Tom Bevan, KT McFarland, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger and Jonathan Martin joined WMAL on Wednesday morning!

Mornings on the Mall

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

 

5am – A/B/C  Cruz wants to team up with Rubio for ‘unity ticket’ to beat Trump, insiders say. (Fox News) — In the hopes of thwarting Donald Trump’s march to the Republican presidential nomination, Ted Cruz’s campaign has been courting former rival Marco Rubio to possibly join the Texas senator in what’s being called a “unity ticket.” The problem is, sources told Politico, Rubio shows no inclination of taking the bait. Rubio, the Florida senator who dropped out of the GOP race following a disappointing finish in his home state last Tuesday, has reportedly told Cruz’s team that he is not interested in the deal despite all the courting. The Florida lawmaker’s rebuke, however, appears not to have stopped Cruz’s camp from continuing to think of ways to lure Rubio in. His campaign has even apparently begun polling prospective voters in states with primaries coming up to gauge their opinion of the two senators’ running on the same ticket. The deliberation comes at a time when many in the Republican Party are worried that Trump could run away with the nomination. The real estate tycoon already has a 256-delegate lead over Cruz and has a host of friendly states coming up – including New York and Pennsylvania – which could propel him to the 1,237 delegates he needs to secure the nomination outright and avoid a contested convention. If Cruz can’t get Rubio to join him on the ticket, he at least wants to get his endorsement, something insiders have said is quite possible.

5am – D         Court Rebukes IRS, Orders Release Of Secret Hit List Of Conservatives So Class-Action Lawsuit Can Proceed. (By Stephen Dinan – The Washington Times) A federal appeals court spanked the IRS Tuesday, saying it has taken laws designed to protect taxpayers from the government and turned them on their head, using them to try to protect the tax agency from the very tea party groups it targeted. The judges ordered the IRS to quickly turn over the full list of groups it targeted so that a class-action lawsuit, filed by the NorCal Tea Party Patriots, can proceed. The judges also accused the Justice Department lawyers, who are representing the IRS in the case, of acting in bad faith — compounding the initial targeting — by fighting the disclosure. “The lawyers in the Department of Justice have a long and storied tradition of defending the nation’s interests and enforcing its laws — all of them, not just selective ones — in a manner worthy of the Department’s name. The conduct of the IRS’s attorneys in the district court falls outside that tradition,” Judge Raymond Kethledge wrote in a unanimous opinion for a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. “We expect that the IRS will do better going forward.” Justice Department officials declined to comment on the judicial drubbing, and the IRS didn’t respond to a request for comment on the unusually strong language Judge Kethledge used.

5am – E         Bowser Will Ask D.C. Council to Raise Minimum Wage to $15 an Hour. (Washington City Paper) – Looks like Mayor Muriel Bowser took a hint from the 87 percent of District residents who say they would support raising D.C.’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020: During her State of the District address on Tuesday evening, Bowser said she will send legislation to the D.C. Council in April calling for precisely that. “In a city as prosperous as ours, we can level the playing field and we can make sure our residents are paid a good wage so fewer families are forced to leave,” the mayor said. “Answering President Obama’s call to raise the wage, cities and states across the country are proving that decent wages and strong business climates are not mutually exclusive… The raise cannot wait, and I ask the Council for swift consideration in our fight for 15.”

6am – A/B/C Presidential Candidates React To Brussels Attacks. What do you want done? Who has the best solution?

6am – D/E     ‘Save Lexi’ protests unable to stop girl’s removal from family under Indian Child Welfare Act. SANTA CLARITA, Calif. — A foster family in Santa Clarita, California is heartbroken after the six-year-old girl they had been caring for was removed from their home on Monday. Lexi Page has lived with the family for four years, but is now being sent to live with extended family in Utah under the Indian Child Welfare Act. Clutched in the arms of her foster dad, Rusty Page, a dramatic scene unfolded outside their home as foster mom Summer and her children screamed in the background. LA County department of children and family services agents, acting on a court order, removed Lexi from the only family she’s known for the past four years. “She’s the happiest child you’ll ever meet today,” said Rusty. “Tomorrow… No. She won student of the month last month at school for how caring she is for people, and people don’t return that favor to her.” The case involves a tribal custody battle that hinged on the Indian Child Welfare Act from the 1970s, aimed at protecting Native American children. Lexi is 1.5 percent Choctaw, and has bounced in and out of foster homes since birth. Even though her biological parents relinquished custody years ago, her extended family in Utah has been fighting for custody.

7am – A         INTERVIEW — TOM BEVAN — Executive Editor, RealClearPolitics.com – discussed the results of Tuesday’s voting. Clinton and Trump Win Arizona; Cruz Wins Utah; Sanders Takes 2. Bernie Sanders wins Democratic presidential caucuses in Utah and Idaho.

