Brad Thor, KT McFarland, Washington City Paper’s Will Sommer and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Nick Wiley joined WMAL on Wednesday!

Mornings on the Mall

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

 

5am – A/B/C DHS Secretary: Gun control is now a national security issue.

5am – D         Why Americans aren’t using all earned vacation time. WASHINGTON — Americans took an average of 16.2 vacation days in 2015, but had an average of 21.9 vacation days coming to them, according to D.C. nonprofit Project: Time Off. That added up to 658 million unused vacation days, and 222 million of those vacation days were simply wasted by employees working at companies that don’t allow vacation days to be rolled over into the next year. While 55 percent of employers in the U.S. do allow some unused days to move to the next calendar year, 27 percent have a “use it or lose it” policy. More than half of Americans left vacation time unused in 2015. Why aren’t we taking all the time off we earn? Project: Time Off says 37 percent of workers cite returning to a mountain of work as the greatest challenge, followed by 35 percent who say “no one else can do the job,” and 33 percent who say they can’t afford a vacation.

5am – E         Biden: No Man Has a Right to Touch a Woman Who Walks ‘Stark Naked’ to the Capitol. (Washington Free Beacon) — Vice President Joe Biden deployed some colorful imagery at the United State of Women Summit on Tuesday, saying even a woman who walked “stark naked” to the U.S. Capitol had no right to receive unwanted touches from a man. Biden said the Violence Against Women Act, which he drafted as a U.S. senator, articulated the fundamental right of women to live their lives free of abuse. “I remember when we did the act, when we were debating it, I said if a woman in this audience got up, stripped down, stark naked, and walked over to the United States Capitol, she has a right to be arrested for indecent exposure, but no man, even in that circumstance, has a right to touch her,” he said. “No man has a right to touch her! Period! Period! Period!

 

6am – A/B/C Obama Defends Ban on Term ‘Radical Islam.’ Critics say failure to link Islam to enemy hinders counterterror war. President Obama vigorously defended his administration’s counterterrorism policy on Tuesday of avoiding the term “radical Islam” when identifying terrorists, and denied political correctness was behind the ban. “And the reason I am careful about how I describe this threat has nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with actually defeating extremism,” Obama said following a White House National Security Council meeting on the Islamic State terror group.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Monday criticized the president for failing to prevent the Orlando massacre that killed 49 people and wounded 53 others. He blamed politically correct policies. “The current politically correct response cripples our ability to talk and to think and act clearly,” he said.

6am – D         Michelle Obama urges men at women’s summit to ‘be better.’ WASHINGTON (AP) — It was a summit on the “United State of Women,” but Michelle Obama had advice for the men in the audience: Be better. “Be better at everything. Be better fathers,” she said during a conversation with one-time talk-show host Oprah Winfrey. “Just being good fathers who love your daughters and are providing a solid example of what it means to be a good man in the world. That is the greatest gift that the men in my life gave to me.” She urged the men who were among the estimated 5,000 people who attended the daylong, White House-organized conference to be part of their family’s lives, to do the dishes and not “babysit” their children. “Be engaged. Don’t just think going to work and coming home makes you a man,” Mrs. Obama said. “Be better. Just be better. I could go on, but I’m not. You get the point, fellas,” she said.

6am – E         Critter News:

• Bear spotted outside Arby’s restaurant in Leesburg. LEESBURG, Va. – Leesburg police said there were multiple bear sightings on Monday in the area of Battlefield Parkway, including one seen outside of an Arby’s restaurant. Police are warning residents that if they happen to encounter a bear on their property, they are urged to leave it alone and not attempt to approach it or chase it away. If they happen to climb up a tree on your property, keeping yourself or pets away is the best way to get the bear to leave on its own.

