By host Tom Ashbrook:
In the Hollywood version, justice out of Chicago came in the form of Kevin Costner and Sean Connery in “The Untouchables”: tough, idealistic crusaders against Al Capone. In the Washington version, circa 2005, justice in the Valerie Plame leak case stood up last week in the form of one special prosecutor [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
The third time may be charmed for President Bush, trying for the last four months to find a replacement for retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court. First came John Roberts, who was swept into the Chief Justice role when the late William Rhenquist died. Then came current White [...]

There’s been an indictment in the Vice President’s Office. We’ll look at the situation of the Vice President himself, Dick Cheney.
Guests:
Walter Pincus, covers national security for The Washington Post
Daniel Richman, former federal prosecutor, professor at Fordham Law School
David Corn, Washington editorr of The Nation
John Fund, writer and columnist for Opinionjournal.com
David Tillotson, neighbor of Valerie Plame
TBA

By host Tom Ashbrook:
In 1969, a young guitarist named Leo Kottke came out with his head-turning debut album, “Twelve String Blues,” recorded live at the Minneapolis Scholar Coffee House. It was the beginning of a legendary guitar career.
In 1999, as a new millennium came in, the touring sensation Phish, the group “Rolling Stone” called [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
If there’s a gold stud in your ear, or chain on your neck, or ring on your finger, you’re part of the picture. A century and half after miners pulled gold nuggets out of river beds in California, the gold mining industry is now going to incredible lengths to blast and bore [...]

Robert Oxnam was president of the Asia Society, a China scholar, companion to Rockefellers, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet — a man of gold-plated resume and accomplishment. He was also and still is a classic case of “multiple personality disorder.”
Behind the facade of Robert Oxnam there was a public figure, boiled Bobby, Tommy, Baby, Robbey, [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
The president who does not back down has folded, or at least his Supreme Court nominee has. This morning, Harriet Miers withdrew her name for consideration as nominee to the nation’s highest court. By all indications, President Bush’s onetime personal attorney and controversial court pick, read the writing on the wall.
Conservatives, [...]

Guests:
Daniel Klaidman, Washington Bureau Chief for Newsweek magazine
John Harwood, National Political Editor for The Wall Street Journal
Joshua Green, senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly magazine
Wayne Slater, senior political writer for The Dallas Morning News and co-author of “Bush’s Brain
William McKenzie, editorial writer and columnist for The Dallas Morning News
David Corn, Washington Editor for The Nation [...]

The Bush Administration seems to be choosing a diplomatic approach to the touchy situation with Syria. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council heard more Tuesday about a report issued last week that said the decision to kill former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri “could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security officials.”
Anthony [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
If you’re poor and sick in America, God help you. No one knows what to do with the cost of helping you out. Look at the headlines. Yesterday, a U.S. Senate committee voted to cut $10 billion from Medicaid and Medicare spending, even as health care costs soar.
Today, there is news [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Two thousand dead American troops in Iraq. We all saw it coming, with an awful and certain inevitability.
The media saw it coming, and laid its plans. The White House saw it coming, and had President Bush out this week, talking up the war. The 140,000 troops in Iraq saw it coming [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
On December 1st, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, a black seamstress finished with her day of work, caught a city bus, and headed home. Three stops later, a white man got on the bus and had to stand. Montgomery and this country’s rules at that time required that blacks rise to [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
It was an inevitable tableau in the Oval Office yesterday. President Bush, with Alan Greenspan at his side, announced a new nominee to take over as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board — the country’s most powerful guardian of monetary policy, and by that, the economy that affects every American.
Greenspan was [...]

A Baghdad hotel popular with journalists was attacked earlier today. Police officials say the attack involved two rockets and one car bomb.
For an update, we turn to Borzou Daragahi, Baghdad correspondent for The Los Angeles Times.
Guests:
Borzou Daragahi, Baghdad correspondent for The Los Angeles Times.

By host Tom Ashbrook:
By some key measures, they are still the “second sex.” American women make up only nine of the Fortune 500’s bigtime CEOs, fourteen of the US Senate’s hundred members, and ten percent of medical school department chairs.
But by many other measures, the influence and impact of American women is absolutely skyrocketing. [...]

It’s a menacing Monday on the East Coast today — a hurricane barreling down on Florida and, in Washington, a special prosecutor’s sword dangling over two of the most powerful men in the Bush White House.
Before this week is out, Karl Rove and Lewis “Scooter” Libby — chief advisers to the president and vice-president of [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Apple Computer co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs was back in his famed role as technology hypnotist last week.
Apple already has millions around the world hooked on its iPod digital music players. You can’t hit a bus, subway, school locker, or Starbucks in America without finding his signature white ear buds and nifty [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Some days, things hurt so badly you have to laugh. Novelist Amy Tan is on that path these days.
The bestselling author of “The Joy Luck Club”, “The Kitchen God’s Wife,” and “The Bonesetter’s Daughter” is soaring far beyond the intimate mother-daughter stories of Chinese tradition and Chinese- American life.
Her new novel, “Saving [...]

Former Illinois Governor George Ryan made national headlines when he emptied his state’s Death Row with a blanket commutation for 160 condemned inmates in 2003. Ryan called the Illinois death penalty system “arbitrary, capricious — and therefore immoral.”
The former governor is now himself on trial for racketeering and fraud charges, that if convicted, could [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
No system is perfect, but when the legal system goes awry, the consequences can be mind-bending.
In the last decade, the emergence of ever-more sophisticated DNA testing has thrown a harsh x-ray on criminal convictions in the United States — and on the number of prisoners who should not be in prison.
Now, a [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
For most of the last five years, on the surface, many hard core American conservatives could hardly believe their luck. A GOP indebted to the religious right owned both houses of Congress, and the born-again President of the United States talked Bible and moral values like no president in living memory.
Yes, there [...]

Today in Baghdad, former dictator Saddam Hussein spent his first day in the dock, on trial, before the Iraqi people and the world. For Iraqis who suffered under his rule this was day one toward justice. For Saddam supporters, it’s a show trial, for all the world, it’s high drama.
Until two and a half [...]

“Never Again” was a great commitment, and it didn’t last very long. Forced in response to the Holocaust, the promise stood not only as a reminder of that great tragedy, but as a vow to prevent genocide from happening again. Then came Bosnia. And Rwanda. And now, it’s widely-charged, Darfur.
Young eyes across the country [...]

Like Darwin’s Galapagos Islands, the island of Madagascar is one of the most dynamic ecological habitats in the world. Widely recognized as one of the world’s top three “biodiversity hotspots”, the island is home to over 200,000 plants and animals, many of them found nowhere else on earth.
Steve Goodman is one of the world’s leading [...]

From host Tom Ashbrook:
As the debate over Intelligent Design has raged in America’s schoolrooms and courthouses, one challenge to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution has had tough staying power with non-scientists: how can a feature as delicately engineered as the human eye have arisen from a series of random mutations? That’s the question Darwin couldn’t [...]

From host Tom Ashbrook:
In the last twenty years, nothing has put grinding American poverty on display like Hurricane Katrina. The powerful Gulf Coast storm ripped the lid off an issue many Americans liked to think was behind us.
The stark images from New Orleans and the Gulf proved it isn’t. Two weeks after Katrina [...]

A new, more restrictive bankruptcy laws takes effect today that will make it harder and more expensive for financially-strapped Americans to get a clean break. People rushed to file for bankruptcy this past weekend in anticipation of the new law, which was long sought by the financial industry.
The new law comes at an awkward time, [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
John Bogle is a lifelong Republican and as big as they come in American investing circles. Thirty years ago, Bogle founded the Vanguard Group, which is today the second-largest mutual fund firm in America. He led that firm until 1999. The investment world must wish he had gone into a quiet retirement [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
There were no cars on the streets and, therefore, no car bombs. There were millions of voters, and once again the inspiring sight of Iraqis turning en masse to the ballot box, this time — it appears — to approve a new Iraqi constitution.
Official results are not expected until midweek, but [...]

Negotiators reached last-minute compromises on the draft constitution and top political figures are urging Iraqis to vote “yes” in this weekend’s referendum.
Insurgents, however, have stepped up efforts to prevent that. A suicide bomber set off hidden explosives in a crowd of men waiting outside an Iraqi army recruitment centre in the northwestern town of [...]

