Neil Levesque, DC Human Services Director Laura Zeilinger, KT McFarland & Marilinda Garcia and guest host Amb. John Bolton joined WMAL on Wednesday.

Listen here to Wednesday’s show!

INTERVIEW — NEIL LEVESQUE – Executive Director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics and Political Library at Saint Anselm College

INTERVIEW — Laura Zeilinger – Director of the DC Department of Human Services

INTERVIEW – KT MCFARLAND – Fox News National Security Analyst

INTERVIEW — MARILINDA GARCIA –  New Hampshire political analyst and formerly served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. RNC called her a “rising star” in NH politics.

Mornings on the Mall

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Hosts: Larry O’Connor and guest host Amb. John Bolton

Executive Producer: Heather Smith

5am – A/B/C Rand Paul starts presidential campaign with visit to New Hampshire, working to build momentum. NASHUA, N.H. (AP) — Republican Sen. Rand Paul is set to spend his first full day as a presidential candidate meeting with voters in New Hampshire. Paul is scheduled to speak at a rally in Milford, New Hampshire, on Wednesday afternoon, one day after he announced he was in the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. As he arrived in the state late Tuesday, he made an unannounced stop for about 10 minutes at a Manchester bar that is popular among tea party activists.

5am – D         Q & A with Amb. Bolton

5am – E         South Carolina Officer Is Charged With Murder in Black Man’s Death.(NY Times) — WASHINGTON — A white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., was charged with murder on Tuesday after a video surfaced showing him shooting in the back and killing an apparently unarmed black man while the man ran away. The officer, Michael T. Slager, 33, said he had feared for his life because the man had taken his stun gun in a scuffle after a traffic stop on Saturday.  A video, however, shows the officer firing eight times as the man, Walter L. Scott, 50, fled.  The North Charleston mayor announced the state charges at a news conference Tuesday evening. The shooting came on the heels of high-profile instances of police officers’ using lethal force in New York, Cleveland, Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere. The deaths have set off a national debate over whether the police are too quick to use force, particularly in cases involving black men.

6am – A/B/C            WHAT IS THE OBAMA DOCTRINE?

• President Explains The ‘Obama Doctrine,’ Defends Iran Deal. President Barack Obama opened up about his so-called “Obama doctrine,” the overarching principle that guides his foreign policy in places like the Middle East where his administration recently negotiated a framework of a deal with Iran over its nuclear program, and Cuba where the U.S. recently loosened long-standing travel restrictions.
• Obama Tells Scott Walker To ‘Bone Up On Foreign Policy’ – During an interview that aired on Tuesday, NPR’s Steve Inskeep asked Obama about Walker’s recent comment that he would “absolutely” withdraw from the nuclear deal “on day one” if he were elected president. Obama responded. “And it would be a foolish approach to take, and, you know, perhaps Mr. Walker, after he’s taken some time to bone up on foreign policy, will feel the same way.”

6am – D         INTERVIEW — NEIL LEVESQUE – Executive Director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics and Political Library at Saint Anselm College

• Rand Paul starts presidential campaign with visit to New Hampshire, working to build momentum

6am – E         Britain’s prime minister ate a hot dog with a knife and fork, and it’s a problem. (Washington Post) — On Monday, David Cameron did something very brave. The British prime minister, facing what is likely to be an extremely close race for reelection May 7, went to a voter’s garden and had a meal. Braver still, he allowed the British press to take photographs of him eating the meal. It sounds strange, but in Britain’s election season, food-eating has become political. And it didn’t take long for Brits to notice that Cameron was eating wrong: He was using a knife and a fork to eat a hot dog.

Katie Martin @katie_martin_FX: what kind of monster eats a hot dog with a knife and fork? Via @SkyNews: http://trib.al/Ag4HeKq  3:06 AM – 7 Apr 2015

 Ellen Eaves @elleneaves: “‘David Cameron eats a hotdog with a knife and fork’….. What a prick” – mum expressing her political views 3:54 PM – 6 Apr 2015

Jimmy Willis @realjimmywillis I’m sorry but I can’t possibly vote for someone who eats a bloody hotdog with a knife and fork! @David_Cameronhttp://news.sky.com/story/1459747/cameron-uses-cutlery-to-dodge-hot-dog-blunder

3:14 PM – 6 Apr 2015

7am – A         INTERVIEW — Laura Zeilinger – Director of the DC Department of Human Services

• D.C. mayor proposes tax increases to confront homeless crisis

7am – B         Postal Service Issuing Stamp To Honor Late Poet Maya Angelou Features Someone Else’s Quote. WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Postal Service issued a new limited edition “Forever” stamp Tuesday, honoring the late poet, author and civil rights champion Maya Angelou, but it carries a quote that apparently originated elsewhere. Angelou rose from poverty, segregation and violence to become a force on stage, screen and the printed page. She died last May at her Winston-Salem, North Carolina, home at 86. The stamp dedicated Tuesday at a Washington ceremony showcases Atlanta artist Ross Rossin’s 2013 portrait of Angelou, an oil painting in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery collection. The stamp includes the quotation: “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” Children’s book author Joan Walsh Anglund told The Washington Post the quotation is in her book of poems “A Cup of Sun,” published in 1967. Anglund, 89, said she didn’t know about the stamp but that she hopes it is successful. The quote has been attributed to Angelou before. Last year, while presenting the National Medal of the Arts and Humanities, President Barack Obama attributed the quote to Angelou while honoring other artists. Postal Service spokesman David Partenheimer said Tuesday that the quotation was included because it’s something Angelou referenced frequently.