• Authorities search for boy dragged into water by gator. LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) — Authorities were searching early Wednesday for a 2-year-old boy who was dragged into the water by an alligator near Disney’s upscale Grand Floridian Resort & Spa. The family of five from Nebraska was on vacation and wading in a lake Tuesday evening when the attack happened, Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings told a news conference. The father tried to rescue his son but was unsuccessful, Demings said. More than 50 law enforcement personnel were searching the Seven Seas Lagoon along with an alligator tracker and two marine units and would continue searching through the night, Demings said. “We’re going to hope for the best in these circumstances,” Demings said.
• National Zoo announces pregnant orangutan. Batang is a 19-year-old female Bornean orangutan at the National Zoo. And when she met Kyle, a 19-year-old male Bornean orangutan, sparks flew. And now, the National Zoo announced Tuesday, a baby orangutan is on the way. The announcement came after the zoo tweeted the image of a positive pregnancy test with a question mark Monday, leading to much speculation. What species was the lucky mama? Panda? Elephant? Tentacled snake? No. On Tuesday afternoon, zoo staff did a live ultrasound on a gleeful Batang, who is at 22 weeks. The gestation period of orangutans is 35 weeks, and Batang is expected to deliver in September.
• National Aquarium dolphins will leave Baltimore for seaside sanctuary

7am – A         INTERVIEW — WILL SOMMER – Politics Editor and Loose Lips for Washington City Paper

• DC voters oust 3 Council members. WASHINGTON — Primary voters in D.C. tossed three incumbents off the District’s Council in favor of two challengers and one former mayor. Former D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray won his primary race for his old Council seat, ousting incumbent Ward 7 Councilwoman Yvette Alexander and making a political comeback after a federal investigation derailed his last campaign. “Victory! Thank you!” Gray posted on his Twitter account Tuesday night. Bowser tried to drum up support for Alexander and other council members, greeting voters at polling places Tuesday, The Associated Press reported. Robert White beat at-large member Vincent Orange, who first joined the council in 1999, winning 40 percent of the votes to Orange’s 37 percent. A third candidate, David Garber, won 15 percent of the votes cast according to unofficial results. And Trayon White took 51 percent of the votes cast in the Ward 8 race to beat Councilwoman LaRuby May, who garnered 43 percent of the votes, according to unofficial results.

7am – B        Immigration News:

• Illegal immigrants who overstay visas hardly ever caught, feds admit. (By Stephen Dinan – The Washington Times) — Immigration agents catch an abysmally small percentage of the illegal immigrants who arrived on visas but overstayed their welcome, authorities admitted to Congress Tuesday, describing a loophole that those around the globe are increasingly using to gain a foothold in the U.S. At least 480,000 people overstayed their visas last year, adding to a backlog that’s reached some 5 million total, members of Congress said. But immigration agents launched investigations into just 10,000 of them, or about 0.2 percent, and arrested fewer than 2,000, less than 0.04 percent, saying the others don’t rise to the level of being priority targets.
• UNICEF: 9 in 10 children migrants to Italy unaccompanied. GENEVA – UNICEF says most of the children migrants who have crossed the Mediterranean Sea from Libya to Italy this year were unaccompanied by adults, making them vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. The children’s agency says 92 percent of some 7,600 children who made the dangerous and often deadly crossing between January and May were unaccompanied minors, up from 68 percent in the same span last year, when 4,566 children crossed. Spokeswoman Sarah Crowe told reporters Tuesday in Geneva that most were boys aged 15 to 17, and came from Somalia, Nigeria and Eritrea. She said boys and girls have faced prostitution, pedophilia rings and gangsterism. She said it’s unclear why more minors are arriving unaccompanied.

7am – C        SWAT team kills suspect who took hostages at Amarillo, Texas Walmart, investigators say. (Fox News) — A SWAT team shot and killed an armed suspect who took hostages at a Walmart in Amarillo, Texas Tuesday afternoon, investigators confirmed, saying all the hostages are now safe. Police identified the gunman late Tuesday as 54-year-old Mohammad Moghaddam.Moghaddam, who was an employee at that Walmart, took two other workers hostage, local media reported. One of the hostages was the store manager, relatives told the Amarillo Globe-News. “We do consider this a work-place violence situation at this point,” the sheriff’s office said. City officials first reported an “active shooter incident” at 12:30 p.m. local time. Police earlier said they were looking for a Somali man wearing khaki pants, KFDA added. Officers reportedly were evacuating shoppers from the west side of the store in the Texas Panhandle.

