Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the reverberations from the FBI Director’s letter that has shaken Washington and rattled the presidential race possibly slowing the momentum towards victory for Hillary Clinton and diminishing the chances that the Democrats will take the senate which will mean four more years of gridlock and no new appointments to the Supreme Court. Former White House Counsel and author of “The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It”, John Dean, whose testimony helped lead to President Nixon’s resignation, joins us to discuss his article at The New York Times “No Emailgate Is Not Worse Than Watergate” and the ludicrous hyperbole coming from Donald Trump’s absurd comparison of Nixon’s impeachable crimes to Hillary Clinton’s guilt by association because her top aide happens to have been married to a man who takes picture of his genitals while Donald Trump on the other hand, grabs women’s genitals. We also assess whether FBI Director James Comey is politically tone deaf or cynically partisan.

Part 2

Then we examine James Comey’s ties to Wall Street and Corporate America since he served as counsel to the world’s largest hedge fund Bridgewater and Lockheed Martin as well as serving on the board of international bank HSBC which has been massively fined for laundering drug money and helping wealthy Americans evade taxes. Jeff Hauser, the Executive Director of the Revolving Door Project at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington D.C., joins us to discuss why Senator Elizabeth Warren has been critical of Comey’s lack of interest in prosecuting white collar criminals.

Part 3

Then finally we look into an even more sensational political scandal than the one roiling Washington, and that is the revelations rocking South Korea that the country’s president has been for decades under the spell of a cult leader of the Church of Eternal Life, essentially outsourcing her presidency to a fortune-teller who has not only enriched herself by shaking down big conglomerates for some $70 million but has embezzled millions from the president’s accounts by buying cheap clothes for the president to wear at state dinners while pocketing the difference for designer wear. Sue Mi Terry, a Senior Research Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asia Institute at Columbia University who was Deputy National Intelligence Officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council and the Director of Japan, Korea and Oceanic Affairs at the National Security Council, joins us to discuss growing protests and street demonstrations in South Korea demanding President Park Geun-hye’s resignation.   

Full Program

Part 1

Following recent declarations by Senators McCain and Cruz that Republicans should hunker down for the next four years and refuse to allow anyone Hillary Clinton nominates to sit on the Supreme Court, we will begin with the rumors of war on the Supreme Court  coming from Senate Republicans who apparently are prepared to let the judiciary wither and die as threats of a total blockade on any and all of Hillary Clinton’s nominees to the Supreme Court gather momentum. Erwin Chemerinsky, the founding Dean  and Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, with a joint appointment in Political Science, joins us to discuss how the no-hearings–no-vote stance of the Republican Senate in holding up Judge Garland’s nomination for over a year that is unprecedented in American history, is now taking on an even more partisan and obstructionist tone. We assess whether threatening a constitutional crisis to rile up Republicans will also motivate Democrats to vote in sufficient numbers to take away the senate from Republican control. 

Part 2

Then we examine the latest report from the World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Index that shows vertebrate populations are set to decline by 67% from 1970 levels and unless urgent action is taken to reduce human impact, we are on track to lose two-thirds of wild animals on the planet by 2020. Stuart Pimm, a Professor of Conservation Ecology at Duke University who is a world leader in the study of present day extinctions and what can be done to prevent them, joins us. With just 15% left of the natural world that is protected, we will discuss how to stop the destruction of wild areas for farming and logging and reverse the impact of unsustainable fishing.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Helmut Norpoth, a Professor of Political Science at Stony Brook University whose research includes Electoral Behavior, Public Opinion and Electoral Forecasting. He has developed a model that has accurately predicted the winner of the popular vote in presidential elections that applied retroactively, goes back to 1912. We will discuss his prediction of a Trump win back in February and why he is sticking by that prediction today, in spite of all the polls that favor a Hillary Clinton win.