Jeff Young, reporter for The Hill, joins us as President Obama speaks briefly about the Senate's just passed version of health care reform.
The rate of federal prosecutions is at an all-time high, showing an increase of nine percent since last year. According to a new study by Syracuse University's TRAC project, this increase is primarily related to an increase in arrests of immigration violators. We talk with John Schwartz of The New York Times and Valeria Fernández of the Feet in 2 Worlds Program about the increase, and what it signifies for the Obama administration's stance towards immigration reform.
Read John Schwartz's article in The New York Times.
President Obama is expected to sign an executive order before the year is over to create a new National Declassification Center in order to aggressively clear a backlog of classified documents. But, the creation of the center will actually delay the declassification of 400 million pages of Cold War-era documents. We talk with Bryan Bender from the Boston Globe and Jim Harper from the CATO Institute about how this plan fits with the president’s promises for government transparency.
One week after meeting with the heads of major banks, President Obama is scheduled to meet with the leaders of small and community banks today. He is likely to make the same request to them as he did the big banks: 'Please lend more.' With major banks taking up most of the headlines all year long, we wanted to take a look at how community banks are doing, and the answer may surprise you. Mike Menzies is the president and CEO of a small community bank, Easton Bank and Trust in Easton, M.D. – he says his bank will finish the year with a profit, but fears the next couple of years will be rough. David Gillen is finance editor for The New York Times, and says that community banks have actually done well despite the constant reports of bank closings.
The economy received some positive news on Sunday from President Obama's top economic adviser, Larry Summers, who said that the recession is over on 'This Week with George Stephanopoulos.' But even if you agree with Summers, it's still hard for many to forgive and forget the role Wall Street played in creating the current economic mess. Even President Obama recently said, "I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of ... fat cat bankers on Wall Street." On the heels of those harsh words, Obama will be hosting the heads of those same banks at the White House Monday. Peter Morici, an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland, says this is just another publicity stunt. We're also joined by Eric Dash, a banking reporter for The New York Times, who has also been covering this story.
We've uncovered our crystal ball and are peeking into the week ahead with our Washington correspondent, Todd Zwillich, and Jonathan Marcus, BBC diplomatic correspondent. They'll discuss what's next for health care reform in the Senate as Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) throws a wrench into the works ... again; President Obama's meeting with some of the heads of the largest American banks; the continuing climate talks in Copenhagen; and continuing nuclear troubles with Iran. All that and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi getting socked in the face with a statuette.
The mastermind of 1994's "Republican Revolution," former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, has never been shy with his opinion. He joins us this morning giving his read on President Obama's accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.
"I thought the speech was actually very good. And he clearly understood that he had been given the prize prematurely, but he used it as an occasion to remind people, first of all, as he said: that there is evil in the world. I think having a liberal president who goes to Oslo on behalf of a peace prize and reminds the committee that they would not be free, they wouldn't be able to have a peace prize, without having force... I thought in some ways it's a very historic speech. And the President, I think, did a very good job of representing the role of America which has been that of – at the risk of lives of young Americans – creating the fabric of security within which you could have a Martin Luther King Jr. or you could have a Mahatma Gandhi."
— Newt Gingrich, former House Speaker, on President Obama's acceptance speech before the Nobel Committee
President Obama was in part awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his outreach to the Muslim world. The administration has made Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan top priorities, but some analysts say Obama has neglected much of the Middle East. We ask Reza Aslan, author and contributing editor to the Daily Beast, and Abderrahim Foukara, the D.C. Bureau Cheif of al-Jazeera, to evaluate the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to the president's Middle East diplomacy.
For reactions to President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech we speak to Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Charlie Sennott, executive editor of Globalpost.
Anticipating President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, we speak to Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations and Charlie Sennott, executive editor of Globalpost.
President Obama is in Oslo today where he will accept the Nobel Peace Prize. Both supporters and critics alike have asked whether the President is deserving of this prestigious award only months into his presidency. Jeff Zeleny of The New York Times, Shuja Nawaz of the Atlantic Council and Steve Cohen of The Earth Institute at Columbia University evaluate the President’s policies – international diplomacy, Middle East outreach and climate change – that won him the award.
In a front page article published in Sunday's New York Times, Peter Baker details how President Obama came to decide on the new Afghanistan war strategy he delivered to cadets at West Point last week. Baker's article describes a patient, methodical and oftentimes frustrating process which, over the course of three months, led to a policy that may define Obama's presidency.
The couple that crashed President Obama's first White House dinner, Tarek and Michaele Salahi, managed to slip through several layers of security in order to pose with such Washington luminaries as Vice President Joe Biden and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel. The couple aren't new to (fleeting) fame. They're reportedly in the running to be one of the couples on the Bravo reality show, "The Real Housewives of Washington." And the New York Times reports that the Bravo cable TV network followed the couple up to the entrance state dinner. For more on this, we're joined by Brian Stelter, who writes the Media Decoder blog for our partners, The New York Times.
New Movie Releases: 'Men in Black 3' and 'Moonrise Kingdom'
Why Increased Immigration is the Solution for America's Ailing Economy
Is the Private Era in Space Officially Upon Us?
The show is a co-production of WNYC Radio and Public Radio International, in collaboration with The BBC World Service, New York Times Radio and WGBH Boston.
Major funding provided by:
