VA Senator Stephen Martin, KT McFarland, Hans Von Spakovsky, Newt Gingrich and Sharyl Attkisson joined WMAL on Wednesday.

Listen here to Wednesday's show.

INTERVIEW — NEWT GINGRICH – Former Speaker of the House and 2012 presidential candidate

INTERVIEW – SHARYL ATTKISSON – former CBS investigative reporter and author of book “Stonewalled” — Sharyl Attkisson is an author and formerly an investigative correspondent in the Washington bureau for CBS News. She had also substituted as anchor for the CBS Evening News

INTERVIEW – HANS VON SPAKOVSKY, a former commissioner for the Federal Election Commission from 2006 to 2007, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and co-author of  book "Obama's Enforcer: Eric Holder's Justice Department"

Mornings on the Mall

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

5am – A/B/C DRIVE AT FIVE INTERVIEW – VIRGINIA SENATOR STEPHEN MARTIN (R-Chesterfield)

• Feral-cat bill scratches its way through Virginia General Assembly. (Washington Post) — RICHMOND — Virginia lawmakers love birds, and they love cats. They don’t want to choose. Yet they must take a side as legislation championed by cat people and loathed by bird-watchers claws its way out of the Capitol. “I am not anti-cat,” Sen. Thomas A. Garrett Jr. (R-Louisa) said during a Senate debate Thursday, minutes after distributing to lawmakers an article accusing cats of killing up to 3.7 billion birds a year. “We love the game birds. We love the songbirds. We love them. We want to protect them,” said Sen. Stephen H. Martin (R-Chesterfield). His bill would do that, he said, by making it easier to trap, neuter and then release feral felines. Under current law, anyone who even temporarily takes in a wild kitty could be found guilty of misdemeanor abandonment for returning the cat to the streets. But bird enthusiasts see “trap-neuter-release” programs as a failed experiment that promotes the existence of vicious cat colonies that gather around free food. In a subcommittee hearing, senators were confronted with pictures of dead birds and tales of wild-cat dander putting allergic bystanders in the hospital.

5am – D         Controversy over Netanyahu’s Visit:

• Rep. Van Hollen Unsure About Attending Netanyahu Speech. List of Democrats Skipping Continues To Grow. (Heather Smith/The Daily Caller) — Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee and leading voice in the House, expressed concerns about attending Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before a joint session of Congress next month. “I haven’t made up my mind but I do believe that it was a huge mistake for Speaker Boehner to extend this invitation unilaterally without consulting with the White House or the Democrats in Congress,” Van Hollen told NewsChannel 8 on Tuesday. “I think it was a mistake for the prime minister to accept but I’ll be looking at whether attending is an appropriate way to indicate the fact that I didn’t think this was a good idea or not.” According to The Hill’s “Whip List” of Democrats skipping Netanyahu’s speech before Congress, Reps. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina, James Clyburn of South Carolina, Keith Ellison of Minnesta, Raul Grijalva of Arizona, Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, Barbara Lee of California, Betty McCollum of Minnesota, Jim McDermott of Washington, Gregory Meeks of New York, John Lewis of Georgia, Charlie Rangel of New York and D.C.’s Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton plan to not attend. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Patrick Leahy joined the opposition as the first senators planning to skip Netanyahu’s March 3 address.
• After Refusing to Meet With Netanyahu, Biden and Kerry Meet With Israeli Opposition Leader. (Jim Hoft) — Joe Biden will skip Israeli Prime Minister’s Congressional speech in March. He is going to leave the country. Minority Leader Pelosi says Democrats will be busy and she hopes the event won’t take place.  And the Obama administration told Black Caucus members to skip the speech and to publicly speak out against it. But Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry met with Israeli Labor leader Isaac Herzog this weekend in Germany. Kerry and Biden scheduled an under-the-radar meeting with Netanyahu’s election opponent Isaac Herzog while in Munich over the weekend.

5am – E         Montgomery Co. votes to change school start times. (Washington Post) — Montgomery County’s high school students soon will be able to get 20 extra minutes of sleep every weekday morning, after a school board vote Tuesday to shift school hours for students across the district. The first high school bells, which now ring at 7:25 a.m., will ring at 7:45 a.m. next school year.  Middle schools will shift 20 minutes later, and elementary schools will begin 10 minutes later, according to the plan approved for Maryland’s largest school district. Tuesday’s decision followed intense discussion across years, beginning with a parent-driven petition in 2012 to change start times so county teenagers could get more sleep. Advocates cited research that shows teens operate on a sleep cycle in which they naturally want to go to bed later and rise later, and that a lack of sleep can lead to myriad health and academic problems.

