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In the radio industry, playlists are power, dictating which albums get noticed and which albums don't. They're especially critical to artists who get played on college radio, bands that typically lack the promotional support offered by major labels. But what if the charts don't really reflect what's being played? And what if the people in charge of the charts have a vested interest in seeing that some albums feel more love than others? As East Bay Express music editor Katy St. Clair reports, that's exactly what's been happening at industry bible College Music Journal -- and the result is rocking the radio underground.

A self-professed "left-of-center" journalist attends a huge pro-America rally in Central Florida and comes away disturbed, and more than a little worried. "I'm also terrified at how easily the right is winning the public-relations war by appealing to base emotions of God, family and country. Dissent has suddenly become un-American, even treasonous," Jeffrey C. Billman writes in Orlando Weekly.

A federal anti-terrorism task force has arrested an Iraqi refugee living in the Seattle suburbs and charged him with running a "sprawling illegal financial network" that "funneled millions of dollars" back to his homeland. At least one national security expert thinks the case is "ridiculous." Either way, writes Seattle Weekly's Nina Shapiro, the story of Hussain Alshafei tells a lot about the country with which we may soon be at war, and about our country's hunt for terrorists among immigrant populations.

The end of the world is right on schedule -- or so believe fundamentalists and the politicians who share their views or want their votes. Salt Lake City Weekly's Zach Abend writes about how some Christians see scripture and politics converging to bring on the apocalypse. He also shows how the current administration's rock-solid support of Israel might be helping speed things along, swayed by "Dispensational premillennialism," or End Time theology.

"Condoms break, or slip off, during intercourse. Women forget to take their birth control pills. Couples, caught up in a moment of passion, often addled by intoxication, have unprotected sex. And sexual assaults, ranging from brutal attacks to insidious incidents of date rape, are still all too common," Chris Busby writes in Rochester, N.Y.'s, City Newspaper. Emergency contraception, or the "morning-after pill," can stop those accidents from becoming unwanted pregnancies. Busby, however, finds out hospitals and health-care workers aren't routinely letting woman know about emergency contraception, even rape victims. "Unlike so many unintended pregnancies, this is no accident," Busby writes.

The thickest plank of McGovern’s 1972 platform, the one that carried the weight, was anti-war. George McGovern was the first member of the U.S. Senate to explicitly denounce U.S. policy in Indochina, and it’s safe to assume that were he still in the Senate, he would have been the first to denounce the Bush administration’s plans in Iraq. But as it stands, McGovern is no longer an elected official, and his opposition, and whatever influence it may have, comes now from the mouth of an elder statesman, a World War II hero, the collective imagination’s anti-Nixon transported into this anxious echo of belligerent Nixonian daydreams. George McGovern isn’t running for anything. He can say anything he wants. And here he is, riding a second wind in Stevensville, Mont., saying to Brad Tyer, editor of Missoula Independent, pretty much the same things he said 30 years ago: Stop hitting. Feed the hungry.