Harvey Silverglate: Pardons Are Forever (thephoenix.com)
Prediction: Before leaving office, Bush will issue a shockingly large number of presidential pardons to operatives who ventured far outside the law to wage the "war on terror."
BENEDICT CAREY: The Fame Motive (nytimes.com)
Money and power are handy, but millions of ambitious people are after something other than the corner office or the beach house on St. Bart's. They want to swivel necks, to light a flare in others' eyes, to walk into a crowded room and feel the conversation stop. They are busy networking, auditioning, talking up their latest project - a screenplay, a memoir, a new reality show - to satisfy a desire so obvious it is all but invisible.
MARTIN FOREMAN: Religion fosters bad behavior (humaniststudies.org; from Nov. 12, 2005)
... a ground-breaking study on religious belief and social well-being was published in the Journal of Religion & Society. Comparing 18 prosperous democracies from the U.S. to New Zealand, author Gregory S Paul quietly demolished the myth that faith strengthens society.
David Bruce: Wise Up! Education (athensnews.com)
At the end of her second day in school, a first-grade student asked her teacher, "What did I do in school today?" Surprised, the teacher asked why the student had asked that. The student replied, "Well, I'm going home now, and when I get home, my mother will ask me that."
CBS starts the night with a FRESH'Rock Star: Supernova', followed by a RERUN'Criminal Minds', then a RERUN'CSI: The 3rd One'.
Scheduled on a FRESHDavid Letterman are John McEnroe, Artie Lang, and Busta Rhymes.
Scheduled on a FRESHCraig are Trace Adkins and Amy Smart.
NBC opens the night with a RERUN'Most Outrageous TV Moments', followed by another RERUN'Most Outrageous TV Moments', then a RERUN'Scrubs', followed by another RERUN'Scrubs', then a RERUN'Law & Order'.
On a RERUNLeno (from 7/20/06) are Colin Farrell, Rainn Wilson, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
On a RERUNConan (from 3/7/06) are Sarah Jessica Parker, and Matisyahu.
On a RERUNCarson Daly (from 6/21/06) are Luke Perry and Jose Gonzalez.
ABC begins the night with a RERUN'George Lopez', followed by another RERUN'George Lopez', then still another RERUN'George Lopez', followed by yet another RERUN'George Lopez', then 'Primetime'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Kimmel are Tom Cavanaugh, Tommy Chong, and Cartel.
The WB offers a RERUN'Blue Collar TV', followed by another RERUN'Blue Collar TV', then a RERUN'One Tree Hill'.
Faux has a RERUN'Bones', followed by a RERUN of Monday's 'Prison Break'.
UPN has a RERUN'America's Next Top Model', followed by a RERUN'All Of Us', then a RERUN'Half & Half'.
A&E has 'Crossing Jordan', 'Dog The Bounty Hunter', another 'Dog The Bounty Hunter', 'Inked', another 'Inked', 'Criss Angel', and another 'Criss Angel'.
AMC offers the movie 'Jaws 2', followed by the movie 'Sleeping With The Enemy', then 'Hustle', followed by the movie 'Instinct'.
BBC -
[2:00 pm] As Time Goes By - Episode 5;
[2:40 pm] Are You Being Served - Dear Sexy Knickers;
[3:20 pm] Keeping Up Appearances - Episode 7;
[4:00 pm] The Avengers - A Funny Thing Happened...;
[5:00 pm] Footballers Wives - Episode 5;
[6:00 pm] BBC World News;
[6:30 pm] Cash in the Attic - Pigott;
[7:00 pm] The Benny Hill Show - Episode 34;
[8:00 pm] Whose Line Is It Anyway? - Episode 10;
[8:30 pm] Whose Line Is It Anyway? - Episode 5;
[9:00 pm] Shipwrecked - Episode 5;
[10:00 pm] Bump n' Grind - Ep 7 Dance Camp;
[10:30 pm] Bump n' Grind - Ep 8 Dance Camp;
[11:00 pm] Whose Line Is It Anyway? - Episode 1;
[11:30 pm] Whose Line Is It Anyway? - Episode 6;
[12:00 am] The Benny Hill Show - Episode 35;
[1:00 am] Shipwrecked - Episode 5;
[2:00 am] Bump n' Grind - Ep 7 Dance Camp;
[2:30 am] Bump n' Grind - Ep 8 Dance Camp;
[3:00 am] Mile High - Episode 3;
[4:00 am] Teachers - Episode 3;
[5:00 am] Cold Feet - Episode 3;
[6:00 am] BBC World News. (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has 'Project Runway', another 'Project Runway', still another 'Project Runway', and a FRESH'Project Runway'.
