Joe diGenova, Tom Bevan and Governor Haley Barbour joined WMAL on Monday!

Mornings on the Mall

Monday, August 31, 2015

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

Executive Producer: Heather Smith

5am – A/B/C White House renames Mount McKinley as Denali on eve of trip. WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration will change the name of North America’s tallest mountain peak from Mount McKinley to Denali, the White House said Sunday, a major symbolic gesture to Alaska Natives on the eve of President Barack Obama’s historic visit to Alaska. By renaming the peak Denali, an Athabascan word meaning “the high one,” Obama waded into a sensitive and decades-old conflict between residents of Alaska and Ohio. Alaskans have informally called the mountain Denali for years, but the federal government recognizes its name invoking the 25th president, William McKinley, who was born in Ohio and assassinated early in his second term. “With our own sense of reverence for this place, we are officially renaming the mountain Denali in recognition of the traditions of Alaska Natives and the strong support of the people of Alaska,” said Interior Secretary Sally Jewell.         

5am – D         Houston police officer killed because of uniform: county sheriff. The killing of a U.S. police officer on Friday in a Houston suburb was unprovoked, a county sheriff said, saying the victim was a target because of his uniform. “It appears to be clearly unprovoked,” said Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman on Saturday, speaking of Friday’s shooting of Darren Goforth at a gas station. Sheriff’s deputies on Saturday arrested Shannon Miles, 30, who will be charged with capital murder for the shooting, which Hickman said was captured on surveillance video. Goforth, a 10-year veteran, was gassing up his patrol car when the gunman approached from behind, shot him in the back and shot him again as he lay on the ground, officials said.

5am – E         IOWA POLLS:

• Trump, Carson in close fight in Iowa poll. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and businessman Donald Trump are neck-and-neck for the GOP’s 2016 presidential nomination in Iowa, a new poll says. The Bloomberg/Des Moines Register survey released on Saturday finds Trump won the poll overall, getting 23 percent support. Carson comes in second at 18 percent. The next-closest competitors are Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at 8 percent each.
• Bernie Sanders Surging: In the Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll, Sanders is now polling just seven points behind Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton, nearly doubling his share of the vote since the last survey was conducted in May. Sanders takes 30 percent support, while Clinton draws 37 percent, marking the first time she’s dropped below 50 percent in the poll.

6am – A/B/C Parents can track whether their college-aged kids are going to classes. (Washington Post) — Parents who want their kids to succeed more than anything are now being sold a high-tech solution. Class 120 is a $199-a-year smartphone app that tracks your teenager and alerts you if the kid isn’t in her scheduled class, and, according to figures provided by the company, 4,000 subscribers are enrolled for the upcoming fall semester. For the more budget-minded parent, surveillance apps including “My Mobile Watchdog” ($44.95) and “Sygic Family Locator” ($24.99) can perform similar surveillance duties from an iPhone or Android. Attendance is a great predictor of college grades, even more so than scores on standardized admissions tests. If grades are good predictors of graduation, and if a parent is paying for college, isn’t it a great idea for parents to track whether their young adults are in class?

6am – D         An upsetting Cecil the Lion Halloween costume has left people outraged. (Newsday) — The Halloween wars focused on pop culture costumes have heated up early this year. Petitions and social media outrage are already flying over a blood-spattered dentist’s smock paired with a Cecil-like lion head. Animal rights activist Doreen Harley in Indianapolis set out to do in a dustup with Johnathon Weeks, owner in Palm Springs, California, of Costumeish.com. He came up with the “Lion Killer Dentist” costume based on Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist who generated a world of wrath when he and his hunting party killed the beloved Cecil in Zimbabwe. Weeks recently put the costume on sale for $59.99, upping the price to $99.99. Harley took to Facebook and Twitter to protest, and she started an online campaign to have Weeks pull the costume. She now has more than 50,000 signatures and a promise from Weeks to donate his profits from the dentist’s smock, lion head and bloody surgical gloves to a wildlife organization.

