I've been wondering why John Kerry chose yesterday to go on Meet The Press. He must have known that the Bob Woodward book would suck all the air out of the weekend news cycles, right into today. Maybe he didn’t actually want the publicity for some reason. ...

9-11 Commissioner Slade Gorton says he doesn’t like to draw conclusions about the Commission's hearings. But on today’s show, the former Republican Senator seemed eager to opine:

-he dubbed Attorney General John Ashcroft’s comments about Commissioner Jamie Gorelick heightening the wall (between intelligence and law ...

Rheingold Beer is trying to make a comeback in New York with an ad campaign that lays into Mayor Bloomberg. One spot targets the smoking ban, another the cabaret laws, and another the mayor’s alleged ticket blitz.

My somewhat sarcastic interview of Rheingold CEO Tom Benheim ...

For all the criticism by the presumed Democratic presidential nominee of the current resident of the White House, it was hard to find differences between them today on the defining issues of Israel and what to do next in Iraq. At least, that was the case judging by ...

While the pols on the 9/11 Commission jockey for impact, keep your eye on the staff reports. The one released today skewers the FBI on numerous fronts. Worst of all, it says the FBI under Louis Freeh failed to establish an effective counter-terrorism operation despite it ...

Idle speculation: As bad as the FBI is coming out of this, I wonder if Ashcroft may wind up the ultimate 9/11 fall guy, with Rudy riding to the rescue as the new AG just as Kerry rolls out his veep.

Using a number 2 pencil, mark the answer that most reflects reality:

1.Social Promotion harms kids by not holding them accountable.
2.Leaving kids back harms kids by making them feel old and useless.

Well, if studies of Chicago’s end to social promotion are any indication, the correct answer ...

While the news media were trying to figure out whether to continue spinning Condi's testimony or focus on the very scary news coming out of Iraq yesterday, Bill Clinton met for about four hours in secret with the 9/11 Commission. The day's papers contained little information on the meeting. Fortunately, ...

Forget about Richard Clarke vs. Condoleeza Rice. Bob Kerrey vs. Rice was much more interesting. In Dr. Rice’s testimony today, Kerrey said the attacks could have been prevented, if only the intelligence would have been better circulated about a lot of Arab men taking flying lessons. ...

Attention White House Press Corps: follow up on this. It came out that the August 6th, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief was about Bin Laden’s “determination” to attack the United States. Rice said it was not a warning but a “historical" document requested by the President. It’s still a classified document. ...

If our conversation on today’s show with Newsweek’s Richard Wolfe is any indication, it looks like Bush and Kerry are trading issues. It used to be that the limp job market favored the Democrat, while going to Iraq favored Bush. But, jobs are coming back (at least ...

Meanwhile, is there nothing in between seedy decay and saccharine Disney for Times Square? You’d think the intersection known as “the crossroads of the world” could have cleaned itself up without stripping itself of its soul. But alas. Talking about his new book The Devil’s Playground, James ...

This morning’s show kicked off with a spirited debate on Ikea’s plan to set up shop in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The New York Sun’s Errol Louis was in Brian’s seat today while Brian was off for Passover (he returns tomorrow).

The debate about whether the jobs and new services would ...

Comments also continued off the air and emailers on both sides of the debate weighed in. Here’s a sample...

On this morning’s show, we followed up on our April Fool's call-in about Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal to “ban smoking in your own home”.

We thought that there was enough silliness in my tone of voice, and that there were enough clues sprinkled throughout, including our “happy holiday’ disclaimer at the end (not to mention our fake city councilwoman “Phyllis Morris”). But the feedback continued to come in over the weekend that many of you believed it, and more importantly, that some smokers were made really upset by it.

We’ve been doing April Fool’s segments for years and years and this is the first one that has had this kind of effect. The call-in this morning was primarily for smokers on what is revealed by this as an underlying issue: That it could be believable that the mayor of New York might propose to outlaw smoking in your own home!

We took calls from smokers to about what it’s like to be a smoker in today’s world.

-BL
Email us your thoughts.

here is a selection of some emails we received...