6am – A         INTERVIEW – KT MCFARLAND – Fox News National Security Analyst

• War powers request this week: The White House is expected to send Congress a proposal for the use of military force against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) by Wednesday, according to two congressional aides. The request for authorization for use of military force (AUMF) would allow members of Congress to formally approve the Obama administration's campaign against ISIS, six months after a U.S.-led air campaign against the group began.
• American hostage Mueller's family, U.S. government say she is dead. (Reuters) —  U.S. aid worker Kayla Mueller, held hostage by Islamic State militants for 18 months, is dead, her family said on Tuesday, but the circumstances were unclear and President Barack Obama vowed to hunt down the culprits. Mueller's family received an email and photograph over the weekend from her captors that enabled American intelligence to determine that she had been killed, U.S. officials said. Islamic State said on Friday that Mueller, 26, was killed when Jordanian fighter jets bombed a building where she was being held outside Raqqa, a stronghold in Syria of the Islamist militant group.
• List of Democrats Skipping Netanyahu's Speech Continues To Grow.  According to The Hill’s “Whip List” of Democrats skipping Netanyahu’s speech before Congress, Reps. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina, James Clyburn of South Carolina, Keith Ellison of Minnesta, Raul Grijalva of Arizona, Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, Barbara Lee of California, Betty McCollum of Minnesota, Jim McDermott of Washington, Gregory Meeks of New York, John Lewis of Georgia, Charlie Rangel of New York and D.C.’s Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton plan to not attend. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Patrick Leahy joined the opposition as the first senators planning to skip Netanyahu’s March 3 address. President Obama reiterated on Monday that he does not plan to meet with Netanyahu.
• ACUF Senior Fellow KT McFarland to be Honored by the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute at CPAC 2015. Congratulations are in order for ACUF Senior Fellow KT McFarland who has been named Woman of the Year by the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute.  She will be honored at a luncheon to be held by the Institute on Saturday February 28 from 12:00PM – 2:00PM at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center. 

6am – B         Rep. Cummings: People ‘Come to Government To Feed Their Souls.’ (CNSNews.com) – Rep. Elijah Cummings (D–Md.) says, “so many people come to government knowing that they are not going to make the kind of money they would make in the private sector but they come to government to feed their souls.” Cummings was speaking in Washington D.C. at the Legislative Conference of the National Treasury Employees Union on February 4th when he made the comments. “People do not seem to understand that so many people come to government knowing that they are not going to make the kind of money that they would make in the private sector but they come to government to feed their souls,” Cummings told the audience. The Maryland Democrat also told union members that getting federal workers a raise higher than the one proposed in President Obama’s budget is among his priorities.

6am – C         Suspected Thief Let Out on Bond Four Times in a Month. (NBC Washington/Tracee Wilkins) — A man suspected of being a part of a theft ring has been let out on bond four times over the past month. Six men and women were arrested following a raid at a foreclosed Prince George's County mansion last week. Officers later arrested 19-year-old Timothy Isaac Foxx on 10 charges, and believe he led those six individuals in a theft ring. Police believe he most recently stole a Rolls-Royce golf cart, found at the multi-million dollar Tantallon home. He was released on bond — his fourth in just a month. On Jan. 3, he was arrested on six charges including theft of a stolen vehicle in Prince George's County. He posted bond and was released. He was charged with seven counts of theft and burglary also in Prince George's County, less than three weeks later on Jan. 21. Yet again, he posted bond and was released.

6am – D         NBC suspends Brian Williams for 6 months without pay. (FoxNews) – Brian Williams, anchor and managing editor of "NBC Nightly News," has been suspended without pay for six months following his continued misrepresentation of events surrounding his coverage of the Iraq War, NBC said Tuesday night. "We have decided today to suspend Brian Williams as managing editor and anchor of NBC Nightly News for six months," NBC News president Deborah Turness said in a memo to staff sent to FoxNews.com. "The suspension will be without pay and is effective immediately. We let Brian know of our decision earlier today. Lester Holt will continue to substitute anchor the NBC Nightly News."