Comedy Central has the movie 'Out Cold', last night's 'Jon Stewart', last night's 'Colbert Report', 'Chappelle's Show', 'South Park', another 'South Park', and 'Drawn Together'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJon Stewart is Frederick Lane.
Scheduled on a FRESHColbert Report is Gideon Yago.
History has 'Mysteries: Ship Of Gold', 'Dicoveries', 'Ancient Discoveries', and 'Modern Marvels'.
IFC -
[06:00 AM] The Dreamlife Of Angels;
[08:00 AM] Shadowlands;
[10:15 AM] Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle;
[12:30 PM] Home Movie;
[01:45 PM] IFC Short Film Collection I: August;
[03:45 PM] IFC In Theaters;
[04:00 PM] Passion In The Desert;
[05:45 PM] August Media Lab Results;
[06:00 PM] Home Movie;
[07:15 PM] Dogfight;
[09:00 PM] Below;
[11:00 PM] Y Tu Mama Tambien;
[01:00 AM] Below;
[03:00 AM] Y Tu Mama Tambien;
[05:00 AM] IFC Short Film Showcase: August. (ALL TIMES EDT)
SciFi has the movie 'Insecticidal', followed by the movie 'Savage Planet'.
Sundance -
[07:15 AM] Go Further;
[08:35 AM] Admissions;
[10:00 AM] Children: Kosovo 2000;
[11:30 AM] In Short: Israel 1;
[12:30 PM] Play It As It Lays;
[02:15 PM] Reach the Rock;
[04:00 PM] Admissions;
[05:30 PM] Hermitage-niks: A Passion for the Hermitage: Episode 4 - Silent Sabotage;
[06:00 PM] House of Boateng: Episode 1;
[06:30 PM] Harvie Krumpet;
[07:00 PM] Coffee and Cigarettes;
[08:40 PM] Bedouin Sand;
[09:00 PM] The Hill: Episode 1;
[09:30 PM] Summer of the Serpent;
[10:00 PM] Djangomania!;
[11:00 PM] Drinking for England;
[12:00 AM] House of Boateng: Episode 1;
[12:30 AM] Overnight;
[02:00 AM] City of Men - Season 2: Episode 2: Two Tickets to Brasilia;
[02:35 AM] The Hill: Episode 1;
[03:15 AM] Twin Town;
[05:00 AM] Reach the Rock. (ALL TIMES EDT)
Broadway performers Ben Vereen and Liza Minnelli arrive at the world premiere of 'Idlewild' at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City August 21, 2006. The event was a benefit of the Hinton Battle Theatre Laboratory, a not-for-profit organization that works to expand the involvement of minorities in every aspect of the entertainment industry.
Photo by Eric Thayer
Stephen King, Doris Kearns Goodwin and former Vice President Al Gore were among the nominees announced Tuesday for the second annual Quills Awards - people's choice prizes trying to catch on with the public.
Caroline Kennedy will receive a Platinum Quill Award honoring her "commitment to providing support for education and literacy in New York." The Quills will also acknowledge the 50th anniversary of "Profiles in Courage," for which her father, then Sen.-John F. Kennedy, received the Pulitzer Prize.
The politically charged documentary "Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing" has been picked up for worldwide distribution by the Weinstein Co.
A release is tentatively scheduled for the fall, possibly right before the November elections.
Asked why she and co-director/producer Barbara Kopple chose to go with the Weinstein Co., Cecilia Peck said, "They made a great offer," though no figures were disclosed. Such companies as Focus Features and Picturehouse expressed interest in the documentary a few months ago.
In addition to chronicling the lives of Maines and bandmates Martie Maguire and Emily Robison, Kopple said the documentary features clips from 15 of the Dixie Chicks songs and a new one written especially for the film, though no soundtrack is planned. "You definitely feel like you're in the front row of a Dixie Chicks concert," Peck said.
Sci Fi Channel is grounding "Stargate SG-1," the longest-running science-fiction series on U.S. television to date.
