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December 11 - Comparing Roy Moore and Doug Jones' Approach to Law and Order; Erik Prince and Oliver North's Alternative to the CIA Could Become a Reality; How the Attempted Suicide Bombing by a Bangladeshi Immigrant Might Impact the Bangladeshi Community
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With Donald Trump having accused the Democrat running for the U.S. Senate in Alabama of being “soft on crime”, we will begin with an analysis of the difference between Judge Roy Moore and the former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones in terms of their approach to law enforcement with Moore having a record on the Alabama Supreme Court of siding with those accused of sexual crimes while Doug Jones is famous for successfully prosecuting two Ku Klux Klansmen for a church bombing that killed four black girls as well as convicting Eric Rudolph for the bombing of an Alabama abortion clinic along with targeting voter fraud, drug dealers and corrupt police. Joyce White Vance, a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer in Law at the University of Alabama School of Law who served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama for 8 years and prior to that was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Birmingham, Alabama for 18 years, joins us. She will discuss the role of the fired White House strategist Steve Bannon who is campaigning with Moore and what it will mean for the alt-right movement and those bent of destroying the administrative state to have their candidate in the U.S. Senate which Roy Moore alone could grind to a halt.
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Then we look into reports that Erik Prince and Oliver North are lobbying the White House to set up a private sector “off the books” alternative to the CIA as a way around what Donald Trump sees as the “deep state” that is out to get him. While this could be dismissed as the fantasy of the founder of the mercenary army Blackwater, if Trump were to appoint Senator Tom Cotton as head of the CIA, it could quickly become a reality. Publisher, journalist, filmmaker and explorer Robert Young Pelton, author of “Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror” and former biographer of Erik Prince, joins us. |
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Then finally we speak with Chaumtoli Huq, a Bangladeshi-American lawyer with Law@theMargins in New York City about how the attempted suicide bombing at the busy Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City this morning by an Bangladeshi immigrant Akayed Ullah, might impact the Bangladeshi community of drivers, food vendors, retail workers and newspaper-sellers. We discuss a climate of fear and scapegoating on the rise in the Trump era in which Muslims and Latinos have been vilified and targeted. |
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December 10 - Trump is More Interested in His TV Reviews Than His Performance as president; The Alabama Race is Shaping Up as Trump's Waterloo and a Referendum on America; Thanks to Trump the Saudis Are Losing the "Arab Street" to Iran
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We begin with the emergence of an orchestrated campaign led by Fox News to delegitimise the Robert Mueller investigation and cast it as a Democratic plot to undermine Trump’s election victory in the Electoral College. David Mindich, a Professor and Chair of the Journalism Department at Temple University and author of “Just the Facts: How “Objectivity” Came to Define American Journalism”, joins us to discuss how Trump watches between 4 and 8 hours of television a day, tuning into Fox News for the comfort it provides him while occasionally watching MSNBC to get riled up and ready for combat. We will examine this un-American relationship between a sitting government and a volunteer Ministry of Truth which Fox has become under Rupert Murdoch who talks to Trump every day and appears to set the agenda for the White House talking points and policies, as well as assess what work the president actually does given his television watching habit which suggests the reality TV star is more interested in his reviews than his performance.
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Then we go to Montgomery, Alabama for an update on Tuesday’s election for the U.S. Senate seat that is both shaping up as Trump’s Waterloo and a referendum on America itself with a child-molester likely to win against a former U.S. attorney who successfully prosecuted the KKK. Mark Potok, the former Director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project who was a spokesman for the SPLC, joins us to discuss the close race and the concern that turnout of the critical African-American vote may not be sufficient to overcome the expected mobilization of the fundamentalist so-called “Christians” who see the tribulations of Jesus Christ in their persecuted champion Roy Moore. |
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Then finally we speak with Lina Khatib, the head of the Middle East and North African Program at Chatham House and the former Director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. She joins us to discuss the demonstrations in front of the US Embassy in Beirut and across the Arab world in response to Trump’s gambit to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and how this is complicating the close ties Trump has forged with the Saudis who are losing the so-called “Arab street” to Iran due to the anger Trump has ignited in the Middle East.
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December 7 - Will Franken's Resignation Hurt Dems' Senate Chances?; Trump Wrecks US Foreign Policy to Get Christian Zionist Votes in Alabama; The Republican Tax Plan's Massive Giveaway to Private Jet Owners
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We begin with the resignation of Senator Al Franken today which he announced on the floor of the US Senate, noting with some irony that while he is resigning, a sexual predator who bragged about his ability to assault women is still sitting in the Oval Office. David Schultz, a Professor of Political Science at Hamline University who also teaches election law at the University of Minnesota School of Law, joins us to discuss the local reaction to their senator stepping down under pressure from his Democratic senate colleagues who are doing the right thing while their Republican counterparts in the senate and the White House are brazenly ignoring the record of the child molester they are running in Alabama and the open admission by the head of the GOP sitting in the White House who boasted he can grab women by the private parts and get away with it because he is a celebrity. We also assess whether the appointment of a placeholder to fill Franken’s vacated seat until the 2018 election will expose the Democrats to a potential loss of a safe seat in a critical election in which Democrats now have to defend 26 senate seats while the Republicans only have to defend 9 seats.
