The President has announced a budget that cuts deep and performs some elaborate sidesteps, and it has politicians from both parties fuming.

Bush says he’s going to cut the deficit in half by 2009 — and to do that he is planning to chop everything from farm subsidies and family literacy programs to healthcare for the poor. Critics say that the worst thing about the budget is not what’s in it, but what’s not. You won’t find any mention of the costs of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, no price tag for the President’s plan to overhaul Social Security, and no accounting for the fiscal toll the President’s tax cuts will take if he succeeds in making them permanent.

Deficit hawks on the Hill say he’s not going far enough — everyone else says he cut past the bone. Following the money, a conversation about pork and priorities.

Guests:

Scott Himelstein, Chairman and CEO of the National Even Start Association

Isabel Sawhill, Vice President and Director of Economic Studies at The Brookings Institution

David Bauman, Staff correspondent for the National Journal

Patrick Finnerty, Director of the Department of Medical Assistance Services in Virginia.

The debate over the Hubble Space Telescope is about more than our ability to see billions of light years away. It’s fundamentally a debate over money, that involves the scientific community and politicians and the very future of America’s space program.

Many scientists question why the government wants to put astronauts on the moon and later on Mars. They say that the best use of scant science dollars demands more support for telescopes and robots that can go farther and look further than humans.

The Hubble they say, though 15 years old and in need of repair, is still the best eye on the expansion of the universe: our eye back into time. The question is will NASA decide that Hubble’s eye is important enough to win a new billion dollar pair of spectacles in this week’s budget. A price tag on deep space.

Guests:

Rick Fienberg, editor-in-chief of Sky and Telescope Magazine

Stephen Murray, Senior Astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Guests:

Michael Ignatieff, Carr Professor of Human Rights Practice, Director of the Carr Center of Human Rights Policy at Harvard University’s JFK School, and author of numerous books including “Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry” and “The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror”

Ret. US General Montgomery Meigs, former Commander of NATO’s Peacekeepig force in Bosnia, Bridge Commander in Desert Storm, currently Professor of Government Policy at the Maxwell School of Public Affairs at Syracuse University

Senator Edward Kennedy, (D), Massachusetts.

This year, science lovers along with atoms, photons and neutrons throughout the universe have something to celebrate. It is the centenary of Einstein’s ‘miracle year’.

Einstein recalled 1905 as the year when he said “a storm broke loose in my mind’. That year, he proved the existence of atoms, devised the theory of relativity, showing that e equals mc2 and laid the foundations for quantum physics. Fifty years after his death, Einstein’s reputation is only improving with age. His theories of the universe continue to be supported by new generations of scientists and the technological tools that Einstein could only imagine. This hour, that year in the life of Albert Einstein, the man who was as famous as a rock star but died still trying to ‘read the mind of God’. 1905 – it very good year Uncle Albert.

Guests:

Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York. He is author of “Einstein’s Cosmos: How Albert Einstein’s Vision Transformed Our Understanding of Space and Time” and the new book “Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions and the Future of the Cosmos.”

It’s been a big week for countries throughout the Middle East. People around the world were riveted by the sight of millions of Iraqis who defied insurgent warnings and went out to vote. Many Arab news sources focused on the violence of that day, others denounced the vote because of the numbers of Sunni Muslims who boycotted the election.

Now the U.S. President’s State of the Union address is raising questions about what’s next. Bush is calling on Saudi Arabia and Egypt to embrace democratic reform and he’s delivering direct threats to Iran and Syria. This hour we talk with the interim leader of an Egyptian opposition party and journalists to see if the Middle East really is ready for democracy.

Guests:

Magdi Abdelhadi, BBC’s Arab News Analyst

Mona Makram Ebeid, Professor at American University in Cairo and Secretary General of the the Party of Tomorrow

Salameh Nematt, Washington Bureau Chief of Al-Hayat, an international Arab daily and the LBC, the Lebanon-based Arab satellite channel

Abdul Bari-Atwan, Editor of Al Quds Daily newspaper.

It’s been called one of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and it’s showing no signs of abatement. The killing, the pillaging and the rape continues in Sudan’s Darfur region, where an estimated 70,000 people have been killed, and more than two million driven from their homes.

