Government & Politics

Ralph Neas is president of People for the American Way, a national social justice organization. He was executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights when he led the successful effort to block the nomination of Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) recently made headlines with her tough questioning of Condoleezza Rice during her confirmation hearings for Secretary of State. Boxer was also the only senator to object to the certification of Ohio's electoral votes.

The weekly HBO program Real Time with Bill Maher begins its new season Feb. 18. Previously, Bill Maher created and hosted the late night political round-table show Politically Incorrect.

U.S Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan prosecuted Tommy Chong. We talk with her about Operation Pipe Dreams and how it applied to Chong, as well as the investigation that led to the charges against him.

Robert O'Harrow, Jr. is a reporter for The Washington Post and an associate of the Center for Investigative Reporting. His new book is about how the government is creating a national intelligence infrastructure with the help of private companies as part of homeland security. Huge data-mining operations are contracted by the government to gather information on our daily lives. Information technology has enabled retailers, marketers, and financial institutions to gather and store data about us.

Former New Jersey governor and Environmental Protection Agency head for the Bush administration Christine Todd Whitman. She is a moderate Republican and in her new book argues against the hijacking of her party by zealous "social fundamentalists." Her new book is It's My Party, Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America.

Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid is a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review and The Daily Telegraph, reporting on Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia . He is also author of Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia and the bestseller, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia.

Kenneth Roth is the executive director of Human Rights Watch. He says the Justice Department's decision not to have the Geneva Conventions apply to Taliban and al Qaeda detainees has opened the door to the abuse of prisoners elsewhere.

John Yoo is a former deputy assistant attorney general in the office of legal counsel of the Dept. of Justice. He wrote some of the memos in the new book The Torture Papers, including some pertaining to the Geneva Conventions and the definition of torture. He signed off on the memo denying prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Conventions to al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Yoo is currently a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley.

A new book compiles U.S. memos and reports on the interrogation and treatment of detainees in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib was edited by Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel.

Critic-at-large John Powers reviews Mikey & Nicky, a film first released in 1976 written and directed by Elaine May starring John Cassavetes and Peter Falk. It's now out on DVD.

Rev. Jim Wallis is the founder of the organization Sojourners, a Christian group advocating a style of peace and justice. Wallis is editor in chief of Sojourners magazine. His new book is God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It.

Richard Land is president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. He and President Bush share the same evangelical faith.

Sidney Jones is the director of the International Crisis Group's South East Asia Project. She has examined separatist conflicts, ethnic conflict, and terrorism in the region, with much of her attention focused on work in Indonesia. We discuss how the Indian Ocean tsunami has affected the already politically unstable Indonesia.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg discusses political language and the word democrat, with a small "d."

Journalist Michael Dobbs is a staff writer for The Washington Post. When the tsunami hit South Asia last week, Dobbs and his brother Geoffrey were swimming near the small island Taprobane off the southernmost tip of Sri Lanka.

We speak to labor economist Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the Living Standards Program at the Economic Policy Institute, about how working families are faring in the current U.S. economy. Bernstein co-authored the forthcoming report The State of Working America 2004-05.

Filmmaker Robert Stone's new documentary tells the story of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the radical group that kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst in 1974. We speak with Stone and with reporter Tim Findley, who covered the kidnapping for the Hearst newspaper The San Francisco Chronicle.

The multi-talented Mos Def plays a police officer in the new indie film The Woodsman, also starring Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, about a pedophile who moves into a suburban neighborhood. He also has a new rap album, The New Danger. Mos Def has appeared in the films Bamboozled, Monster's Ball, and Brown Sugar. He made his Broadway debut with the play Topdog/Underdog, and has also won an Obie Award. Mos Def will be in the upcoming films A Confederacy of Dunces and A Hitchhiker s Guide to the Galaxy.

New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins recently accompanied the Marines of Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines for eight days in November as they took over Fallujah.