Tonight on the show, Milt plays some of the most interesting political clips from his past thirty years on the show. More information on this and other programs is available at our monthly program guide. You can listen to the show from 9 to 11 p.m. central time here.

THE OLD (REPUBLICAN PARTY) IS NEW AGAIN...according to George Will who here reacts to the present, and to the now completed Republican convention, with his usual penchant for evoking the past and finding some continuity therewith.

AND ANOTHER REACTION. This one from John McIntyre, co-proprietor of Real Clear Politics.com and a frequent guest on our program.

DIONNE TO THE DEFENSE OF KERRY THE WARRIOR. E.J. recently did a book urging the Democrats to be proudly "liberal" and discussed it with us on Extension 720. In his column today he attacks the leading Democrat for Bush for questioning Senator Kerry's war-like resolve. Good try...but.

DICK MORRIS LOSES HIS (CYNICAL) COOL...and, after last night's speech, goes all out for Bush. This column from the man who guided Clinton in the development of the "triangulation" strategy appeared in today's New York Post.

A HORRIBLE STORY FROM IRAN...and the complicity (by silence) of the Britsh press are detailed in this article that appeared a few days ago in the U.K. Telegraph. When will the left-tilted feminists take up the cause of women killed in the name of Islamic Sharia?

CAN OR WILL ISLAM TURN TOWARD EQUALITY FOR WOMEN? That question--inherent in our last item--is illuminated in a valuable study reported last year and summarized here in an article from Foreign Policy.

COUNTERING ISLAMISM...A LA FRANCAIS. So, at last, the head scarves are off in the schools of France. Or are they? The use of wigs as a substitute measure may suggest Jewish orthodoxy. Sauve qui peut...and here's the story from today's New York Times.

CONSTERNATION AT THE ACLU...or, at least, among some of its board members. One of those is Nat Hentoff, whom we much admire (and with whom we serve on the Advisory Board of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) but with whom we also differ on the works and ways of the ACLU. Here's his recent denunciatory report as published in the Village Voice.

WINE, HAPPINESS, CALIFORNIA, AUSTRALIA AND THE FALL OF MOUTON CADET. Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker makes his belated debut (after all he has lived in France in recent years) as an oenophile.

AND SPEAKING OF WINE...and gin, scotch, sherry and beer, this release from the University of Missouri flak-office will provide a good rationalization for anyone who needs to defend his/her "modest" drinking regimen.

THE RISE OF THE QUEEN...in the game of chess and in European history has been tracked by a Stanford professor who is here interviewed, over a chess board, for the San Francisco Chronicle.

THIS GREAT PERFORMANCE...of a Ravel piano concerto is followed by his still stirring and startling Bolero.

Extension 720 is pre-empted tonight by an 8:30 p.m. Northwestern Wildcats football game.

Milt's File is taking the day off, but will return tomorrow.

Tonight on Extension 720, we take an in-depth look at the Republican National Convention with Joe Morris, Robert Schmuhl, and Paul Green (live from New York). More information on this and other programs is available at our monthly program guide. You can listen to the program after the 6:05 Cubs game (around 9:15 p.m. central time) here.

EUROPEAN ANTI-AMERICANISM COMES AT A HIGH COST...says Fareed Zakaria in this sharply stated essay just published in Foreign Policy magazine. One hopes this will be read and appreciated at the Quai d'Orsay.

THE PROTESTOR BOOMERANG. Dick Morris suggests, in this well-bethought column, that the protests in New York may well work to the disadvantage of the Kerry campaign. Perhaps the organizers should have briefed themselves on the history made in 1968 when the kids opposing Lyndon Johnson went "clean for Gene (McCarthy)."

AND SO SAYS THE NATIONAL JOURNAL AS WELL! When Bill Schneider and Dick Morris agree, the "leaders" of the hundred-and-one protesting collectives might to well to "consider that they may be mistaken."

IS THIS KERRY INTERVIEW A SPOOF? That was our first thought but--upon reflective perusal--we now guess that it all really happened and that the transcript is as authentic as it is...ahhhh, unengaging.

WERE THEY "LOOTERS" ACROSS THE AVENUE? Our headuarters is at WGN Radio located in the Tribune Tower in Chicago and across Michigan Avenue from the Sun-Times building. Thus the charges against Lord Black and his colleagues at Hollinger, as detailed here by Reuters, do take on a certain special and piquant interest.

TALK RADIO IN BAGHDAD...does sound not unlike talk radio in Chicago but the callers have more immediate problems and more legitimate gripes. This story from yesterday's New York Times does suggest, to us, that the socio-political transformation of Iraq will be irreversible.

NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT OR UNIVERSAL MUTUAL ASSURED DESTRUCTION? These may be the ultimate choices available in a militarily nuclearized world, according to this valuable article just published in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

HOW MUCH IS TEMPERAMENT? HOW MUCH IS "ACCIDENT?" When it comes to human personality and behavior, that is. Jerome Kagan of Harvard is a senior and much respected figure in developmental psychology and by opting for inborn temperament he has stirred a classic academic controversy. It's all here in good coverage from the Boston Globe.

WHAT POPULATION EXPLOSION? The demographic projections have changed so radically that all sorts of "experts" are as confounded as is Paul Ehrlich. This story from the New York Times tries to sort it out.

A HUNDRED YEARS OF "CONSERVATIVE" READING. The people at, or near, the National Review have polled themselves on the "great (non-fiction) books" of the last century. There is some valuable guidance here, some odd choices and a few that provoke either rage or appalled amusement.

A POLITICAL STREET THEATER PERFORMER IN NEW YORK...is immortalized by Matt Labash of the Weekly Standard who tries to tag along.

AND OH, T'IS TRUE, T'IS TRUE!! We spent about half an hour earlier today waiting out and trying to decipher a phone menu not very unlike the one imagined here in this bitterly brilliant satire from Monday's Slate.

A PRECURSOR TO THE CLASSICAL SYMPHONY? Some historians of western music have attributed that special significance to the Orchestral Trios of Johann Stamitz. Whether or not that is the case, the music is rich in post-baroque tonality.

Tonight on Extension 720, we talk with noted Chicago author Alex Kotlowitz after the 6:05 Cubs game. You can listen to the program after the game here.

Milt's File is taking the day off, but will return tomorrow.

Tonight on Extension 720, we go inside the Lincoln Park Zoo after the 6:05 Cubs game with Dr. Les Fisher, former director of the zoo and author of Dr. Fisher's Life on the Ark, and Mark Rosenthal, curator emeritus of the Lincoln Park Zoo. More information on this and other programs is available at our monthly program guide. You can listen to the program after the game until 11 p.m. central time here.

HOW THEY MADE "PEACE" IN NAJAF. This eyewitness account from a Time reporter has rich detail and manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of "victory." i.e. Al Sadr is not de-fanged and is not going away.

AND WHY, EXACTLY, WERE WE IN NAJAF? The New York Times, a few days ago, ran this rather unTimesian op-ed in which a serving Marine flyer explained--as effectively as anyone we have ever read on the subject--how our military are serving American security "over there."

THE OTHER PRESENCE IN IRAQ...is, of course, Iran. The current issue of Newsweek features this revealing article about the across-the-border Ayatollahs who are backing and running Al Sadr's Mehdi movement.

MEANWHILE IN KHARTOUM...the Sudanese government is still ordering killings in Darfur and the chief negotiator for the "rebels" may walk out. Some of the best coverage of the Sudan genocide has come from the Beirut-based Daily Star.

THE 9/11 REPORT MAY DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD...says Richard Posner in yesterday's New York Times Book Review. We will examine the argument presented here with Judge Posner in November, when he is next scheduled to appear on our program.

STEYN ON THE CAMBODIAN SECRET MISSION. The indefatigueable omnivore of political journalism has managed, as he dashes between London, Canada and New England backwoods, to share--with his readers in the Jerusalem Post--his thoughts about Lt. Kerry's mission of very long ago.

DISRUPTION, VANDALISM AND--WHERE NECESSARY--ASSAULT. That's what they preach and teach at RUCKUS, the organization that trained many of the "protesters" now in New York City. This Front Page article about them is essential reading--and that particularly includes the disclosure about the current employment of one of their former "workshop facilitators." Do, by all means, read on!!

HOW FRANCE FINALLY GOT OVER ITS REVOLUTION. This outstanding essay from the London Review of Books focuses on the crucial intellectual work of Francois Furet and his colleagues who--as the bicentennial of the revolution approached--finally "put paid to Mitterand's socialism" and to the Jacobin idealization of the revolution itself.

TO BE YOUNG AND JEWISH IN POLAND...is a revived identity shared by only a few. But, as related in this article from The Forward, in Krakow the real Jews are less evident than the faux-Jews performing in the faux-ghetto.

DOES POETRY OUTLAST ITS PERIOD? Well, some poems do and some don't. What's the difference? This fine review/essay from The New Criterion addresses the question and demonstrates that what is "outdated" still has interest and value.

