Blogger, author and nationally syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington revealed this week that Senator John McCain had told her eight years ago that he did not vote for President Bush in the 2000 election. McCain has angrily denied the claim. Huffington joins us to talk about her disillusionment with McCain, whom she says has abandoned his principles in his quest for the Republican nomination. Huffington is author of the new book, Right is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe—and What you Need to Know to End the Madness.

The Nigerian government, along with foreign oil companies, have reaped enormous profits over the years from the sale of oil and gas reserves, while the residents of the Niger Delta live in abject poverty. We speak to Sandy Cioffi, director of the the upcoming documentary Sweet Crude. She was recently arrested by the Nigerian military and held for a week before being released following international pressure. [includes rush transcript]

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the Sudanese government for Sunday’s air raids against three villages in North Darfur that killed fourteen civilians and injured several others. Antonov bombers targeted a marketplace, water installations and a village school that was holding classes. We speak to filmmaker, activist and writer Jen Marlowe of Darfur Diaries, an independent American project that helped raise funds to restart the school last year. [includes rush transcript]

The first major international delivery of aid has finally landed in Burma amidst new fears the death toll from this week’s cyclone could top 100,000. We speak to Jeremy Woodrum, co-founder of the US Campaign for Burma. [includes rush transcript]

Panamanian President Martin Torrijos was in Washington earlier this week to discuss a pending free trade agreement with the United States, where he drew praise from President Bush on winning national approval for the $5.2 billion expansion plan for the Panama Canal. But three decades ago the moves to nationalize the Panama Canal by President Torrijos’s father, General Omar Torrijos, met with enormous resistance in this country. [includes rush transcript]

The House Judiciary Committee is preparing to hold a series of hearings examining the Bush administration’s role in authorizing the illegal torture of prisoners in US custody at Guantanamo and elsewhere. We speak to British attorney and author, Philippe Sands, author of the new book Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values. On Tuesday, Sands testified before the House Judiciary Sub-Committee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. [includes rush transcript]

Many political analysts say Tuesday’s primary results in North Carolina and Indiana make Senator Barack Obama the all-but-certain nominee. But Senator Hillary Clinton is vowing to press on with her presidential bid. We speak to former senator, Senator George McGovern, who has dropped his support of Clinton to endorse Obama. Senator McGovern won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972 and ran against Richard Nixon. [includes rush transcript]

More than 200 people have been arrested in a day of protest over acquittal of three police officers in the killing of Sean Bell. The twenty-three-year-old Bell died in a hail of fifty police bullets on the morning of what would have been his wedding day in November 2006. He was unarmed. On Wednesday, demonstrators halted traffic at six busy intersections in Manhattan and Brooklyn. [includes rush transcript]

Senator Barack Obama scored a landslide victory over Senator Hillary Clinton in the North Carolina primary last night and lost narrowly to her in Indiana. The results moved Obama closer to clinching the Democratic nomination as the contest enters its final month. [includes rush transcript]

Legendary broadcaster Bill Moyers helped organize the Peace Corps and served under President Johnson before going on to a distinguished career in journalism that continues today with the PBS series Bill Moyers Journal. His latest book, just published, is Moyers on Democracy. Moyers joins us to talk about the 2008 elections, the media and war. He addresses the controversy over Barack Obama’s former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. It was nearly two weeks ago on Bill Moyers Journal where Wright first spoke out since his criticism of US government policies became a major issue in the 2008 Democratic presidential race. [includes rush transcript]

Over the past five years, Denis Moynihan has overseen the remarkable growth of Democracy Now! Today, DN! airs on over 700 public radio and TV stations. Denis is moving to Denver today to become the CEO of Free Speech TV. [includes rush transcript]

Renowned political analyst Kevin Phillips argues successive administrations have imperiled the US economy by a combination of shortsighted policies and a trend against regulation. These include unparalleled credit card debts, the expansion of financial industries such as hedge funds, ballooning national debts, and deliberately altering statistics like inflation and unemployment to mask the accurate picture. [includes rush transcript]

Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics—ruthless legal battles against small farmers—is its decades-long history of toxic contamination. We speak to James Steele, contributing editor at Vanity Fair. [includes rush transcript]

In Burma, at least 15,000 people have now died following a devastating cyclone. Another 30,000 people are still missing. Aid agencies estimate as many as one million people may be without shelter. The storm hit Burma on Friday night. David Scott Mathieson joins us on the telephone from the Thai-Burma border. He is a consultant to Human Rights Watch on Burma. [includes rush transcript]