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Then we speak with Matthew Sutton, Distinguished Professor of History at Washington State University and author of “American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism”. He joins us to discuss the main reason why Trump upended U.S. diplomatic history and foreign policy in moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, and that is apparently his political calculus that he needs to shore up the Christian Zionist vote in Alabama for accused child molester Roy Moore. We look into the sick theology behind the Christian Zionists’ spiritually pornographic interpretation of the Book of Revelation that has them raptured up to heaven while the rest of us burn in hell as the end of the world begins in Israel. |
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Then finally we examine a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, “High Flyers 2017”, and speak with its author Josh Hoxie, who heads the Project on Opportunity and Taxation at the Institute for Policy Studies and edits inequality.org and was a legislative aide to Senator Bernie Sanders. We discuss the big lie in the Republican tax plan that is supposed to help the middle class but massive tax breaks for the owners of the 12,000 private luxury jets in the U.S. whose owners have an average net worth of $1.6 billion, tells another story. |
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December 6 - A View From Israel on Trump's Dangerous Gambit; Could Tax Reform Die in Conference?; Trump's 3 Month Window to Attack North Korea
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We begin with President Trump’s formal recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital announced today and his plan to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv. The former spokesman for Shimon Peres, Gideon Levy, an Israeli journalist and columnist for Ha’aretz joins us from Tel Aviv to discuss Trump’s gift to Netanyahu that leaves the U.S. totally isolated as the only country in the world to have an embassy in Jerusalem. We assess the likely impact of Trump’s announcement on the Palestinian territories and in the neighboring countries and the extent to which it dims the hope for any future two state solution, a prospect that already appears to be dead in the water. We will also examine the similarities between Trump and Netanyahu in as much as both are pursuing aggressive right wing policies while judicial inquiries close in on them and threaten their political futures.
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Then we get an analysis of whether the rush to get something passed by the Republicans so that they will not have to run next year as the “do-nothing” congress will result is a worse backlash once their constituents know what is in their so-called tax reform bill and how much it will hurt average Americans. Paul Waldman, who writes for The Washington Post’s Plum Line and is a contributing editor to The American Prospect where he has an article “How Republicans are Digging Their Own Grave for 2018” and another at The Week “Republicans’ remarkable self-deception on tax cuts”, joins us to discuss the possibility that the bill will die in conference as many members from blue states begin to realize how much their vote for the bill will amount to political suicide. |
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Then finally we speak with the former speechwriter for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Mark Seddon, a professor of international relations at Columbia University about his article at The Guardian “Have we got just three months to avert a US attack on North Korea?” He joins us to discuss John Bolton’s recent trip to the U.K. House of Commons where the former US Ambassador to the UN relayed a message from the Trump White House that the CIA head had told Trump he had a “three month window” to strike North Korea before they had the capability to hit Washington with a nuclear-tipped ICBM.
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December 5 - Resurrecting the Logan Act; Will All Hell Break Loose in the Middle East?; Corporate Backers of GOP Tax Giveaway Are Now Complicit with Who Trump is and What He Does
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We begin with the possible resurrection of the 18th century Logan Act under which only two people have been charged and neither convicted, and assess whether Jared Kushner or his father in law Donald Trump could be charged with violating the Logan Act based on what Michael Flynn has told the special counsel Robert Mueller who Flynn is cooperating with. Daniel Hemel, a Professor of Law at the University of Chicago who was a law clerk for Justice Elena Kagan on the U.S. Supreme Court, joins us to discuss his article at The New York Times “Why the Trump Team Should Fear the Logan Act”. And while the Logan Act prevents private citizens from unauthorized communication with foreign officials to influence U.S. foreign policy, as the incoming National Security Advisor to Donald Trump, Michael Flynn was hardly an ordinary private citizen. Furthermore his communications with the Russian Ambassador about easing sanctions and advising them how to react to President Obama’s new round of sanctions in response to Russian meddling in our election, appears to rise to the level of “a high crime and misdemeanor”.
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Then we anticipate the reaction in the Middle East and Europe to President Trump’s expected move on Wednesday to relocate the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem which is widely seen and an abandonment of any pretext of supporting any future viable Palestinian state. Juan Cole, a professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan and author of “The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East”, joins us to discuss the possibility of a new “intifada” erupting, the Jordanian kingdom in turmoil and Saudi influence over Trump because of the friendship between MBS and Jared Kushner exposed as worthless. |
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Then finally we speak with David Halperin, who served on the Clinton National Security Council and was counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee about his article at The Huffington Post “GOP’s Unholy Alliance: Trump-McConnell-Moore-Kochs”. We discuss how all the big corporations backing the GOP tax giveaway to the rich including the so called ones that do good like Google and Facebook, are now complicit in screwing the middle class, supporting a sex offender and validating Trump’s bigotry, misogyny, environmental destruction, kleptocratic corruption and his likely treason with Russia. |
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