Tonight is an evening of music on Extension 720 as we celebrate the pioneers of jazz with two jazz experts. Our guests include MICHAEL DREGNI, columnist, reviewer and feature writer for Vintage Guitar magazine, as well as author of the new book Django: The Life and Music of a Gypsy Legend, which details the life of eminent jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. He will be joined by JOHN MCDONOUGH, jazz critic and writer for Downbeat magazine and the Wall Street Journal. Apart from Reinhardt, we will focus on such great jazz pioneers as Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman.

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 will return on Monday.

Extension 720 takes a seat on the bench tonight for the Northwestern Wildcats basketball game at 8:30 p.m. central.

More information on Extension 720 programs is available at our monthly program guide.

SOME INSIDE DOPE (AND REQUIRED WISDOM) ON THE IRAQI ELECTION...is provided in the New York Times today by Bill Safire, proving once again that his presence as a calm columnar voice will be much missed.

IS THE UKRAINIAN UPRISING CONTROLLED BY THE CIA? The question is not merely nonsense. The fact that it is being seriously asked, says Anne Applebaum in today's Washington Post, is strong evidence of how the anti-American left is now ready to endorse the east European anti-democratic right.

PLUS CA CHANGE: The Economist meets its highest reportorial standards in this excellent examination of what is now stirring in French politics. The haunting question on the horizon is: Apres Chirac, qui?

THE AWAKENING OF THE NETHERLANDS...is documented here in a strongly-written article that has just appeared in Front Page Magazine. The author, Michael Radu, is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who has been studying the works and ways of Islamic radicalism for some years.

CANADA ANYONE? As some of the Bush-haters migrate (or threaten to migrate) northwards, this op-ed from the Seattle Times by a migrant from the north might be recommended to them as urgent reading.

THE RISING ANTI-AMERICAN (AND ANTI-JEWISH) TIDE IN EUROPE: Gerard Baker, the London Times' man in the U.S, spotlights some of the ugliness in western Europe and lays out a corrective itinerary for the forthcoming Bush visit. This guy tells it like it is!!

HOW DID THE UNIVERSE HAPPEN? Last night on Extension 720 we put that question to Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman. This morning, when we put it to Google, this came up as one of the more intelligible answers.

A PRIMER IN BIOETHICS...is laid out in this important and incisively argued mini-essay published originally in the London Times. The hypothetical sequence in which embryonic stem-cell research leads to a world in which we "make enemies of the weak" deserves serious consideration.

IF YOU CARE ABOUT POLITICAL POLLS...and are bemused or amused by their considerable failings, the blog of the Mystery Pollster should be on your favorites list. Here is today's edition.

GENERAL PATTON: MAD OR BRILLIANT OR BOTH? Sir Max Hastings, who appeared on our program last Monday night referes to the two-gunned general as a "madman." Here, from Australia, is a more admiring--and yet, quite informative--biography of the man in question.

A "BACKWARD PILGRIMAGE" TO OUR ANCESTORS...is the way Richard Dawkin's latest work is characterized in this review from the New York Times. Brief, but to the point, this overview of the book whets our appetite for it.

BY THEIR READING SHALL YE KNOW THEM: A possible key to the public performance of political leaders may be to investigate what they habitually read...and re-read. Remember Harold MacMillan? Peter Catterall, writing in the scholarly journal Cercles, does and in this truly engaging, if lengthy, essay he relates the Prime Minister's statesmanship to his literary indulgences.

YOU CAN'T TELL THE PROFESSORS WITHOUT A SCORECARD...is the rationale for published student evaluations of their college teachers. As a veteran academic--who got good reviews!--the proprietor thinks this sort of thing is deeply injurious to the maintenance of academic quality. (Why? Because the untenured and many of the tenured court popularity by engaging in "crowd-pleasing" rather than in diligent representation of their subject matter.) Here, from Columbia University, is the student rundown on all of the professors in the Psychology Department.

