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Colonel Lawence Wilkerson on the recent hearing in the House of Representatives with David Addington, Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff and John Yoo, the legal author of the foundation of the Bush torture policy set. Colonel Wilkerson was Secretary of State Colin Powell's Chief of Staff at the Department of State from August 2002 to January 2005. But, Colonel Wilkerson's career with General Colin L. Powell goes back much further--to in March 1989 at the U.S. Army s Forces Command in Atlanta, Georgia as his Deputy Executive Officer. He followed the General to his next position as Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, serving as his special assistant. Upon Powell's retirement from active service in 1993, Colonel Wilkerson served as the Deputy Director and Director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College at Quantico, Virginia. Upon Wilkerson s retirement from active service in 1997, he began working for General Powell in a private capacity as a consultant and advisor. In December 2000, Secretary of State-designate Powell asked Wilkerson to join him in the Transition Office at the U.S. State Department and, later, upon his confirmation as Secretary of State, Secretary Powell moved Wilkerson to his Policy Planning Staff with responsibilities for East Asia and the Pacific, and legislative and political-military affairs. In June of 2002, the Director for Policy Planning, Ambassador Richard Haas, made Wilkerson the Associate Director. In August of 2002, Secretary Powell moved Wilkerson to the position of Chief of Staff of the Department. In October of 2005, Colonel Wilkerson, after considerable soul searching, went public to tell the truth of what he knew: that Vice President Cheney had provided the "guidance" that led to America's torture disgrace in Guantanamo, Abu Ghriab and elsewhere; and that Secretary Powell's February 2003 presentation to the UN security council was "the lowest point" of his life; saying " I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council."

Paul Helmke on the recent Supreme Court decision regarding the regulation of guns in Washington DC. Mr. Helmke is president of the Washington, DC-based Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a position he has held since July 1, 2006. He is a former mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana and a former president of The United States Conference of Mayors. The Brady Campaign is the nation's largest, non-partisan, grassroots organization leading the fight to prevent gun violence. Working with its dedicated network of Million Mom March Chapters, the Campaign is devoted to creating an America free from gun violence, where all Americans are safe at home, at school, at work, and in our communities. Their website is Bradycenter.org.

Judith Todd on Robert Mugabe and the situation in Nigeria. Judith Todd is a human rights activist and author who was born and raised in what is now Zimbabwe and focuses her activism on that country. She is the daughter of Sir Garfield Todd, the liberal colonial Rhodesian Prime Minister, who ran the country from 1953 to 1958. Judith Todd later became a heroine of the struggle to liberate Rhodesia from the minority rule of white supremacist Ian Smith' regime. For her efforts, she was jailed by Smilth in 1972, force-fed during a hunger strike and then forced out the country to spend eight years in exile in England. She returned to Zimbabwe shortly before independence was achieved in 1980, and soon realized that, far from being the solution to Zimbabwe's ills, Robert Mugabe and his ruling Zanu party were increasingly becoming a serious problem. As the country slid into economic and social decay, Todd had a front-row view from her position as director of an international aid agency, the Zimbabwe Project Trust. In 2003 she became one of hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans stripped of their citizenship and thus their right to vote by the Mugabe regime. At present she lives, exiled again, in Cape Town, South Africa. Over the first 25 years of Mugabe's rule, she kept journals, notes and copies of letters and documents from which she has compiled an intensely personal account of life in Zimbabwe, published to worldwide acclaim in her book "Through the Drakness: A Life in Zimbabwe." The Economist picked this book as one of their 2007 "Books of the Year," describing it as "a harrowing tale of courage and betrayal by a white heroine of the liberation struggle against Ian Smith and who has been punished and stripped of her citizenship with extraordinary vengefulness by Robert Mugabe for speaking out about his regime's abuses of power."

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LIVE FROM THE LEFT COAST !

A program from Ian Masters which features a longer, more in-depth interview with a special guest on a topic of current interest, followed by a series of listener phone calls. mp3 streams!