January 28 – The New Attorney General Faces Hostile Republican Senators; Jordan Agrees to Negotiate with I.S. For It’s Captured Pilot; The Measles Outbreak and the Anti-Vaxxers

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the Senate confirmation hearings for the new Attorney General Loretta Lynch who was grilled by Republicans implacably hostile to President Obama and the current Attorney General Eric Holder. Nancy Zirkin, the Executive Vive President and Director of Policy at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights who was at today’s hearing joins us to discuss how the United States Attorney for Brooklyn handled the difficult position she is in as the nominee and a surrogated for the Administration that is so hated by many of the Senators on the Judiciary Committee questioning her, in particular Senators Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Jeff Sessions along with Senator Vitter who has already threatened to block her.  

Part 2

Then we look into the hostage situation in Jordan where the government has agreed to negotiate with the so-called Islamic State who are holding a captured Jordanian fighter pilot along with a Japanese journalist they are threatening to behead unless a $200 million ransom is paid and an al Qaeda suicide bomber is freed and swapped. Curt Ryan, a professor of Political Science at Appalachian State University and a Fulbright Scholar to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, joins us to discuss the overwhelming support in Jordan to make a deal to release the pilot which gives the Islamic States leverage to play the Japanese off against the Jordanians.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Michael Hiltzik a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and columnist of the Los Angeles Times whose latest article is “The Disneyland Measles Crisis: How to Make Negligent Parents Pay”. We discuss the measles outbreak across the nation and in California that began at Disneyland where 50 cases are linked to exposure in the happiest place on earth, and the paradox that parents who refuse to vaccinate their children based on anti-science hysteria are often from affluent and educated communities in Marin and Orange counties.