August 12 – A Judge on Changes in Drug Sentencing; Ending The Failed “War on Drugs”; The Puny and Paltry Threats America Faces

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Part 1	We begin with long overdue changes in drug sentencing announced by Attorney General Holder and speak with California Superior Court Judge James Gray, who was a former Federal Prosecutor in the US Attorney’s office and ran for Vice President of the United States in 2012 as the Libertarian Party’s candidate. We discuss a federal prison system that has grown 800% since the 1980’s and the moral and human costs to the United States, which has 5% of the world’s population, but holds 25% of the world’s prisoners.
Part 2	Then we speak with the filmmaker of the Academy Award-nominated best documentary feature of 2012 “The House I Live In”. Eugene Jarecki joins us to discuss the sentencing reforms which were called for in his powerful and wide-ranging examination of the prison/industrial complex and our failed “war on drugs” in a film that takes viewers from ravaged inner city communities to overcrowded prisons with drug users, prison guards, narcotics officers and judges all acknowledging a broken system that might now begin to change direction.
Part 3	Then finally we speak with Michael Cohen, a columnist at Foreign Policy who previously served in the State Department as chief speechwriter for the U.S. Representative at the U.N. We discuss his recent article in the U.K. Guardian “Threat to America? The Size of our own Military Budget” that examines our bloated military budget compared to what he sees as the paltry foreign policy threats outlined by the departing deputy head of the CIA as clear and present dangers.