WHEN BENJAMIN BRITTEN ENCOUNTERED RIMBAUD...the result was this enticing song cycle which is beautifully performed here by Amanda Roocroft backed by the Hong Kong Symphony.

Tonight, Extension 720 turns to the cosmos and discusses the fabric of the universe with two expert guests. Nobel Laureate LEON M. LEDERMAN and CHRISTOPHER T. HILL, director of the Theoretical Physics Department at FermiLab join the program to discuss their new book Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe.
More information 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 will return tomorrow.

Tonight on Extension 720: Though D-Day is one of the most celebrated moments of World War II, it was only a step on the road to defeating Nazi Germany. After the invasion of Normandy and the liberation of France, the Allied Forces still faced the long and arduous task of invading Germany to finally wrest power from Hitler's clutches. Tonight on the program we discuss the final years of the Third Reich with world-renowned author, historian and journalist SIR MAX HASTINGS. He has been a frequent guest on Extension 720 over the years, and we are happy to welcome him back to discuss his latest book Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945.

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.

WHO WILL STEM THE NUCLEAR TIDE IN IRAN? Fareed Zakaria asks the question and comes up with a clear answer: The Europeans can do it IF they have the will and can put aside their America-baiting impulses for a while.

ARE THE EUROPEANS VERY DIFFERENT FROM US? If so, it's not because they have more money--pace F.Scott. Rather, says George Weigel, in this major speech delivered recently at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, it is because they went through true "secularization" a long time ago.

THE BLUE AND THE RED: A Harvard faculty member who is also an Evangelical Christian seems unlikely, but here's one who thinks his two cultures are potentially reconcilable. This fine essay appeared today in Tech Central Station.

WHY AMERICA IS (DESERVEDLY) HATED...as explained by yet another major figure at the New York Times. We are indebted to the American Spectator for its report on this speech recently delivered by Chris Hedges.

HOW EUROPEAN ISLAM MUST CHANGE...if it is to avoid rejection in the countries (like Holland!) where it is now arousing suspicion and reactive rage. The advice comes from a Roman Catholic Cardinal who is one among the rumored papabile!

THERE ARE OTHER MUSLIMS...and, indeed, their reasonable opposition to Wahabbist fanaticism should be noted and rewarded. This article from Front Page Magazine is a valuable overview with many valuable links to organizations, scholars and activists who restore one's hope that Islamacist extremity may yet be put aside in favor of reasonable adaptation to a truly multicultural international scene.

BETTER SEVENTY YEARS LATE THAN NEVER? The matter of Harvard, Putzi and the Nazis gets an indignant review from the editors of The Harvard Crimson. Paging Larry Summers...

I BLOG THEREFORE I AM...INFLUENTIAL! So assert the authors of themselves and of many of their blogpals. This fine piece by Dan Drezner and Henry Farrell deserves close reading and active linking.

A NEW FRONTIER FOR PLAGIARISM: In recent years serious academic historians have been accused of plagiarism and the evidence against them has often been rather compelling. Now, according to this from the student newspaper at Boise State University in Idaho, the practice has spread to Letters to the Editor!!

AN APPRECIATION OF WODEHOUSE...which manages at the same time to conflate him with Samuel Beckett!! you don't run into that every day...or week...or year. But the author makes a pretty fair case in this review of a new biography of the source of Bertie and Jeeves.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CELL PHONE REVOLUTION...may well include further atomization of the individual says Christine Rosen in this article from The New Atlantis. To be constantly "connected" may paradoxically foster disconnection from the world immediately around us. This is a wonderfully provocative essay well worth close consideration.

THE NIGERIAN LETTER SCAM...continues to spam up our (and your) e-mail. The Secret Service has been tracking and, where possible, fostering prosecution of these con-artists. Here's their tip-sheet on the whole enterprise and the way that it is played against naifs with "a well developed sense of larceny."

ANOTHER CONCERT FROM LUGANO: Particularly splendid is the performance by Argerich of Prokofiev's First Piano Concerto.