Ken Klukowski, Stuart Varney and Jake Tapper joined WMAL on Thursday!

Mornings on the Mall

Thursday, January 7, 2016

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

 

5am – A/B     Trump vs Cruz over Natural Born Citizenship

5am – C         O’Malley misses Ohio write-in deadline. COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – Democrat Martin O’Malley has failed to qualify as a write-in candidate for Ohio’s presidential primary after he previously fell short of the signatures needed for his name to appear on the key swing state’s ballot. To be a write-in candidate for the March 15 primary, contenders were required to file a declaration of intent with Ohio’s elections chief by 4 p.m. Monday.   A spokesman for Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted (HYOO’-sted) tells The Associated Press that O’Malley missed the deadline. Husted’s office says it received the former Maryland governor’s paperwork at about 8 a.m. Tuesday. There is no appeals process under Ohio law. Messages seeking comment were left with an O’Malley spokeswoman. O’Malley is running an underdog bid for his party’s nomination against Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

5am – D/E     DRIVE AT FIVE INTERVIEW — MARGOT HIRSCH – president of the Smart Tech Challenges Foundation

• ABOUT STCF: Margot Hirsch is the President of the Smart Tech Challenges Foundation (STCF) a non-profit focused on reducing gun violence through technology and innovation. The STCF was formed in 2013 with the mission of bypassing the political gridlock and polarizing debate around gun control versus personal freedoms, by spurring innovation in technologies that serve to reduce firearm-related injuries and death.
• SMART GUNS: How do they work and how will they prevent gun violence?
• President Barack Obama’s Executive Action on guns includes a directive to the Attorney General, The Secretary of Defense, and The Secretary of Homeland Security to take a closer look into “smart gun” technology, where a weapon will only fire for the person authorized to use it.

6am – A/B/C Va. man convicted of animal cruelty after dog dies from cancer gets charge dismissed. STAFFORD, Va. – A Stafford man was convicted of animal cruelty after their dog died from cancer. But this case has gotten worldwide attention because many feel he was wrongly convicted for it. The Evans family said they loved their dog, Buxton, and he was a member of the family for ten years. Last summer, they were forced to put him down because he had terminal cancer. “He was a great dog, he was a happy dog,” said Travis Evans. “He got plenty of love all through his entire life, all the way until the last day I took him in.” A year ago, the Evans family noticed a lump on his paw. They took him to two veterinarians and spent $800. They had to amputate a toe and then they got the diagnosis.

6am – D         Economic News:

• A $500 Car Repair Bill Would Send Most Americans Scrambling. An unexpected car repair or medical bill would cause the vast majority of Americans to scramble because they lack the needed funds in their savings accounts. Only 37% of adults have the necessary savings to cover a $500 car repair or a $1,000 emergency room bill, according to a survey Bankrate.com released Wednesday. The finding is little changed from last year, when 38% said they didn’t have the cash on hand, despite a year of steady job creation and the unemployment rate falling to 5%. “Most Americans are ill-prepared for life’s inevitable curveballs,” said Sheyna Steiner, Bankrate.com’s senior investing analyst. She said that’s a concern because more than 40% of families experienced a similar unexpected cost during the past 12 months.
• President Obama Releases Trailer Previewing His Last State of the Union. The President will deliver the address on Jan. 12. President Obama is teasing his final State of the Union address in a new video trailer, in which he says he’s “never been more optimistic” about a year ahead than he is right now. The video, shared by White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough on Twitter, shows the President leaning on his desk in the Oval Office and delivering a preview of his Jan. 12 address.

7am – A         INTERVIEW — KEN KLUKOWSKI — national-bestselling author, constitutional lawyer and Legal Editor, Breitbart News Network

• Trump says Cruz’s Canadian birth could be ‘very precarious’ for GOP. Cruz on White House Eligibility: It’s Settled Law.

7am – B         Hillary News:

• Petraeus appears at Benghazi panel. Former CIA Director David Petraeus on Wednesday appeared before the House Select Committee on Benghazi for a four-hour interview as Republican committee leaders narrow in on their final weeks of interviews. The retired Army general will return to answer additional questions on an undetermined date in the coming days, committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said. “We’re going to get back together,” Gowdy said. “He’s a really important witness,” Gowdy added, without going into detail about the unanswered questions. “He’s willing to answer more questions, and we have more questions. “That’s a good combination, when you have more questions and the witness is willing to answer them.” Petraeus, who is one of the highest-profile former government officials to have appeared before the panel, brushed past reporters without comment after his interview on Wednesday.
• State Dept. set to release 2,900 additional pages of Clinton emails. State Department officials are set to release 2,900 pages of Hillary Clinton’s private emails Thursday after falling short of a court order requiring them to publish those documents by New Year’s Eve. While the agency should have posted more than 8,000 pages of emails online at the end of last month, State officials blamed the holiday schedule for releasing just 5,500 pages on time. They vowed to catch up by publishing the remainder during the first week of January. Citing the heavy burden imposed by screening so many documents for sensitive information in such a short period of time, the State Department also declined to include headers with subject lines or sender and recipient information in the initial batch, making the records difficult to read. The agency’s failure to post nearly 3,000 pages of emails online by the end of December marked its largest shortfall since it began releasing documents on a monthly basis in March.

