By: Jenny Marder

A cicada perches on a leaf of grass at Virginia’s Bull Run Regional Park. The full brood of cicadas is expected to emerge en masse in late May or June. Photos by Jenny Marder.

After an afternoon hunting for cicadas on Thursday, I finally discovered a nice crop of them in a nest of poison ivy in Virgina’s Bull Run Regional Park. It took some scouring, but then there they were, with their veiny golden wings and bright beady red eyes, clinging to grass and leaves and tree bark.

And the signs of them were probably more visible than the creatures themselves. Their exoskeletons, which they shed after molting from nymphs into winged adults, littered the ground and tree trunks.

Their tunnels, especially, were everywhere you looked. A sign perhaps of many more to come?

The brood II cicadas are expected to emerge en masse in late May or June through these tunnels they’ve dug from under the earth to its surface. The nymphs have been living quietly underground for 17 years, sucking on plant roots.

I suspect this is only a preview to the possibly million cicadas per acre that science and history have promised us. The ones I found were docile and quiet — no sign yet of the hundred-decibel mating shrieks for which the U.S. East Coast is bracing.

By: Paul Solman

The entrance at the 1912 Democratic National Convention held in Baltimore, Md. The theme of the presidential campaign of 1912 was economic inequality, but looking at the data, the problem is worse today than it was more than 100 years ago. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons.

*Paul Solman answers questions from the NewsHour audience on business and economic news here on his Making Sense Business Desk page.

Here's a question from Carolyn of Chicago, Ill., who writes:

"There is a lot of talk about income disparity between rich and poor today. How does it compare to the disparity 100 years ago?"

One hundred years ago? How about 101? Economic inequality is often cited as the key issue in the 1912 presidential election that pitted William Howard Taft (Republican) against Woodrow Wilson (Democrat), ex-Republican Theodore Roosevelt (Bull Moose Party), Eugene V. Debs (Socialist Party) and Eugene Chafin (Prohibition Party).

Roosevelt said around that time in a famous speech that the struggle for liberty "appears as the struggle of freemen to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth."

Sitting President Taft said in a 1912 campaign speech: "Insofar as inequality of condition can be lessened and equality of opportunity can be promoted by improvement of our educational systems, the betterment of the laws to ensure the quick administration of justice, and by the prevention of the acquisition of privilege without just compensation ... all are in sympathy with the continued effort to remedy injustice and to aid the weak."

Unfortunately, when asked what he would do about high unemployment, he said "God knows." He ran third in the election.

Given these facts, it might be reasonably supposed that inequality a century ago was greater than it is today. Not so, however.

The most definitive published analysis I'm aware of measures the share of pre-tax income going to the top 1 percent of Americans from 1913 through 2008. It comes courtesy of economists Thomas Picketty and Emmanuel Saez and looks like this:

By: Kwame Holman

President Barack Obama met with U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, left, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, right, and other Pentagon leaders at the White House Thursday to discuss sexual assault in the military. The U.S. military vowed May 15 to address a wave of sexual assault cases after a soldier who worked in a rape prevention program was accused of forcing a subordinate into prostitution. Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images.

Over the last several days, the phrase "sexual assaults in the military" could be found within the top stories of almost every news organization.

First came a Defense Department report estimating that the crimes have risen sharply, that most victims are unwilling to report them, and that commanders summarily dismiss cases that had apparent merit. Then in rapid succession came charges two military officers responsible for stopping sexual misconduct had themselves committed it.

On Thursday, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey -- summoned along with other military leaders by President Barack Obama to the White House to talk about the problem -- called sexual assault in the military a "crisis."

Members of Congress have wrestled with the long-standing problem for years. Now, as a result of the hyper-attention to the issue this week, they were in legislative high gear.

What's emerged is two sides to a central question: should military commanders be stripped of their sole authority to decide whether complaints of sexual assault go forward?

Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio -- a member of the Armed Services Committee -- says he's not yet ready to take that authority away from the military chain of command.

By: Terence Burlij

The House Ways and Means Committee will hold the first hearing on the IRS scandal. Watch a live stream of the hearing.

The former acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, Steven Miller, will take his place in the hot seat Friday morning when the House Ways and Means Committee holds the first hearing on the tax collection agency's targeting of conservative groups.

Members of the panel are expected to spend hours grilling Miller about the IRS' practice of zeroing in on groups with the words "Tea Party," "Patriots" or "9/12" in their names that had applied for tax-exempt status.

According to the report released Tuesday by the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration, Miller first learned of the additional screening procedures in March 2012 but did not inform lawmakers, despite some having raised concerns that the IRS was singling out conservative groups. The timeline of events, and Miller's decision to hold back information, will surely draw a good deal of scrutiny from committee members Friday.

