November 21 – Democrats Pull the Trigger on the “Nuclear Option”; A Senator who Investigated CIA, Mafia and Cuban Ties to JFK’s Assassination; The First Person to Deliver an Eyewitness Account of the Assassination of President Kennedy

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with all but three Democratic senators pulling the trigger on the so-called “nuclear option” in a 52 to 48 vote to pass executive branch and judicial nominees by a simple majority vote after the persistent use of the filibuster by the Republicans that has all but paralyzed the senate. Michelle Schwartz, the Director of Justice Programs at the Alliance for Justice joins us to discuss this dramatic change in senate rules and its likely consequences.

Part 2

Then, on the 50^th anniversary of the assassination of President John F Kennedy, we speak with Senator Gary Hart who served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Agencies, known as the Church Committee that investigated CIA, Cuban and Mafia ties to the assassination. We examine important leads that Senator Hart feels the press should have picked up on and followed, that to this day remain largely unexamined since one of the two main Mafia witnesses the Committee investigated was killed shortly after testifying and the second was murdered shortly before testifying.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with the first person to deliver the first eyewitness account of President Kennedy’s assassination, Julian Read, who at the time was Texas Governor John Connally’s representative to the national media for President Kennedy’s visit to Texas in November of 1963. He joins us to discuss what he saw and experienced on that tragic day as the first person to arrive at Parkland Hospital to find Jackie Kennedy and Nellie Connally standing alone outside trauma rooms 1 and 2, waiting to hear the fate of their husbands inside who had both been shot.