Tonight on Extension 720:
THE USE AND ABUSE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Though G.K. Chesterton once claimed that “all slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry,” we at Extension 720 are more inclined to agree with Samuel Johnson, who “laboured to refine our language to grammatical purity, and to clear it from colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combinations.” Joining us tonight in our quest to save the English language are ELLEN HUNT, SUSAN HARRIS and CRAIG SIRLES, all experts in the proper usage of our vernacular.

More information on other Extension 720 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.

Tonight on Extension 720, expert paleontologist Paul Sereno joins the program to discuss his latest findings. More information on this and other programs is available at our monthly program guide. You can listen to the show after the show after the 6:05 Cubs game here.

KEEGAN SAYS "STAY THE COURSE" IN IRAQ. John Keegan is a great (and, happily, non-academic) military historian who has graced our program many times. In this op-ed for the U.K. Telegraph he argues, in his usual practical and informed manner, that the Iraq insurgency can be, and is being, effectively dismantled. England and the U.S., he argues, must persist; and the payoff will more than justify their efforts and redeem their present losses.

LUCY RAMIREZ, PLEASE CALL DAN RATHER! The whole miserable tale grows stranger and stranger...and, as the lies pile up, less and less believable. Here's the story from USA Today that broke the "Lucy did it" revelation. Whoever may have forged the papers, the larger question is: What did the Kerry people know and when did they know it? And ditto for Rather and CBS!!

THE JOURNALISM "INTELLECTUALS" ZERO IN ON THE RATHER MESS. Here are some of the Poynter Institute Faculty asking and answering: What went wrong? What lessons should be drawn? What should now be done?

THE TANTALIZING QUESTION OF THE CBS-KERRY CAMPAIGN CONNECTION...is further amplified by the "less than coincidental" parallels between the documents from the two sources. NewsMax may be ahead of the crowd on this.

BUSH'S REAL MILITARY CAREER. This piece by Byron York was published in The Hill about ten days ago and should have received far more attention than it got. The real story about Bush as Air Guardsman seems to involve more time put in at flight training and mission performance than Kerry spent in Vietnam!

TOM BEVAN ON THE BATTLEGROUND POLLS. This latest analysis of the data from the "swing states" was worked up by the co-proprietor of the always informative Real Clear Politics website. Rs are entitled to smile a bit and Ds to frown...but "who knows what shocks will come?"

THE FAR RIGHT YOU SHALL ALWAYS HAVE WITH YOU...though it often seems strangely continuous with the far left; and so it appears to be in eastern Germany after recent regional elections. This highly informative article is from the current issue of The Economist.

IS A PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI PEACE POSSIBLE? Yes, says Dennis Ross who went seeking it for Bill Clinton for some eight years. The big "but" is that it can only be achieved through significant American intervention--or so he argues in his recent book which is reviewed here in the new issue of Foreign Affairs.

ISLAM IN AND WITH EUROPE...is the real meaning of Eurabia says this Israeli scholar. While her views, as conveyed in this interview in yesterday's Front Page magazine, are "extreme," they require respectful and close consideration for, among other things, the light they shed upon anti-Israelism and anti-Americanism.

CA N'ARRANGERA PROBABLEMENT RIEN! So the French governmant has a plan (sort of!) to reverse anti-semitism by showing a movie to the kids. Perhaps, like chicken soup "it couldn't hurt" but doesn't that depend upon what they hear in their after-lycee madrassas?

DIDN'T I READ THIS VERY ARTICLE SOMETIME AGO? At any rate, it treats of the deja-vu experience and its hidden causes which are now, perhaps, adequately explained by young Dr. Brown who is interviwed here by Benedict Carey of the New York Times. Why is that name so familiar?

AN ANTI-PATRIARCHAL, ANTI-SMOKING AND HIGHLY PC CARMEN...is reviewed here, with his tongue firmly in cheek, by Denis Dutton. Delightful stuff!

THE METASWING OF STAN KENTON. That's how one music critic described this great band that toned it arrangements with dissonances, Latin metrics and resonances to "Les Six." Peanut Vendor is a classic as is Willow Weep for me. And then, there's The Concerto To End All Concertos.

Tonight on Extension 720, Milt discusses the legacy of the Holocaust with Mona Sue Weissmark, professor of psychology at Roosevelt University in Chicago. 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 here.

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

Tonight on Extension 720, Milt welcomes veteran Chicago journalists John Drummond, Bernie Judge and Dick Kay to discuss their long careers covering the Second City. 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 NUCLEARIZATION OF IRAN...will not, apparently, be halted by U.N. resolutions, nor by IAEA resolutions, investigations or abject pleading. This coverage by Reuters yesterday does not address the question of how to block the fabrication of the Iranian nuclear bomb--but some appropriate entity had better look to it soon.

YES, THERE WERE BLUNDERS IN IRAQ...says Larry Diamond in this important essay from the current issue of Foreign Affairs. Why and how were they made? At what cost? Can they be fixed and, if so, how?

