September 8 - The Senate May Not Hold a Vote on the Iran Deal; A Christian Martyr Released From Jail; More Upheaval at the Los Angeles Times

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the growing likelihood that the Republicans may not be able to stage a vote to grandstand their opposition to Obama’s deal with Iran since 41 Democratic senators have pledged to sustain Obama’s veto in spite of an expensive and determined lobbying effort by the so-called Israel lobby, AIPAC. Jim Manley, a Senior Director at Quinn Gillespie and Associates Public Affairs, who is a 21 year veteran of the U.S. Senate, recently serving as senior advisor to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and before that as an aide to the late Senator Ted Kennedy, joins us. We discuss how the expected resistance to the Iran deal has petered out in the House and what procedural wrangling is going on in the Senate ahead of tomorrow’s rally in Washington against the deal by presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Donald Trump who might find themselves a day late even if they are not a dollar short.  

Part 2

Then we look into today’s incident where Ted Cruz, along with Mike Huckerbee, showed up in support of the county clerk in Kentucky who had defied the Supreme Court by not issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, only to find her Christian martyrdom was over and she had been released from jail. Matthew Avery Sutton, a Distinguished Professor of History at Washington State University and author of “American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism”, joins us to discuss the throngs of passionate theocratic supporters of the clerk Kim Davis, who they see as a heroic Christian being persecuted for her beliefs just like the Romans persecuted Jesus, before later feeding Christians to the lions.

Part 3

Then finally we look into the latest upheaval at the Los Angeles Times where the publisher and chief executive officer Austin Buetner was just fired by the paper’s owners the Tribune Company in Chicago. We speak with Bill Boyarsky, a political correspondent for Truthdig and a lecturer in journalism at the University of Southern California who retired as City Editor of the Los Angeles Times in 2001 where he was a member of reporting teams that won three Pulitzer prizes. The author of “Inventing L.A.: The Chandlers and Their Times”, we discuss the demise of the newspaper since its sale by the Chandler family to a corporate pirate Sam Zell.