Guests:

“The latest deaths bring to 540 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the United States launched the Iraq war in March.” So reads today’s Associated Press headline. What you won’t find in that headline is the number of soldiers who have been wounded in that same period of time.

These numbers are stuffed into later paragraphs, so unassuming, they read as an afterthought. But most of these men and women, injured on the battlefield, are now back home or in the hospital contemplating how much their lives have changed. Beyond the mental anguish, there is the adjustment to a broken body, to stitches and painkillers, lost limbs and sleepless nights. For them, the war doesn’t end when they come home. Instead, it’s a different fight.

Guests:

Steven Tice, formerly Director of the Post Traumatic Stress Treatment Program at the American Lake VAMC. He also was a casualty of the Vietnam War – wounded in the Battle for Hamburger Hill in May 1969

Major Lanier Ward, former Operations Officer for 2nd Armoured Cavalry Regiment — wounded July 2003 n Baghdad

Sara Corbett, writer for the New York Times Sunday Magazine.

The announcement of a successfully cloned a human embryo is reigniting debate from doctor’s offices to scientific labs and the halls of Congress. The ability to clone a human embryo to harvest those valuable stem cells, the kind of cells that could turn into any tissue or cell, one day even a kidney or liver, has many patients cheering.

Some say it’s a path to a cure for diseases like Parkinson’s and juvenile diabetes, and they’re urging the Bush Administration to lift restrictions that are restraining U.S. scientists from pursuing this research. But many religious groups are concerned that science is taking things a step too far, leading researchers down a path that will soon have scientists cloning babies in labs, perfect genetic mini-me’s ready made for monomaniacs.

Guests:

Dr. George Daley, Harvard Researcher

Jim Battey, Chair of NIH Stem Cell Task Force

Genevieve Wood, Family Research Council

Jim Maurer, an activist with the Parkinson Alliance.

It is a tale of two prodigies. One, born to Chinese parents in Paris. A graduate of Juilliard and Harvard. A cellist, whose instruments of choice include a 1712 Stradivarius. The other, a Cuba-born clarinetist and saxophonist. Son of a musical legend, and guided by his father’s belief that, as Duke Ellington said, “There are only two kinds of music, good, and bad.”

Between them, Yo-Yo Ma and Paquito D’Rivera’s albums could pave a concert hall, their collected honors would cover the stage. And between them, Ma and D’Rivera’s musical influences span seven continents. After 20 years of admiring each others’ work, their collaboration has taken on a musical life of its own.

Guests:

Yo-Yo Ma, cellist

Paquito D’Rivera, clarinetist

If God did not exist, humans would have had to invent him; so said Voltaire, spiritual father of secularism in France. But now, in the name of God, Muslims inside and outside France are denouncing a recent decision by the French parliament to ban all religious symbols, including headscarves, from the country’s public schools. The ban passed with overwhelming support from legislators, and polls show the French people to be squarely behind their leaders.

Supporters say the ban will bring back the values of the French Revolution, of liberty and equality, and help integrate the sons and daughters of immigrants into French society. Opponents argue that it will alienate young Muslims and will push them to the hands of militant gangs.

Guests:

Gilles Kepel, Chair of Middle East studies in the institute for Political Science in Paris

Farid La Roussi, Professor
of French Literature, Yale-University.

Looking for love in the afternoon. How about “an Italian Bella Donna with a hazel eyes and a degree in art.” Or a “Troll-like gurning male, trousers mostly held up with woven excerpts from Will Self’s latest.” Behold the art of the literary personal ad.

Elusive, descriptive and sometimes downright bizarre. As much of the lovelorn world bares all online looking for romance and sexual adventure, others are choosing instead to forego details of height, weight and hair color and instead pen ads that are more literary than literal.

For these lovers, the aim is to woo an erudite, well-traveled mate with eclectic tastes, box-seats to the opera, and a flair for fra diaviolo, as well as other spicy delights.

Guests:

Catherine Tice, Associate Publisher of The New York Review of Books

Paul Myerscough, Senior Editor of The London Review of Books

Mary Balfour, owner of Drawing Down the Moon, a London based dating agency.

Haiti is burning. In the past week, armed rebels across the country have been literally setting fire to the homes and businesses of supporters of Jean-Bertand Aristide, the nation’s first democratically elected President. Worse, some rebels have set fire to the supporters themselves. This on an island with 8 million people and a police force of just 5,000 to protect them.

Democracy is a recent and tenuous innovation in Haiti, where opposition-as-blood sport is a tradition rooted in the island’s 200 years of turbulent history. Regime change has always come by coup d’etat. Arisitide’s opposition runs the gamut from armed thugs to civic activists. They want him out. He’s refusing to go. And the insurgents are saying they won’t back down. Crisis in the Caribbean.

Guests:

Christian Wisskerchen, senior member, Haiti Support Group

Robert Maguire, director, Trinity College (DC) Haiti Program

Georges Michel, Haitian journalist and historian, and drafter of Haiti’s constitution.

Ever since the divisive days of the Vietnam War, and Jimmy Carter’s preference for human rights over military might, Republicans have been trouncing Democrats on issues of foreign policy. Remember Reagan, with his sharp eye on the Soviets during the dying days of the Cold War, and said the words “evil empire.” George W. Bush, went beyond talk straight to pre-emption and invaded two countries.

For much of this century, Democrats were known as the party of international engagement, consider FDR, Truman and Kennedy. But in recent years, the Dem’s have focused more on fighting domestic issues, than wars abroad. And now with U.S. troops now stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and an election underway, many are saying Democrats will have to prove they have the foreign policy mettle if they want to win the White House.

Guests:

George Packer, staff writer for The New Yorker, author of this week’s article, “A Democratic World: Can Liberals take Foreign Policy back from the Republicans?”

David Brooks, Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times and senior editor of The Weekly Standard

Senator Joseph Biden, Democratic Senator from Delaware.

The storm over gay marriage gathers in Massachusetts today as state lawmakers struggle with amendments to ban same sex couples from ever actually getting married. But what began here as a local issue has quickly spread to a national battle, leaving legislators in other states scrambling to make laws to prevent gay marriage.

38 states have thrown up legal barricades, but none of that may matter once this becomes a question about a national constitutional amendment. The debate has already entered the Presidential election campaign. It is a social and legal and moral tug-of-war over the “M” word, If anyone present can show just and legal cause why they may not be joined let them speak now

Guests:

Larry Tribe, Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard Law School

Maggie Gallagher, President, Institute for Marriage and Public Policy

He’s been called a rebel, a literary rockstar. When Yevgeny Yevtushenko burst onto the Russian poetry scene in the late 1950s, his attacks on the government turned him into a hero of Soviet youth. He wrote about loneliness and love in a Communist era when leaders frowned on such expressions of emotion.

Then Yevtushenko turned his attention to Russia’s troubled soul and the need for artistic freedom. Some say he blended poetry and prose to such powerful effect, his pen helped tear down the former Soviet Union. Now Yevtushenko is 70, and living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a place he calls the “bellybutton of world culture.” But he’s still using his poetic touch to inspire students, here in the U.S. and in Russia to stand up to leaders they don’t respect.

Guests:

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Russian poet