April 29 - Donald Sterling's Punishment; Political Spin on Recent Racist Rants; The Fourth Amendment and Your Cell Phone

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the ruling today issued by the Commissioner of the NBA Adam Silver banning Donald Sterling for life from any association with the team he owns, the LA Clippers, fining him two and a half million dollars and moving to have a three quarters majority of the NBA team owners force him to sell the Clippers, all this on the eve of an important playoff game for the embattled team. Andrei Markovits, a Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Michigan and author of “Gaming the World: How Sports are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture” and “Sportista: Female Fandom in the United States” joins us to discuss today’s punishment of a racist billionaire slumlord team owner by his peers.

Part 2

Then we discuss the public shaming of Donald Sterling further with Andra Gillespie, a Professor of Political Science at Emory University and the author of “The New Black Politician: Cory Booker, Newark and Post-Racial America”. We discuss attempts by the right wing press to label Sterling a Democrat, even though he is a registered Republican, and examine why, only weeks after Sterling’s racist rant was made public, African-American leaders like the Reverend Al Sharpton and the NAACP were about to host an awards dinner honoring Donald Sterling with a lifetime achievement award.

Part 3

Then finally, we assess the arguments before the Supreme Court in an important Fourth Amendment case with far-reaching consequences for privacy in the digital age. Marc Rotenberg, the President and Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington D.C., who was in the Supreme Court today, joins us to discuss how the court might rule on police powers in searching a potential crime scene where they have access to a trove of personal and private data, your cellphone.