6am – E         Democratic In-Fighting:

• Bernie Sanders Surging: In the Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll, Sanders is now polling just seven points behind Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton, nearly doubling his share of the vote since the last survey was conducted in May. Sanders takes 30 percent support, while Clinton draws 37 percent, marking the first time she’s dropped below 50 percent in the poll.
• O’Malley, Sander criticize small Democratic debate schedule, suggest its rigged to favor Clinton. (Fox News) –Two top Democratic candidates in the 2016 White House race suggested Friday night that party leaders have rigged the debate schedule in favor of frontrunner Hillary Clinton. “Only four debates … before voters in our earliest states make their decision,” Martin O’Malley, a former Maryland governor, said at the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting in Minneapolis. “This sort of rigged process has never been attempted before.” O’Malley is particularly concerned about the party having just one sanctioned debate each in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states in which primary votes are cast. “That’s all we can afford?” O’Malley asked. “Is this how the Democratic Party selects its nominee?” He also argued that limiting the total number of sanctioned Democratic debates to six, including two after the Iowa and New Hampshire votes, is allowing the rhetoric of Republicans candidates to go largely unchallenged. “Republicans traffic in immigrant hate,” said O’Malley, who has been critical of the debate schedule since it was announced in early August. “We need debate.”

7am – A         INTERVIEW – JOE DIGENOVA – legal analyst and former U.S. Attorney to the District of Columbia

• Virginia teenager gets 11 years for tweeting support for ISIS: A Virginia teenager behind a powerful pro-extremist Twitter account who helped a friend travel to Syria to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was sentenced to 11 years in prison on Friday.
• Houston police officer killed because of uniform: county sheriff. The killing of a U.S. police officer on Friday in a Houston suburb was unprovoked, a county sheriff said, saying the victim was a target because of his uniform. Sheriff’s deputies on Saturday arrested Shannon Miles, 30, who will be charged with capital murder for the shooting, which Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman said was captured on surveillance video.
• State to release largest batch of Clinton emails so far. The roiling controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state looks likely to intensify Monday with the State Department set to release the largest batch of her messages made public thus far. The sheer size of the planned posting on the State Department’s website—at least 6,106 pages, according to a recent court filing—should give Clinton’s critics and her defenders a lot to digest. The volume of emails slated to go public Monday is roughly the same as that of all of Clinton’s messages unveiled up to this point.

7am – B        Chrissie Hynde Criticized for Comments About Rape After Revealing Sexual Assault: ‘You Have to Take Responsibility’ (People) — The Pretenders lead singer Chrissie Hynde is taking major heat from critics after making controversial comments about her own sexual assault. “You can’t paint yourself into a corner and then say, ‘Whose brush is this?’ ” the singer, 63, said in a recent interview with Sunday Times. “You have to take responsibility. I mean, I was naive.” According to Hynde, a member of an Ohio biker gang brought her to a vacant house when she was 21 and forced her to perform sexual acts while threatening violence. The singer said that she blames herself for the sexual assault that occurred. “Technically speaking, however you want to look at it, this was all my doing, and I take full responsibility,” Hynde said. “You can’t f— about with people, especially people who wear ‘I Heart Rape’ and ‘On Your Knees’ badges … Those motorcycle gangs, that’s what they do.”

7am – C Critter News: Cat starts house fire by accident. SUITLAND, Md. —Prince Georges County Fire battled a house fire Sunday started by a cat, the department said. The fire occurred at about 7:45 p.m. in the 2100 block of DuPont Avenue in Suitland. According to a department spokesperson, a cat knocked a candle onto a mattress, which sparked the fire. No injuries were reported. Two adults were displaced. The cat also survived.

