Robert Thomson “Dr. Gridlock”, Stuart Varney and Greg Gutfeld joined WMAL on Thursday.

Listen here to Thursday’s show!

Mornings on the Mall

Thursday May 28, 2015

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

Executive Producer: Heather Smith

5am – A/B/C Controversial Ad Featuring Prophet Muhammad Submitted to Metro.(NBC Washington) — The group behind a provocative contest for cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that led to a deadly shooting in Texas earlier this month has submitted the winning image to run as an advertisement on Washington, D.C., public transportation. The American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), a conservative group behind some controversial ad campaigns, wants to plaster the image of the Prophet Muhammad on the side of Metrobuses and in train stations.

Pamela Geller, founder of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, submitted the the winning cartoon from the “Draw Muhammad” event to the Washington, D.C., Transit Authority. “There is nothing about this cartoon that incites violence. It is within the established American tradition of satire. If America surrenders on this point, the freedom of speech is a relic of history,” Geller said. Metro riders News4 spoke with had mixed opinions about the idea. “I know it is a First Amendment issue, but I also know pictures of the Prophet Muhammad are considered disrespectful to Muslims,” one rider said.

5am – D         2016 News:

• Rick Santorum Announces New Presidential Bid, and New Focus on Middle Class. CABOT, Pa. — Rick Santorum, the runner-up in the Republican nomination race four years ago, announced his second presidential bid on Wednesday, pledging to restore a middle class “hollowed out” by government policies. A former United States senator from rural western Pennsylvania, he appealed primarily to social conservatives four years ago. But he has donned a new mantle of economic populism, one he calls “blue-collar conservatism.” “Working families don’t need another president tied to big government or big money,” he said, criticizing Hillary Rodham Clinton and “big business” for pro-immigration policies he said had undercut American workers.
• Ohio Gov. Kasich looks to announce 2016 presidential bid this summer.(Washington Post) — Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who has been actively gauging reactions to a possible campaign for president in 2016, is now moving rapidly to assemble the staff and financial resources for such a bid and is looking to declare his candidacy sometime after June 30, according to knowledgeable Republicans. The two-term governor and former House member is running through a checklist before formally entering the race, but strategists close to Kasich and other longtime friends say there is no doubt that he will soon join the crowded field of those vying for the GOP nomination. Kasich’s calling cards, these Republicans say, will be a record of fiscal conservatism, both as House Budget Committee chairman and as governor of a big and politically important state; national security credentials as a former member of the House Armed Services Committee; and a faith-based focus on programs and policies to help those most in need that advisers think could set him apart from competitors.
• Hillary Clinton’s ‘Patented Southern Accent’ Is Back Again. (Fox News) — James Rosen reported on “The Kelly File” tonight that something was a little different about Hillary Clinton’s voice today during her campaign stop in South Carolina.  The former first lady put on her “patented southern accent” as soon as she returned to Dixieland, Rosen said.  “That fickle and elusive creature that only surfaces in select settings to raise its proud head once more,” he stated. “Maybe the trigger was the purportedly unscheduled stop at Kiki’s Chicken and Waffles in a strip mall outside of downtown Columbia, South Carolina.” Rosen added that the Democratic presidential candidate was also “careening accent-wise,” to a group of Democratic women in the state.  He noted that Clinton lost the state to Barack Obama in 2008 by nearly 30 points.

5am – E         Critter News:

• McLean black bear seen eating from bird feeder. WASHINGTON — There were two separate bear sightings in residential areas of McLean, Virginia Wednesday morning, including one who was feasting on a resident’s bird feeder, reports the Fairfax County Police Department. The reports came about three hours apart from homes a few miles away from each other.  The second report, which came at about 9:30 a.m., said that the bear appeared to be moving into Scott’s Run Nature Preserve. Animal Control officers and the Fairfax County Wildlife Management Specialist say that it is not unusual to see black bears this time of year.  Unless the animal is in distress or there is a public safety concern, animal control officers will not remove a bear from a neighborhood.
• Chimps Get Their Day in Court in N.Y. ‘Personhood’ Hearing. Animal-advocacy group argued for the rights of Hercules and Leo, two chimpanzees currently held at Long Island’s Stony Brook University. A Long Island university defended its right to hold two chimpanzees for scientific research in a closely watched hearing Wednesday on the animals’ “personhood.” In a Manhattan courthouse, about 50 people listened while lawyers from New York’s attorney general’s office, representing Stony Brook University, and the Nonhuman Rights Project, an animal-advocacy group, argued over whether the rights of personhood are applicable to the chimps, Hercules and Leo.

6am – A/B/C Rand Paul vs GOP: Is he right?

• Rand Paul: Republican brand ‘sucks’ and is ‘broken.’ Washington (CNN)Presidential candidate Rand Paul has christened himself a different kind of Republican, and now he’s embracing a unique moniker: tree hugger. In a new book released on Tuesday, Paul said he composts and believes in clean air and clean water. Paul notes that he has planted giant sequoias in his yard and repurposed old trees used for a fort to build compost bins. “None of this is at odds with wanting our government to be smaller, with wanting our regulatory bodies to protect both our land and water,” Paul wrote in his third book, “Taking a Stand: Moving beyond partisan politics to unite America.”

• Rand Paul says GOP hawks ‘created’ ISIS. (AP) — Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Wednesday blamed the rise of ISIS on hawkish members of the GOP who he said were too eager to intervene abroad. Paul, who is running for president, has worked to push back against the characterization that he is an isolationist and weak on foreign policy. On Wednesday, Paul said that those who said his  kind of foreign policy was responsible for the rise of ISIS were wrong. “I would say it’s exactly the opposite. ISIS exists and grew stronger because of the hawks in our party who gave arms indiscriminately. And most of those arms were snatched up by ISIS. These hawks also wanted to bomb [Syrian President Bashar al-Assad], which would have made ISIS’s job even easier,” he said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “They created these people. ISIS is all over Libya because these same hawks in my party loved — they loved [former Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton’s war in Libya. They just wanted more of it.”

6am – D/E     Spelling Bee in Maryland This Week: With autocorrect, does spelling matter anymore?

• Faces of the 2015 National Spelling Bee. For seven years in a row, and for 11 of the past 15 years, the $US30,000 Scripps National Spelling Bee championship has been won by American youngsters of Indian heritage. Chances are as good as ever that another one will follow suit at this year’s finals on Thursday at the Gaylord National convention resort by the Potomac River outside Washington. They make up one in five of the 285 spellers, aged nine to 15, from all 50 states and seven foreign countries, who ran a gauntlet of local and regional contests to qualify for the big event. One of them, Vanya Shivashankar, 13, who lives in Kansas, is back for a fifth time — inspired no doubt by her sister Kavya, the 2009 champion. Last year ended in a tie between Sriran Hathwar of upstate New York and Ansun Sujoe from Texas after they failed to knock each other out after five rounds. Their winning words, respectively, were “stichomythia” and “feuilleton.” But on social media, the reaction from some of the nearly one million people viewing the finals live on cable television veered towards the xenophobic. “One year I wish an American kid could win,” read one of several dubious Twitter posts curated on Storify.comby tech journalist Jeff Chu. “Not to be offensive … but how do kids from India dominate the American spelling bee?!?” read another tweet. “The kids in the spelling bee should only be AMERICAN,” declared a third. Such sentiments clearly rankle the organisers of the National Spelling Bee, whose longtime core sponsor is the Scripps media group. “I look forward to the day, as do I think many of our South Asian participants, when they are called what they want to be called — Americans,” said bee director Paige Kimble, the 1981 champion.

7am – A         INTERVIEW – ROBERT THOMSON – aka DR GRIDLOCK

• Commuter bottleneck about to be uncorked in Northern Virginia
• Dr. Gridlock: Public hearings beginning on I-66 HOT lanes
• Dr. Gridlock: NTSB releases agenda for hearings into fatal Metro smoke incident. The hearings will be held Jun. 23 and 24 and will include four panels that will examine Metro’s infrastructure, emergency response efforts and its organizational culture.

