DignityUSA, James Rosen, Trevor Matich & Ricky Skaggs joined WMAL on Friday!

Mornings on the Mall

Friday, January 8, 2016

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

5am – A/B/C DRIVE AT FIVE INTERVIEW – MARIANNE DUDDY-BURKE – Executive Director, DignityUSA

• DignityUSA, a religious non-profit that works to promote justice for LGBT Catholics
• Catholic church in Germantown fires cantor after his same-sex marriage

5am – D         Clinton News:

• Juanita Broaddrick @atensnut: I was 35 years old when Bill Clinton, Ark. Attorney General raped me and Hillary tried to silence me. I am now 73….it never goes away. 2:42 PM – 6 Jan 2016
• NBC Reporter Confronts Bill Clinton on Sexual History: “I Don’t Have A Response.” Bill Clinton was confronted by a reporter after stumping for his wife at a campaign rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “Donald Trump is again today making an issue of your past transgressions,” NBC’s Kirsten Welker pressed former President Bill Clinton. “Do you want to respond? And are you worried that your past will hurt your wife’s campaign?” “I don’t have a response,” Clinton told the reporter. “If he wins the Republican nomination we will have plenty of time to talk about it.
• State Department misled public on Clinton emails, investigation concludes. Report says her aides shielded secret account from public. (By Stephen Dinan – The Washington Times) — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top aides knew about her secret email account but allowed the department to mislead the public about its existence, an inspector general said in a report Thursday that found widespread problems with transparency during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure. The department told a public interest group in 2013 that there was no information on Mrs. Clinton using a non-State.gov email account — even though dozens of her top staffers knew she used an account kept on a server she maintained at her home in New York. Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl D. Mills, was even told of the request, but the department gave an erroneous answer anyway, the inspector general said. The report was issued just hours before the department, prodded by a court order, released thousands more of those emails, making up for missing a Dec. 31 deadline.
• More of Hillary’s emails released in late-night document dump. WASHINGTON — The State Department unexpectedly dumped 2,900 more pages of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails late Thursday night — hours after a scathing inspector general’s report accused the agency of stonewalling requests for public data. The department had already missed a judge’s deadline to post 82 percent of the former secretary of state’s e-mails by Dec. 31. The after-hours release of 2,900 new pages of Clinton records was a harried attempt to meet that goal.

5am – E         Hammered: Wall Street Drops as China Fears Flare. U.S. equity markets closed a volatile session in sharply negative territory as fears were reignited about slower growth in China, and global currencies. With the market’s plunge Thursday, investors added to nearly $1 trillion in losses seen in the prior session. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 392 points, or 2.32% to 16513. The S&P 500 dropped 47 points, or 2.37% to 1943, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 145 points, or 3.03% to 4689. All 10 S&P 500 sectors were in negative territory as technology and materials plunged more than 2%.

Chinese stocks volatile a day after sharp sell-off. BEIJING (AP) — Chinese stocks were volatile Friday and other Asian markets rebounded after a plunge in Chinese prices rattled global markets. The Shanghai Composite Index was up 2.4 percent at 3,199.56 by late morning after swinging between gains and losses. Trading in Chinese stocks was suspended Thursday after a key index plunged 7 percent. China’s stock markets have little connection to the rest of its economy but two sharp price declines this week have focused attention on the slowdown in Chinese growth. Stocks worldwide and oil fell on concern about weaker Chinese demand. The Dow Jones industrial average sank 2.3 percent and the Standard & Poor’s 500 lost 2.4 percent on Thursday. The Nasdaq composite index fell 3 percent.

6am – A/B/C Obama’s Town Hall Calls Out NRA For Not Attending.

• NRA: Obama lacks respect for Second Amendment. (The Hill) — After getting slammed by President Obama for refusing to attend his town hall on gun control Thursday night, the National Rifle Association (NRA) says the president lacks “a basic level of respect” for the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms. The NRA, which turned down an invitation to attend the town hall, live-tweeted the event, offering a series of rebuttals to the president’s policy proposals.

6am – D         State Department: We Don’t Have To Accept Reality About North Korea.

State Department spokesperson John Kirby was questioned by Associated Press reporter Matt Lee about the department’s reluctance to recognize North Korea as a nuclear state.

