Government & Politics

Lewis and a team of researchers at the Center for Public Integrity have investigated the financing of all of this year's presidential contenders in the new book The Buying of the President 2004: Who's Really Bankrolling Bush and His Democratic Challengers — and What They Expect in Return.

The group was founded by Boyd and Joan Blades, two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, in the late '90s as a liberal political force. MoveOn.org recently sponsored the "Bush in 30 Seconds" ad contest. Some 1,500 contestants submitted ads and more than 100,000 people voted for them online. Moveon.org is now raising money to air the winning ad on TV this week and is even trying to get the ad aired during the Super Bowl.

He is a founder of the conservative group rightmarch.com. According to the group's Web site, rightmarch.com "is an umbrella Web site for many conservative organizations." The group has launched media and e-mail campaigns, some of them against Moveon.org. They are planning to sponsor TV ads criticizing the liberal group. One of the group's members recently released a country song entitled "Hey Hollywood." The song pokes fun at so-called liberal actors and country musicians, like Willie Nelson and The Dixie Chicks, who speak out against the war in Iraq.

Cowell is one of the judges on the talent show American Idol, a spin-off of the show he co-created in Britain, Pop Idol. The show has made him famous for his brutally frank criticism. Cowell has spent 25 years in the music industry, and is currently with BMG. His new book is Simon Cowell: I Don't Mean to Be Rude, But...

He directed and choreographed the new film adaptation of Chicago. It stars Richard Gere, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renee Zellweger and Queen Latifah. Previously, Marshall won an Emmy for Best Choreography for his work on the movie-musical Annie. He also directed and choreographed the acclaimed revival of Cabaret.

O'Neill and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Ron Suskind speak about the new book on which they collaborated, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill. The book chronicles his nearly two years with the Bush administration. O'Neill was the administration's top economic official and a principal of the National Security Council. The book has created a firestorm because of O'Neill's assertion that President Bush was intent on invading Iraq as soon as he took office, nine months before Sept. 11.

In this week's New York Times Magazine cover story (Sunday, Jan. 11) he writes about Maj. John Nagl, a professor at West Point and a counterinsurgency expert who is putting into practice for the first time his theories about counterinsurgency. He is in Iraq with a tank battalion in the Sunni Triangle.

Frum is former assistant to President Bush and a former White House speechwriter who helped coin the phrase "axis of evil." Perle is a former assistant secretary of defense under Reagan, and a member of President Bush's Defense Policy Board. The two have been influential in helping to shape foreign policy for the Bush administration. They have collaborated on the new book An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror.

In December he was part of a USO tour performing for troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Kuwait. The tour lasted eight days, and he returned Christmas Day. He'll talk about the tour and do some of his routine from it. Franken's books include Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right and Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot. Franken is an alumnus of Saturday Night Live, where his most memorable character was the simpering self-help sap Stuart Smalley.

John Sifton serves as Afghanistan researcher with Human Rights Watch. His articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine and the International Herald Tribune. Since 2001, he has made nine trips to Afghanistan. Sifton is also an attorney.

Corrigan's choices include: The Company You Keep by Neil Gordon; Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left by Susan Braudy; and They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 by David Maraniss.

Journalist Vernon Loeb covers the military for The Washington Post. He just returned from five weeks in Iraq. He discusses the situation there and the capture of Saddam Hussein.

He's starring in the new film The Cat in the Hat with Mike Myers, and in the upcoming film The Cooler with William H. Macy. Baldwin's other films include State and Main, Glengarry Glen Ross and The Hunt for Red October. He's appeared on Broadway in A Streetcar Named Desire and Loot. He is also serves on the boards of People for the American Way and the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund, named for his mother.

She is senior policy analyst for energy and environment at The Heritage Foundation. Coon researches and writes about energy and environmental policy, such as oil drilling in Alaska and the recent blackouts in California. The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C.

He is senior counsel for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C. Kennedy thinks Bush will be considered the worst environmental president in history and is concerned that Bush will dismantle 30 years of pro-environmental legislation.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews In America, the new film from director Jim Sheridan.

We catch up with him about the latest news from Iraq. He's in the United States for just one day, and then he goes back to Baghdad. Burns has won several Pulitzer Prizes for his overseas war reports.

The two collaborated (along with journalist Liz Sly) on a three-part series in The Chicago Tribune about illegal Muslim immigrants living in the United States who were required to register with the government after the Sept. 11th attacks. Now many of them are facing deportation or have already been deported.

TV critic David Bianculli reviews some of the network specials marking the 40th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. They include the PBS documentary JFK: Breaking the News, about how local media covered the assassination, and Court TV’s Forensic Files: The JFK Assassination: Investigation Reopened, (both on tonight). ABC also presents a special on the subject, Peter Jennings Reporting: The Kennedy Assassination — Beyond Conspiracy.

Sennott covered the war in Iraq, but not as an imbedded reporter. He talks about his recent return to Iraq and also discusses the relationship between President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, who are about to meet in London. Sennott is the London bureau chief for The Boston Globe. Sennott is also the author of the book The Body and The Blood: The Holy Land's Christians At the Turn of a New Millennium.