department of Education developed a teacher evaluation model that was tested in dozens of school corporations last school year.  Schools don’t have to use that model – they can modify it, use other models or develop their own.