7am – B         President Obama’s Cuba Trip:

• Obama defends attending baseball game in Cuba after Brussels attacks. (Politico) – President Barack Obama pushed back on criticism from Republican presidential candidates regarding his decision to remain in Cuba in wake of tragic terrorist attacks in Brussels, suggesting that doing so would have played into the terrorists’ hands. “It’s always a challenge when you have a terrorist attack anywhere in the world, particularly in this age of 24/7 news coverage,” Obama told ESPN at the top of the third inning in a historic baseball game in Havana between Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team. “You want to be respectful and understand the gravity of the situation, but the whole premise of terrorism is to try to disrupt people’s ordinary lives.”
• Kasich says Obama should cut Cuba trip short. John Kasich is criticizing President Barack Obama for not cutting his Cuba trip short in light of the attacks in Brussels.
• Cuban Refugees Flocking to Texas Border. (Texas Tribune) — The same week President Obama makes the first trip to Cuba by an American president in almost 90 years, The Rolling Stones will play a free concert in Havana — the first open-air show there by a British rock band. But changing times in the Communist country haven’t stopped tens of thousands from fleeing the island and saying gimme shelter to American immigration officials at Texas land ports. From October 2015 to February 2016, more than 18,500 Cubans arrived at Texas’ Laredo field office of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which includes ports from Del Rio to Brownsville. If that trend continues, it will shatter last year’s numbers for the same ports, when a record 28,371 crossed. During the 2015 fiscal year, more than 43,150 arrived at the 20 CBP field offices in the United States that process immigrants. More than half — 25,800 — arrived in only the first five months of the current fiscal year. The president’s visit to Cuba Monday was the latest step in his mission announced in late 2014 to normalize relations with the Castro regime.

7am – C         Cherry Blossoms on target for a peak bloom of March 23 despite near-freezing temperatures. WASHINGTON – Rejoice cherry blossom lovers!  This weekend’s cold weather did not affect the Tidal Basin’s cherry blossom trees! Peak bloom is still on target for March 23 despite near-freezing temperatures, the National Park Service (NPS) said. Temperatures are expected to reach near-freezing Monday night, but NPS says it will not affect peak bloom. In past years, unusually warm or cold temperatures have resulted in peak bloom as early as March 15 and as late as April 18, according to NPS. The average date for blooming is April 4. Once the trees reach peak bloom, the blossoms can remain on the trees for 4-10 days, according to NPS.

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

• Yes, America, it’s war. Here’s how we can stop losing and start winning. (By K.T. McFarland Published March 22, 2016 on Fox News Online) — The January 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks were a wakeup call to take radical Islam seriously.  The November Paris attacks put that call on a loudspeaker. The December San Bernardino attacks showed it could happen here, too. The Brussels attacks are proof that radical Islam has spread throughout the European continent. There are likely to be more terrorist attacks in the months ahead.  How long are we going to ignore the obvious? Global Islamist jihad is at war with all of Western Civilization.  President Obama and other western leaders may not see it as a war, but the other sides does.  Left largely unchecked over last seven years, radical Islam has exploded worldwide.  According to the head of EUROPOL, 5,000 Europeans have travelled to Syria & Iraq to train and fight with ISIS and since returned to Europe.  They are sleeper agents setting up sleeper cells.   A guerilla army has invaded Europe.
• Europe remains on high alert after yesterday’s terror attacks. ISIS claimed responsibility for co-ordinated terrorist attacks on Brussels which saw suicide bombers strike at Brussels’ Zaventem airport, with passengers seen fleeing for their lives shortly afterwards. An hour later an explosion was heard at the Belgian capital’s Maelbeek metro station in a separate terror attack. 34 people are reported to have died, and at least 198 are injured. The airport suicide bombers have been named as brothers Khalid and Ibrahim El-Bakraoui. The third man, seen next to the brothers in CCTV footage, is allegedly the Paris bomb maker Najim Laachraoui. Adelma Tapia Ruiz, a mother of twins living in Brussels, has been named as the first victim from yesterday’s terror attacks.
• Police release image of Brussels bomb suspects wearing black glove on their left hand.  Belgian police have released CCTV footage of three men suspected of carrying out the attack on a Brussels airport which left at least 14 dead and injured hundreds of others. It shows three unidentified men pushing trollies with suitcases past Zaventem airport’s check-in area, two of whom are wearing a black glove on their left hand. The grainy pictures have been released by Belgian police as part of their investigation, according to the Belgian news agency Belga and local newspaper La Libre.
• Obama, Addressing Cuba, Says It’s Time to ‘Bury’ the Cold War. President champions rights in speech directed in part at Cuban leader Raúl Castro, before meeting dissidents and attending baseball game. HAVANA, Cuba—President Barack Obama concluded a history-making visit to Cuba by plunging Tuesday into prickly issues of civil liberties and free elections, drawing qualified approval but also a measure of skepticism from Cubans and human-rights advocates. “I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas,” Mr. Obama said in a speech in Old Havana on the final day of his groundbreaking trip. “It is time for us to look forward to the future together.”