7am – B         Baltimore News:

• Officers in Freddie Gray case file for change of venue. Attorneys for the six officers in the Freddie Gray case have filed to move the trial out of Baltimore. Defense attorneys for six police officers facing criminal charges in the Freddie Gray case are seeking to have the case tried elsewhere in Maryland, saying their clients can’t get a “fair and impartial trial” in Baltimore. In an 85-page document filed Wednesday with the court seeking a change of venue, the lawyers argued that a “presumption of prejudice” exists in the city. Gray, 25, was arrested April 12 after running from officers patrolling West Baltimore and suffered a severed spinal cord and other injuries in police custody. His death a week later led to widespread protests and rioting that prompted a curfew and a National Guard deployment.

• Fox reporter Leland Vittert spars with Baltimore mayor at press conference.

7am – C  D.C. parking tickets, meters could cost more. (WTOP) — WASHINGTON — Parking tickets will cost more and some meters will have extended hours of enforcement under a budget the D.C. Council is expected to approve Wednesday. The proposed fine for a parking ticket would increase $5 — from $25 to $30. “We have not changed the parking fine in many, many years,” says D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson. “Even at $30, our fine will be below what the suburban jurisdictions are.”  Around D.C.’s parking meter hot spots, drivers would have to feed the meters until midnight. The current cap is 10 p.m.

7am – D         INTERVIEW — STUART VARNEY – Anchor of Varney and Company, Fox Business Network

• Fallout from Fifa: Fifa key sponsors Visa, adidas and Coca-Cola pile on pressure in wake of corruption scandal

7am – E         FIRST ON FOX: Savopoulos assistant Jordan Wallace lied to police about details of $40,000 cash. (Emily Miller, FOX 5 Chief Investigative Reporter)WASHINGTON – The quadruple homicide of the Savopoulos family and their housekeeper is still an open case almost two weeks after their bodies were found dead in their Woodland Drive home in Northwest D.C. Savvas Savopoulos, his wife, Amy, the couple’s 10-year-old son, Philip, and their housekeeper, Veralicia Figueroa, were killed and 34-year-old Daron Wint has been arrested and charged for their murders. FOX 5 is now identifying the employee of Savvas Savopoulos who brought $40,000 in cash to the Savopoulos’ home on the day of the murders. Multiple sources have told me that Jordan Wallace is the so-called “W-1” — otherwise known as Witness 1 — in court documents regarding this case and he lied to police about the details of dropping off the money at the Savopoulos’ house. FOX 5 has been trying to find Wallace for a week, but he seems to be hiding from the media. Wallace started working for Savvas Savopoulos a few months ago. He was a driver and ran errands for him. He is also an amateur race car driver. Wallace posted a photo on Instagram of the interior of a Porsche. He captioned the photo, “Another day on the job, my office today is pretty nice!”

8am – A/B/C INTERVIEW — GREG GUTFELD – Fox News Channel host of the new show “Greg Gutfeld Show”, debuting on May 31st at 10 pm

• Fox News Channel to Feature Comedy, Parody in New ‘Greg Gutfeld Show.’Fox News Channel is often the subject of critique by hosts of satirical programs like “The Daily Show.” Now, the network will launch a program that features monologues and parodies all its own. The 21st Century Fox-owned outlet said it would launch a “comedic news hour” on Sunday nights hosted by Greg Gutfeld. “The Greg Gutfeld Show” will debut on May 31st at 10 p.m., and will feature “parodies on current events, conversation on key issues and signature monologues showcasing Gutfeld’s eclectic humor,” the network said Thursday. Gutfeld is also expected to interview newsmakers, culture critics and media personalities on major headlines of the week.

8am – D         2016 News:

• Fiorina: ‘Titles Are Just Titles,’ Hillary’s ‘Track Record’ Is ME Collapse and the Russian Reset
• Rick Santorum Announces New Presidential Bid, and New Focus on Middle Class
• Hillary Clinton’s ‘Patented Southern Accent’ Is Back Again.
• Walker suggests he’ll skip Florida primary
• George Pataki Enters Presidential Race
• O’Malley backers launch super PAC ahead of Democrat’s presidential bid