I have many memories of Vince Fumo. One of the first was of meeting him as a high school student when he and my father were sworn into the Senate in Harrisburg on the same day. I still recall the media hoopla surrounding the good-looking guy in the three-piece suit with the shoulder-length brown hair who wore an air of invincibility. His charm and confidence were palpable and infectious. I covered Sen. Fumo many times over the years as a State Capitol correspondent. Eventually, I went to work for Gov. Bob Casey in the early 1990s when Fumo was at the height of his power and prestige. Like most observers, I marveled at his keen intellect and cunning political prowess in matters large and small, and the incredible devotion he seemed to inspire in his staff. Their motto was, "We get s.... done." Fumo's tangles with fellow Democrat but always by-the-book Casey were legendary.

When the Republican Ridge team came into office in 1994, I stayed on staff -- handling television and broadcast communications for Gov. Ridge. I distinctly recall a conversation Fumo and I shared one fall in the main Senate hallway. Fumo had agreed to tape a Gridiron skit I was producing for Gov. Ridge. He pulled me in close and whispered, “If they try to f--- with you, come see me.” The idea that I might someday need his help, and what he might do to help me, gave me a shudder. He was the kind of guy who had your back ... but that's what made you nervous. His conviction closes a chapter, but doesn't end the story, on a political giant whose vanity, insecurities and hubris felled him.

Shifting gears a bit to a different kind of controversy, Millersville University certainly has stirred a tempest with its invitation to William Ayers to deliver the Anna Funk Lockey Education Lecture on campus this evening. Ayers, a national expert on urban education who teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is better known as co-founder of the Weather Underground, a radical anti-Vietnam War group. The group advocated and carried out bombings of federal buildings in the 1960s and 70s to protest the war. Ayers says no one was injured in the attacks and has said that he thinks they didn't go far enough. This week on Smart Talk, we'll explore academic freedom and the case of William Ayers at Millersville with two legal experts, Laurie Baulig, an attorney and adjunct assistant professor of business, organizations and society at Franklin & Marshall College, and Dr. W. Wesley McDonald, a professor of political science at Elizabethtown College.

Nadya Suleman, the so-called Octomom, also is no stranger to controversy. Already a divorced, unemployed mother of six children, Suleman chose to be impregnated via in-vitro fertilization in California because she wanted an even larger family. She got one! Ms. Suleman became pregnant with eight children and delivered the babies six-weeks prematurely in January. Two of the babies came home from the hospital this week under an intense media glare. Her case has sparked worldwide conversation and a fair amount of condemnation. We decided to look a little deeper into the laws and ethics surrounding in-vitro fertilization, multiple births and reproductive freedom in Pennsylvania. Among our guests discussing some of the legal, moral and societal questions raised by planned multiple births will be Jenell Williams Paris, a professor of sociology and anthropology at Messiah College. Professor Paris and her husband spent years trying to conceive a child. They elected to try the only fertility treatment their insurance covered which was superovulatory medicine. The doctors injected the sperm directly into her uterus resulting in three fertilized eggs. Professor Paris got an infection in the amniotic sac that antibiotics couldn't treat so her medical team decided to deliver the babies in her second trimester knowing they would be unable to sustain life. They died within a day of delivery. Their names were Simon, Ian and Gordon. Professor Paris and her husband tried to get pregnant again using superovulatory medicine and within a year she was carrying twins. She ultimately gave birth to two boys --Oliver and Wesley and then became pregnant naturally and gave birth to Max. She'll share her family's story with us on Friday night along with Dr. Robert Filer, a reproductive endocrinologist at The Fertility Center in York and Lancaster. Dr. Filer did not treat Professor Paris.

It's the war Americans seem to have forgotten. Yet, President Obama is shifting the nation's and our military's focus back on Afghanistan more than seven years after U.S. troops invaded and toppled the Taliban. In recent years, the Taliban have slowly reasserted their grip on many parts of the country, especially the southern opium-rich regions that fuel the underground economy and the Taliban's terrorist allies. Fahima Vorgetts was born in Afghanistan but fled during the Soviet invasion in 1979. She's now an American who raises money to support humanitarian relief for her homeland. Fahima is particularly struck by the plight of Afghan women. She has written, "Afghanistan haunts me. It is my country, and my heart breaks for my sisters who undergo daily oppression and hardship there. My passion and life's work is to reclaim and rebuild the country so that women can be free and equal, and can live a life of dignity, literacy, and financial stability." Despite passage of a new constitution that guarantees women equal rights, the laws are not enforced and women are subjected to many forms of discrimination, harassment and terror. With the resurgence of the Taliban in several regions of the country, comes fear of new reprisals and degradation of girls and women. Fahima joins us Friday night along with Colonel James Helis, chairman of the Department of National Security and Strategy at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, to update us on the suffering, progress and challenges ahead for U.S. troops and Afghan citizens. Col. Helis recently returned from a six-month tour of duty in Kabul, Afghanistan and will share his fresh insights on the struggle for freedom and peace in that region.