On May 1, activists locked themselves together in the lobby of weapons manufacturer General Dynamics in Burlington, Vermont. The activists were demanding “General Dynamics stop giving campaign contributions to the politicians responsible for regulating it, stop making Gatling guns, missiles and other weapons of mass destruction, and give back the $3.6 million in Vermont tax breaks General Dynamics received in 2007.” [includes rush transcript]

A US military judge dismissed the argument Friday that Guantanamo’s youngest detainee, Omar Khadr, was a child soldier when captured in Afghanistan and therefore in need of protection and not prosecution. US Army Colonel Peter Brownback’s ruling clears the way for Khadr’s trial, which will be the first war crimes trial in history of anyone under the age of eighteen. [includes rush transcript]

Elections Under Threat portrays the everyday people of Iran as well as the candidates running for Parliament, as they debate and discuss the relevance of these elections, their economic conditions and the international pressures on their nation. The documentary offers a unique glimpse into the political dynamics of the struggles for participation and democracy in a nation facing increasing economic and military threats from the United States. [includes rush transcript]

In Bolivia, President Evo Morales has rejected an autonomy vote by the country’s richest region of Santa Cruz, calling the poll “illegal and unconstitutional.” The proposals voted on Sunday include giving Santa Cruz more control over land distribution and rich oil and gas reserves. [includes rush transcript]

Thursday’s air strike comes in the midst of a deepening humanitarian crisis in Somalia that the International Committee of the Red Cross described as “catastrophic.” Over one million people have been made internal refugees, and 3.5 million, or nearly half the country’s population, may need food aid by the end of the year. [includes rush transcript]

Just two months after local opposition thwarted its effort to build a massive outdoor training facility near San Diego, the private military company Blackwater USA is being accused of secretly trying to build a new one just blocks from the US-Mexico border. Blackwater received approval for the 61,000 square-foot indoor facility in Otay Mesa, California, by filing for permits using the names of two subsidiaries. [includes rush transcript]

Arrested in Pakistan in December 2001, Sami al-Haj spent nearly six-and-a-half years at Guantanamo without charge or trial. He had been on a more than a year-long hunger strike to protest his imprisonment. We hear al-Haj’s first public remarks from his hospital bed in Sudan and speak to his brother, Asim al-Haj. [includes rush transcript]

In the largest labor strike since the invasion of Iraq, ports along the West Coast—all twenty-nine of them—were shut down as some 25,000 dockworkers went on a one-day strike to protest the war. We speak to Jack Heyman of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. [includes rush transcript]

We speak to the top election officials from two states—California Secretary of State Debra Bowen and Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan—about some of the contentious issues facing the American electorate ahead of the November presidential election. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court upheld an Indiana law requiring voters to show photo identification. Many Democrats and civil rights groups have opposed the law, saying it is a thinly veiled effort to suppress elderly, poor and minority voters, those most likely to lack proper ID and who tend to vote for Democrats. [includes rush transcript]

Reverend Jesse Jackson has just returned from Haiti, where the World Food Program is warning of a “major crisis” if international donors fail to help feed Haiti’s poor. Prices of rice, beans and cooking oil have doubled in the past few months. The soaring food prices have had a devastating effect: two-thirds of Haitians live on less than a dollar a day, and 47 percent are undernourished. We speak to Rev. Jackson about the US responsibility to feed a nation long targeted by Western subversion. Rev. Jackson also shares his thoughts on the recent fallout between Democratic candidate Barack Obama and his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. [includes rush transcript]

Tens of thousands are expected to march in cities across the country today, linking immigrant rights to May Day for the third year in a row. The major demands include legal status for undocumented migrant workers and an end to the raids and deportations that have torn families apart. We speak to Anike Tourse of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. [includes rush transcript]

In what’s believed to be a first, a group of US citizens and lawful residents have brought claims against the government for being illegally detained during an ICE raid earlier this year. If the claims are successful, this legal strategy could force the Department of Homeland Security to change its policy about workplace raids. [includes rush transcript]

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union has been organizing to shut down ports on the West Coast today, May Day, to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But yesterday an arbitrator ordered the union to tell its members that they must report to work today. We speak to Clarence Thomas, an executive board member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 and a member of US Labor Against the War. [includes rush transcript]

CorpWatch Managing Editor Pratap Chatterjee has just returned from Iraq, where he was embedded with the US military and investigating the outsourcing of both military logistics and intelligence gathering. A new CorpWatch report offers a scathing assessment of intelligence contractors L-3 and Titan. We also speak to Marwan Mawiri, who worked in Iraq as a translator with Titan in 2003 and 2004. [includes rush transcript]

