a daily independent global news hour

Earlier today Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) resigned his House seat after acknowledging he had an affair with a female staffer. Long an advocate for "family values," Souder called for former President Bill Clinton to resign over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. On Sept. 17, 1998, during the Clinton impeachment scandal, Democracy Now! invited Rep. Souder and Rep. Bill McCollum (R-FL) (who is now running for governor in Florida) to discuss by phone a recent House vote on combating drugs. In the spirit of the times, Amy Goodman asked both men if they have ever had extramarital affairs. McCollum said "I am not, and, uh.. in, at this present time involved in anything whatsoever, have not been." When Souder was asked, he hung up the phone.

The 2009 George Polk Awards were announced on Monday. Two of the winners include reporters featured on Democracy Now!:

• Environmental Reporting
  Abrahm Lustgarten for documenting the deadly side effects of hydraulic fracturing

• Military Reporting
  Charlie Reed and others at Stars and Stripes for revealing the Pentagon used PR firm the Rendon Group to profile journalists covering the Afghanistan war

Nominations have been announced for the 82nd annual Academy Awards. In the documentary category, three films featured on Democracy Now! in the past year received nods:

* China’s Unnatural Disaster

* The Most Dangerous Man in America

* Burma VJ

Howard Zinn, one of the country’s most celebrated historians and author of the seminal work A People’s History of the United States, died of a heart attack Wednesday in Santa Monica, California. He was 87. Over the years, Zinn was a frequent guest on Democracy Now!

Click for more

President Obama presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, to 16 people in a ceremony today at the White House. Check out Democracy Now!’s past interviews with some of those who received the award:

* Rev. Joseph Lowery
* Mary Robinson
* Archbishop Desmond Tutu
* Muhammad Yunus

Imprisoned Native American activist Leonard Peltier will have his first full parole hearing in 15 years on Tuesday. He has been in prison for the past 33 years after being convicted of killing two FBI agents during a shootout on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. Peltier has long maintained his innocence and is widely considered a political prisoner who was not granted a fair trial. In 2000, we conducted an extensive interview with Peltier from his jail cell:

DOWNLOAD MP3

President Obama said Cambridge police acted "stupidly" in the arrest of leading African American scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in his own home last week. Obama said the incident is a reminder that racism "still haunts us." Check out our extended interview with Gates in 2004 on "America Behind the Color Line."

Watch/Listen/Read Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency has declared a public health emergency in the town of Libby, Montana, where hundreds of people have died from asbestos contamination. It is the first time such a declaration has been made by the EPA. For decades, W.R. Grace and Co. mined asbestos-contaminated vermiculite in Libby.
See extended Democracy Now! coverage

The legendary radio broadcaster, writer and oral historian Studs Terkel has died at the age of 96 in Chicago. Over the years Terkel has been a regular guest on Democracy Now!

In 2005, Studs Terkel appeared on Democracy Now! shortly after undergoing open heart surgery. He told Amy Goodman, "My curiosity is what saw me through. What would the world be like, or will there be a world? And so, that’s my epitaph. I have it all set. Curiosity did not kill this cat. And it’s curiosity, I think, that has saved me thus far."

The National Book Critics Circle Awards have just been announced and two past DN! guests were among the winners: Edwidge Danticat ("Brother I’m Dying") and Harriet Washington (“Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present")