The countrified songs and rebellious politics of rocker Michelle Shocked broke ground at the height of the hair-band 1980’s. Older, wiser, and free from a binding record contract, Michelle Shocked has come full circle with a re-release of her 1988 hit, “Short, Sharp, Shocked.”
Guests:
Michelle Shocked, singer, songwriter, social activist, and CEO of Mighty Sound Records.

Medicare and means testing. As massive reform bills reach the final stages in Congress, we look at the new push behind means testing and the future of the social compact of American entitlement programs.
Guests:
Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute
Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research

Two weeks ago, Bolivian president Gonzalo Sanchez was toppled from power. The wealthy and cosmopolitan leader was friendly to the United States and its global objectives.
His ouster is seen by some as a rejection of globalization and rising anti-Americanism. in the region. Efforts by the United States to “get serious” about Bolivia’s coca crops have [...]

Firefighters battle to stop wildfires from destroying two beloved Southern California getaways, Lake Arrowhead and the historic mountain town of Julian, east of San Diego. One firefighter was killed, bringing the death toll to 20. Tony Perry, is covering the story for the Los Angeles Times and he joins us with the latest developments.
Guests:
Tony Perry, [...]

Pulitzer Prize winners Louis Menand and Roger Wilkins share their thoughts on the meaning of patriotism.
Guests:

“Is Valerie your real name?” That’s what Ambassador Joseph Wilson asked his future wife when she revealed to him that she was a CIA operative. The new question is who leaked Valerie Plame’s name to a Washington columnist.
Did the White House out Plame to get back at Wilson for his public criticism of the [...]

Today’s economic figures charted even more growth in the US than analysts hoped for: a whopping 7.2% increase in Gross Domestic Product; growth of this magnitude has not been seen since 1984. We take a closer look at the data and assess their meaning.
Guests:
Kathleen Madigan, Business Outlook editor, Business Week Magazine

Russia’s richest man is behind bars. Mikhail Khodorkovsy’s dramatic arrest comes amid deep tensions between the government of President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s oligarchs.
Mr. Khodorkovsy has financed opposition parties in advance of the December parliamentary elections and some Kremlin-watchers are speculating that this is what drew the ire of President Putin.
The arrest comes at [...]

His “slightest utterance can move markets,” the Wall Street Journal once said about George Gilder. The 1990s visionary and founder of the Gilder Report railed against regulations, and saw enormous potential and profit in fiber optics and wireless technologies. Then the bubble burst and Gilder’s empire collapsed.
Tonight On Point: why George Gilder still [...]

President Bush takes tough questions from reporters in a Rose Garden press conference.
Guests:
Maura Reynolds, White House reporter for the Los Angeles Times

Patt Morrison from the Los Angles Times reflects on the California wildfires and what keeps Californians living on danger’s edge.
Guests:

Today, the SEC filed complaints against mutual fund company Putnam Investment Management and two of its former managing directors. It’s the latest in a string of questionable dealings that the SEC and state lawmakers, most notably, Elliot Spitzer, have uncovered.
How big is the problem? Ninety-five million Americans invest their rainy day savings and [...]

Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz on where the U.S. economy has been, and where it’s headed next.
Guests:
Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist, Columbia University and author of “”The Roaring Nineties: A New History of the World’s Most Prosperous Decade”

Ten major wildfires that destroyed more than 800 homes andkilled more than 13 people continue to burn from the Mexican border to the suburbs of Los Angeles. Tony Perry, a reporter with the Los Angeles Times joins us with the latest developments.
Guests:
Tony Perry, San Diego-based correspondent for the Los Angeles Times newspaper

R. Nicholas Burns, U.S. Ambassador to NATO on the challenges to the organization and his hopes for the role NATO should have in resolving conflicts in the Middle East.
Guests:
R. Nicholas Burns, U.S. Ambassador to NATO

The first day of Ramadan was greeted with disaster in Baghdad. At least 35 Iraqis were killed this morning after a series of bombs exploded during rush hour. The attacks followed a rocket attack on a hotel that nearly killed Deputy Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz.
The U.S. military is quick to point to “foreign fighters” [...]

A prize bull gets cloned into five baby breeders. Scientists and farmers await the nod from the FDA to let them loose in the food chain. We’ll look at the future of clone burgers.
Guests:
Don Coover, rancher and owner of SEK Genetics, a meat cattle genetics company
Michael Hansen, senior research associate, Consumer Policy Institute
Paul Billings, [...]

Americans say that on September 11th, 2001,”everything changed.” But some Middle East observers say the real day that “everything changed” was October 23rd, 1983 — 20 years ago today. On that day, a truck bomb destroyed the American Marine headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 American soldiers. It was then that the [...]

As the case for war in Iraq evolved and changed so did the intelligence that was used to make it. For months the airwaves were filled with accounts of weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi nuclear programs pushing toward building a bomb. Post-invasion, those weapons and programs have not been found.
Seymour Hersh, investigative reporter for [...]

In Madrid, the first day of an international conference on Iraqi reconstruction costs has ended. The meeting, attended by delegates from 78 countries, was called to spread the cost of the 55 billion dollars that the UN and IMF estimate is needed for Iraq in the next five years. Roula Khalaf of the Financial Times, [...]