WHAT HATH GEORGE W. WROUGHT? Plenty good stuff though his leftist critics won't abandon their cartoon caricatures of a significant and innovative leader. So says Victor Davis Hanson today in the Chicago Tribune. Hanson will be our guest tonight at Extension 720 and can be heard here at 9 p.m., central time.

CHICAGO (STILL) AIN'T READY FOR REFORM...to quote the immortal Paddy Bauler, as witness the addition of two more aldermanic names (and also one Congressman) to the roster of the accused in this year's leading governmental corruption scandal.

THE REAL DESECRATION OF ISLAM...has not happened at Guantanamo. Rather, says Jeff Jacoby, in this strongly written article from the Boston Globe, it is seen in "what totalitarian Muslim zealots have been doing to innocent human beings in the name of Islam."

THE VIEW OF AMERICA IN THE WORLD...as seen from the executive offices of the PepsiCola Corp!! Our good friend and rather frequent program guest, Roger Kimball, contributed this report yesterday to Armavirumque, the blog of New Criterion magazine.

THE LIFE, ACHIEVEMENT AND DEATH OF IRIS CHANG...are treated with appropriate appreciation and sensitivity in this article from the Village Voice. We knew and admired her. Here she is at WGN Radio during one of her visits to the program.

WHAT IS TRUTH? Pilate's question is asked most recently by Simon Blackburn, eminent British professor of philosophy. Whatever truth is, he asserts, it is not to be found in such modern sophistries as multiculturalism, relativism or postmodernism. Edward Skidelsky gives two cheers for his new book in this review from the New Statesman.

AND SPEAKING OF ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHERS...can their departments be scientifically (sort-of) rated. Here's a report on one such noble effort from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

AND IF YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW ABOUT POST-MODERNISM...here's a deep-delving and, we think, on-the-money analytic essay that popped up at Front Page the other day.

"ICONIC" MODERN BUILDINGS...are here debated in a vigorous exchange between two articulate practitioners of the architectural art. Or, might one say, the architectural racket? The discussion is under the auspices of the British magazine, Prospect.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JANE JACOBS? She has grown more pessimistic and shares her dark vision in a new book that gets an involved but, to say the least, mixed review from The Next American City.

ARE THERE MERELY NINE BASIC PLOTS? Wrong! There are only seven--and they are detailed and analyzed in what sounds, according to this review in the Washington Post, like an essential book for amusement and partial edification.

"BUZZ" FINDS A NEW PERIODICAL HOME!! They have started a new magazine which sounds to us, regressive and unneeded, and Tina Brown, according to this coverage from the New York Observer, is more-or-less the guiding philosophe for the enterprise.

BY THEIR CRAVATS SHALL YE KNOW THEM: The study of neckwear was an underdeveloped corner of the sub-discipline of the sociology of costume--until this article appeared the other day at BBC News.

BACH'S ART OF THE FUGUE...is heard here in two seperate performances, both recorded live in church settings in London.

THE IRAQ SUICIDE MARTYRS ARE SAUDIS...Syrians, Egyptians and Jordanians more frequently than Iraqis. The data, from "insurgent" blogs suggests that advantaged (and a smaller number of disadvantaged) Middle-Eastern young men were inspired by 9/11 and are ready to throw themselves into holy death against Americans and the Iraqi government.

VOINOVICH, BOLTON, PAUL MARTIN, GEORGE BUSH AND TSUNAMI RELEIF: Here's a story that has not been told and needs immediate telling. Mark Steyn is on the case with his usual cutting-through-the-fog directness and verbal verve.

THE JEWISH SOLDIERS OF THE THIRD REICH...were virtually unknown until Brian Rigg, then a Yale graduate student, got onto the story. Here's a fine interview with him detailing how he did his great shoestring research project and what he has been up to since then as he continues his historical studies of the Nazi period. The article is from the Jerusalem Post and--as a bonus--here's the audio of the interview we did with him in 2002.

AN SS OFFICER FROM AUSCHWITZ...sixty years later still has some trouble remembering and thinking about his years at extermination-central. This rather astonishing interview/article has just appeared in Der Spiegel.

MAKING IT HOT FOR WAL-MART...may or may not be a social movement but it doth now appear that the Christian journalists (or at least those at Christianity Today) think it appropriate to get in on the act. And they do, indeed, raise some quite important questions.

THE NEO-CONS ARE NOT STRAUSSIANS...argues Thomas West in this strikingly lucid essay just published in the Claremont Review. Rather, Kristol, Kagan, Boot and yet others might best be classified as "hard Wilsonians."

HITCHENS DOESN'T MIND SOME MUD WALLOWING...in democratic eletioneering. Rather, as he argues in this essay from the Wilson Quarterly, it has always been the "reductio" reality in our politics. Interestingly, this was published just BEFORE the last presidential election!

HANSON KNOCKS TENURE: We think he's wrong despite the painful presence of the thousand Ward Churchills who contaminate--and contribute to the lowering of--American higher education. But, as usual, he makes his case clearly and forcefully.

DO MARRIED PARENTS DO BETTER BY THEIR KIDS? The question is heavily examined in argument in this latter day of cohabiting, both heterosexual and homosexual. Some social research data might be useful at this point--and is provided here by the Howard Center.

THE FUTURE OF THE SOVIET ARCHITECTURE OF THE PAST...is examined in this fine article from yesterday's New York Times--and the slideshow is more than worth the price of admission.

AND SPEAKING OF ARCHITECTURE...Don't build any new tower at all at the 9/11 site, cries Ron Rosenbaum in this impassioned piece from the New York Observer.

HOW TO ENGAGE IN CONVERSATION...without disclosing your boorishness, stupidity or narcissistic isolation. That's the extended (and more or less "modern") title that might be given to this classic essay by Jonathan Swift.

MENDELSSOHN'S PIANO TRIO IN C MINOR...is sensitively performed here by three unidentified members of the Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale of Bologna.