Tonight on the show: Extension 720 goes under the knife as we welcome three prestigious Chicago surgeons to discuss the life of a surgical resident and what really happens in an operating room. Our guests will be neurosurgeon DR. ROBERT KAZAN, cardiovascular surgeon DR. DAVID CALANDRA, and DR. MICHAEL COLLINS, an orthopedic surgeon and author of the new book Hot Lights, Cold Steel: Life, Death and Sleepless Nights in a Surgeon's First Years.

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.

Tonight on the program: In honor of Black History Month, Extension 720 tonight examines the history of blacks in Chicago. From the post-Civil War era to the Great Migration to today, we will be examining all aspects of the history of African Americans in the Second City. Our guests include JOHN FOUNTAIN, professor of journalism at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, former Chicago correspondent for the New York Times, and author of True Vine: A Young Black Man's Journey of Faith, Hope and Clarity, and CHRISTOPHER REED, professor of history at Roosevelt University and author of the forthcoming book Black Chicago's First Century, Volume 1, 1833-1900.

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 IRAQ ELECTION WAS TRANSFORMATIVE...argue Kagan and Kristol in the Weekly Standard as they call for some resonant transformation in the Democrat opponents of the Iraq intervention. The kind of movement they call for has already been signalled by the junior senator from New York but not the senior one from Massachussetts.

FEDERAL JUDGE RICHARD POSNER...raises some very imposrtant questions about the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act and comes to the unhappy conclusion that the Superchief of Intelligence will be caught between conflicting imperatives and, once he begins to serve, will be launched upon "a journey into misery."

DICK MORRIS REALLY LOSES HIS COOL: For a year now he has been frightening himself with the prospect of Hillary running for (and, gasp, achieving) the presidency. And now, at last, he has discovered the preventive measure. Guess what and who?

A CHILLING CONVERSATION IN ISRAEL: Some female suicide bombers who "survived" are interviewed in their Israeli prison. Whatever one finds in their further ruminations can't be called "repentance."

STROM THURMOND'S OTHER DAUGHTER...the black one, has done a memoir of her relationship with her only occasionally seen father whose most frequent message to his daughter was to avoid fried foods and eat lots of vegetables!!

DOES HISTORICISM UNDERMINE RELIGION...and/or any other systems that assert non-relativistic values? A recent book examining this dilemma in the thought of four great modern Jewish thinkers is summarized here in a probing review/essay from Christianity Today.

JOHN LEO REWRITES LARRY SUMMERS APOLOGIA...and, in the process, reviews some of the really relevant research about male and female professional proclivities.

DON'T BREAK THE TENURE OF WARD CHURCHILL...says David Horowitz to our surprise at Front Page Magazine. Rather, says he in his always forthright style, restore the intellectual balance in faculty appointments at those universities where the anti-American left dominates the humanities and social science departrments.

THE BLUES MASTERS: This great collection features major performers who recorded in the fifties and sixties. Not to be missed: Willie Dixon, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, Elmore James and Muddy Waters.

Tonight on Extension 720: Just a few days ago, millions of Americans watched the Super Bowl—many of them not for the game, but for the debut of the highly touted and expensive commercials. What new trends in advertising did the ad world’s most important night signal? And how are advertising firms coping with the age of the Internet? And is advertising growing more vulgar and stupid? All these questions will be addressed tonight after the 7:00 Northwestern Basketball game as we explore the state of the advertising industry. Our panel of ad experts will be: LEWIS LAZARE, advertising columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, KEVIN LYNCH, partner and writer at Hadrian's Wall, a boutique advertising firm in Chicago, and DAVID LOEW, VP Creative Director at Young and Rubicam.

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 tomorrow.

Tonight on Extension 720: In America, we usually view the Revolutionary War as a heroic struggle of colonists to free themselves from the tyrannies and oppressions of the British Empire. Tonight, however, we reconsider the founding of America with renowned historian and biographer STANLEY WEINTRAUB whose latest book—Iron Tears: America's Battle for Freedom, Britain's Quagmire: 1776-1783—recounts the war as not only America’s triumph, but also as Great Britain’s great military folly.

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 tomorrow.

Tonight on Extension 720: Approximately 1.3 billion people live in China, people who are not only consumers but workers in an increasingly powerful economy. What is the future for China’s hybrid capitalist-communist economy? Will their growing industrial and manufacturing strength eventually cause the decline of America’s economy as we know it? Tonight, we will go inside this Asian tiger with TED FISHMAN, author of the new book China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World, LYRIC HUGHES, noted global economist and the publisher of ChinaOnline, an Internet news service that provides business and economic news on China, and MIMI YANG, a native of China, professor of modern languages at Carthage College and lecturer at their Clausen Center for World Business.

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.

"DEMOCRATIC PEACE" IS THE BIG THEME...in international theory these days and Natan Sharansky is its great expositor. Furthermore, according to this from the current issue of The Economist, his foremost enthusiast is the occupant of the big house on Pennsylvania Avenue.

THE PRIME POWER IN IRAQ IS HELD BY GRAND AYATOLLAH SISTANI...who is profiled in fairly rich (and apparently well-informed) detail in this article from the latest issue of Newsweek.

KEN POLLACK KNOWS JUST ABOUT ALL THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT IRAN...and here is a great review of his latest book. His recent discussion, on our program, of that mullahed nation can be heard here.

ALL HELL BEGINS TO BREAK LOOSE IN POLAND...as the Communist-era files are opened and some Solidarity notables turn out to have been double agents. This revealing account is from the U.K. Guardian.

ON THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN WITH THE FINANCIALLY EMPOWERED...of the western world as, observed by Timothy Garton Ash, they demean and and trivialize America while remaining scrutable to the Asians.

WHAT CAN BE LEARNED FROM THE DREARY CHURCHILL/HAMILTON COLLEGE AFFAIR? Whether a marginal academic provocateur should or should not retain tenure is hardly the crucial issue. The best account we have seen on the whole mess is this one by Roger Kimball in New Criterion. Follow the links for all (or more than) you need to know about the rot that has set in at Hamilton and many other American colleges.

ADDENDUM TO THE KIMBALL ACCOUNT: This deeply pained and appropriately accusatory letter from a member of the Hamilton College faculty appeared in the Utica, N.Y. Observer-Dispatch yesterday.

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE INTIFADA CELEBRATION AT DUKE UNIVERSITY? In this article from Commentary, two aggrieved graduate students from that very place report about who reviled whom and then call the administration of their university to account.

AND THE DUKE ADMINISTRATION DEFENDS ITSELF...but not at all to the satisfaction of its critics. Our call: the critics are 85% right and the administration apologist is a skilled hack practitioner of PR as university Vice Presidents for Public Affairs usually are.

CHRIS HITCHENS TAKES CHANCES...with his always strongly stated and sometimes shifting rages and enthusiasms. That's what makes him one of the most readable journalists...and here's a review of his new book of collected essays that matches him in its strong, uncluttered judgments.

TAKE HIM ALL IN ALL...he was a great "moral realist" and, as well, a paragon of intellectual elegance. That judgment of Lionel Trilling, given on his hundredth birthday by Gertrude Himmelfarb, has just been conveyed in this fine article from The Weekly Standard.

A CATHOLIC ACTOR: Alec Guinness was surely that in both possible meanings of the word. This review of a new biography of the "actor of ultimate range" has just appeared in our most notable Catholic journal of ideas, First Things.

A MOVING CHAMBER WORK BY DEBUSSY: His sonata for flute, viola and harp is reminiscent of the mood of Melisande weeping in the opera...and is here performed in almost liquid legato phrasing.