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In what could prove a sneak peek at the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a strong critic of President Obama's decision to open relations with Cuba, appears to be stepping up an attack on fellow Republican Sen. Rand Paul over his support of the policy shift.

Speaking to ABC's This Week today, Rubio, who is of Cuban descent, took the Kentucky senator to task for supporting the new U.S. policy. Both lawmakers are considered potential White House contenders.

Rubio reiterated his displeasure with the president's decision, calling it "absurd." He said Paul had become Obama' s "chief cheerleader."

Last week, Paul told a West Virginia radio station that starting trade with Cuba is "probably a good idea."

"Rand, if he wants to become the chief cheerleader of Obama's foreign policy, he certainly has a right to do that," Rubio said after This Week host George Stephanopoulos asked about the growing feud between the two senators over Cuba policy.

"I'm going to continue to oppose the Obama — Obama-Paul foreign policy on Cuba because I know it won't lead to freedom and liberty for the Cuban people, which is my sole interest here," Rubio said.

On Wednesday, the president announced the historic shift in U.S. policy.

For more than five decades, the U.S. has maintained a commercial, economic and financial embargo on Cuba and isolated the nation diplomatically. The tense relations were triggered by Cuban leader Fidel Castro's communist revolution that in 1959 overthrew the regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista, who enjoyed U.S. support.

Relations continued to sour as the Soviet aid went to Castro's government and a CIA-sponsored invasion of the island at the Bay of Pigs failed in 1961. A year and a half later, the U.S. and USSR nearly came to war over Soviet missiles based in Cuba. The so-called "Cuban Missile Crisis" ended with Moscow withdrawing the weapons.

Sen. Marco Rubio

Sen. Rand Paul

Cuba

For many Norwegian-American families, the biggest Christmas treat isn't foil-wrapped chocolate or sugar-dusted cookies. It's lefse, a simple flatbread.

Lefse are sort of like soft tortillas, made mostly out of mashed potatoes (with a little fat and flour mixed in to form a tender dough). They're usually spread with butter and sugar, or rolled up with a bit of lingonberry jam. And families that make them make them by the dozens.

"It's probably one of the first foods I fell in love with," says Megan Walhood, who lives in Portland Ore., and has family roots in Norway. "The rest of the year, I would just think about, when are we going to have lefse again?"

The Salt

Why We Hold Tight To Our Family's Holiday Food Traditions

Walhood loves the unique toasty potato flavor. And, she says, "there's something so comforting about soft, starchy things."

For the Walhood family, that comfort goes way back.

Megan's dad, Dale Walhood, grew up in North Dakota, with a strong sense of his Norwegian heritage — and lefse. "On my father's side of the family, lefse arrived [with the family to the U.S.] in 1825, for the opening of the Erie Canal."

Many of the surrounding families in their rural part of North Dakota had similar roots. And it showed in the lefse. "Weddings and funerals and christenings. Anything that smacked of a lot of Norwegians there — yeah, there'd be stacks of it," Walhood remembers.

These days, lefse in America is pretty much reserved for Christmas (and, in some families, Thanksgiving). For the Walhoods, lefse-making is a true family project. Peggy Walhood, Megan's mother, has Swedish roots ("a mixed marriage," she laughs), but learned from her mother-in-law the art of wrapping up the still-warm lefse in towels to keep them soft and pliable.

As with many simple foods, much of it comes down to technique. The key to lefse, the Walhoods explain, is to keep things tender. That means chilling the mashed potatoes so that you only need a minimum of flour to form a dough, and rolling them nice and thin with a special grooved rolling pin.

"You want to roll it thin enough, and then also even," Megan Walhood explains. "You don't want to have a fat edge and a skinny edge, which are not the ideal. They're not approved by the 'Lefse Commission,' " she and her dad laugh.

There's even an art to shimmying a long flat stick — called a lefse stick — beneath the dough to transfer it to the griddle.

Then you brush off the extra flour, to keep it from either burning on the griddle or being absorbed and toughening the flatbread. It's a step that yields a nice finished product, but also a fair amount of floury mess. Dale Walhood jokes that cleanup was "about a six-hour vacuum job."

Once the lefse are finished, all warm and toasty and inviting, they're spread with butter and sugar. And devoured.

Carrying on the lefse tradition is especially poignant this year, the family says. Dale Walhood was diagnosed with cancer in the spring. They didn't think they'd get this Christmas together.

The Walhood lefse legacy extends far beyond this particular floury table. A few years back, Megan and her husband Jeremy opened a business and food truck in Portland, Ore., called Viking Soul Food. The entire menu is based around Dale's lefse.

"I'm incredibly proud of her," Dale says, nearly overcome. "Her sensitivity, and her dedication to quality. And I'm one of seven children, so they all look to her for their lefse."

