US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad says “the crisis is over,” after watching the country teeter all weekend on the brink of explosive civil war.
But few others are so sure. Since the golden dome was blown off the Shiite’s Samarra shrine last Wednesday, Baghdad’s main morgue has filled with hundreds of bodies — shot, knifed [...]

With its 800,000 citizens, South Dakota may be one of the smallest states in the nation, but it made a big noise last week.
The South Dakota legislature has passed a bill that would virtually ban abortion. Straight out. No matter how old or young the woman. No matter if the pregnancy was the result of [...]

Maverick Californian Republican Pete McCloskey’s bio sounds like a page from history, and it is.
He graduated from high school the year World War II ended. A highly-decorated US Marine, McCloskey led bayonet charges in the Korean War.
He joined the US Congress in 1967, tangled with Richard Nixon over the war in Vietnam.
McCloskey retired years ago [...]

With all the hullabaloo in Washington over Dubai port operators and Iraq war woes, President Bush may glad to get out of town this week – and he’s getting way out of town, to India and Pakistan.
Half a world away, booming India is emerging as a new partner and a new challenge — as a [...]

If you think the banjo is limited to folk and country music, then you probably don’t know much about Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. The group has been recording and touring for much of the past 15 years, and in that time Bela Fleck has pioneered a genre that is difficult to label — because [...]

The push to ban gay and lesbian adoption is becoming the next battle in the nation’s culture wars. Efforts are underway in some 16 states to pass laws or constitutional amendments to prevent same-sex couples from adopting.
Activists are hoping the issue will do in 2006 what the campaign against gay marriage did in the last [...]

Roughly 120 people have died in sectarian violence since the bombing Wednesday in Baghdad that destroyed the golden dome of one of Shiite’s most holy shrines. Many worry this could be the spark that ignites an all-out civil war in Iraq.
Sunnis announced Thursday they would withdraw from talks to form a new government in protest [...]

By guest host Anthony Brooks:
“Bridge & Tunnel” is the Broadway play that brings together a cast of American immigrants for an evening of open-mike poetry.
The characters include Mohammad Ali, the Pakistani emcee who loves bad puns and frets about an interview with the department of Homeland Security, the elderly Lorraine Levine, who remembers when suburban [...]

Cellist Matt Haimovitz was the first classical musician to play at New York’s CBGB nightclub. As a child prodigy, he’s performed with the finest orchestras around the world.
Now, in his mid-thirties, Haimovitz prefers to bring his music to the more intimate settings of bars, nightclubs and small coffee houses. He also tries to stray [...]

By guest host Anthony Brooks:
A political storm swirling around the sale of U.S. port facilities to an Arab owned company has united Republicans and Democrats in a Casablanca movie-type moment.
We’re shocked, they say, shocked that President Bush would allow Arab ownership of these terminals. Never mind that almost a third of all port facilities [...]

By guest host Anthony Brooks:
Owning a second home has long been a part of the American dream, but lately many Americans are finding their dreams overseas.
We are not talking about the very rich with homes in Tuscany, Provence or the Caribbean. We are talking about middle-income Americans finding deals in places like Argentina, Panama, [...]

By guest host Anthony Brooks:
Almost six months after Katrina struck and the levees failed, New Orleans is in the midst of its annual Mardi Gras celebration. This year’s party is scaled back, with fewer parades, fewer tourists and of course, a dark and somber backdrop. Just blocks from the parade routes and the Bourbon Street [...]

By guest host Anthony Brooks:
According to one sleep expert, “Sleep is the new Sex. People want it, need it, and can’t get enough of it.” The same could be said for the pills Americans are popping in huge numbers in their search for that illusive night of sleep. Americans filled some 42-million [...]

By guest host Anthony Brooks:
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is in the Middle East today, tackling the delicate issue of Hamas. It may be her toughest assignment yet. Since it won parliamentary elections last month, the militant Palestinian group has represented a vexing problem for American diplomats and a challenge to the Bush Administration’s [...]

The relationship between religion and government has sparked one of the loudest American debates for more than 200 years.
James Madison argued against the “unenlightened minds of well-meaning Christians” who favored government-established religion. Thomas Jefferson wrote of building that wall of separation between church and state.
Most historians accept that these views reflected the founders’ personal [...]

After a decade of stunning success reducing violent crime across much of America, there’s a new crime wave shaking the peace of many neighborhoods coast to coast.
While violent crime has been at historic lows in cities like New York, Miami and Los Angeles, it’s rising sharply elsewhere. Homicides jumped almost 50% in Milwaukee last year; [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
The Muslims world’s “cartoon riots” have continued this week. More protesters are dead in Pakistan, foreign company buildings have gone up in flames, and madrassas have been emptying their students into the streets to rage.
Novelist Kiran Desai looks on with a knowing eye. Her first novel, “Hullabaloo in the Guava [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
The headlines say too many American college graduates can’t do the basics such as calculate a tip at the restaurant, make sense of a newspaper editorial, or balance a checkbook.
Cartoonists have had a field day with that. Others want action. Some want standardized testing — the kind of testing that the [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
There was a heads-up moment last week in America’s march into the arms of Ritalin. An FDA advisory panel, by a narrow vote, recommended a “black box” warning on Ritalin, Adderall, Concerta, and the whole family of stimulants used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The risks: heart attack, [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
According to the latest poll, 55 percent of Americans now think going to war in Iraq was a mistake. More oppose the war, and even more disapprove of President Bush’s handling of it.
Torie Clarke says it doesn’t have to be this way. Clarke was chief Pentagon spokesperson during the Afghanistan [...]