News and commentary for the week of October 18-24, 2006 with Mike Kaspar and Nathan Callahan.

An interview with Ronald Dworkin, author of "Is Democracy Possible Here? Principles for a New Political Debate."

Politics in America are polarized and trivialized, perhaps as never before. The result, Dworkin believes, is a deeply depressing political culture, as ill equipped for the perennial challenge of achieving social justice as for the emerging threats of terrorism. Yet this need not be. Dworkin, one the world's leading legal and political philosophers, identifies and defends core principles of personal and political morality that all citizens can share. He shows that recognizing such shared principles can make substantial political argument possible and help replace contempt with mutual respect. Only then can the full promise of democracy be realized in America and elsewhere.

News and commentary for the week of October 11-17, 2006 with Mike Kaspar and Nathan Callahan.

News and commentary for the week of October 4-10, 2006 with Mike Kaspar and Nathan Callahan.

An interview with Sidney Blumenthal, former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and the author of "How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime." In a series of columns and essays that Blumenthal wrote in the three years following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a unifying theme began to emerge: that George W. Bush, billed by himself and by many others as a conservative, is in fact a radical-more radical than any president in American history. Blumenthal argues that these radical actions are not haphazard, but deliberately intended to fundamentally change the presidency and the government. He shows not only the historical precedents for radical governing, but also how Bush has taken his methods to unique extremes.

Blumenthal is a regular columnist for the Guardian of London and for Salon, and has been a staff writer for the New Yorker and the Washington Post. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the New York University Center on Law and Security.

News and commentary for the week of September 27 - October 3, 2006 with Mike Kaspar and Nathan Callahan.

News and commentary for the week of September 20-26, 2006 with Mike Kaspar and Nathan Callahan.