6am – E         Critter News:

• Red pandas return to the National Zoo. WASHINGTON — Red pandas are back at the National Zoo after a two-year hiatus. Tusa, a 1-year-old male, and Asa, a 1-year-old female, are calling the Small Mammal House their home until they move into the red panda exhibit. Upgrades are currently being made to the exhibit, located on the Asia Trial, and are expected to be finished by early summer. The zoo’s previous red panda pair, Rusty and Shama, were moved to the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute last January for breeding. Shama gave birth to three cubs in June, but died shortly thereafter. Rusty, infamous for his brief zoo escape and safe return in June 2013, remains at the institute.
• Members of the National Zoo in Washington are getting an exclusive peek at panda cub Bei Bei. The cub, who was born Aug. 22, is set to make his public debut Jan. 16, but zoo members can see him starting Friday. Visitors who want to see Bei Bei will have to show they have a current Friends of the National Zoo membership and a matching photo ID. The cub is the third surviving offspring for parents Tian Tian and Mei Xiang, who also live at the zoo along with their second cub, Bao Bao, who was born in 2013. Another cub that was also born Aug. 22 died soon after birth. The couple’s first surviving offspring, Tai Shan, lives in China.
• Grooves in the ground may reveal a bird-like dinosaur mating dance. It’s possible that lovestruck dinosaurs did bird-like dances to woo their sweethearts. Paleontologists presented evidence of these groovy moves in a study published Thursday in Scientific Reports. They’ve found four separate sites in Colorado with long fossilized grooves in the Earth that they believe could have been formed by lusty dinosaurs with fancy feet. “These are the first sites with evidence of dinosaur mating display rituals ever discovered, and the first physical evidence of courtship behavior,” study co-author Martin Lockley of the University of Colorado at Denver said in a statement. “These huge scrape displays fill in a missing gap in our understanding of dinosaur behavior.” The 50 or so grooves, which averaged just over six and a half feet long, were found in 100-million-year-old rock — and in places where there are already signs of dinosaur foot traffic. “Despite this abundance of footprints, display scrapes represent a previously-unrecognised, entirely new category of vertebrate trace fossil,” the authors wrote in the study. In other words, no one has ever seen these markings and associated them with dinosaurs before. The size, shape and time period suggest that theropod dinosaurs could have been responsible for making them. In fact, the researchers report, some of gouges include complete outlines of three-toed theropod tracks.

7am – A         INTERVIEW — JAMES ROSEN – Fox Chief Washington Correspondent and author of new book “Cheney One on One: A Candid Conversation with America’s Most Controversial Statesman” – discussed Hillary’s emails, 2016 news and more.

7am – B/C     AUDIO HIGHLIGHTS: Obama’s Town Hall On Guns

7am – D/E     INTERVIEW – TREVOR MATICH — Redskins elite long snapper and WMAL’s Redskins analyst – previewed Green Bay Packers vs Washington Redskins this weekend at FedEx Field, Landover, Maryland.

8am – A         INTERVIEW — Rickie Lee “Ricky” Skaggs is an American country and bluegrass singer, musician, producer, and composer. He primarily plays mandolin; however, he also plays fiddle, guitar, mandocaster and banjo.

• His shows this weekend: Fri, Jan 8 – Alexandria, VA – The Birchmere & Sat, Jan 9 – Alexandria, VA – The Birchmere

8am – B         Clinton News:

• Juanita Broaddrick @atensnut: I was 35 years old when Bill Clinton, Ark. Attorney General raped me and Hillary tried to silence me. I am now 73….it never goes away. 2:42 PM – 6 Jan 2016
• NBC Reporter Confronts Bill Clinton on Sexual History: “I Don’t Have A Response.”
• State Department misled public on Clinton emails, investigation concludes. Report says her aides shielded secret account from public.
• More of Hillary’s emails released in late-night document dump.

8am – C         Health club memberships in America are at an all-time high at more than 54 million in 2014. But the percentage of members who never use the gym is 67 percent.

8am – D/E     Obama’s Town Hall Calls Out NRA For Not Attending. NRA: Obama lacks respect for Second Amendment.