7am – D         White House renames Mount McKinley as Denali on eve of trip. WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration will change the name of North America’s tallest mountain peak from Mount McKinley to Denali, the White House said Sunday, a major symbolic gesture to Alaska Natives on the eve of President Barack Obama’s historic visit to Alaska. By renaming the peak Denali, an Athabascan word meaning “the high one,” Obama waded into a sensitive and decades-old conflict between residents of Alaska and Ohio. Alaskans have informally called the mountain Denali for years, but the federal government recognizes its name invoking the 25th president, William McKinley, who was born in Ohio and assassinated early in his second term. “With our own sense of reverence for this place, we are officially renaming the mountain Denali in recognition of the traditions of Alaska Natives and the strong support of the people of Alaska,” said Interior Secretary Sally Jewell.

7am – E         370,000 Students Head Back to School in Md. and Va. It’s the first day of school for students in Montgomery County, one of the 20 largest school systems in the nation. Students will also head back to class in Charles County, Maryland, and several counties in Virginia. More than 156,000 students are expected to enroll in the county’s schools this year. Interim Superintendent Larry Bowers, County Executive Isiah Leggett and other officials will talk about the growing enrollment and the school system’s priorities for the year at a news conference on Monday morning. They will speak at Wheaton Woods Elementary School in Rockville. Students in Charles County, Maryland, will also head back to school Monday. This year, the district built more snow days into the calendar by shortening Spring Break this year. Charles County will also have free breakfast for all students next week to celebrate the growth of the free breakfast program over the last five years. In Virginia, 73,000 students will be back in class in Loudoun County, and here’s a change some high school students may like — they will not have to take midterms or finals this year. Snow days from back-to-back stormy winters cancelled the tests the past two years. Loudoun County administrators will also open Riverside High School for the first time.

University to mark down students who say ‘illegal immigrants’ in class. Professors at a US university have told students that they risk failing their assignments and even their semester if they use offensive or hateful language in class or submissions. Two programmes taught at Washington State University have set out clear restrictions upon the language students can use, banning terms such as “The Man”, “Coloured People” and “Illegals/ Illegal Aliens”. The terms have been forbidden by certain professors on the basis that they are “oppressive and hateful”, according to one of the syllabuses reported by Campus Reform. The “Course Notes and Policies” of the university’s “Women & Popular Culture” course taught by Professor Selena Lester Breikss specifies that “Gross generalisations, stereotypes, and derogatory/oppressive language are not acceptable”.

Montgomery Co. schools open with new start times. The president of the Montgomery County Board of Education, O’Neill wished everyone “Happy New Year!” during an interview with WTOP on Monday morning, the first day of classes for 2015-2016. The big change for the new year involves school start times. High school and middle school classes will start 20 minutes later than previously; elementary school days will start 10 minutes later and end 20 minutes later. The high school day now runs from 7:45 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; middle schools, 8:15 a.m. to 3 p.m.; elementary schools in Tier 1, from 9 a.m. to 3:25 p.m., and elementary schools in Tier 2, from 9:25 a.m. to 3:50 p.m. “We’re very excited about this,” O’Neill says, adding that it has to do with reports that later start times fit better with kids’ sleep schedules.

8am – A         INTERVIEW – TOM BEVAN – EXECUTIVE EDITOR, REAL CLEAR POLITICS

• Trump, Carson in close fight in Iowa poll.
• Bernie Sanders Surging: Sanders takes 30 percent support, while Clinton draws 37 percent, marking the first time she’s dropped below 50 percent in the poll.
• State to release largest batch of Clinton emails so far. The roiling controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state looks likely to intensify Monday with the State Department set to release the largest batch of her messages made public thus far.

8am – B         With RG3 out, Cousins starts and throws for 190 yards to help Redskins beat Ravens 31-13. BALTIMORE (AP) — Jay Gruden intends to judge the health of Robert Griffin III before choosing his starting quarterback in the regular season. If RG3 can’t go, then Kirk Cousins is more than happy to take his place atop the Redskins’ depth chart. Cousins filled in capably for Griffin on Saturday night, throwing for 190 yards and a touchdown as Washington beat the Baltimore Ravens 31-13.

Sources: Redskins brass at odds over ending Robert Griffin III era. High-ranking Washington Redskins front-office officials and coaches want to part ways with quarterback Robert Griffin III, but are meeting resistance from team ownership, according to team and league sources.

