RIP Prince.

Chef Geoff Tracy, James Rosen, Chris Richards, Tony Fly and guest host Lisa Boothe joined WMAL on Friday!

Mornings on the Mall

Friday, April 22, 2016

Hosts: Brian Wilson and guest host Lisa Boothe

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

 

5am – A/B/C  Congress Removes All State Flags Because Of Mississippi’s Confederate Imagery. Flags from each of the states will no longer be displayed in a tunnel under the Capitol after complaints about the Confederate imagery of Mississippi’s state flag, according to the House Administration Committee. Instead, Michigan Rep. Candice Miller , the chairman of the committee on House Administration, announced Thursday the tunnel will permanently display a reproduction of the commemorative quarters of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and the United States territories. Last year, the state flags, in the tunnel between the Rayburn House Office Building and the Capitol, were ostensibly removed because of renovation to the area. It happened to come after the national debate over the Confederate flag after the shooting of churchgoers at a black church in Charleston last summer. In a statement, Miller acknowledged ordering the new display because Mississippi’s flag includes the Confederate battle flag symbol in its upper left corner.

5am – D         Hillary Clinton: We have too many guns ‘in our homes’ (The Washington Times) – Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton suggested Wednesday that Americans have too many guns in their homes. “When it comes to guns, we have just too many guns. On the streets, in our homes, in our neighborhoods,” the former secretary of state told a gun violence forum in Philadelphia, according to a clip obtained by Washington Free Beacon. “And, you know, there’s been a lot of talk in this campaign, in the primary campaign, about the power of certain interests in our country,” she said. “And we do have a bunch of powerful interests, make no mistake about it. But there is no more powerful lobby than the gun lobby.” Mrs. Clinton has focused her campaign on strict gun control and lashed out at Democratic rival Bernard Sanders this week for not doing the same.

Chelsea Clinton: Gun Control Opportunity on Supreme Court With Scalia Gone. Chelsea Clinton said Thursday at an event in Maryland that there is now an opportunity for gun control legislation to pass the Supreme Court since Justice Antonin Scalia passed away. “It matters to me that my mom also recognizes the role the Supreme Court has when it comes to gun control. With Justice Scalia on the bench, one of the few areas where the Court actually had an inconsistent record relates to gun control,” Clinton said. “Sometimes the Court upheld local and state gun control measures as being compliant with the Second Amendment and sometimes the Court struck them down.” Clinton then touted her mother’s record on gun control issues and knowledge that the Supreme Court has an effect on whether many gun control laws stand.

5am – E         Paul Ryan: I Do The Speaker Job ‘Better’ Than John Boehner Did. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) boasted in a CNN interview published Thursday that he thought he does the job better than his predecessor, John Boehner (R-OH), who resigned last year. CNN host Manu Raju asked Ryan how he dealt with the warring factions in the House’s GOP majority differently than his predecessor had. “I think I do it better,” Ryan said. “Not to knock John, but, um I spend more time with all of our members on a continual basis. And so because I was a person that wasn’t looking for this job, what i’m trying to do is be responsible with the power that comes with the job and decentralize that power and make members more empowered.”

 

6am – A/B/C PRINCE PASSED AWAY YESTERDAY and the fans are heartbroken.  He was an icon in popular culture and his music was adored but instead of paying tribute to the departed — what musician or cultural icon you want to pay tribute to who is ALIVE today?  Why not pay tribute while they alive?  Who do you want to honor today?

6am – D         Is this the future? Chinese researchers unveil human-like ‘robot goddess’  The state of robotics is seemingly moving at warp speed these days. Not only do we have Google’s Boston Dynamics division churning out increasingly adept, capable and nimble robots, we’re also seeing a discernible improvement in the likeness robots bear to humans. The most recent example of this comes to us via China where university researchers recently unveiled a realistic robot called Jia Jia.  Three years in the making, Jia Jia ostensibly looks like a female adult, complete with facial features that can move (she blinks!), realistic facial expressions and human-like hair. Without question, Jia Jia thankfully helps us forget about that eerie looking Scarlett Johansson robot someone built last month.  Designed to mimic a human in as many ways as possible, Jia Jia’s eyes will casually look around a room and her mouth was designed as to correspond with whatever statements she happens to be making.

6am – E         Comments are making the internet worse. So we got rid of them. I used to rely on Above the Law commenters for tips. Now they just spew bile. (Washington Post) – In February 2009, large law firms were in crisis. The stock market was in free fall, Lehman Brothers had recently collapsed, and rumors of lawyer layoffs and firm implosions were rampant. At Above the Law, the legal news website I founded in 2006, my colleague Elie Mystal and I were covering the developments closely. In the reader comments, we noticed persistent predictions bubbling up of layoffs at leading law firm Latham & Watkins. These comments led us to investigate further, working our sources at Latham and reaching out to the firm. When Latham eventually announced its massive, record-setting layoffs, we broke the story — and we owed the scoop, one of our biggest ever, to our comments section. Reader comments in the early days of Above the Law were a treasure trove of information, insight and humor, advancing our mission of bringing greater transparency to an often opaque profession.  Comments were wildly popular; some readers came specifically to read them, and some commenters became Internet celebrities in their own right.

