An 88-year-old white supremacist with a rifle walked into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, fatally wounding a security guard. The gunman was identified by law enforcement officials as James W. von Brunn, who embraces conspiracy theories involving Jews, blacks and other minority groups and has waged a personal war with the federal government. Jack Levin, Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Northeastern University joins The Takeaway to talk about the shooting and the trends in hate crimes.
There's yet another chapter in the tale of ousted Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and the Senate seat left vacant by Barack Obama. Secretly taped phone conversations between then State Senator Roland Burris and the disgraced former governor's brother were released to the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee yesterday. Burris, now a senator, still claims that he was not involved in any plan to funnel money to Blagojevich in return for the Senate seat. Rob Wildeboer is a reporter for Chicago Public Radio and he has been following the story closely.
Sen. Burris has been making adamant denials of any wrongdoing:
President Nixon coined the term "war on drugs" in 1969, and began fighting the problem of drug use with arrests and prison time. Since then every administration has more or less done the same. In what may be a major shift, though, the Obama administration’s new drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, says he wants to get rid of the term "war on drugs" altogether, and focus more on treatment instead. To discuss the implications of this possible policy shift is Glenn Greenwald, a columnist for Salon.com and he just wrote a Cato Institute-funded study, Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies, published last month.
Paul Butler was on track for the American dream. A graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, he was a federal prosecutor for the U.S. Department of Justice specializing in public corruption. All that changed when he was arrested on charges he claims are false. That's when he decided the system simply didn't work. He is now a law professor at George Washington University and author of Let's Get Free: A Hip Hop Theory of Justice and advocates that the public force major changes in the criminal justice system.
International intrigue and Latin America have long been partners in crime. So when Bolivian security forces killed an Irish man, a Romanian, and a Hungarian in a hotel room in Santa Cruz, Bolivia in a half-hour shoot out, it sounded like it was ripped from the pages of a high-flung spy novel. Now, Bolivian President Evo Morales said that this alleged assassination attempt by foreign mercenaries could have been backed by the U.S. Government reports say that the group was linked to rightist opposition groups against Morales’ leftist regime, but they have not released the details of their report to the Irish or Hungarian governments who have been seeking answers.
Naomi Daremblum who teaches about Latin American issues at New York University joins The Takeaway to talk about the alleged assassination attempt on President Morales.
The American public is famously divided on almost every issue: from politics to war to the place of religion in society. But in the past five years there is one cause that has united Americans of liberal and conservative leanings and of Muslim, Jewish and Christian faiths: outrage over the ongoing conflict in Sudan's Darfur region. Since former Secretary of State Collin Powell identified the conflict in Darfur as a genocide in 2004, we've been up in arms and out in the streets, demanding an end to abuses by the Sudanese government. But how much has our advocacy actually achieved? And can we accurately call Darfur a genocide? The Takeaway talks to Mahmood Mamdani, a professor of Government at Columbia University and author of the book, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror.
The Department of Homeland Security last week warned in an internal memo that the disastrous economy may spur some Americans to join right-wing extremist groups. The memo focused particularly on U.S. servicemen and women and drew outrage from some who say it paints returning vets with an ugly brush. Janet Napolitano, the head of DHS, has been apologizing ever since. But does the report hold any water? The Takeaway talks to Charles Blow, an op-ed writer for our partners, The New York Times. He's been taking his own look at the link between the economy, extremism, and servicemen.
For more, read Charles Blow's article, The Enemies Within, in the New York Times.
At this point everyone has heard of disgraced financier Bernie Madoff, but the name J. Ezra Merkin may still be unknown. That is about to change. In a lawsuit filed Monday by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, it is alleged that Mr. Merkin convinced his clients to invest with him and then funneled all their money into Madoff's scheme. Mr. Merkin's private clients lost over $2 billion in the collapse of Madoff's Ponzi scheme and most did not realize they had ever invested with him. New York Times reporter Diana Henriques is covering the story and she joins us now with the details on these new "feeder fund" lawsuits.
Want to know how to avoid paying taxes on April 15? Jason Zengerle, a senior editor at The New Republic, might be able to give you some ideas— though he may not be able to tell you how to escape from jail when the IRS catches up to you. Jason wrote an article for this Sunday's New York Times Magazine called "Hell Nay, We Won't Pay!" profiling the philosophical movements that argue that despite, you know, the law, you're not actually obligated to pay your taxes. He joins us now to explain.
All week, we’ve been taking a look at the U.S.-Mexico border, where violence has soared as Mexico’s army battles powerful drug cartels. Today, we turn to a place you may not have heard of: Brownsville, Texas. It’s a small city where most people have family right across the border in Matamoros, Mexico. And they have learned that what happens in Texas can’t be separated from what happens in Mexico. The Takeaway talks to Brownsville judge Carlos Cascos and Brownsville Herald crime reporter Ildefonso Ortiz for their take on life on the border.
The President of the West African Nation of Guinea-Bissau was shot and killed yesterday by renegade soldiers. The soldiers blamed the President for the bomb blast that killed his main rival, the army chief of staff, the day before. To unravel the twisted tale, we are joined by Will Ross, the BBC's West Africa correspondent in Accra, Ghana.
In recent weeks, much of northern Mexico has been gripped by anarchic violence as President Felipe Calderon takes on powerful drug cartels. The cartels' tactics are simple: use brute force to get what you want. The problem is—it's working. And increasingly, that violence is spilling across Mexico’s border into U.S. cities like El Paso and Phoenix. The Takeaway is joined by Sam Quinones, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, and Tracy Wilkinson, Mexico Bureau Chief for the same paper. Both have been providing coverage for the paper’s series: “Mexico Under Siege.”
For more, follow the series, Mexico Under Siege, in the Los Angeles Times.
"There are many groups fighting for a piece of not just territory, not just smuggling routes, but also for control of local markets. So there are many factors to why this has become so much more violent." — Tracy Wilkinson of the Los Angeles Times, on the violence of Mexican drug cartels
Senator Roland Burris is promising to fully cooperate with a new investigation into his contacts with the administration of now-ousted Gov. Rod Blagojevich. But while he may be talking to investigators, he says he'll no longer be talking to reporters. Especially not at the Chicago Tribune. Joining us now is Robert Wildeboer is a criminal justice reporter for Chicago Public Radio.
Alex Rodriguez broke the hearts of fans and delighted his detractors when he admitted this week that he took performance enhancing drugs during his years as a Texas Ranger. While fans may have a lot of questions, one that we had was why would the Major League Baseball players' union keep their best players' failing test results? Why didn't they destroy them before federal agents confiscated them in a 2004 raid? To help us answer those questions we turn to Michael Schmidt, a reporter for the New York Times has been following this story.
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