8am – C         RIP:

• Legendary Horror Director Wes Craven Dies At 76. Wes Craven, the director of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Scream,” died Sunday at 76. The celebrated horror master battled brain cancer, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Craven is one of the past few decades’ most recognizable filmmakers, having transformed the slasher movie with the aforementioned box-office triumphs, both of which spawned numerous sequels. “Scream,” in particular, is credited with reinvigorating the teen horror film thanks to a tongue-in-cheek script that both parodied and praised the genre. But long before “Scream” became one of 1996’s highest-grossing releases, Craven cemented his status as the influential writer and director of exploitation films like “The Last House on the Left” (1972), “The Hills Have Eyes” (1977) “Swamp Thing” (1982) and “The People Under the Stairs” (1991). He broke from his signature genre with the 1999 drama “Music of the Heart,” for which Meryl Streep earned an Oscar nomination, and one of the shorts within the acclaimed 2006 anthology film “Paris, je t’aime.” He returned to form with the thriller “Red Eye” (2005), the supernatural box-office dud “My Soul To Take” (2010) and the long-anticipated fourth installment in the “Scream” franchise (2011). At the time of his death, the Craven-produced MTV series based on “Scream” was days away from airing its Season 1 finale.
• ‘Awakenings’ author, neurologist dies at 82. NEW YORK (AP) — There was the blind man who had the disastrous experience of regaining his sight. The surgeon who developed a sudden passion for music after being struck by lightning. And most famously, the man who mistook his wife for a hat. Those stories and many more, taking the reader to the distant ranges of human experience, came from the pen of Dr. Oliver Sacks. Sacks, 82, died Sunday at his home in New York City, his assistant, Kate Edgar, said. In February, he had announced that he was terminally ill with a rare eye cancer that had spread to his liver. As a practicing neurologist, Sacks looked at some of his patients with a writer’s eye and found publishing gold.
• Former Maryland governor Marvin Mandel dies at 95. Marvin Mandel, who dominated Maryland’s political landscape in the 1970s, is remembered for modernizing the state government, as well as a racketeering conviction that was overturned on appeal and a nationally publicized divorce. Former Gov. Marvin Mandel, whose record of modernizing Maryland’s state government was overshadowed by a messy divorce and a fraud conviction for helping associates profit from a racetrack deal, died on Sunday in St. Mary’s County, Md. He was 95. The death was confirmed in a statement by Gov. Larry Hogan, who ordered all flags throughout the state to be flown at half-staff. A cause was not released. “The state of Maryland lost not only a former governor but also a truly great leader,” Mr. Hogan said in the statement. Mr. Mandel was first elected governor by the state legislature, where he was speaker of the House of Delegates, when Spiro T. Agnew resigned to become vice president in 1969. Voters elected him in 1970 and again in 1974.

8am – D         INTERVIEW — FORMER MISSISSIPPI GOVERNOR HALEY BARBOUR – author of new book “America’s Great Storm: Leading through Hurricane Katrina” – reflected on the Katrina anniversary.

8am – E         VMA Highlights: Kanye Is Running For President And One Other Must-Watch VMA Moment. Nicki Minaj accepts the award for hip-hop video of the year for “Anaconda” at the MTV Video Music Awards at the Microsoft Theater on Sunday in Los Angeles. In case you didn’t stay up late to watch the MTV Video Music Awards, there are really only two moments that matter. They’ll be the talk of the water cooler today, so you might as well take a look. Here are the two moments that matter:

1. After receiving the Video Vanguard award, the rapper Kanye West delivered a 13-minute soliloquy in which he sorta, kinda apologized for his past behavior and then he got ahead of the news cycle by announcing he’s running for president in 2020.
2. Perhaps the most controversial moment came when Nicki Minaj accepted her award for Best Hip-Hop Video for her song Anaconda. Minaj called out fellow pop star Miley Cyrus for comments she made during an interview with The New York Times. It resulted in the Giphy-est moment of the night. (EW has an extensive write-up of the beef, if you care for some background.)