The cable network has decided not to order additional episodes beyond the show's current 10th season, but it has picked up a fourth season of its more-popular spinoff, "Stargate Atlantis."
The show's ratings have softened in recent years and series star Richard Dean Anderson left last season, but it boasts a strong fan base, with as many as nine official conventions taking place worldwide every year. Producer MGM is exploring the possibility of taking the series to yet another outlet.
The final three episodes of "Stargate SG-1" are slated to air on Sci Fi Channel next year. Both "Stargate SG-1" and "Atlantis" also run in syndication.
'Beerfest' cast member Cloris Leachman holds aloft a beer keg at the premiere of the film at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, Monday, Aug. 21, 2006.
Photo by Chris Pizzello
Texan Willie Nelson is raising his voice in defense of a symbol of the West - wild horses. Country singer Nelson is the latest to join an effort to ban the slaughter of horses in the U.S. for consumption of their meat abroad. The U.S. House is scheduled to vote Sept. 7 on a bill aimed at ending horse slaughter.
"If you've ever been around horses a lot, especially wild horses, you know they are part of the American heritage. I don't think its right that we kill them and eat them," Nelson said in a telephone interview Tuesday.
Nelson said he has owned several horses and has several buried on his ranches. "I do have a lot of respect for my horses, a lot. I don't ride them as much as I used to and I think they appreciate it," he joked.
Bob Dylan says the quality of modern recordings is "atrocious," and even the songs on his new album sounded much better in the studio than on disc.
"I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past 20 years, really," the 65-year-old rocker said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.
Noting the music industry's complaints that illegal downloading means people are getting their music for free, he said, "Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway."
"You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them," he added. "There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like ... static."
Legendary singer Tony Bennett has slammed his home country of America for not contributing anything other than jazz music to world art and culture. The 'If I Ruled The World' crooner feels that Europe and Asia offer far more culturally than America does. Bennett says, "I have travelled around the world to Asia and Europe. They show you what they have contributed to the world. The British show you theatre, the Italians show you music and art, the French show you cooking and painting, and the Germans show you science. "The only thing that the United States, which is still a young country, has contributed culturally to the world is jazz - elongated improvisation. It's tragic." And Bennett feels that Americans don't even appreciate the impact of jazz in popular culture. He says, "Fifty years from now people will be bowing to Dizzy GillespieI and Charlie Parker, just like impressionist painters like Monet, who were starving in their day. The Americans don't even know what they have come up with."
Author Ray Bradbury turned 86 on Tuesday and still has his eye on the stars - both celestial and earthbound.
The author of such science fiction and fantasy classics as "The Martian Chronicles" and "Something Wicked This Way Comes" said he believes that humans will return to the moon, then go to Mars and eventually to other worlds.
"Our future is wonderful," he told Patt Morrison in an interview on KPCC, a Pasadena-based public radio station.
Bradbury, born Aug. 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Ill., is a longtime Los Angeles resident. Bradbury, who doesn't drive, continued his long-standing griping about local traffic and called on the mayor to push mass transit.
Singer Patti LaBelle arrives for the world premiere of her new movie 'Idlewild' at the Ziegfeld Theatre, Monday, Aug. 21, 2006, in New York.
Photo by Louis Lanzano
Vince Gill and Jimmy Webb have written a song to celebrate Oklahoma and its people as the state nears its centennial.
Gill wrote the music and Webb wrote the lyrics for "Oklahoma Rising," which is intended to complement the state's official song, "Oklahoma!" from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.
"Oklahoma Rising" will debut Sept. 11 at a private event at the Civic Center Music Hall, said Centennial Projects and Events Chairman Lee Allan Smith. The 100th anniversary of the state's admission to the union is Nov. 16, 2007.
German novelist Günter Grass said in a letter to the mayor of his hometown of Gdansk that only in his old age has he found the "right formula" to talk about having served in the Waffen-SS during World War II.
"I would like to keep the right to say that I have understood this painful lesson that life taught me when I was a young man. My books and my political activity are the proof," Grass wrote.
"This silence may be judged as a mistake - that's exactly what's happening. It may also be condemned. I must also come to terms with the fact that the honorary citizenship of Gdansk is questioned by many residents."
But Grass did not say he was giving up his honorary citizenship, as he has been urged to do by Solidarity founder and Nobel Peace laureate Lech Walesa.
Walesa had threatened to give up his own honorary citizenship in Gdansk if Grass didn't give an explanation to the city. But he said he was satisfied by the letter and would not do so no.
Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures unit is ending its 14-year relationship with Tom Cruise's film production company because of the actor's offscreen behavior, the company's chairman said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
Sumner Redstone, Viacom chairman, said the behavior of the star of the "Mission: Impossible" series and "Top Gun" was unacceptable to the company, according to the Wall Street Journal story e-mailed to reporters.
"As much as we like him personally, we thought it was wrong to renew his deal," Redstone was quoted as saying in the Wall Street Journal. "His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount."
This undated photo released by the International Mathematician Congress shows Grigori Perelman, from Russia, who was awarded with a prestigious Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid, Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2006. Perelman, a reclusive Russian genius who says he's cracked one of history's toughest math problems won the equivalent of a Nobel prize Tuesday, but refused to accept it _ a stunning renunciation of accolades from the top minds in his field. Perelman, a 40-year-old native of St. Petersburg, was praised for work that might help scientists figure out the shape of the universe. But besides shunning the medal, colleagues say he also seems uninterested in a separate, million-dollar prize he might be due over his feat of wizardry: proving a theorem about the nature of multidimensional space that has stumped very smart people for 100 years.
Photo courtesy International Mathematicians Congress
Tower Records filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the second time in two years Monday, weeks after word surfaced that the iconic music retailer had been cut off by major suppliers for failing to pay its bills.
MTS Inc., the corporate parent of the 89-store chain based in West Sacramento, Calif., said in court papers that it aimed to keep Tower up and running as a "going concern" while a new owner is sought.
Many in the industry had feared that, given the severity of Tower's situation, a Chapter 7 liquidation could be in the offing. The possibility still exists that the company's assets could be sold off piecemeal if a buyer can't be located.
Cut-outs of former Chile dictator Augusto Pinochet (2nd L) and former Chilean presidents hung by their necks are displayed at Chilean artist Nicanor Parra's exhibition at La Moneda Cultural Center in Santiago August 17, 2006. The startling art exhibit depicting all of Chile's past presidents strung up by nooses, on display in a national-palace annex, is testing Chileans' ability to laugh at themselves.
Photo by Ivan Alvarado
A voter registration group with Republican ties has been banished from Wal-Mart stores in Tennessee for failing to meet the retailer's standards of nonpartisanship and may soon be shut out of stores in California and Nevada, the retailer's spokesman said Tuesday.
Liberty Consultants wanted to register Wal-Mart shoppers in seven traditionally Republican suburban counties around Nashville. But the request was denied after the company's owner, Gary Thompson, acknowledged to Wal-Mart that he had been hired by Tempe, Ariz.-based Sproul & Associates.
Headed by Nathan Sproul, a former Christian Coalition activist and executive director of the Arizona GOP, Sproul & Associates was paid $7.9 million by the Republican National Committee for consulting and voter registration drives in the 2004 election cycle, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Sproul's canvassers focused on signing up Republican voters in key battleground states in 2004. Former canvassers came forward in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Oregon to say they were told to register only Republicans and to walk away from people who said they intended to vote for Democrat John Kerry. Some said completed Democratic registration forms were thrown out or ripped up.
Popular American comedy and drama shows have yet to conquer Europe as most programmes broadcast in the EU are still locally made, the bloc's executive arm said on Tuesday.
Figures from the EU showed schedules on average contained 63 percent of European works in 2004, with 31.5 percent of output made by independent producers.
The latest numbers were not much changed from the previous year, when 65.2 percent of programmes were made locally and independents supplied 31.4 percent, though they reflect the market in the expanded EU which admitted 10 new members in 2004.
Under the EU's television without frontiers rules, at least half of programming in the 25-nation bloc should be made in Europe where practicable.
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that a Bush administration plan to allow commercial logging inside the Giant Sequoia National Monument violates environmental laws.
U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer sided with environmental groups that sued the U.S. Forest Service over its plans for managing the 328,000-acre preserve, home to two-thirds of the world's largest trees.
In the lawsuit filed last year, the Sierra Club and other conservation groups said the management plan for the reserve in the southern Sierra Nevada range was a scientifically suspect strategy that was intended to satisfy timber interests under the guise of wildfire prevention.
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