7am – C         Cell-Phone Distracted Parenting Can Have Long-Term Consequences: Study. New research shows how cell phone distraction can deprive babies’ developing brains of crucial developmental signals. Few things require more hands-on attention than a young child. And there’s little that’s more distracting than the constant bleeping of our cells phones. When these two things compete for our attention, the results can be sobering. In a new animal-based study published in the journal Translational Psychiatry, scientists show that distracted parental attention may sometimes have detrimental effects on babies’ development, especially their ability to process pleasure. The study involved rats, but the implications, says one of the senior authors, could be very relevant for many parent-baby interactions in our technology-obsessed world.

7am – D         INTERVIEW — STUART VARNEY – host of “Varney and Company” on Fox Business Network

• Stock market meltdown…..STUART: Why?…..the world is on fire, things falling apart, no adult in charge, hot war coming for Saudi Arabia and Iran? Europe’s most powerful leader in trouble over migrants….China meltdown….oil meltdown….Big trouble for your money, and Obama has no answers at home or abroad.
• A $500 Car Repair Bill Would Send Most Americans Scrambling. An unexpected car repair or medical bill would cause the vast majority of Americans to scramble because they lack the needed funds in their savings accounts. Only 37% of adults have the necessary savings to cover a $500 car repair or a $1,000 emergency room bill, according to a survey Bankrate.com released Wednesday. The finding is little changed from last year, when 38% said they didn’t have the cash on hand, despite a year of steady job creation and the unemployment rate falling to 5%.
• Upcoming FOX Business Network GOP Primary Debate on Jan. 14: Anchor/Managing Editor of Business News, Neil Cavuto and Anchor/Global Markets Editor, Maria Bartiromo will reprise their roles as moderators for the primetime debate, which will begin at 9 p.m. ET. The earlier debate, which is scheduled to start 6 p.m. ET, will again be moderated by anchors Trish Regan and Sandra Smith.

7am – E         Wednesday’s People’s Choice Awards:

• Dakota Johnson showed off her funny side when she had a wardrobe malfunction at the People’s Choice Awards.
• A stage-crasher channeled his inner Kanye West at the People’s Choice Awards.
• The Talk won, man tried to upstage them and Sharon Osborne started kicking man.

8am – A/B/C The Ehang 184 is a self-piloting drone you can ride inside. Drones are currently best at carrying cameras for recording (sometimes-illicit) videos of sunsets, skyscrapers and sporting events, and, well, not much else. The future, though,will probably see our skies grow increasingly cloudy with swarms of actually-useful drones: Amazon (and many others) want to use drones to carry packages, and quadcopters that follow you around (Intel), launch from the back of trucks (Ford and DJI) and fly like planes (Parrot) have already been unveiled this week at CES in Las Vegas. But what if drones could carry people, too? That apparently simple question seems to have been answered, at least hypothetically, by the Chinese drone maker Ehang which has unveiled what it claims is the world’s first autonomous helicopter drone. The Ehang 184 is a 440-pound, eight-rotor aircraft which the company claims is able to lift a single person 500 metres into the air and fly them to any point on Google Maps, avoiding objects automatically and safely handling take-off and landing (as long as it can be reached within the 23 minutes battery limit). Ehang adds that in the event of your drone experiencing problems, human pilots housed in custom built “command centres” will be able to take over and guide you to safety. Of course, it would have to build such centres first. Supposedly costing between £130,000 and £200,000 — a price tag which includes air conditioning and in-flight WiFi — Ehang 184 has caused at stir at CES, even though the aircraft has remained static on the show floor and not (yet?) soared into the show air with a human passenger inside.

8am – D         INTERVIEW – JAKE TAPPER – Host of CNN’s “The Lead” and “State of the Union”

• On Jake’s State of the Union, Jake has TED CRUZ this Sunday.
• CRUZ-TRUMP: Trump says Cruz’s Canadian birth could be ‘very precarious’ for GOP. Cruz on White House Eligibility: It’s Settled Law.
• Town hall tonight with Obama, Anderson hosting it but Jake will be doing coverage around it today.
• Obama’s final State of the Union coming up

8am – E         Catholic church in Germantown fires cantor after his same-sex marriage. Germantown, Md. (ABC7) — Jeffrey Higgins says he never thought his same-sex marriage would be a problem at his job. But on November 8, his marriage came up during a conversation that led to his termination from Mother Seton Catholic Church in Germantown, where he worked part-time as a cantor and choir member for 1.5 years. On November 8, Higgins, 29, says Pastor Lee Fangmeyer invited him to his office, asked him about his marriage, and then asked him if he’d resign. “I was shocked,” Higgins says. “He told me it had been discovered, that’s the word he used, that I was gay and married and would I resign. I told him I wouldn’t resign, that I liked my job, that I was good at my job, and I didn’t see the need to resign. He told me I’d been an asset to the music program at Mother Seton and that I’d be missed, but that I was terminated as of that moment.” Higgins told ABC7 News that a fellow parishioner allegedly saw him and his husband together in public and then found their wedding photos online and alerted the church. He says he didn’t broadcast his marriage while working at Mother Seton, but pointed out that he wears his wedding ring and filled out his tax paperwork saying he’s legally married. “Out of respect for people who disagree with me, I didn’t broadcast it loudly.” Higgins appealed the decision to terminate him to the Archdiocese of Washington and received a letter on December 7 from Auxiliary Bishop of Wa