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

• Obama Defends Ban on Term ‘Radical Islam.’ Critics say failure to link Islam to enemy hinders counterterror war. President Obama vigorously defended his administration’s counterterrorism policy on Tuesday of avoiding the term “radical Islam” when identifying terrorists, and denied political correctness was behind the ban.
• Mateen’s twin trips to Saudi Arabia raise suspicions. Orlando gunman Omar Mateen’s two trips to Saudi Arabia, one of which was a pricey package that included four-star accommodations and fancy meals, were highly unusual and may have been cover for terror training, according to experts. The FBI is piecing together Mateen’s radical Islam roots, and the trips to Saudi Arabia could be a sign of his growing religious devotion. His stated reason for both the 2011 and 2012 trips was umrah, a Muslim pilgrimage to the Kingdom that is not as significant as the hajj, a trip all Muslims must make to Mecca at least once in their lives. Either or both of the trips could also have included a side trip.
• Federal prosecutors convene grand jury to investigate wife of Orlando massacre gunman, source says. Federal prosecutors have convened a grand jury to investigate the wife of the Orlando nightclub shooter, seeking to charge her as an accessory to 49 counts of murder and 53 counts of attempted murder as well as with failure to notify law enforcement about the pending terrorist attack and lying to federal agents, a federal law enforcement source confirmed Tuesday to FoxNews.com. FBI agents have interviewed Omar Mateen’s wife, Noor Salman, in the days since Sunday’s massacre that killed 49 and wounded 53 more. A federal law enforcement source additionally told Fox News that Salman knew of her husband’s deadly plans and did nothing to stop him.

7am – E        Anderson Cooper Confronts Florida AG Pam Bondi: Are You Really a ‘Champion of the Gay Community’? The CNN anchor took Florida’s attorney general to task on Tuesday for her ‘hypocrisy’ on LGBT rights. Just moments after Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi praised Anderson Cooper for highlighting the names of the victims in the Pulse nightclub shooting on his show Monday night, the CNN anchor turned things around and accused her of “hypocrisy” when it comes to the LGBT Floridians who were targeted by the gunman. “I saw you the other day saying that anyone who attacks the LGBT community—our LGBT community, you said—will be gone after to the full extent of the law,” Cooper said during his interview with Bondi live from Orlando this afternoon.

8am – A/B/C INTERVIEW – BRAD THOR — New York Times Bestselling author of NEW BOOK: Foreign Agent: A Thriller (Scot Harvath) Hardcover – June 14, 2016

• DISCUSSED HIS LATEST BOOK
• HIS THOUGHTS ON THE ORLANDO TERROR ATTACK

8am – D         Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump. Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach. The intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC’s system that they also were able to read all email and chat traffic, said DNC officials and the security experts. The intrusion into the DNC was one of several targeting American political organizations. The networks of presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were also targeted by Russian spies, as were the computers of some Republican political action committees, U.S. officials said. But details on those cases were not available. A Russian Embassy spokesman said he had no knowledge of such intrusions. Some of the hackers had access to the DNC network for about a year, but all were expelled over the past weekend in a major computer cleanup campaign, the committee officials and experts said.

8am – E         INTERVIEW — NICK WILEY — Executive Director — Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

• Toddler Dragged by Alligator Into Lake at Disney Resort in Florida, Search Underway. A search is underway for a 2-year-old boy who was dragged by an alligator into the water Tuesday evening at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa in Orlando, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. The incident happened around 9 p.m. and, despite the hours-long search for the boy, officials remain optimistic. “We are very hopeful and hoping for the best,” Jeff Williamson of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said at a news conference this morning.Orange County Sheriff’s Jerry Demings said rescue crews — including the Florida Fish and Wildlife, Reedy Creek Fire Rescue and the Orange County Sheriff’s Office – were actively looking for the child at the Seven Seas Lagoon early this morning in a search-and-recovery effort but had not found him.