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2013 Program Archive
February 11 - A Once in 600 Years Papal Resignation; Would a New Pope Consider Ordaining Women?; What Really Happened in Benghazi
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We begin with the resignation of the Pope, an unusual occurrence that has not happened for 600 years. Anthea Butler, a professor of Religious Studies and Graduate Chair in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania joins us to discuss who might succeed Pope Benedict whose relatively brief tenure was beset by scandals and shrinking church attendance and finances in Europe and North America. |
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Then we discuss the issue that Pope Benedict most strenuously opposed, the ordination of women. Erin Saiz Hanna, the Executive Director of the Women’s Ordination Conference joins us to explain the Pope’s hostility to the idea of women being ordained into the Catholic priesthood and his crackdown on American nuns. She has been detained by the Italian police five times for peaceful protests against the Vatican. |
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Then finally, with Senator Lindsay Graham promising to block John Brennan’s nomination to head up the CIA unless the Administration comes clean on Benghazi, we examine what really happened in Benghazi with author and journalist Robert Young Pelton. And we discuss a new e-new book by two Special Forces veterans “Benghazi: The Definitive Report”, which claims to have the answers, along with who was behind the “palace coup” that ended David Petraeus’s career. |
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February 10 - Climate Change and the State of the Union; Obama's Many Second Term Challenges; A Police Force Hunted by a Fugitive and Haunted by Its Past
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We begin with the latest super storm that has dumped record amounts of snow in New England and speak with Michael Mann, the Nobel Prize-winning founder and contributor to the award winning science website RealClimate.org. We discuss this latest extreme weather event in the context of the global warming challenge that President Obama will likely address in Tuesday’s State of the Union, while Senator Marco Rubio, who will offer the Republican rebuttal, may explain why he does not believe that global warming is real. |
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Then we look into how many challenges face the president and whether he can address them all in his State of Union and hope to achieve some legislative victory in his second term with a hostile and implacable House determined to impose austerity that will tank the economy and doom any hopes of recovery. Democratic strategist Ed Kilgore, the principal writer of the Washington Monthly’s Political Animal blog joins us to discuss whether the president has spread himself too thin and what advice the Democrats will take from Bill Clinton’s recent pep talk. |
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Then finally we speak with author and award-winning investigative journalist Joe Domanick, who is a leading authority on the Los Angeles Police Department. He has written “To Protect and Serve: The LAPD’s Century of War in the City of Dreams” and is writing “Road to Reckoning: The Collapse and Reformation of the LAPD”. With the LAPD now under siege from a former member of its ranks who is on a vengeful murder spree vowing to kill senior LAPD officers and their families, we discuss efforts by the fugitive to frame his grudge and blame his dismissal on racial injustice. |
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February 7 - Oversight on Assassinations; Facts and Figures on the Drone Program; A Hippocratic Oath on the Economy?
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We begin with an analysis of the testimony today from the White House Counterterrorism Chief John Brennan whose nomination to head up the CIA drew sharp questions from hawks and doves over the contentious issues of drone policy and assassination authority. A former CIA official Melvin Goodman, the author of “National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism” joins us to discuss recent efforts to pry secrets from the White House over its drone policy.
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Then, since John Brennan is considered the architect of the drone program, and his testimony today was delayed due to protesters expressing outrage that the U.S. government operates what many consider to be an assassination program with limited oversight that is not subject to international law, we look into the size and scope of the drone program. Bill Roggio joins us. He is the editor of The Long War Journal, which is considered the leading authority on the numbers of drones the U.S. has and how many targets they have struck in what countries and the extent of collateral damage involved in these strikes. |
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Then finally we speak with economist James Galbraith about the standoff in Washington over the future of the economy and the nation’s economic recovery that has repeatedly been held hostage by Congressional Republicans trying to cut taxes for their wealthy donors and cut government programs they don’t like or want to privatize. We discuss whether, as some have suggested that before they cause another recession, the Congress should take the Hippocratic Oath on the economy.
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February 6 - Are Bankers Too Big to Jail?; Did Khamenei Approve the Bulgarian Bombing?; Tunisia on the Secular/Religious Divide
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We begin with the 610 million dollar fine (most of which will be paid to U.S. regulators and the Department of Justice) levied against the Royal Bank of Scotland for rigging the Libor rate. Bartlett Naylor, the former chief of investigations for the U.S. Senate Banking Committee joins us to discuss why the government is able to claw back money from banks for criminal behavior but at the same time no bankers go to jail. |
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Then we look into U.S. and Israeli efforts to get the Europeans to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization following the Bulgarian inquiry that found Hezbollah guilty of a bus bombing that killed Israeli tourists. A former CIA officer who spent decades operating against Hezbollah, Robert Baer, joins us to discuss the role of Iran in these tit-for-tat assassinations and terrorist acts that are likely to escalate as Iran and Hezbollah face defeat in Syria. |
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Then finally we speak with a State Department Middle East veteran who served in Tunisia to get an update on the killing of a secular leftist opposition leader whose assassination has led to the ruling Islamist government dissolving parliament and calling for speedy, new elections. Ambassador David Mack, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Middle East Affairs joins us to discuss the secular/religious divide erupting in Tunisia, Egypt and Israel. |
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February 5 - The Ethics of Killing by Remote Control; The Academy Award-Nominated Filmmakers of "5 Broken Cameras"
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We begin with an analysis of the confidential Justice Department memo leaked to NBC News that authorizes the U.S. government to order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be Al Qaeda leaders, even if there is no intelligence that they are actively involved in a plot to attack the U.S. Bradley Jay Strawser, a professor in the Defense Analysis Department at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and author of “Killing By Remote Control: The Ethics of an Unmanned Military” joins us to discuss targeted killing, an issue that is bound to dominate Thursday’s confirmation hearing of John Brennan to head up the CIA. |
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Then we are joined in the studio by the film makers of the Academy Award nominated documentary feature “5 Broken Cameras”. Palestinian farmer and cameraman Emad Burnat and Israeli documentary filmmaker Guy Davidi discuss their powerful film that documents the encroachment of Israeli settlers on a Palestinian village where Emad and his wife and four sons live. “5 Broken Cameras” reveals the shocking ground truth of the Israeli/Palestinian struggle, provided by the five cameras Emad uses, as one-by-one they are destroyed by the Israeli Army over a six year period, while Palestinian villagers are beaten and killed by Israelis with impunity as they engage in non-violent protest trying to protect their farms, homes and families. |
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