THE POLLS AS OF YESTERDAY...suggest that the Bush lead is holding in the most important "battleground" states. This useful summary article was provided by Bloomberg; also reported are the obligatory and far less useful comments from the usual campaign sources.

IF KERRY IS AGAMEMNON, WHO IS ULYSSES? David Brooks' Homeric rendering of the turbulence in the Camp of Kerry may well outlast this campaign and wind up in some future anthology of political satire.

THE WORKS, WAYS AND FUTURE OF THE NEOCONS...as perceived through its American correspondents eyes rather darkly, by the U.K. Economist. Despite their "more sophisticated than thou" stance they do manage to come up with a few telling insights.

A MUSLIM COLUMNIST IN SINGAPORE...struggles with the hard reality of Muslim terrorist violence and comes out--after some rather delicate hedging--against killing the innocent. But, as he confesses, he might not be so "bold" if he lived in Ramallah or Chechnya.

THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD IN BEIJING...as reported by the official news agency, Xinhua. It's good to know that deadening Communist officialise has not yet disappeared from the linguistic repertoire

IF DEMOGRAPHY IS DESTINY...then the way to predict the future is to reason about the consequences of population decline in the west and (curiously) in much of the rest of the world as well. Some quite surprising recent projections are intelligently presented in this article from Newsweek.

MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY FROM THE STARSHIP ENTERPRISE. This article from the Phoenix Business Journal does rather recall the little gizmo that "Bones" used to wave around the patient's head and pelvis before pronouncing his always acurate diagnosis.

WHO IS COMMUNICATING AT YOU? The media, of course. And to whom do the various media that you depend upon actually belong? This useful guide to the media mega-corporations and all their holdings makes for some fascinating browsing.

HAS SPIEGELMAN TRIVIALIZED 9/11? The question has arisen and been ventilated in numerous book reviews. Here's an interesting review of those reviews from the Christian Science Monitor.

HOW LINDBERGH WON THE PRESIDENCY IN 1940...and how Philip Roth came to imagine this alternative history as revealed by him in yesterday's New York Times. Compelling reading!

A FEW MORE SUCH MITZVAS (MITZVOT) AND THE WAR MAY BE LOST. The adventures of Madonna in Israel do, after all, provide a welcome change from the usual news beamed from the Middle East.

BRAHMS' TRIO IN A MINOR...calls for a virtuoso clarinet performance and here are three seperate versions with three such virtuosi. We think its a toss-up between Hill and Collins, though Pay aquits himself well. Whichever performance you choose, the music is Brahms at his most moving.

Tonight, Extension 720 turns its attention to the world of religion and the latest developments and trends with two well-known religion writers. 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.

OH, WHAT A TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE WHEN FIRST WE VENTURE TO DECEIVE: The Houston Chronicle zeros in on the fellow who now is strongly suspected of being "the source" of those CBS memos and he appears to have been obsessed (but not consistent) in his long-expressed fulminations against George W.

MEMOGATE, RATHERGATE, SIXTYMINUTESGATE....or whatever suffix you prefer, the real question is: What happened and how? This chronologically-ordered review of the sad saga has been supplied by Human Events which, in this undertaking, has effectively summarized the available facts.

WHY ISRAEL WILL HAVE TO ATTACK THE IRANIAN NUCLEAR FACILITY......according to a columnist writing today in The Australian.

KRAUTHAMMER: THE INNER PSYCHIATRIST EMERGES AGAIN! This column from today's Washington Post, examining Kerry's inconsistencies (across time) on questions of war, concludes with some reflections on the Senator's "character." We think that the classic polarity between ambition and principle provides just as good an analytic tool when it comes to the higher American politics.

A STRANGE DAY AT WHITEHALL: It wasn't as dangerous as the Gunpowder Plot, but the MPs had a right to wonder whether the Chamber was and will remain secure from the Invasion of the Fox Hunters. Here's some of the needed detail as supplied by the U.K. Guardian.

PUTIN MAY BE ROLLING BACK RUSSIAN DEMOCRACY....but there is still enough of it left for his two predecessors (they didn't have live predecessors in the USSR) to leap into the denunciatory mode. This coverage from the Moscow News is rich with relevant links.

A NEW INSTANCE OF DARWINIAN "NATURAL SELECTION"....has just been reported from a research project focused upon high-altitude Tibetan mothers and their children. Add this to butterflies in Liverpool and the beak lengths of Galapagos Finches! Howzat? Well, those are two prior claimed instances of evolution in action.

5764 AND ALL THAT: WHAT KIND OF YEAR HAS IT BEEN FOR AMERICAN JEWS? An interesting--and somewhat worried--overview as it appeared a few days ago in The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.

A GREAT SCHOLAR AND NOBLE SOUL PASSES: James David Barber was a truly inspired political scientist and--where necessary--political activist. We knew him, Horatio--a fellow of infinite worth and, in the old days, a frequent guest on our program. The obituary is from the Chronicle of Duke University.

