Full Program

Part 1

We begin with Mike Lofgren who has spent 28 years working in Congress as a Senior Analyst on the House and Senate Budget Committees. He is the author of “The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats became Useless and the Middle Class Got Shafted”. We discuss the latest threats by House Republican to both shut down the government and risk the full faith and credit of the United States unless they get all of their legislative wish list.

Part 2

Then we speak with the former Chief Investigator for the Senate Banking Committee Bartlett Naylor to find out whether government by extortion is the new normal in Washington since the House Republicans are abandoning the very process of negotiation and compromise laid out in the Constitution. And whether there was ever a time in the history of the American government where laws that were passed and upheld by the Supreme Court were held hostage by a small faction of extremists prepared to both shut down the government and destroy the economy unless the law they don’t like was repealed.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the latest declassified documents obtained by the National Security Archive on a six-year NSA domestic spying program “Minaret” that targeted 1,650 individuals, including prominent Americans like Martin Luther King, Mohammed Ali and the humorist Art Buchwald. Matthew Aid, a leading intelligence historian who obtained the documents joins us to discuss the revelations that the NSA spied on two prominent U.S. Senators, Frank Church and Howard Baker and his article in Foreign Policy “Secret Cold War Documents Reveal NSA Spied on Senators”.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the meeting that did not happen between President Obama and Iran’s President Rouhani at the U.N. because it was apparently vetoed by Iran’s Supreme Leader. First Dr. Trita Parsi, the co-founder and president of the National Iranian American Council joins us to discuss the Iranian leader’s speech to the U.N., and then we will discuss it further with Nader Hashemi the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver.

Part 2

Then we examine the consequences of the NSA’s spying on Americans that the President and the head of the NSA assured us was only directed at foreigners. One foreigner, the president of Brazil Dilma Rousseff, blasted the NSA in her opening speech at the U.N. saying that “without the right of privacy there is no democracy and without respect for sovereignty there is no basis for proper relations amongst nations.” Christopher Sprigman, a professor of Law at New York University joins us to examine the fallout from increasing international outrage over the on-going NSA scandals.

Part 3

Then finally we assess what it being done to counter growing hysteria and hyperbole over Obamacare that has Tea Party Senator Ted Cruz vowing to filibuster until he can no longer stand up to save the American people from the impending doom of affordable healthcare. Ethan Rome, the executive director of Health Care for America Now joins us to discuss what Republicans fear most about the Affordable Care Act and why they are determined to shut the government down to prevent its implementation, their fear that Obamacare will work.