The people there need the attention of both humanitarian aid agencies and human rights organizations. How they do that work though, varies. Human rights groups gather information about the atrocities, then publicly “name and shame” the perpetrators. Aid agencies focus on getting the basic needs of the victims met , food, water, medicine, and often remain quiet about who’s right or wrong in the conflict. For both kinds of organizations, there’s a tradeoff.

Guests:

Lynn Amowitz, Director of Evidence-Based Research for International Medical Corps, Director of the Initiative on Global Women’s Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, recently returned from a trip to Darfur

Georgette Gagnon, Deputy Director, Africa Division, Human Rights Watch, recently returned from Darfur.

President Bush didn’t mince his words last night. Social security he said, is going bankrupt, and he says he’s got a plan to save it. Much of the speech read like a lecture in personal finance, complete with actuarial charts and graphs, and warnings to a generation of young Americans that unless Washington acts now, nothing will be left for them.

He also called on Congress to take on other pressing business, like reforming the tax system, changing immigration laws, and passing a constitutional marriage amendment. He spoke about Iraq as well, making it clear that there is no timetable for bringing the troops home, and that the U.S. would stay until Iraq is stable and secure.

Examining the state of the union, as seen by the President – debating social security at home, and democracy abroad.

Guests:

Doyle McManus, Washington Bureau Chief for The Los Angeles Times

Congressman Bobby Jindal, Rep. (R-LA)

Martin O’Malley, Mayor of Baltimore, MD

Michael Adams, Assistant Managing Editor of the Fayetteville Observer in NC

Gene Sperling, Senior Fellow for Economic Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and Former White House National Economic Advisor in the Clinton Administration.

It is the dead of winter in Moscow, and more than 30,000 children are living on the streets. Theirs is a marginal existence. They sleep in railway stations, stairways and sewers. They spend their days begging, playing, sniffing glue, drinking vodka, and missing their mothers. Many will never see past their 15th birthdays.

After spending time with these children, Hanna Pollack directed a documentary film about their lives, which was just nominated for an Oscar. Hannah takes us inside the train stations and the dark warm corners where the children live. She delivers a picture of their lives that is both brutal and deadly.

Guests:

Hanna Polak, director of “The Children of Leningradsky”;
Fred Weir, Russian Correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor;

When the newly elected members of Iraq’s parliament sit down to draft a constitution, how will they start? Will they say “we the people of the Islamic Republic?” Will they say “we the Sunnis, the Shites and the Kurds?” Or will they find enough common ground and national purpose to say, “we the People of Iraq”?

This is a country with great pride in its history but without a long tradition as a nation state. Thrown together by the colonial powers after WWI and then bound tight under the harsh rule of Saddam Hussein, the country is today a tangle of different ethnicities, religions, and languages. While the election seems to have gone well, many say coming up with a constitution that everyone can live with will be the real test. Finding a center that will hold, drafting Iraqi democracy.

Guests:

Noah Feldman, visiting professor at Harvard Law School who served as consultant to Iraq Governing Council in drafting the interim constitution

Peter Galbraith, former United States Ambassador to Croatia, senior fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation in Washington

Anne Barnard, Baghdad correspondent with The Boston Globe

TBA.

Early on in the film “Born Into Brothels” we meet Kochi, a shy 10-year old with bright, darting eyes. Kochi mops the floor and gets tea and curry for the prostitutes who live upstairs. “I keep thinking,” she tells the camera, “if I could go some place and get education, I wonder what I could become.”

It’s a bold question for such a small child born to women working the sex trade in Calcutta’s red light district. And it’s the question that underscores a film following the lives of eight unforgettable children who learn to document their own lives with cameras.

It’s a story of children engaging and confronting their perilous world and of a photographer who is determined to help children find a way out of dead end lives. Surviving the sex trade, one picture at a time.

Guests:

Zana Briski, photographer, now filmmaker of “Born Into Brothels,” founder of Kids With Cameras

Ross Kaufman, Academy-Award nominated filmmaker of “Born Into Brothels.”