Unlike other judges, those on the Supreme Court make their own call about recusing themselves from a case, and those decisions are not open to review. Recently, Justice Antonin Scalia decided not to disqualify himself from hearing the case of a friend called Dick Cheney.

It began when the Supreme Court decided to review a case involving the vice president. Then, three weeks later, Cheney and Scalia went duck hunting together in a Louisiana bayou. Some say the hunting trip raises reasonable questions about the judge’s impartiality. Others point out that justices have always chosen their own company, which in Washington, DC, inevitably includes politicians.

Guests:

Henry Waxman, Democratic Congressman from California

Steven Lubet, director of the Program on Advocacy and Professionalism at Northwestern University in Chicago

Robert Destro, professor of law at Catholic University of America, specializing in legal ethics.

Perhaps the most influential story in all of history begins with an arrest, and the declaration “I am he.” So begins the story of the death of Jesus Christ, otherwise known as “The Passion.” The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all recount his final hours. The story of his betrayal by Judas, the public condemnation, his flogging at the hands of Roman soldiers, and finally his crucifixion — these each have been the stuff of dramatic re-enactment for centuries.

From church productions on Good Friday to the infamous “Oberammergau” in Europe, passion plays have served not just as testimonies to one man’s suffering, but also as incitements for anti-semitic violence.

Guests:

Philip Cunningham, Adjunct Professor of Theology and Executive Director for the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College

James Shapiro, Professor of English at Columbia University and author of “Oberammergau: The Troubling Story of the World’s Most Famous Passion Play.”

The junior senator from Massachusetts is now the decided frontrunner in the race for the Democratic nomination for president. But even before John Kerry’s strong showing in three state contests over the weekend, some in the GOP had already resurrected an old line of attack, branding Kerry a “Massachusetts Liberal” who is “culturally out of step with the rest of America.”

These are fighting words. In 1988 they were wielded against Michael Dukakis, and effectively killed his candidacy. Since then the label has continued to be used to color a perception of Massachusetts as a breeding ground for precious, political elites better suited to the salons of Cambridge than the porticoes of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Guests:

David Nyhan, political analyst and syndicated columnist

John Aloysius Farrell, Washington bureau chief and columnist, The Denver Post.

Admit it. It’s nice to see the big players cut down to size. Seeing mega-millionaires like Fastow and Kozlowski take the stand warms the self-righteous souls of we ordinary people, because we’d never do what they did, we’d never lie or cheat like they did, would we?

A growing body of research suggests that in fact, we would, and do, on a regular basis. Doctors prescribe drugs that patients don’t need. Students lie about that advanced tutorial in ancient Greek on a college application. Ever padded an expense report? You get the idea. All deceptions big and small, some say, are evidence that the land of the free, and home of the brave, is more like the land of greed, home of the depraved.

Guests:

David Callahan, author of “The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead.”

Back in the summer of 2002, Colin Powell arrived in Pakistan with an unusual request: that President Musharraf arrest a man Powell said had sold nuclear secrets to North Korea. Musharaff refused. Powell returned home. And Pakistan resumed its place as America’s ally in the war on terror.

So earlier this week, when Abdul Qadder Khan, the so-called father of the Islamic bomb and a national hero in Pakistan, admitted to, and apologized for, selling nuclear secrets, the news created its own kind of diplomatic mushroom cloud. Khan had done business not just with North Korea but with Iran and Libya. Leaders in Pakistan and America say they accept the apology, but just what the fallout might be is anyone’s guess. Pakistan’s dirty secret and America’s new quandary.

Guests:

Paul Anderson, BBC correspondent based in Islamabad, Pakistan;
Kathy Gannon, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, on leave as Associated Press bureau chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan

Ahmed Rashid, correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, in Lahore, Pakistan.

Janet Jackson’s two seconds of bare flesh at the Super Bowl have launched a new rocket in the culture wars. The heads of CBS and MTV say they were shocked, shocked to find nudity had made its way into the Superbowl. The media moguls are repenting, making amends, kicking Janet out of the Grammies and even editing out a scene from ER that reveals the breast of an 80 year old woman.

The guardians of the National Football League are also promising changes. But some members of Congress want more, they want FCC to get tough with the networks, fine them into good behavior. Even the FCC Chairman Michael Powell, a man who never met a deregulation he didn’t like, is saying legislation may be in order.

Guests:

Robert Thompson, Head of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University

Mary Jo Kane, Director, Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport

Fred Upton, Republican Congressman from Michigan and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet.

Zoloft, Prozac and Paxil are just a few of the drugs that have become common household names in America. This is a pill-popping nation and children are fast becoming a key part of the pharmaceutical market.

Each year nearly 11million prescriptions for antidepressants are written for children. These drugs save lives, that’s not being debated. But at hearings in Washington this week, dozens of parents told stories of antidepressants making their children more violent, even suicidal.

The British government, looking at suicide in its drug trials has told its doctors not to medicate children with most antidepressants on the market. The FDA is now doing its own investigation . Anti-depressants. Are they a chance at a better life, or do they raise the risk of losing it?

Guests:

Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, Harvard Psychiatrist

Dr. Suzanne Vogel-Scibilia, Psychiatrist

Tom Woodward, parent.

Earlier this year, in the northwest corner of Cambodia, at a brothel in Poi Pet, a New York Times columnist paid for two teenage prostitutes.

He took them to his hotel room, interviewed them, and decided to buy their freedom. Nicholas Kristof paid the Madams 353 dollars, and then set out to return the girls to their villages.

Kristof has been covering Asia, for a long time, and wrote a feature on the sex slave trade. “Nothing” from that time, he says “shook me more than interviews with 13-year-old girls who had been sold by their parents or kidnapped by neighbors.”

So this year Kristof went back to Cambodia to pick up this story, and wound up writing a very different kind of ending.

Guests:

Nicholas Kristof, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author of “China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, ” and Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times.

So you want to run for President. You think you’ve got the right take on the issues, you have the vision, the character, but have you got the money? The competition for the Presidency today has become an all-consuming, scramble for cash that has candidates dialing for dollars and hob-nobbing with funders in ways that would make a tele-evangelist blush.

But the money matters. For the past 30 years, the candidate with the most money the year before the election has always cinched the nomination. And as any world-weary Washington insider can tell you, no one raises that kind of cash at bake sales. Today a look back at the last night’s results and a look ahead at how the Democratic war chests will match up against the fundraising machine. of George W. Bush.

Guests:

Charles Lewis, Executive Director, The Center for Public Integrity and author of “The Buying of the President 2004″;
Ryan Lizza, Associate Editor, The New Republic.

The only thing more elusive than Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction may be a straight answer about who knew what when. Blame has a way of ricocheting around like a little blue racquet ball.

The White House has been hit — accused by some of relying on weak intelligence to support its case for war. The CIA has been thumped, too — charged with just plain getting the intelligence wrong. And the media is taking its knocks.

Critics accuse journalists of going soft when hard questions were in order. They say the public hasn’t been served by an American media too willing to buy the President’s case for war. They say that if intelligence gaps and White House spin were part of the mix, We the People should have known about it BEFORE the fighting began.

Guests:

Michael Massing, freelance journalist and author of “Now They Tell Us” in the New York Review of Books, February 26, 2004

Judith Miller, senior writer, The New York Times

Pamela Hess, Pentagon correspondent, United Press International.