NPR News

Only a few more hours until the sequestration is scheduled to kick in. You can feel the tension. The anxiety. The pre-panic attack.

Things on Capitol Hill today turned emotional, when Neil Heslin, whose 6-year-old son was killed in Sandy Hook, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Throughout, Heslin held a picture of him holding his son Jesse Lewis, who was 6 at the time of rampage, during his first Christmas. Two other oversized pictures of a smiling Jesse were place on easels beside him.

Heslin's voice cracked almost from the beginning, when he said Jesse was killed about 20 minutes after he dropped him off at school.

The American businessman who paid $20 million to visit the International Space Station in 2001, has presented an ambitious plan for a manned fly-by mission to Mars.

If all goes as planned, a couple would be on a rocket headed to the Red Planet in January of 2018.

Space Ref reports that Dennis Tito has created a non-profit organization called Inspiration Mars Foundation that will raise the funds for the mission through donations.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. The buzz has been building since the leak of an internal Yahoo memo last week on telecommuting. New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer decided to end the company's work-from-home program. The memo, made public on the website AllThingsD, declares that communication and collaboration will be important, and that starts with physically being together.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

And now it's a supersize edition of the Political Junkie. Ken Rudin, of course, is staying with us. John Kasich, Rick Scott, now, Chris Christie - three high-profile Republican governors and outspoken critics of Obamacare - have all decided to accept federal money to expand Medicaid coverage. The governor of New Jersey explained his reasoning yesterday.

(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

Tomorrow in this hour, we'll talk with Ron Elving about the looming automatic budget cuts. What questions do you have about the sequester? We'd especially like to hear from those of you who maybe affected. You can email questions to us now: talk@npr.org.