Friday, Oct. 22, 2004

Campaign Day
With Election Day nearing, Kwame Holman looks at the presidential campaign. Then, Margaret Warner examines the big campaign issue of medical liability with Frank Sloan, a professor of health policy and economics at Duke University and Philip Howard, a lawyer and chairman of Common Good, a bipartisan coalition working for liability reform.

Rocky Mountain Race
Tom Bearden explores the tight and costly Colorado Senate race.

Shields and Brooks
Jim Lehrer speaks with syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks about the presidential campaign and how the public should read the myriad of polls on the race.

Hostage Plea
Ray Suarez discusses the kidnapping of Margaret Hassan, CARE International's Iraq director, with Rajiv Chandrasekaran, a Washington Post correspondent who just ended his tour as the paper's Baghdad bureau chief.

Thursday, Oct. 21, 2004

Campaign Day
With only 12 days until Election Day, Kwame Holman looks at the presidential campaign. President Bush campaigned in Pennsylvania, while Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., campaigned in Ohio.

Military Challenge
Both presidential candidates insist they can muster the forces needed to fight America's wars without a draft.

Margaret Warner examines the issues with Gen. P.X. Kelley, who is a member of the National Veteran's Steering Committee for the Bush-Cheney Campaign, and Brig. Gen. David McGinnis, who is a volunteer defense policy analyst for the Kerry campaign.

Fact Checking
Terence Smith gives a report on the media's role in fact checking the presidential election.

Then, Michael Getler, ombudsman for the Washington Post, Brooks Jackson, director of Factcheck.org, and Jake Tapper, an ABC correspondent who has been on the fact check beat, discuss the art and science of checking politician's facts.

Poet Laureate
Jeffrey Brown talks with America's newest poet laureate Ted Kooser.

Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2004

Campaign Day
President Bush made campaign stops in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, as Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., visited Iowa and Pennsylvania. With less than two weeks until Election Day, Terence Smith looks at the campaign to date.

Black Hills Battle
Kwame Holman reports from South Dakota, where an important Senate race is heating up.

The Senate Struggle
Gwen Ifill follows up with a look at some of the other closely fought Senate races with two Congress watchers: Thomas Mann, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, and Michelle Swers, an assistant professor of American government at Georgetown University.

Intelligence Overhaul
Ray Suarez discusses the action Congress is taking to reshape the intelligence community.

Crisis in Sudan
Margaret Warner discusses the humanitarian crisis in Darfur with John Prendergast, former director of African affairs on the National Security Council in the Clinton administration, and Ali Ali-Dinar, who is the outreach director of the African Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

In Memoriam
Veteran diplomat and arms control adviser Paul Nitze died last night at age 97. He served under eight presidents, from Roosevelt to Reagan. He was considered an architect of the policies seeking to contain the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons.

Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2004

Campaign Day
Kwame Holman looks at the day's news from the campaign trail. President Bush made a campaign stop in Florida, while Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., traveled to Pennsylvania.

Social Security
Margaret Warner leads a discussion on the issue of Social Security in the presidential race with two independent analysts: Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget at the New America Foundation, and Peter Orszag, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Counting Every Vote
Spencer Michels reports on what's being done to insure voting integrity on Election Day.

Then, Michael Alvarez, co-director of the Cal Tech-M.I.T. Voting Technology Project, and Doug Chapin, director of the nonpartisan Electionline.org, join Gwen Ifill for a closer look at U.S. voting systems.

The Rivalry
The Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees will face off tonight in game six of the AL championship series.

Jeffrey Brown speaks with Leigh Montville, sports columnist for The Boston Globe, and NewsHour essayist Roger Rosenblatt about the storied rivalry between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.

Monday, Oct. 18, 2004

Voting Early
Jim Lehrer talks with Ray Suarez, who is reporting from Florida, about the first day of early voting in the hotly contested state.

Fighting Terror
President Bush and Senator Kerry have divergent opinions and approaches to the issue of terrorism. Gwen Ifill gives a background report on the two candidates' plans.

Then, Morton Halperin, former director of policy planning at the State Department under President Clinton, and Kiron Skinner, assistant professor of history and political science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh discuss how to approach the war on terror.

Shot Shortage
Margaret Warner updates the latest developments in the flu vaccine shortage.

Disobeying Orders
Terence Smith speaks with Jeremy Hudson of the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., who broke the story about a military unit in Iraq refusing to go on a dangerous mission.