7am – C         Today’s the big day — you can now sign up for @HBO without having cable. You can now sign up for HBO without having cable. Starting Tuesday, you can buy an HBO subscription without having to pay for cable.  The premium cable channel’s HBO NOW service started to welcome subscribers on Tuesday, a few days ahead of the channel’s biggest premiere of the year, the new season of “Game of Thrones.”   “We’re making HBO available in as many ways as possible to our consumers,” HBO CEO Richard Plepler said. “That’s a win for the consumer, that’s a win for our partners and that’s a win for HBO.” In an exclusive launch day interview with CNNMoney, Plepler said he is “expanding the pie” by giving more people access to HBO. The service costs $14.99 a month, and comes with a 30-day free trial. It is available through Apple TV, iPhones and iPads, as well as one major broadband Internet provider, Cablevision.

For the first time in over 5 years, ABC is beating NBC in the nightly news ratings race. (CNN) — ABC’s evening news ends five-year winning streak for NBC. For the first time in over five years, ABC is beating NBC in the closely-watched nightly news ratings race. What does that mean? It means Brian Williams’ suspension is hurting the “NBC Nightly News” at least a little bit. It also affirms ABC’s decision to appoint David Muir the new anchor of “World News Tonight” last fall.   The Williams-less “Nightly News” lost by about 84,000 total viewers last week. NBC had been expecting this to happen eventually. Its winning streak — dating back to September 2009 — couldn’t last forever. Still, the 6:30 p.m. loss looks bad for Lester Holt, who is filling in for Williams. But many within NBC see Holt as a stabilizing force in a time of turmoil and believe he’s maintained the ratings more successfully than anyone else could have.

7am – D         INTERVIEW – KT MCFARLAND – Fox News National Security Analyst @KTMCFARLAND

• President Explains The ‘Obama Doctrine,’ Defends Iran Deal. President Barack Obama opened up about his so-called “Obama doctrine,” the overarching principle that guides his foreign policy in places like the Middle East where his administration recently negotiated a framework of a deal with Iran over its nuclear program, and Cuba where the U.S. recently loosened long-standing travel restrictions.
• Obama Tells Scott Walker To ‘Bone Up On Foreign Policy’. During an interview that aired on Tuesday, NPR’s Steve Inskeep asked Obama about Walker’s recent comment that he would “absolutely” withdraw from the nuclear deal “on day one” if he were elected president. Obama responded. “And it would be a foolish approach to take, and, you know, perhaps Mr. Walker, after he’s taken some time to bone up on foreign policy, will feel the same way.”
• Obama, Raul Castro set to meet for first time since U.S.-Cuba diplomatic thaw:  Four months after announcing a historic diplomatic thaw with Cuba, and with key questions about the future of the two nations’ relationship still unanswered, President Obama will come face-to-face with the leader of the communist island later this week at a top-level summit in Panama. White House officials say it’s all but certain Mr. Obama will “interact” with Cuban President Raul Castro at the Summit of the Americas, which begins Friday.

7am – E         Power surge knocks out electrical service in parts of D.C. region.(Washington Post) — A piece of metal breaking loose from a power line 43 miles southeast of the District momentarily knocked out electricity to the White House, State Department and wide swaths of the nation’s capital and Maryland suburbs early Tuesday afternoon. But many in the city barely noticed. The outage threw scores of public and private office buildings off the grid, but in most cases, the lights stayed on because backup generators kicked in. That wasn’t true everywhere. A dozen people were trapped in stalled elevators, passengers were left searching for exits in darkened underground Metro stations, and a building full of Department of Energy employees and the main campus of the University of Maryland closed their doors. Thousands of visitors at Smithsonian museums on the Mall had to leave for hours. While the outage caused little more than a blip for many others, it took most of the afternoon to fully restore electricity. The outage immediately caught the attention of national security officials, who have heightened their scrutiny of vulnerabilities of the U.S. electricity grid after recent reports that nations such as China and Iran have infiltrated U.S. power company networks. Homeland security officials concluded Tuesday that terrorism had played no part in an outage that was quickly blamed on the failure of a simple piece of transmission equipment in southern Maryland.

8am – A         INTERVIEW — MARILINDA GARCIA –  New Hampshire political analyst and formerly served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. RNC called her a “rising star” in NH politics.

• Rand Paul starts presidential campaign with visit to New Hampshire, working to build momentum.

8am – B/C     Amb. Bolton and Larry discuss Rand Paul’s bid for the presidency.

8am – D         Would you vote for a man with facial hair?

• Uncovering the face value of beards. (The Guardian) — From pharaohs to presidents, hipsters to hippies, The ‘powerful distinguishing mark’ of facial hair has social, political and sexual connotations. A beard has both social and political meanings.  “A powerful distinguishing mark, the appearance of facial hair plays a key role in the process of asserting or stigmatising identity,” says ethnologist Christian Bromberger.  “Being hairless and clean-shaven, or not, is far from neutral,” says Stéphane Héas, a sociologist at Rennes 2 University. “One’s appearance impacts directly on the way others judge us.” Beards often have political connotations. The pharaohs wore fake beards, not to accentuate their wisdom, but because they were seen as a divine attribute, “a symbol of power”, Bromberger says. During France’s Third Republic a large number of politicians reinstated this tradition. Jean Jaurès, a leading figure on the left, Paul Doumer and Émile Loubet, who both served as president, all had beards.

TOMORROW:  guest host Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer