By Tom Ashbook.
Soul-singer Irma Thomas has been known for years now as the Soul Queen of New Orleans.
When New Orleans gets the blues, so does she.
Last month she won a Grammy for her post-Katrina album “After the Rain”. They call her voice “dark honey”. Sweet, strong, deep and knowing.
This hour On Point: [...]

By Tom Ashbrook
Besieged is the word slapped on the White House this week. Its Iraq push under attack as the Senate now votes for targets for withdrawl.
The president’s Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez, all but called a liar by his own resigned chief of staff.
Across the pond, old ally Tony Blair looking helpless as Iran [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
The Prohibition years, from 1920 to 1933, were simultaneously a wild and buttoned-up era in American history.
Moral crusaders smashed beer bottles and barrels of whiskey. Millions of Americans resisted an intrusive law, in speakeasies and nightclubs and everyday life. And mobsters made fortunes as rum-runners and moonshine boys kept the [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
You might not guess it from the “Made in China” tags that seem to be on everything these days. But even now, in the era of off-shoring jobs and hyper-competition from overseas, the good old USA does still know how to manufacture at home and sell abroad.
Last year saw the biggest [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
There has never been anything quite like ABC TV’s hit drama “Lost.” Yes, there was “The Twilight Zone,” “The X-files,” “Planet of the Apes,” and for that matter “Robinson Crusoe” and “Gilligan’s Island.”
But for sheer mystery and complexity woven around island castaways, “Lost” sets the bar. And that’s even before you add [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
It’s tough out there for US Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. Yesterday in Chicago he ran from a press conference after three minutes as questions rained down on the political corruption of the Justice Department.
Former top attorney Sharon Eubanks threw another big rock in the pond last week. She led the department’s giant [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
If you’re a teenage or twenty-something American male, it may be the catchphrase of the year, drawn from ancient history and a new Hollywood blockbuster.
“Spartans, tonight we dine in hell!” is the campy call drawn from the box office hit “300.” It’s the buffed-up version of the Battle of Thermopylae. [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Decades after America became a nation of two-income households, American families are still up against the issue of what happens with the kids when mom and dad are on the job.
The biggest study ever of child care kids this week brings us this headline: Bad Behavior Linked to Time in Day [...]

Guests:
Susan Neuman,Professor in Educational Studies at the University of Michigan, former U.S. Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education under President George W. Bush, author of forthcoming book: Changing the Odds: Breaking the Bleak Cycle of Poverty and Disadvantage for Children at Risk
Josh Lerman, Senior Editor at Parenting Magazine
TBD

By Tom Ashbrook.
Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson is a making a big noise against the Iraq War and President George Bush from the heart of one of the conservative states in America.
Utah is Republican and strongly Mormon. Salt Lake City’s mayor is lapsed Mormon and fiery Democrat. Now, from the deep Mountain [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
California’s rough and ready spiritual seeker Anne Lamott grabs her many fans and followers where they live — in the midst of messy relationships, family crises, bad habits and a stubborn yearning for grace.
Her essay collections have become dog-eared Bibles for an army of readers looking for God, for solace, for wild [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
So, it’s confrontation time this week in Washington. Congressional Democrats are casting votes on Iraq war funding with pullout dates attached. Authorizing subpoenas for top White House officials, including Karl Rove, in the US Attorneys inquiry. Lining up — at least rhetorically — with Al Gore on warnings [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
So, you want to write the great American novel, or read the greats again with a more knowing eye? Francine Prose is your guru and guide.
A dozen novels into her own enviable career, she says the secret to great writing is great reading and its inspirations. Homer for plot. [...]

By guest host Bob Oakes:
President Bush set the terms: He would allow key aides to testify before a Congressional committee about the firings of eight federal prosecutors BUT not under oath, on the record or in public. Democratic Congressional leaders said NO WAY, arguing that THAT approach lacked transparency.
And yesterday Congress struck back. A [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
When online video-sharing sensation YouTube was a couple of scruffy founders and video clips of cats and karaoke, nobody cared in the canyons of old media big power.
But when new media mega-giant Google bought YouTube last year for 1.6 billion dollars, and put its big Google engines behind the start-up, Hollywood and [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Here’s the next big competition coming down the road: a $25 million dollar prize to the builder of the first commercially-viable 100 mile per gallon car.
The crew that mounted the $10 million dollar X Prize for the first reusable private spacecraft is now looking to America’s highways, at global warming, and [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
When you’re telling ghost stories, the twist is always key — the unexpected shocker that jumps out of the closet, the past, the dark. Debut horror novelist Joe Hill has loaded plenty of shockers into his new page-turner “Heart-Shaped Box.”
An aging rock star collects Goth groupies and a raft of morbid momentos: [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
For six decades, American policy in the Middle East was pretty clear: go with the strongmen and never mind the democratic niceties. Stability was what mattered.
Four years ago, George W. Bush declared an end to all that. Stability cannot be bought at the expense of liberty, he declared. [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Say “the tropics” these days, and history comes to mind. Kipling. Pith helmets. Somerset Maughm and gin tonics. Or, if not history, Club Med… Blue water. Travel brochures. Palmy beaches. The belly of the planet has booming industry; warming, rising seas; war and tsunamis.
But [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
These are tough days for the GOP. Scandal. Deficits. A brutal war. And war in its own ranks over where to go next.
The Republican Party that, it seems, only yesterday saw itself as the country’s “permanent majority” has lost both houses of Congress and now looks with mounting [...]