THE INTERNET HAS JUST TURNED THIRTY-FIVE...and this AP article, after reviewing the basic facts about its birth and growth, turns to some interesting speculations and predictions about its future. Can anyone really forecast where and what it will be thirty-five years from now?

A WALLET-DROPPER IN MANHATTAN. This sort of thing has been done "experimentally" by social psychologists...but not written up as well as Philip Weiss has done in this heartening report from the New York Observer.

COCA-COLA, DIABETES II AND SCIENTIFIC COMPETENCE...are the crucial terms in this article by the editor of Junk Science, one of the most valuable journals that we regularly read.

SWING AT THE SUMMIT. The masters of that great period in American popular mnusic are featured here. Some essential selections: There's Good Blues Tonight; Take the A Train; Begin the Beguine; The One O'Clock Jump.

KERRY IN A 1971 TV INTERVIEW. C-Span has recently disinterred this interview in which Kerry says that the anti-communist policy of John Foster Dulles (!) got us into a war that should not have been fought and that many of his colleagues have returned as potential killers and actual drug addicts.

Tonight on Extension 720, Milt examines the smallest of the small with two experts in nanotechnology. More information on this and other programs is available at our monthly program guide. You can listen to the program from 9 to 11 p.m. central time here.

STATECRAFT AND STAGECRAFT...is the title of a fine book (by our friend Robert Schmuhl of Notre Dame) and it could well have been the headline for this story from today's New York Times.

THE POLLS AND THE POLS. The latter must be talking about the former today. Trend patterns are what's most important in the continuing political preference polls...and the trend that has just emerged seems to favor Bush! The coverage is by Ronald Brownstein and Kathleen Hennessey of the Los Angeles Times.

DR. KRAUTHAMMER'S DIAGNOSIS...is that the Bush haters have overshot the limits of reality. His explanation of the etiology of the disorder does, indeed, draw upon his earlier psychiatric training and is vividly conveyed in this column from today's Washington Post.

A MEDITATION ON THE KERRY CAMPAIGN'S USE OF VIETNAM...is featured in the current edition of the Weekly Standard. The source is Fred Barnes, the executive editor of the magazine.

CHARLES GLASS ARGUES WITH BERNARD LEWIS ABOUT ISLAM...and we think he makes a rather poor case even while providing some exciting reading. This article is from The Nation magazine and here is the audio of a recent discussion we had with Bernard Lewis.

THE GLACIERS ARE MELTING...in the Swiss Alps and, in gereral, global warming is visible and measurable throughout Europe. Some of the predictable consequences are examined in this scary report from BBC News.

WE SHALL NOT LOOK UPON HIS LIKE AGAIN. Edward Teller, the "father of the hydrogen bomb" and the most "hard-line" of the scientific nuclear warriors is memorialized here in a fascinating account given by two former colleagues, one of whom served as Secretary of Defense.

ONE FINE WRITER REMEMBERS AND APPRECIATES ANOTHER...who died far too young. Grace Paley's brief essay on Harvey Swados gets the nature of his excellence exactly right.

"DISTASTE FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS"...is de rigeur in novels submitted for the Booker Prize. That's one of the many revelations provided, in this article from the Telegraph, by one of the judges of the U.K.'s leading literary award.

WHEN SCIENTISTS ANALYZE ART...one of the surprising (and disturbing) hypotheses they put forward is that some of the old masters "cheated." If they did, how and why did they do so? Those and related questions are addressed in this fascinating article from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

WHO DOES WHAT AND WITH WHICH AND TO WHOM? The National Opinion Research Center has studied American sexual behavior very closely for many years. Here's the full report of their findings. Among the many interesting facts: Same-sex partnering by males remains at about 2% of the total referenced population--and at about 1% for females.

IGNORANCE, LAZINESS AND RHETORICAL INCOMPETENCE...are some of the qualities this English college professor finds in his students at a major American university. This review/essay in the Wall Street Journal fully accords with the prorietor's experience of recent years spent teaching undergraduates at another major American university.

A FEW PERFECTED MOMENTS WITH VIVALDI. This brief, but beautifully formed, concerto for various instruments is too slight to be labelled a "concerto grosso." But, in this instance, less is (as so often with Vivaldi) more.

Tonight on Extension 720, Milt welcomes two renowned poets to read and discuss the art of poetry. More information on this and other programs is available at our monthly program guide. You can listen to the show from 9 to 11 p.m. central time here.

Milt's File is taking the day off, but will return tomorrow.