Virtually Speaking

Alan returns to discuss his book about planetary exploration and identification on the outskirts of the solar system, making the case for Pluto as one of the nine planets.

Lt. Col. Barry Wingard and Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Bogucki, the U.S. military attorneys for Kuwaiti Guantanamo Bay detainee Fayiz Al Kandari, will host a virtual town hall meeting via Second Life at 6:00 PM PST on Monday, April 26, 2010. The attorneys will share Fayiz’s story, discuss legal developments in his case, provide their views on the Obama administration’s detention policies and take questions from the audience, consisting of citizens from across the country.

Lt. Col. Wingard, a Judge Advocate General (JAG) in the Air Force, has served 26 years in the U.S. military and is a veteran of both the Bosnia and Iraq conflicts. Lt. Cmdr. Bogucki, a Judge Advocate General (JAG) in the Navy, previously represented former Kuwaiti detainee Fouad Al Rabiah, an innocent man who was released from Guantanamo Bay in December 2009.

Fayiz Al Kandari, who was sold into U.S. custody in 2001, has been imprisoned for more than eight years

James writes for the Atlantic Magazine, and blogs at his Atlantic site. He is the author of numerous books, the most recent Postcards From Tomorrow's Square, which is about his extended time spent reporting from China.

Bruce is a highly regarded security expert, author of Applied Cryptography and of a cryptographic algorithm. He is also the author of books about security issues for the general public, including Secrets and Lies and Schneier on Security

Jay Rosen has been on the NYU Journalism School faculty since 1986, and from 1999 to 2005 he served as chair of the Department. He lives in New York City.

Rosen is the author of PressThink, a weblog about journalism and its ordeals (www.pressthink.org), which he introduced in September 2003. In June 2005, PressThink won the Reporters Without Borders 2005 Freedom Blog award for outstanding defense of free expression. In April 2007 PressThink recorded its two millionth visit.

He also blogs at the Huffington Post. In July 2006 he announced the debut NewAssignment.Net, his experimental site for pro-am, open source reporting projects. The first one was called Assignment Zero, a collaboration with Wired.com. A second project is OfftheBus.Net with the Huffington Post.

As MSNBC.com's science editor, Alan Boyle runs a virtual curiosity shop of the physical sciences and space exploration, plus paleontology, archaeology and other ologies that strike his fancy. Since joining MSNBC.com in 1996, Boyle has won awards from the National Academies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Association of Science Writers, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Space Frontier Foundation, the Pirelli Relativity Challenge and the CMU Cybersecurity Journalism Awards program. He is the author of "The Case for Pluto," a contributor to "A Field Guide for Science Writers," the blogger behind Cosmic Log — and an occasional talking head on the MSNBC cable channel.

His blog is at http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/

Karen Tumulty, National Political Correspondent for TIME Magazine is also a regular contributor to Washington Week.

We will be discussing health care reform and Congressional deadlock.

Gloria is a former head of Planned Parenthood for America and author of several books. Lynn is a novelist, essayist and comedian. Shelby is an author, and the director of The Education of Shelby Knox.

Mid-east Expert Dr. Juan Cole returns to talk about his latest book: Engaging the Muslim World.

Juan R. I. Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. His most recent book is Engaging the Muslim World and he also recently authored Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

Cole writes extensively about Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and South Asia; commenting extensively on the Iraq War, the politics of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the increasing conflict with Iran.

digby can only be characterized as the most respected progressive blogger. mcjoan (Joan McCarter) writes for the front page of DailyKos on legislative and health care issues. She also moderated the YearlyKos Presidential forum in 2007.

Dean Baker (b. July 13, 1958) is an American macroeconomist and co-founder and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He previously was a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor of economics at Bucknell University. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. His B.A. is from Swarthmore College. He blogs for The American Prospect.

We will talk, among other things, about his book Plunder and Blunder