7am – A         INTERVIEW — CHEF GEOFF TRACY  — owns and oversees restaurants in Washington DC including Chef Geoff’s, Chef Geoff’s Downtown, Chef Geoff’s Tysons, and LIA’S, among other restaurants

• Bowser Minimum Wage Law Includes Tipped Workers, But At A Lower Wage
• DC Restaurant Owners, Liberal Activists Both Furious With Mayor’s Minimum Wage Plan. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s proposal to raise the minimum wage of tipped workers in the city is sparking intense blow-back from restaurant owners, who say it will only end up hurting their employees. Bowser unveiled her proposal to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 dollars an hour by 2020, but surprised many by also calling to raise the wage of tipped employees from $2.77 an hour to $7.50, reports The Washington Times. While tipped employees have a low base salary, they largely end up making well over the minimum wage according to business owners in the District.

7am – B/C     INTERVIEW — JAMES ROSEN — Beatles aficionado, the chief Washington correspondent of Fox News and the author of “Cheney One on One: A Candid Conversation with America’s Most Controversial Statesman”

• Fearing appearance of favoritism, RNC blocks rule change. ** James was in Florida covering the RNC rules committee meeting this week
• Paul McCartney tickets in Washington, DC @ the Verizon Center for the highly anticipated August 9th concert. McCartney is nothing short of music royalty.

7am – D         INTERVIEW — CHRIS RICHARDS – Washington Post’s Pop Music Critic

• We’ve lost Prince, our single greatest pop star. (Washington Post/Chris Richards) – “The most significant scene in “Purple Rain” — the 1984 blockbuster that introduced Prince to the entirety of America — comes deep in the action when the young maestro finally strolls onstage to unleash the film’s transcendent title track. As the camera pans across the crowd, we see Jheri-curled funk dudes, Aqua Net glam girls, mulleted wastoids, preps and punks. And that’s exactly who Prince wanted to see when he looked out into this vicious world: a radical congregation of disparate individuals being different, being together, being free. Whether we’ve gotten any closer to that purple paradise over the past three decades is up for debate, but here’s what isn’t: Modernity has produced no greater pop star than Prince.”

7am – E         2016 News:

• Cruz Rips Trump’s Apathy Toward Transgender Bathroom Law: “Have We Gone Stark Raving Nuts?”
• Trump: Transgender People Should Use Whatever Bathroom They Want To
• Indiana’s Pivotal Role in 2016 GOP Race. (RCP/Rebecca Berg) – With support for candidates calcifying in many of the upcoming states on the Republican primary calendar, there are few true battlegrounds left that could swing the outcome of the race, either handing the GOP nomination to Donald Trump or stopping him in his tracks.

8am – A/B/C Congress Removes All State Flags Because Of Mississippi’s Confederate Imagery. Flags from each of the states will no longer be displayed in a tunnel under the Capitol after complaints about the Confederate imagery of Mississippi’s state flag, according to the House Administration Committee. Instead, Michigan Rep. Candice Miller , the chairman of the committee on House Administration, announced Thursday the tunnel will permanently display a reproduction of the commemorative quarters of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and the United States territories. Last year, the state flags, in the tunnel between the Rayburn House Office Building and the Capitol, were ostensibly removed because of renovation to the area. It happened to come after the national debate over the Confederate flag after the shooting of churchgoers at a black church in Charleston last summer. In a statement, Miller acknowledged ordering the new display because Mississippi’s flag includes the Confederate battle flag symbol in its upper left corner.

8am – D         INTERVIEW – TONY FLY – longtime radio DJ and Afternoon Drive radio host on 105 The Vibe WGVX Minneapolis – LOCATED IN in Minneapolis, Minnesota

• Remembering the life and legacy of Prince and discuss what he’s hearing about what happened to Prince there in Minnesota. Music icon Prince, who helped define the sound of the 80’s with songs like “Kiss” and “Purple Rain” died yesterday. The 57-year-old singer was found unresponsive in an elevator at Paisley Park Studios in Chanhassen, Minnesota. Word of his death sparked a massive outpouring of grief outside his famed studios and even from the White House. Authorities are investigating the circumstances surrounding his death.

8am – E         State Department Office Removed Benghazi Files After Congressional Subpoena. Release of records delayed over a year due to removal. (Washington Free Beacon) — State Department officials removed files from the secretary’s office related to the Benghazi attack in Libya and transferred them to another department after receiving a congressional subpoena last spring, delaying the release of the records to Congress for over a year. Attorneys for the State Department said the electronic folders, which contain hundreds of documents related to the Benghazi attack and  Libya, were belatedly rediscovered at the end of last year. They said the files had been overlooked by State Department officials because the executive secretary’s office transferred them to another department and flagged them for archiving last April, shortly after receiving a subpoena from the House Select Committee on Benghazi.