The search for survivors in Pakistan has officially ended. More than 35,000 people are reported dead and at least two million more are now homeless.
Newsweek’s Ron Moreau in Islamabad, Pakistan responds to the latest developments.
Guests:
Ron Moreau, South Asia Bureau Chief for Newsweek Magazine.

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Ninety-nine years ago this spring, an eon of geological tension exploded under San Francisco. In a matter of minutes, America’s gold rush city was shaken to bits. Then came the fire. When the Great California Earthquake of 1906 was over, the queen city of America’s western shore was in ruins.
In [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
“Can you hear Me now?” asks one ‘end is nigh’ website, channeling the voice of God and calling for American repentance. After a bone-jarring year of tsunami and war, hurricanes, earthquakes, fire and flood, it is not just Bible-thumping prophets of doom who are feeling a little besieged.
The train of disasters from [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
It is a moment to try any couples’ souls, and it happens every day. A pregnant woman and expectant father sit in an examination room after prenatal testing. The doctor comes in and tells them that the child they’ve dreamed of has Down Syndrome. He or she, if born, will [...]

President Bush yesterday pushed religion to the forefront of the debate over Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, defending White House moves to inform religious conservatives about her Christian faith.
Guests:
Maura Reynolds, reporter for The Los Angeles Times

By host Tom Ashbrook:
“Here today, gone tomorrow,” reads the headline. Foreign Policy magazine turns thirty-five this year. To celebrate, its editors invited sixteen big thinkers to each name one big thing they believe will disappear in the next thirty-five years.
The list is arresting. Not a full picture of the future, but a huge reminder [...]

By Host Tom Ashbrook:
Shelton Jackson Lee — or “Spike” Lee as you know him — grew up, tough and slight, in the Brooklyn household of a jazz musician father and a mother who died early. He came out of NYU film school with a now-famous attitude, a camera in his hand, and a dream [...]

By Host Tom Ashbrook:
The energy bill vote last Friday was the tightest of squeakers on Capitol Hill. Long after the gavel was supposed to come down, House Republicans — including the deposed Tom DeLay — twisted resistant GOP arms to the breaking point, while Democrats shouted “Shame! Shame!” in the House chamber.
In the end, by [...]

In the cool days of fall, you can still curl up with a hot summer read. Novelist Anne Bernays takes readers to the Cape Cod town of Truro and tells the story of how easily foundations can crack in a house and in a marriage.
In this radio diary, Anne Bernays reads from her new book [...]

By Host Tom Ashbrook:
Jonathan Kozol’s view of the history of race and American education goes something like this: at the dawn of the Civil Rights movement, the country decided that “separate but equal” did not work. It struggled for two decades with integration, busing, mixing up the kids. Then it shrugged, looked away, and let [...]

By Host Tom Ashbrook:
The public outcry for government accountability has been loud and high in the wake of Michael Brown and FEMA’s foul-ups and Katrina. But last week, the CIA decided to lean the other way. CIA chief and former Florida congressman Porter Goss announced that there will be no discipline for intelligence failures in [...]

Depending on the crowd, say the word “fundamentalism” and chances are it will summon up ominous images: bombed-out abortion clinics in the U.S., burning buildings and bloodshed in Bali, Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and of course the crumbling World Trade Center.
These are, some would argue, misguided images — or at least, not [...]

On the U.S. Senate floor last week, Arizona Republican Senator John McCain introduced an amendment to prohibit the “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment of prisoners held abroad by the US Military.” It passed by an overwhelming majority: the final vote was ninety to nine.
Here was a Republican — a staunch supporter of the war [...]

By Guest Host Sheilah Kast:
August Wilson didn’t finish high school. He educated himself by reading at the public library. But when he died this week at age 60, he was compared to some of the greatest playwrights in English literature –Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, even Shakespeare.
Wilson brought alive on the stage the African-American [...]

Robert Kaplan talks about the American soldier’s life in an era of global military presence. He calls them “imperial grunts”.
Guests:
Robert Kaplan, veteran correspondent, author of “Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground”

By Guest Host Sheilah Kast:
Five weeks after Katrina blew it apart and then filled it with water, New Orleans is struggling to recover. Some residents are coming back, at least to see what’s left of their homes. Some business are taking stock of whether they can start again. The city’s government is sorting out what [...]