On their 30th anniversary as America’s premier Latino rock and roll band, Los Lobos have released a new album titled “The Ride,” that boasts a great lineup of guest singers, including Dave Alvin, Ruben Blades, Cafe Tacuba, Elvis Costello, Mitchell Froom, Martha Gonzalez, Robert Hunter, Little Willie G., Mavis Staples, Richard Thompson, Tom Waits, and [...]

This month in Iraq, there were more dead American soldiers than in the entire six-week drive to take Baghdad last year. More troops are needed in Iraq and some high-profile congressmen and senators are saying it is time to think about reinstating the draft.
Click the “Listen” link to hear Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska [...]

Tribute or anti-war propaganda? During tonight’s broadcast of the ABC News program “Nightline” anchor Ted Koppel will read the name and show photos of U.S. servicemen and women killed in the Iraq war.
Guests:
Leroy Sievers, executive producer, “Nightline.”

When President Bush announced in a television speech the week after September 11 that he wanted Osama bin Laden “dead or alive,” a grieving nation seeking justice and revenge roared in approval. Two years later, attacks continue against U.S. interests and bin Laden roams the world as a free man.
War correspondent Philip Smucker broke the [...]

President Bush and Vice-President Cheney meet today with the 9-11 Commission to talk about their actions leading up to the day of the deadly attacks.
Guests:
MIchael Isikoff, investigative reporter, Newsweek magazine.

Tony Blair. The stand-up American ally is in hot water at home in Britain. We take a close look at the tough times ahead for the British Prime Minister.
Guests:
Geoffrey Wheatcroft, author of the article “The Tragedy of Being Tony Blair” in the June issue of The Atlantic Monthly
Pippa Norris, lecturer in comparative politics at [...]

Secretive, controversial, and above all influential, Dick Cheney is regarded as the most powerful vice president ever. During his formative experience as President Ford’s chief of staff, he witnessed a pairing down of executive branch powers brought on by the Nixon Watergate scandal. Since then, he has spent a considerable amount of energy trying to [...]

One year ago today, U.S. Marines fired on a crowd of Iraqi civilians celebrating Saddam Hussein’s birthday, killing fifteen and wounding scores of others. The city has never really been at peace since that day, and the escalating fighting there doesn’t bode well for a peaceful transition to a sovereign Iraqi state on June 30th, [...]

Today in Fallujah, Iraq, coordinated insurgent attacks on United States troops and heavy U.S. response were the story of the day. The Marines, while still avoiding an all-out assault on Iraqi resistance, used air power to pound weapons caches and insurgent positions.
Scott Peterson, staff writer with the Christian Science Monitor, located just outside Fallujah, reports [...]

This morning the U.S. Supreme Court heard the oral arguments in the cases of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Rumsfeld v. Padilla. The court must decide whether the U.S. government can indefinitely detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” without bringing charges or even allowing them access to legal representation.
Yaser Hamdi was born in Louisiana, [...]

Anne Alstott, professor of law at Yale University, is also a mother to four-year-old twins. She is experiencing the joys of parenthood but she also knows the burden of being a parent in America today.
Alstott argues that stripped-back social support makes childrearing harder and that’s not fair. American parents need help to lighten [...]

The U.S. Supreme Court today took up the long-running fight over public access to records of Vice President Dick Cheney. The General Accounting Office, Sierra Club, and Judicial Watch have sued Cheney in an attempt to force him to release the names of the people he met with while putting together the Bush Administration’s energy [...]

During his 30 year career as a jewel thief, Bill Mason stole more than $35 million dollars in gems from the likes of Phyllis Diller, Armand Hammer, and Bob Hope. Mason was eventually caught, though he ended up spending only a few years in prison.
Now, he has written about his three decades snagging jewels in [...]

On April 23, 2004, a top Vatican cardinal said that priests must deny communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights. While he didn’t mention John Kerry by name, it was clear who Cardinal Arinze’s statement was referring to.
Yet, this past Saturday, John Kerry’s local church in Boston granted him communion, in defiance of the [...]

Explosions shook Fallujah after dark today as US forces struck targets in the city in southern Iraq, which has been a stronghold of Sunni insurgents.
Guests:
Scott Peterson, correspondent embedded with the US Marines at Fort Fallujah, The Christian Science Monitor

Today in Fallujah, Iraq, U.S. warplanes delivered a thunderous show of force, bombarding insurgent forces after U.S. troops had earlier killed scores of Iraqi fighters to the south, near Najaf.
Scott Peterson, a reporter with The Christian Science Monitor embedded with the U.S. Marines at what they call Fort Fallujah, six miles east of the [...]

In his last State of the Union speech, President Bush vowed to “finish the historic work of democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, so those nations can light the way for others, and help transform a troubled part of the world.”
But author Rashid Khalidi questions in his new book “whether by invading, occupying and imposing a [...]

The Pentagon earlier this month announced that 20,000 American soldiers due to come home would have to stay in Iraq for an extra 3 to 4 months. One of the soldiers who thought he was on his way home was Specialist Roman Diaz of the Army’s 1st Armored Division. After a year in Iraq, he [...]

Iraqi insurgents and U.S. Marines fought a pitched battle in Fallujah in spite of a so-called “cease-fire.” Michael O’Hanlon is a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution gives his take on what the Pentagon has and has not learned from the situation in Fallujah.
Guests:

Amway is an American success story. The company sells 450 products and is part of a multibillion dollar empire. The key to its success is its pyramid formula that is known in the business as a multilevel marketing scheme. Each independent entrepreneur who joins the sales force also becomes a recruiter, who is responsible for [...]