7am – E         Sarah Palin to be a new ‘Judge Judy’ in courtroom-based reality show. (USA Today) — Never far from a glowing screen, Sarah Palin may be coming to a TV dial near you: She will star in a new Judge Judy-style courtroom reality show in 2017, according to a publicist for a Montana production company. The former governor of Alaska, who’s already starred in her own reality shows since the end of her vice-presidential campaign in 2008, signed a production deal last month with a Montana-based company called Warm Springs, according to Howard Bragman of  Fifteen Minutes P.R., a veteran public-relations executive who represents Warm Springs. Palin’s show, still unnamed, would feature Palin in a nationally syndicated daytime show premiering in the fall of 2017. But first she has to make a pilot, meet with TV stations across the land and sell it and herself to them.  Which shouldn’t be too difficult, Bragman says, even though Palin is not a lawyer.

8am – A         INTERVIEW — REP. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER – (ROO-PERS-BERGER) — D-MD – former ranking member on House Intel committee and currently on Defense Appropriations Committee

• Charles Albert “Dutch” Ruppersberger III is the U.S. Representative for Maryland’s 2nd congressional district, serving since 2003. The district covers parts of Baltimore County, Anne Arundel County, Harford County and Baltimore City, including Dundalk, Towson and Severn.
• MD Representative Has Unique Perspective On Brussels Attacks. (WCBC) – Maryland Representative Dutch Ruppersberger has a unique perspective on the Brussels attacks. The Baltimore County Democrat served for years on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and is now on the Appropriations Committee subcommittee on defense. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attacks at the Brussels airport that killed at least 31. Ruppersberger told WBAL Radio that the focus now needs to be on combating ISIS efforts in forgery and encrypted communications while staying on top of intelligence and border efforts at home.  Ruppersberger said the key continues to be staying one step ahead of the terrorists by way of intelligence, and getting the information first.

8am – B         Anti-Trump ad uses undressed Melania Trump against him. WASHINGTON — Ahead of another round of caucusing and primary voting Tuesday, an anti-Trump group has run ads in a pointed effort against the GOP candidate. BuzzFeed reported Monday that Liz Mair launched a Facebook campaign last week, which features ads that have a bold font and a few lines of text. Mair is a Republican strategist who is a part of the anti-Trump super PAC Make America Awesome. BuzzFeed News reported that the goal of the ads is to reach Mormons voting in Utah Tuesday and to increase their turnout. Donald J. Trump

‎@realDonaldTrump: Lyin’ Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad. Be careful, Lyin’ Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!

9:53 PM – 22 Mar 2016

Mair, however, responded in a series of tweets.

Liz Mair ‎@LizMair

.@realDonaldTrump Hi Donald, I know you’re really upset about that ad, but it was Make America Awesome’s, not Ted Cruz’s.

10:08 PM – 22 Mar 2016

Liz Mair ‎@LizMair: …b/c @realDonaldTrump knows there’s a little thing called defamation law. Which doesn’t apply to our ad bc the Melania pic is real. LOLZ.

10:12 PM – 22 Mar 2016

And GOP candidate and Trump rival Ted Cruz stepped in to defend his wife, Heidi, after Trump’s threat.

Ted Cruz @tedcruz: Pic of your wife not from us. Donald, if you try to attack Heidi, you’re more of a coward than I thought. #classless https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/712457104515317764 …

10:21 PM – 22 Mar 2016

8am – C         Study: ‘Dumb blonde’ stereotype has no basis, study finds. COLUMBUS, Ohio – The “dumb blonde” stereotype is simply wrong, according to a new national study of young baby boomers. The study of 10,878 Americans found that white women who said their natural hair color was blonde had an average IQ score within 3 points of brunettes and those with red or black hair. While jokes about blondes may seem harmless to some, it can have real-world implications, said Jay Zagorsky, author of the study and a research scientist at The Ohio State University. “Research shows that stereotypes often have an impact on hiring, promotions and other social experiences,” Zagorsky said. “This study provides compelling evidence that there shouldn’t be any discrimination against blondes based on their intelligence.” The study found that the average IQ of blondes was actually slightly higher than those with other hair colors, but that finding isn’t statistically significant, said Zagorsky, who works in the university’s Center for Human Resource Research (CHRR).

8am – D         INTERVIEW – JONATHAN MARTIN – National Political Correspondent, NY Times – recapped Tuesday’s voting results.

8am – E         Former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has lost his battle with cancer. He was 46 years old. Rob Ford, former Toronto mayor, dead at 46 after battle with cancer.  (CNN) Former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has died, according to his chief of staff, Dan Jacobs. Ford, who had been battling an aggressive form of cancer, served for a decade as a city councilor before being elected mayor in 2010. The 46-year-old Ford gained international notoriety after a video surfaced in May 2013 that apparently showed him using crack cocaine. He was re-elected to the City Council in 2014 and was serving in that role at the time of his death. His family had said Monday that he was “resting comfortably” in palliative care at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, adding he was sometimes being sedated to help him deal with pain.