By: Justin Scuiletti

The Watergate hearings began on May 17, 1973. Public Television aired all 250 hours of testimony that summer. Here are some of the highlights. Video edited by Justin Scuiletti

The Watergate scandal began with a burglary in June 1972 and ended with a president's resignation in August 1974. During the summer of 1973, a special Senate Committee held hearings, co-chaired by Sens. Sam Ervin, D-N.C., and Howard Baker, R-Tenn., to investigate the burglaries and whether "illegal, improper or unethical activities" had been committed in connection to President Richard Nixon's 1972 campaign for re-election.

By: Gwen Ifill

It was scandal week in Washington, but because of an accident of scheduling, I had the opportunity to view it through an altered lens.

The president's week was turning into a very bad one -- with new revelations about Benghazi talking points, IRS political targeting, and the seizure of news organizations' phone records -- as I was completing my very first visit to Israel.

On one side of the world, scandals were collapsing on one another like an origami bird -- fragile and complex. On the other side, hard up beside the Sea of Galilee -- the old and enduring disputes existed side by side.

It was all about juxtaposition. Taken separately, the Benghazi, IRS and phone records stories are each hugely complicated. But for them all to unfold in one week was a bit mindboggling.

By: Rebecca Jacobson

Last year's drought scorched over half of country last year. Now that drought is shifting towards the Southwest and western Plains, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which held a meeting on summer drought outlook Thursday in Washington, D.C.

Mark Svoboda, climatologist at the National Drought Mitigation Center, says the American Southwest and western Great Plains are likely to see the effects of the drought deepen, and it's possible for the drought to reach areas of the Pacific Northwest, like Oregon and Idaho.

But the conditions in the East are improving. Rain from last year's Tropical Storm Isaac brought much needed relief to the Midwest, and a wet, cool April has improved conditions for much of the Mississippi Valley.

By: Meena Ganesan

On May 17, 1973, Sen. Sam Ervin, D-N.C., gavelled in the first public hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, better known as the Senate Watergate Committee. The impending result was almost unfathomable.

The months that followed would bring testimony from White House officials and questions from senators on whether "illegal, improper or unethical activities" had been committed in connection to President Richard Nixon's 1972 campaign for re-election. What had started out as a story about a bungled break-in to Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate complex the previous summer eventually ended in the downfall and resignation of President Nixon on Aug. 9, 1974.

Four decades later, we look back at the process that engrossed the country and convulsed Washington with its unwavering characters and cliff-hanging moments.

Here are some of those figures and instances:

Sam Ervin

Unless otherwise noted, all photos taken from archival PBS video of the Senate Watergate hearings.

Sen. Sam J. Ervin Jr. was chairman of the Senate Watergate committee in 1973.

At the start of the television hearings in May of that year, Ervin noted:

If the many allegations made to this date are true, then the burglars who broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate were in effect breaking into the home of every citizen of the United States. And if these allegations prove to be true, what they were seeking to steal was not the jewels, money or other precious property of American citizens, but something much more valuable -- their most precious heritage: the right to vote in a free election.

Ervin joined the Senate in 1954. As a freshman, he served on a committee charged with studying whether Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., required censure for his anti-Communist investigations. In his 20 years in the Senate, the Harvard-trained statesman became well-known for his constitutional knowledge, according to the U.S. Senate Historical Office. Ervin retired from the Senate in December 1974. He died April 23, 1985. He was 88.

By: Michael Chwe

Economist Michael Chwe has written a book called "Jane Austen: Game Theorist." Do you need more of a reason to read this post? Video from Michael Chwe's YouTube channel.

I'm a specialist in game theory, the mathematical analysis of strategic thinking. Probably the best-known game theorist is John Nash, who received the Nobel Prize in economics and was featured in the movie "A Beautiful Mind."

I have published mathematical economics papers in journals such as the "Journal of Economic Theory." But my latest book is built around the theoretical insights of Jane Austen. This popular and beloved writer used little mathematics or economics. But Austen's novels, written in the early 1800s, anticipated by more than a century the most fundamental game-theoretic concepts, including the emphasis on choice, the theory of utility, and the theoretical analysis of strategic thinking. In fact, Austen's novels contain game-theoretic insights not yet superseded by modern social science.

Before going into Austen's theoretical contributions, let me briefly introduce how game theory is used in economics.

How Game Theory Is Used in Economics

For most of its history, economics concentrated on the analysis of what it calls "perfectly competitive" markets: markets with a multitude of buyers and a multitude of sellers, with no single firm having any influence over market prices.

By: Associated Press

Watch the full joint press conference from Wednesday with President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who discuss the current issues regarding a political transition in Syria. President Obama also addressed questions on domestic issues, including the recent resignation of the head of the IRS and the Justice Department's seizure of reporters' phone records.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama said Thursday that the U.S. and Turkey will keep ramping up pressure to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad from power, with his country's civil war having "wracked the region."

At a news conference with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the White House Rose Garden, Obama says the only way to resolve the crisis is for Assad to hand over power to a transitional government. He says Turkey will play a critical role in that process.

"We're going to keep increasing the pressure on the Assad regime and working with the Syrian opposition," Obama said. "We both agree that Assad needs to go."