6am – E         Obama In Hot Water Over ‘Random’ Comment:

• AP's Matt Lee Grills State Dept's Psaki: Does Obama Really Think French Deli Attack Was "Random?"

MATT LEE, ASSOCIATED PRESS: Yesterday, the president in his news conference raised some eyebrows by saying victims of the shooting in Paris at a kosher deli were "random." The White House apparently said something similar today. Does the administration really believe these people were not singled out because they were of a particular faith.

JEN PSAKI, U.S. STATE DEPT: Well, if I remember the victims, specifically, they were not all victims of one background or nationality, so I think what they mean by that is don't know if they spoke to the targeting of the grocery store but the individuals who were impacted.

MATT LEE: Well, I mean, right, but when the Secretary went and paid respects, he was with a member of the Jewish community there.

JEN PSAKI: Naturally, given that that is the nature of of the grocery store—

MATT LEE: Don't you think the target may be even if all the victims came from different backgrounds, the store itself was the target, was it not?

JEN PSAKI: That is different that the individuals– I don't have anything more to really—

MATT LEE: Does the administration believe that this was an anti-Jewish attack? An attack on a Jewish community in Paris?

JEN PSAKI: I don't think we're going to speak on behalf of French authorities and what they believe was the situation there.

• White House Says Shooting at Kosher Market in Paris Was 'Random.' (ABC News) — President Obama has raised some eyebrows by suggesting in his interview with VOX.com that the shooting at a Kosher supermarket in Paris last month was “random.” It was a comment the president made in making the case that the media overstates the terrorist threat and that his job fighting terrorism is akin to a big-city mayor fighting crime. "It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be deeply concerned when you've got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris," Obama told Vox's Matt Yglesias in the interview. "We devote enormous resources to that, and it is right and appropriate for us to be vigilant and aggressive in trying to deal with that — the same way a big city mayor's got to cut the crime rate down if he wants that city to thrive. But we also have to attend to a lot of other issues, and we've got to make sure we're right-sizing our approach so that what we do isn't counterproductive."

7am – A         INTERVIEW – HANS VON SPAKOVSKY, a former commissioner for the Federal Election Commission from 2006 to 2007, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and co-author of  book "Obama's Enforcer: Eric Holder's Justice Department"

• DC-Area Election News:
  • HANS NEWS: Hans is scheduled to testify on Wednesday at 1:00 pm in an all-day hearing before the Federal Election Commission.  There is a push by the new chairman of the FEC, Ann Ravel, an Obama appointee, to have the FEC increase its very limited regulation of political activity by candidates on the Internet.  She seems to want bloggers and others who post political commentary that might influence elections to have to report on their activity to the FEC.  He will be testifying that this is a very bad idea and a violation of basic First Amendment rights.
  • Va. House approves ID requirement for absentee voting requested by mail. The Virginia House of Delegates on Monday passed a bill that would put additional limits on voting in a state where the laws are already among the most restrictive. Under the bill, voters would have to submit a copy of their photo identification when they apply by mail to vote by absentee ballot. Currently, only people who apply for absentee ballots in person have to present a photo ID.
  • Arlington County is eyeing new state-of-the art voting machines to replace its newer touchscreen machines. Arlington County is eyeing new state-of-the art voting machines. Like other localities in Virginia, the county has to get rid of its newer touchscreen machines since they do not provide a paper trail. But the county is looking at dumping all of its current voting machines.
  • McAuliffe appointee to elections board bows out amid GOP complaints. Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s nominee to represent the GOP on the State Board of Elections has bowed out amid Republican complaints that he had voted in recent Democratic primaries. Matthew Gray of Richmond, state director of the Humane Society of the United States, said in a letter sent to the governor Friday that he wanted to avoid a contentious confirmation process.
  • DC's November election had lots of problems, an audit finds:  The D.C. Board of Elections is coming under new criticism of its performance in the general election last November. An audit found one in four polling places wasn't properly staffed. On Nov. 4, investigators from the D.C. auditor's office visited 89 of the District's 143 precincts unannounced. Twenty-three of those polling places didn't have the required staff, 37 precincts weren't fully accessible for people with disabilities and 57 had problems with equipment.

