Month: December 2006

LISTEN TO THIS SHOW ONLINE  SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST
Gerald Ford died yesterday, but he lives on in two of his key appointees: Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Their impact on America today is greater than Ford’s. JOHN NICHOLS comments: he’s Washington correspondent for The Nation, and writes The Online Beat at TheNation.com.
READ my piece “Gerald Ford’s Legacy: Cheney and Rumsfeld” at TheNation.com

Report from Ramallah: Palestinian politics have been on the verge of chaos as Fatah and Hamas battle for power –MARK LeVINE has just returned from Ramallah with a report: is a Palestinian unity government possible? Do the Israelis want negotations? Mark teaches Middle Eastern history at UC Irvine and writes for the L.A. Times, Tikkun, Le Monde, and The Nation.

ALSO: EARL WARREN transformed America as Chief Justice, first of all with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, declaring segregated schools unconstitutional. But before Eisenhower appointed him, he had a long career in California politics that was not so liberal. JIM NEWTON of the L.A. Times will explain: his new book is Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made.

More stuff to read: My piece “James Brown, Godfather of Soul” at TheNation.com

No show today, but some news: the FBI yesterday agreed to release the last ten documents from the John Lennon FBI File, which had been withheld for the last 25 years on the grounds that they were “national security” documents and that releasing them could cause “foreign military retaliation.”
READ the L.A. Times story
READ my new piece “The Last Lennon File” at TheNation.com
SEE the new documents at LennonFBIfiles.com

LISTEN TO THIS SHOW ONLINE SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST
A 20-year prosecutor lays out the case against George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell. The charge: conspiracy and fraud in taking the country to war. ELIZABETH de la VEGA is the author of U.S. v. George W. Bush et al.

ALSO: The great RICKY JAY talks about the world of “deceptive practices.” He’s one of the world’s most accomplished sleight-of-hand artists, and has appeared on TV and in movies, including David Mamet’s films “House of Games”, “Homicide,” “Spanish Prisoner,” and “Heist.” His award-winning show “Ricky Jay and his 52 Assistants” is running at the Geffen Theater in Westwood through Jan. 27. (originally broadcast Sept. 26, 2001)

PLUS: falling wages and rising unemployment: the world economy over the last 50 years has been plagued by over-production and excessive competition; the result is a long-term crisis since the early 1970s. UCLA historian ROBERT BRENNER is the author of The Economics of Global Turbulence. “Here, at last – something good out of the left” — The Wall Street Journal.

MORE STUFF TO READ: my TruthDig piece, “Was Nixon Worse? Counting the dead in Vietnam and Iraq”
And at TheNation.com, “John Lennon’s Legacy: Did “Give Peace a Chance’ Save a Single Life?”

LISTEN TO THIS SHOW ONLINE — SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST (requires iTunes)
90 percent of Americans say they’ve never doubted the existence of God. 80 per cent say they are certain they will be called to answer for their sins on Judgment Day. But says EYAL PRESS, the same religious zeal that pushes some whites to the right leads blacks and Latinos in the opposite direction. The secular left, he concludes, should think twice before seeing religious people as their foes.
Eyal’s story, “In God’s Country,” is in Nov. 20 issue of The Nation.

ALSO: The Underground economy of the urban poor: SUDHIR VENKATESH explains the desperate, dangerous, and remarkable ways people survive in a poor black neighborhood, where he found a wide world of work off the books: backyard mechanics, street vendors, hustlers and of course drug dealers. Sudhir teaches sociology and African-American Studies at Columbia and is the author of Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor.

PLUS: Back from Afghanistan: ALISSA RUBIN of the L.A. Times just returned from Khowst where she profiled a woman who serves in the Afghan parliment: Zahera Sharif.
Her father opposed her getting an education, but under Soviet rule she was able to get an M.A. When the Taliban conquered, she was forced to flee to Pakistan. Now she is back, fighting warlord rule.

Finally, JOHN NICHOLS, Washington Correspondent for The Nation, will have comment on the Iraq Study Group Report.

Web Extra: YOUR MINNESOTA MOMENT: Keith Ellison, the newly elected congressman from Minneapolis who is first Muslim elected to Congress, has announced that he will not take his oath of office on the Bible, but rather on the Koran. LA Radio host Dennis Prager says “He should not be allowed to do so — because the act undermines American civilization.”