June 17 – Fossil Fuel Republicans Alarmed by the Pope’s Climate Change Encyclical; Right Wing Domestic Terrorism the Greatest Threat; Senate Ban on Torture Faces a Veto Threat

Full Program

Part 1

We be begin with the furious backlash from the fossil fuel industry to the leak of a draft of Pope Francis’ encyclical on global warming to be released on Thursday, and look into the incoherent and contradictory responses from Jeb Bush and other Catholic Republican candidates for the presidency. Joining us is Erik Conway, a historian of science and technology employed by the California Institute of Technology and co-author of “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming”. We discuss whether Republican climate deniers alarmed by the Pope’s moral authority can continue calling global warming a “hoax” as the latest primary entrant Donald Trump does or “flat-Earthers” as Ted Cruz labels those who believe global warming is real.

Part 2

Then we speak with Charles Kurzman, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill about his recent op-ed in The New York Times “The Other Terror Threat”. We discuss last year’s survey by 382 law enforcement agencies in the Police Executive Research Forum that finds the country is facing a growing threat from right wing militias, neo-Nazis and “sovereign citizens” with 74% reporting anti-government extremism as one of the top three threats while 39% listed Al Qaeda or like-minded terrorist organizations as a threat.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the landslide Senate vote of 78 to 21 outlawing torture which is attached to the National Defense Authorization Act that President Obama is threatening to veto. Scott Horton, a professor at Columbia Law School and a contributing editor to Harper’s in legal affairs and national security joins us to discuss why the president is threatening to veto a ban on torture that he has called for.