7am – B         Jon Stewart says he’s leaving The Daily Show. (Variety) — Jon Stewart said all the right things Tuesday, but if he’s normal at all, he should really, really miss “The Daily Show.” For years, Stewart was the rumored candidate for every latenight job that opened up, or even might open up. Then he turned “The Daily Show” into one of TV’s most enviable showcases – a platform that injected him into the cultural and political zeitgeist, while paying him a fortune and allowing him to have a hand in producing other programs for Comedy Central. Given all that, seeing him walk away from the gig, as the network announced prior to the program, came as something of a shock to the system – a “Why would he?” moment. Sounding gracious and humble, Stewart devoted the last few minutes of his program to telling the studio audience what TV viewers already knew. “Seventeen years is the longest I have ever in my life held a job by 16 years and five months,” he joked, adding, “In my heart I know it is time for someone else to have that opportunity.” Calling his “Daily Show” stint “an absolute privilege, the honor of my professional life,” Stewart noted, “This show doesn’t deserve an even slightly restless host, and neither do you.” As for his official exit, Stewart said the details are still being worked out, but it could be slightly before or after the conclusion of his current contract in September. Either way, he won’t be around for the network’s “Indecision 2016″ election coverage.

7am – C         Scientists Calculated How Many Licks It Takes to Get to the Center of a Lollipop. (Esquire) — In related news, a well-educated owl is now looking for work.  The number of licks it takes to get to the center of an average-size lollipop is approximately 1,000, according to an actual scientific study recently conducted by researchers at New York University and published in Journal of Fluid Mechanics. While the researchers didn't exactly set out to count lollipop licks, they used lollipops and water to examine the way liquid flows over an object. Beyond candy land, this has practical implications for pharmacists to develop pills that dissolve and geologists who study the way rivers and streams carve different landscapes. "Licking a lollipop can be viewed in exactly that way," explains study co-author Leif Ristroph, an assistant professor of mathematics at New York University's Courant Institute. "The tongue sweeps fluid (saliva) over the candy surface, and the fluid carries away the dissolved sugars." With this in mind, Ristroph and his team calculated the rate at which candy dissolves and used the mathematical equation to estimate the number of licks it would take to dissolve a lollipop in your mouth: 1,000, which isn't far off from some of the estimates posted by online experimenters, according to Ristroph.

7am – D         VALENTINE'S DAY – Are you emergency preparing?

7am – E         Liberal Vox.com Editor Gives Advice To Young Journalists:

• Ezra Klein Offers Terrible Advice To Young Journalists. (Daily Caller/Betsy Rothstein) — There’s only one thing left to do on the day you release a lengthy, nothing burger interview with President Obama. You share your vast wisdom with young journalists because the novices really need to know what you think. As if you needed to guess, Vox Democratic operative Ezra Klein, 30, offered advice to young journalists on Monday. In his essay, he complimented his wife, New York mag’s Annie Lowery, without explaining their marital relationship, he showered BuzzFeed with kisses and he gave himself and his relatively new site a hearty pat on the back. “This is my best advice to young journalists,” he writes in his headline. Klein can’t resist endorsing the model he’s set up at Vox: In particular, your editor will often want something ‘new.’ That is to say, they will want something that they, a highly educated hyper-consumer of news products, hasn’t seen before. But your readers don’t necessarily want the stories your editors haven’t read. They want the stories that explain their world to them. Those stories are often absurdly basic, and they might feel like repeats of past stories: What’s in this bill? Why do we care about inflation? What does the Fed do?” He love taps BuzzFeed‘s Andrew Kaczynksi, calling him “a force” in campaign journalism who showed up campaign journalists for being lazy. He conjured up an example of Kaczynski unearthing a USA Today op-ed by Mitt Romney encouraging President Obama to add an individual mandate to his Affordability Care Act. He doesn’t mention Kaczynksi’s major Boston Marathon fuck up that landed in an episode of HBO’s The Newsroom. He basically got the bomber’s identities wrong. (No big deal. But shhhh….young journos, don’t do that.)

• FLASHBACK 2012: Tucker Carlson Gives Brutally Honest Speech to Aspiring Writers at CATO Luncheon. (Red Alert Politics) — Conservative media mogul Tucker Carlson had blunt advice for young people at a Cato Institute luncheon in Washington, DC on Wednesday afternoon. At an event intended to teach aspiring journalists how to get noticed, Carlson told young people that the mantra that, ‘You can be anything you want to be,’ isn’t true. “No you can’t. You can’t be most things that you want to be. Why? Because you’re not capable of it,” Carlson told the audience. The theme of Carlson’s brutally honest speech could be summed up with this direct quote. “Most people’s voices are not worth being heard.”