Megan and Jeremy estimate that Viking Soul Food will turn about 250 pounds of potatoes into lefse this week — enough make memories on dozens of Christmas tables.

food traditions

Norway

President Obama is not the only one thinking about the precedent set when Sony decided not to release the comedy The Interview. Around Hollywood, the action drew immediate rebuke as celebrities took to Twitter — like director and producer Judd Apatow:

I think it is disgraceful that these theaters are not showing The Interview. Will they pull any movie that gets an anonymous threat now?

— Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) December 17, 2014

Late night host Jimmy Kimmel agreed, writing, "An un-American act of cowardice that validates terrorist actions and sets a terrifying precedent."

In writing rooms and comedy clubs in Los Angeles, however, the conversations are more nuanced.

"I feel like there's been like a schizophrenic range of reactions," says Rob Kutner, a writer for comedian Conan O'Brien who has also worked for The Daily Show and Dennis Miller. "Because I feel like in the sort of public realm, like in social media, people are saying like, 'This is an outrage and it's so stupid of Sony and so cowardly.'

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"Nobody censors us," says Stephanie Striegel, an independent producer who's worked for Spyglass and New Line Cinemas. Like Kutner, she's been following the Sony story for weeks.

"We get to watch what we want, read what we want, produce what we want," she says. "You know, that whole First Amendment thing."

But, Kutner says, "I feel like in private conversations ... in the calm of, 'What would I do?' there's a little more trepidation." What if we did show the movie, and something happened — a bombing or a shooting?

Or nobody comes because they're scared of something happening, Striegel points out. "That could be the other thing."

Striegel worries Sony's decision could have a far-reaching effect on Hollywood.

"From a creative point of view, if you're a producer, or you're an actor, you're a writer, you know, it feels like the margin's narrowed about what kind of movies Hollywood will be making," she says.

The effect may ripple beyond Hollywood. At Flappers Comedy Club in beautiful downtown Burbank, Calif., comedians like Greg Cashmanian are taking cracks at Kim Jong Un.

"Part of me wants to believe that he's like a super big cinephile and he was like, 'Oh, they're doing a movie about me? Who's in it? James Franco? Oh, he's good,' " Cashmanian cracked. "'Who's killing me? Seth Rogen? No. No, I saw Neighbors. Zero sex appeal.' "

But Flappers owner Dave Reinitz worries that these kind of jokes could provoke an attack on his business.

"We're a tiny company, mom-and-pop place," Reinitz says. "But we got a server, we've got a website and we need that for our business. So there is a chill effect when you feel threatened."

Reinitz says that's the scariest thing, because the world needs comedy. "Comedy helps open minds and that's why they're scared of it. That's the real reason. 'Oh, we're insulted,' — No, you're worried that your people are going to see this movie and realize how hysterical and ridiculous your tinpot dictator is and maybe try to take some action to change that system."

He just hopes that we don't have to change ours. In the words of the incomparable Mel Brooks: "Humor is just another defense against the universe."

the interview

Sony data breach

Updated at 10:30 a.m. ET

The United States has released four Afghan detainees from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who were returned to Afghanistan — the latest in a series of releases of inmates in recent weeks.

Reuters says: "The men were flown to Kabul overnight aboard a U.S. military plane and released to Afghan authorities, the first such transfer of its kind to the war-torn country since 2009, a U.S. official said."

The four were released at the request of Afghanistan's new president, Ashraf Ghani, The Associated Press reports.

The AP says:

"Obama administration officials said they worked quickly to fulfill the request from Ghani, in office just three months, to return the four, who had been cleared for transfer as a kind of reconciliation and mark of improved U.S.-Afghan relations.

"There is no requirement that the Afghan government further detain the men, identified as Mohammed Zahir, Shawali Khan, Abdul Ghani and Khi Ali Gul."

All 4 detainees sent home to Afghanistan from #Gitmo overnight were cleared for release by 2008-09 Obama Task Force. pic.twitter.com/egYuxwwxtD

— Carol Rosenberg (@carolrosenberg) December 20, 2014

In a Pentagon statement, the U.S. said it is "grateful to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan for its willingness to support ongoing U.S. efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The United States coordinated with the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to ensure these transfers took place consistent with appropriate security and humane treatment measures."

Even so, The Washington Post reports: "The United States and Afghanistan have not started serious discussions about repatriating the remaining eight Afghans still held at Guantanamo Bay, said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the transfers.

Last month, five Guantanamo detainees, four of them Yemenis, were sent to Georgia and Slovakia. And, earlier this month, the U.S. transferred six inmates to Uruguay. The latest release comes as no real surprise, as it is part of a larger U.S. effort to draw down the inmate population at Guantanamo, which President Obama, in his first campaign for the White House, promised to close.

Guantanamo Bay

Afghanistan