AND STILL, THE DIPLOMATS DITHER AND THE DARFURIANS DIE: The Economist has just published this review of the situation in Sudan. They are trying to be hopeful but, or so it seems to us, the gloom shows through.

THE BIRTH OF LANGUAGE? This study, just reported, makes the large claim that it has revealed how languages are formed. We predict that this will be met by more skepticism from the "linguistics community" than it has received from the press. But, all the same, the autonomous emergence of a language that follows universal structural rules is surely interesting (if true).

AND SPEAKING OF THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE: Here's an informative review of a new book that sounds like the definitive summary of ALL thought and scientific conjecture on that subject.

PURE WILLIE NELSON: This generous selection includes The City of New Orleans, On the Road Again and Heartbreak Hotel.

Tonight on Extension 720, after the 6:10 Cubs game, sports lawyer Eldon Ham returns to the program to discuss the rules of sport and the many ways in which they are broken. He will be joined by a fellow sports lawyer, Lester Munson. More information on this and other programs is available at our monthly program guide. You can listen to the show around 9:15 p.m. central time here.

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

A recorded edition of Extension 720 will air as Milt takes the night off to celebrate Rosh Hashanah. Producer MAGGIE BERNDT hosts a selection of clips from Extension 720's thirty year history that feature politicians, political historians and political pundit, including Colin Powell, Jimmy Carter, P.J. O'Rourke, Michael Beschloss and Sir Peter Ustinov.

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 EUROPEAN UNION BESTIRS ITSELF OVER THE GENOCIDE IN DARFUR...but ever so slowly in the "diplomatic" mode; and, meanwhile, hundreds (or is it now thousands?) die every day. This report of some ministerial activity is from Deutsche Welle.

SPEAK TRUTH TO RUSSIAN POWER...and don't let Putin get away with the re-Sovietization upon which he is now launched. That is the underlying "action implication" of this op/ed by Robert Kagan in today's Washington Post.

THE SILENCE OF MUSLIM LEADERS IN THE AFTERMATH OF BESLAN...is noted, analyzed and condemned by one of the leading columnists at the Jerusalem Post who, at the same time, finds some hope in one Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia.

SO WHAT KIND OF YEAR HAS IT BEEN FOR THE JEWS...asks the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The answer, erev Rosh Hashonah, seems to be: greater political prominence in the U.S., greater anti-semitism in Europe...and everyone is a little more...uh, tense.

AN ANGUISHED VOICE FROM ISRAEL. Plaut, the author of this article in today's Front Page magazine, perceives the Israeli left to be undermining the very continued existence of the state itself. There are few more angry voices in Israel, but his passion is informed by a "realpolitik" view that does not admit of "compromise" with those who disdain and condemn the Jewishness of the Jewish state

A WORTHY EVALUATION AND CRITIQUE OF THE BUSH REGIME'S FOREIGN POLICY...is presented here by the magazine of the same name. Melvyn Leffler, eschewing extremity, finds present policy to be in continuity with that of earlier regimes--but thinks that some additional realism is required.

THE RATHERGATE IS OPEN...and, even to lots of "friends of Kerry," CBS has some explaining--or revealing--to do. Here's what ABC is saying about its competitor's dilemma today.

AND THIS ONE IS GETTING RATHER A LOT OF ATTENTION TODAY. Ann Morse, writing for the National Review Online, recalls another time when D.R. plopped himself into the soup.

READING (CLOSELY) THE SENATOR'S FIRST BOOK...is the possibly arduous, but not unuseful, task that David Skinner of the Weekly Standard set for himself. Herein, the findings and thus a much delayed book review.

THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL IS NOT HEAVEN...its a neuro-optical phenomenon caused by oxygen-deprivation. So says this qualified physician/anesthesiologist writing in the Skeptical Inquirer. Sorry!

IF IT HADN'T BEEN DARWIN IT WOULD HAVE BEEN, WHO? Alfred Russell Wallace, of course--and here's a fine review of two new books about him and his other, less "scientific," interests.

BETWEEN THE SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS OF PSYCHOBABBLE AND HAPPY PILLS...is where lots of the "unsick but unhappy" find themselves. The U.K. New Statesman provides a usefully cynical evaluation of the "happiness industry."

MISTAH BUTLER, HE DEAD...but the ghost of America's "leading neo-nazi" will, undoubtedly, go marching on. This report of his demise and some reactions to it is from the San Francisco Chronicle.

CLOSER TO HEAVEN THAN TO HELL...AND THE LOCAL WINE IS GREAT...in Orvieto, the jewel hill-town of Tuscany. Our enthusiasm for the place was renewed by this fine, appreciative and evocative article in the New York Times.

A GREAT COLLECTION OF MIXED SWING AND POP. Don't miss: Etta James, Sinatra and the Stan Kenton and Benny Carter bands.