Freedom

On summer nights in the mid-1960s, while black-and-white television crackled elsewhere in his Staten Island home with news of Southern violence and Vietnam, Bobby Lasnik would stretch out in his bedroom to let the righteous soundtrack of the civil rights movement waft into his impressionable teenage soul. Tuned in to WBAI-FM, coming across the water from Manhattan, he heard baleful laments about injustice that he would carry with him for a lifetime. "Suddenly there was someone speaking a certain kind of truth to you. You'd say, 'Wow!

CANNES, France - Walter Salles carefully raises the fingers of his right hand and gently strokes the back of his left. "These are characters," he says, explaining the gesture, "who experience things not vicariously but on the flesh. Men and women in a quest for something they couldn't define yet, who are trying to amplify their knowledge of the world. " More than half a century after "On the Road" was published, 30-plus years since Francis Ford Coppola bought the rights in 1978, and nearly a decade after Salles began working on the film, Jack Kerouac's peerless anthem to the romance of youthful freedom and experience has finally made it to the screen with its virtues and spirit intact.

Freedom A Novel Jonathan Franzen Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 576 pp., $28

SAN DIEGO — Based on his conversations with the Dodgers' new owners, General Manager Ned Colletti expects to have more financial flexibility at the July 31 nonwaiver trade deadline than he's had in recent years. "If we have a chance to improve our club, they're open-minded to doing it and everything that it entails," Colletti said. That could mean making significant additions to the payroll. President Stan Kasten recently acknowledged the Dodgers "don't have the warehouse of prospects we wish we had. " Without prospects to trade, the Dodgers probably won't be able to make any meaningful acquisitions unless they agree to inherit millions of dollars in salaries from non-contenders looking to shed payroll.

Jonathan Franzen begins his fourth novel, "Freedom," with an extended set piece introducing Walter and Patty Berglund, urban homesteaders who, back in the 1980s, moved to the crumbling core of St. Paul, Minn., and became "the young pioneers of Ramsey Hill. " It's an interesting choice since, as Franzen makes clear from the book's first sentence, the Berglunds have abandoned the Twin Cities for Washington, D.C., and "mean nothing to St. Paul now. " Still, their memory, or their influence, lingers like an afterimage: the perfect couple that somehow wasn't, whose love was shattered by some ineradicable taint.

For five years she's lived under the threat of death from Islamic radicals, and in those five years, she has become an acclaimed and provocative author on matters about Islam and the West. Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born into a Somali Muslim family and eventually made her way to the Netherlands as a refugee. There she wrote a screenplay for a short film about women's treatment under Islam. Just over two months after it aired, the filmmaker Theo van Gogh was assassinated. A letter threatening Ali's life has meant she has lived under guard ever since -- most recently thanks to a fund set up by private donors.

Reporting from Washington -- Israeli President Shimon Peres will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom this spring, President Obama announced at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in Washington. "Shimon once described the story of the Jewish people by saying it proved that, 'slings, arrows and gas chambers can annihilate man, but cannot destroy human values, dignity and freedom,'" Obama said as he announced the award. "He has lived those values. He has taught us to ask more of ourselves and to empathize more with our fellow human beings.

Rick Santorum's surge in the Republican primary campaign has inevitably prompted greater scrutiny in the news media and blogosphere. On Tuesday, as he arrived in Arizona for a campaign swing and televised debate, Santorum suggested that he didn't find the attention entirely flattering. Speaking to a Lincoln Day luncheon sponsored by Maricopa County Republicans in Phoenix, Santorum asked the audience: “Will you be the generation that sat on the sidelines and watched as candidate after candidate comes up, and the national media takes their whack at them to try to destroy them in every way possible, as they've done with every single Republican candidate, and as they will between now the election?

WASHINGTON - Pat Summitt, the former head coach of the University of Tennessee's women's basketball team, will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the White House announced Thursday. Summitt, the winningest coach in basketball history, announced her retirement Wednesday after coaching the Lady Volunteers for 38 years. Summitt was diagnosed less than a year ago with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. President Obama, an avid basketball fan, called Summitt an “inspiration.” He praised her willingness to speak openly about her disease and her coaching skills.

Megan Mullally comes through the door of a small office at the Odyssey Theatre, dressed in a long, flowy strapless dress, a black cardigan and Chinese slippers. Her fashionably straight auburn hair brushes her shoulders, and she looks radiant. Or is that a bit flushed? "I think I'm having a hot flash," she says, wiping beads of sweat off her brow. The Emmy- and Screen Actors Guild award-winning "Will & Grace" star has passed the threshold of 50, a milestone most actresses dread in youth-obsessed Hollywood.

A convicted killer who died on death row while his appeal languished before the California Supreme Court should have his case decided posthumously, his attorney told the state high court. Scott F. Kauffman, who represented Dennis Lawley for 19 years, contends that his client was innocent of a 1989 murder for hire that sent him to San Quentin. Lawley, he said, deserves a ruling on his claims, even if the outcome will have no practical consequence. "Mr. Lawley's death does not erase the injustice of his conviction and sentence," Kauffman told the court in a written motion.

Re "Border drones have yet to prove worth," April 29 The looming proliferation of drones is chilling. How is a country that values freedom seemingly OK with this? As someone who has never been arrested, I don't want these creepy unmanned things buzzing over my head. As they become cheaper, drones will fill the skies, and anyone from the neighborhood busybody to a suspicious spouse will employ them. That walk you love in the wilderness will no longer be guaranteed to be yours alone and surveillance-free.

A day after Mitt Romney spoke of a "day of shame for the Obama administration" for its role in protecting a dissident in China who sought shelter at the American Embassy, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee on Friday appeared to be softening his words about the handling of Chen Guangcheng. "Some recent reports coming from China suggest we may not have been as effective in protecting his freedom as we should have been and if those reports are true that would be a very dark day for freedom, but let's wait and see what those reports finally show,” Romney said on the Fox & Friends show on Fox News.

WASHINGTON -- The White House has announced this year's recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. The list of 13 honorees includes musician Bob Dylan, writer Toni Morrison, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Shimon Peres. "These extraordinary honorees come from different backgrounds and different walks of life, but each of them has made a lasting contribution to the life of our nation," President Obama said in a statement.

The third-graders struggled to keep pace. And their teachers at Parkridge Elementary School in Corona wanted to know why. The teachers met after school recently and delved into sheets of data and reading comprehension test questions. They quickly found the reason: Their students could predict events in a story but only a third of them could infer how an incident would affect the story's outcome. The five teachers developed plans to aggressively target the lackluster skill.

The White House announced Thursday that former Tennessee Coach Pat Summitt will receive the nation's highest civilian honor, The Medal of Freedom. Through a statement released by the press secretary's office, President Obama said: “Coach Summitt is an inspiration - both as the all-time winningest NCAA coach, and as someone who is willing to speak so openly and courageously about her battle with Alzheimer's.   "Pat's gift has always been her ability to push those around her to new heights, and over the last 38 years, her unique approach has resulted in both unparalleled success on the court and unrivaled loyalty from those who know her and those whose lives she has touched.  Pat's coaching career may be over, but I'm confident that her work is far from finished.  I look forward to awarding her this honor.” Summitt was notified of the award last week.

Last week I attended a performance by my daughter's fourth-grade class. Christmas and Hanukkah songs were sung by a very diverse group of students. Suddenly I understood why we must fight the terrorists to the end. We must preserve our freedom! Aron Tintfass Beverly Hills