Government & Politics

Philadelphia Daily News reporters Barbara Laker and Wender Ruderman received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for the 10-month series "Tainted Justice." Their reporting on an allegedly crooked police narcotics squad resulted in the review of hundreds of criminal cases -- and started an FBI investigation into one of the Philadelphia police's elite units.

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tenn. For the next two months, the man who shot him, James Earl Ray, was able to evade the FBI during a massive worldwide manhunt. Writer Hampton Sides traces the movements of both King and Ray in his new book, Hellhound on His Trail.

New York Times foreign correspondent Dexter Filkins has just returned from Afghanistan. He discusses what he's seen since the recent troop surge and explains the challenges the U.S. faces in trying to drive the Taliban out of the country.

Richard Clarke, the former anti-terrorism czar, has now turned his attention to a new national security threat: cyberwar. In a new book, Clarke details what a full-scale cyberattack could look like, how the United States is particularly vulnerable, and what measures can be taken to ensure our networks remain safe.

In 1937, frustrated by a conservative Supreme Court that struck down a series of his New Deal programs, President Franklin Roosevelt set about to reform the court — by expanding it and adding as many as six liberal justices. The controversial proposition is examined in writer Jeff Shesol's new book, Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court.

By 16, Frank Meeink had become one of the most well-known skinhead gang leaders on the East Coast. His defection from the white supremacy movement is the subject of his memoir, Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead.

Last April, Merchant Marine Capt. Richard Phillips became the first American seaman to be captured by pirates in two centuries. After attempting to escape, Phillips was beaten and bound by his Somali captors. Five days later, Navy SEAL snipers killed the pirates and rescued Phillips. His new memoir, A Captain's Duty, recounts the ordeal.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg says what makes the pledge important isn't the meaning of the words -- it's the way we've managed to keep the words from meaning much of anything at all.

The Iranian-American journalist was imprisoned in Iran, interrogated, tried and eventually released. But the controversy continues. Saver says she confessed to her crimes in order to get out of jail but asserts she did nothing wrong. Her new book Between Two Worlds is an account of her time in captivity.

In 2008, historian Tony Judt was diagnosed with ALS, a progressive motor-neuron disease. For the past several months, Judt has been writing a series of essays for The New York Review of Books, charting life in what he calls a "progressive imprisonment without parole."

The number of hate groups in the United States continues to rise, says Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Potok discusses how the rhetoric of hate groups has increasingly entered the mainstream in the wake of the nation's changing demographics and the election of President Obama.

A fiery feminist, former political reporter and founder of the National Women's Political Caucus, Carpenter was the person who wrote the 58-word text that newly sworn-in President Lyndon B. Johnson read when he returned to Washington after President Kennedy's assassination. LBJ's onetime executive assistant was also press secretary to Lady Bird Johnson; Fresh Air remembers her with excerpts from a 1987 interview.

Until his arrest in 2004, nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan -- the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb -- ran a vast smuggling network that sent nuclear material to Iran and Lybia. In his book Peddling Peril: How the Secret Nuclear Trade Arms America's Enemies, weapons expert David Albright explains how Khan's network continues to threaten global security.

The book by the conservative strategist is called Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight. Rove tells Fresh Air the decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 was not based on wrong information from the Bush administration, but was based on wrong information from the intelligence community.

Starting tonight on the FX cable network, Deadwood star Timothy Olyphant is back playing another man with a badge -- this time in Justified, a modern-day Western based on stories by Elmore Leonard. TV critic David Bianculli review the new series for Fresh Air.

Speculation is growing that Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court's longest-serving member, will step down in June. New Yorker legal correspondent Jeffrey Toobin discusses who is likely to replace Stevens -- and offers his take on how the court will rule on the future of gun control laws.

Bourne Identity director Paul Greengrass and leading man Matt Damon have re-teamed for Green Zone, a fictionalized account of the U.S. search for weapons of mass destruction in the first year of the Iraq occupation. Film critic David Edelstein reviews the political thriller.

After producing Band of Brothers in 2001, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg return to World War II with The Pacific, a 10-part historical miniseries beginning Sunday night on HBO. TV Critic David Bianculli review the series, which examines the Pacific theater of operations.

Since the U.S. invasion, 4 million Iraqis have had to leave their homes. An additional 2 million have left the country entirely, and many are still outside its borders. NPR's Deborah Amos tells the story of these displaced Iraqi citizen in her new book, Eclipse of the Sunnis.

David M. Walker is the former comptroller general of the United States. His book, Comeback America, details the current financial crisis and offers his ideas on controlling spending and restoring fiscal responsibility in the United States.