As the Reverend Wright controversy continues to dominate media attention, we host a debate with two guests. Melissa Harris-Lacewell is associate professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton University. A Barack Obama supporter, she was a member of the Trinity United Church, and Reverend Wright was also her pastor. And Adolph Reed, Jr. is professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. He makes the case against voting for Senator Barack Obama in the latest issue of The Progressive magazine. [includes rush transcript]

On Tuesday, Senator Barack Obama said he was “outraged” and “saddened” by “divisive and destructive” comments by his former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Since the weekend, Reverend Wright has publicly defended himself after weeks of being lambasted by politicians and pundits for his sermons. We hear from both Obama’s and Wright’s speeches. [includes rush transcript]

It’s been described as “the government-sanctioned bombing of Appalachia.” The controversial coal mining practice known as mountaintop removal has been used widely in West Virginia. The technique involves blasting off the tops of mountains and dumping the rubble into valleys and streams. Its use has expanded under the Bush administration. We speak with Ed Wiley, one of the leading activists behind the grassroots effort to stop mountaintop removal in West Virginia. [includes rush transcript]

Debbie Almontaser was forced to step down in August 2007 as the founding principal of the Khalil Gibran School, New York City’s first public school dedicated to the study of Arabic language and culture. Her resignation followed a rightwing campaign that painted her as an educator with a militant Islamic agenda. In a Democracy Now! exclusive, Debbie Almontaser joins us in her first national broadcast interview since stepping down and suing the city. [includes rush transcript]

James Lee is a former Marine from California who served two tours of duty in Iraq in 2001 to 2004. He’s been back in Iraq more recently, this time as an embedded photographer. Lee is now a journalism student at San Francisco State University and filed reports from Iraq for the college newspaper, the Golden Gate XPress. But earlier this month, Lee was abruptly de-embedded. On April 2nd, just before General Petraeus was due to brief Congress on progress in Iraq, Lee was ordered to leave Basra. [includes rush transcript]

The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog group, Mohamed ElBaradei, has criticized the United States for withholding intelligence that it says showed the construction of a nuclear reactor in Syria that Israel bombed in September. The International Atomic Energy Agency chief was critical of both the US delay in releasing the information and of Israel’s bombing of the site before the IAEA could inspect it. We speak with former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter. [includes rush transcript]

In New York, a coalition of civil rights advocates are calling for a permanent state-level special prosecutor to handle police brutality cases following the acquittal of three NYPD detectives in the killing of Sean Bell. The twenty-three-year-old Bell died in a hail of fifty police bullets on the morning of what would have been his wedding day in November 2006. Two of his friends were also injured in the shooting. All three men were unarmed. We speak with Sanford Rubinstein, the attorney representing Sean Bell’s fiancee Nicole Paultre-Bell, and with Jessica Sanclemente, the co-coordinator of People’s Justice. [includes rush transcript]

Forty years ago this week, hundreds of students at Columbia University started a revolt on campus. Students went on strike. They occupied five buildings, including the president’s office in Low Library, and barricaded themselves inside for days. The students were protesting Columbia’s ties to military research and plans to build a university gymnasium in a public park in Harlem. The 1968 Columbia uprising inspired student protests across the country. We spend the hour with four of the strike leaders: Gustin Reichbach is now a New York State Supreme Court Justice; William Sales is now a professor at Seton Hall University; Tom Hayden is a former California state senator; and Juan Gonzalez, our own Democracy Now! co-host. [includes rush transcript]

The Three Gorges Dam along China’s Yangtze River is the world’s largest hydroelectric project and is due to be completed in 2009. Widely touted as a feat of modern engineering, the dam was supposed to stop flooding along the river and provide clean energy to fuel China’s economic boom. But it has also gained notoriety as an environmental and human catastrophe. Up the Yangtze is a critically acclaimed new documentary about the social impact of the Three Gorges Dam. We speak with Chinese Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang. [includes rush transcript]

Bolivian President Evo Morales came to New York this week to deliver the keynote address at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Morales became Bolivia’s first indigenous president when he was elected in 2005 with more popular support than any Bolivian leader in decades. Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez had a chance to sit down with President Morales at the Bolivian mission in New York for an interview. Morales discusses issues of world hunger, biofuels and climate change, relations with Paraguayan President-Elect Fernando Lugo, his push to introduce a new constitution in Bolivia, his accusations that the US ambassador is leading a conspiracy against his government, his thoughts on the US presidential elections, and more. [includes rush transcript]

Representatives of the world’s 370 million indigenous people are gathered at the United Nations this week to demand that their voices be included in future talks on climate change. Over 3,000 delegates are attending the seventh session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. We speak with Casey Camp-Horinek, a member of the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma. [includes rush transcript]