8am – A         INTERVIEW — NEWT GINGRICH – Former Speaker of the House and 2012 presidential candidate

• Newt will be speaking today at the Defeat Jihad Summit in DC. His speech will follow along the same lines as his speech on Radical Islam in Iowa that has generated a lot of buzz.  The event will be live streamed from 9:00am to 3:00pm at: http://youtu.be/xl-7nxBOWyU / This event will be conducted in a roundtable discussion format involving some 35 distinguished counter-jihadists. Among the eminent participants will be: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, Representatives Steven King and Mike Pompeo, Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, Danish free speech advocate Lars Hedegaard and Britain’s Lord Malcolm Pearson.
• In 2010, Newt hosted and produced a documentary about terrorism "America At Risk" The film was hosted by Newt and Callista Gingrich, vividly demonstrating the dangers facing America, one decade after the attacks on 9/11. www.americaatrisk.com/
• War powers request this week
• American hostage Mueller's family, U.S. government say she is dead.
• List of Democrats Skipping Netanyahu's Speech Continues To Grow.

8am – B         Entertainment News:

• MORE KIDS: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to adopt child from Syria. LOS ÁNGELES, Feb. 9 (UPI) — Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie will reportedly adopting their seventh child. According to Australian magazine Women's Day, the celebrity couple is in negotiations to adopt a 2-year-old Syrian boy named Moussa. The toddler currently resides in the Altinozu refugee camp in Turkey. Jolie reportedly met Moussa during a United Nations visit to the refugee camp where he lives. If reports are true, the new baby will join Pitt and Jolie's three other adopted children Maddox, 13, Pax, 11, Zahara, 9, as well as the couple's three biological children Shiloh, 8, and twins Vivienne and Knox, 5.
• CREEPY: Family to let Bobbi Kristina die on same day as Whitney. Bobbi Kristina Brown’s anguished relatives have agreed to take her off life support — but want to wait until Wednesday so she can die on the same date as her tragic mom, Whitney Houston, sources told The Post. Bobbi’s grandmother Cissy Houston floated the idea of a Feb. 11 death over the weekend during discussions with the Brown family at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. The Browns gave their blessing to pull the plug at the stroke of midnight to align the date with the 2012 passing of the legendary singer at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. The move is a symbolic way to keep the mother and daughter together for eternity, according to a Brown family source. Bobbi Kristina, 21, the only child of Houston and singer Bobby Brown, has been in a medically induced coma since she was found unresponsive in a bathtub in her Roswell, Georgia, home Jan. 31.
• What has Uma Thurman done to her face? Actress' suspiciously smooth forehead and tight smile leave her almost unrecognizable. (Daily Mail) — She is renowned as a natural beauty but Uma Thurman was almost unrecognisable at the premiere party for her new miniseries The Slap on Monday in New York City. The 44-year-old actress turned heads for all the wrong reasons as she stepped out with a suspiciously smooth forehead and puffy face along with an extremely tight smile.  While Uma's transformation was not as dramatic as that of fellow actress Renee Zellweger, who caused shockwaves with her drastically altered appearance last year, there was no denying she was looking decidedly different.

8am – C         Axelrod: Obama Misled Nation When He Opposed Gay Marriage In 2008. (TIME) — A striking admission of political dishonesty from the keeper of the Obama flame. Barack Obama misled Americans for his own political benefit when he claimed in the 2008 election to oppose same sex marriage for religious reasons, his former political strategist David Axelrod writes in a new book, Believer: My Forty Years in Politics. “I’m just not very good at bullshitting,” Obama told Axelrod, after an event where he stated his opposition to same-sex marriage, according to the book. Axelrod writes that he knew Obama was in favor of same-sex marriages during the first presidential campaign, even as Obama publicly said he only supported civil unions, not full marriages. Axelrod also admits to counseling Obama to conceal that position for political reasons. “Opposition to gay marriage was particularly strong in the black church, and as he ran for higher office, he grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a ‘sacred union,’ ” Axelrod writes.

8am – D         INTERVIEW – SHARYL ATTKISSON – former CBS investigative reporter and author of book “Stonewalled” — Sharyl Attkisson is an author and formerly an investigative correspondent in the Washington bureau for CBS News. She had also substituted as anchor for the CBS Evening News

• NBC suspends Brian Williams for 6 months without pay