As people around the world continue to protest the soaring prices of basic food items, the World Food Program has described the crisis as a silent tsunami. The head of the Food and Agriculture Organization blamed the current global food crisis on “inappropriate” policy decisions over the past two decades. Nowhere is this more clear than in Haiti, where hungry people are rioting in the streets because they cannot afford to buy rice. Haiti imports most of its rice from the United States, which in turn remains heavily subsidized. We speak with human rights lawyer, Bill Quigley. [includes rush transcript]

Lawmakers and the NAACP are calling for an investigation into reports that federally funded scientific experiments in 2000 spread sewage sludge on yards in poor black neighborhoods to test if it could fight lead poisoning in children. The Associated Press reported Sunday that researchers spread a mix of human and industrial wastes from sewage treatment plants on the lawns of nine low-income families in Baltimore and a vacant lot next to an elementary school in East St. Louis, Illinois. We speak with John Heilprin, the AP reporter who broke the story. [includes rush transcript]

The race for the Democratic presidential nomination is continuing following Hillary Clinton’s win over Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary. We host a roundtable discussion on the 2008 race with Clinton supporter Kim Gandy, the president of the National Organization for Women; Obama supporter Bill Fletcher, the executive editor of The Black Commentator; and Cynthia McKinney supporter Ted Glick, a member of the Green Party. [includes rush transcript]

Senator Hillary Clinton has won the Pennsylvania primary, beating Senator Barack Obama by ten percentage points. Clinton received 55 percent of the vote, Obama had 45 percent. Pennsylvania was seen as a must-win state for Clinton. We get analysis of the results with Will Bunch, senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News. [includes rush transcript]

Army reservist Sergeant Marshall Thompson spent a year in Iraq working as a military journalist. He reported from across Iraq, interviewing thousands of US soldiers. In October 2006, Sgt. Thompson walked the entire 500 miles across his native state of Utah to protest the war and call for a withdrawal of US troops. [includes rush transcript]

The New York Times has revealed new details on how the Pentagon recruited more than seventy-five retired military officers to appear on TV outlets as so-called military analysts ahead of the Iraq war to portray Iraq as an urgent threat. The Times reported the Pentagon continues to use the analysts in a propaganda campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance. We speak with Col. Sam Gardiner (Ret.) and Peter Hart of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. [includes rush transcript]

In Paraguay, a former Catholic priest once known as the Bishop of the Poor has been elected president. Fernando Lugo will be the first Paraguayan president since 1946 not to be from the conservative Colorado Party. Lugo won 41 percent of the vote, beating Blanca Ovelar, who received 31 percent. Lugo has pledged to crack down on corruption and channel Paraguay’s wealth into social programs. We go to Asuncion to speak with journalist Michael Fox. [includes rush transcript]

Aime Cesaire, the esteemed poet, writer, politician and anti-colonial activist from Martinique died on Thursday at the age of ninety-four. Cesaire is revered in the Francophone world as a leading figure in the movement for black consciousness and pride, which he called “Negritude.” His use of culture to fight colonialism and racism influenced generations of activists and writers around the world. [includes rush transcript]

It remains to be seen whether the Democrats will ultimately take their fight for a presidential candidate all the way to the Democratic National Convention this August in Denver, but for many activists tired of the two-party system and the ongoing war, they will be demonstrating at the convention regardless of who the final nominee is. We speak with Mark Cohen, an organizer with Recreate ’68, and Mark Silverstein, the legal director of the ACLU in Colorado. [includes rush transcript]

While there are differences between the healthcare plans offered by Democratic presidential opponents Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, neither of them is proposing a single-payer system of national healthcare. That’s despite the endorsement of precisely such a plan last December by the American College of Physicians, the largest medical specialty organization. We speak with Dr. Rocky White, a passionate, if unusual, advocate for a single-payer health insurance program. He describes himself as an evangelical from a conservative background and is on the Board of Directors of the nonprofit Health Care for All Colorado. [includes rush transcript]

The United States maintains over 700 military bases in dozens of countries across the globe. We speak with two international activists who are in the US for a speaking tour as part of a campaign called “No Bases for Empire.” Jan Tamas, from the Czech Republic, is the founder of the No Bases Initiative, a coalition against the proposed US missile system in Eastern Europe. Olivier Bancoult is with the Chagos Refugee Group. He was expelled from his native Diego Garcia when he was four years old. The US has operated a military base there since British forces expelled native islanders in the early 1970s. [includes rush transcript]