December 8 - The Torturers Circle the Wagons; Restoring Equal Justice and a Belief We Are a Just Society; A Former Senior Editor of the Former New Republic

Full Program

Part 1

We  begin with the post-9/11 torture report due out on Tuesday that already has senior officials in the George W. Bush Administration and at the CIA circling the wagons to challenge the report’s conclusions. The author of “The Interrogator: An Education”, Glenn Carle, a former member of the CIA’s Clandestine Service who retired in 2007 as Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Transnational Threats, joins us to discuss the possibility that revelations in the report might inflame anti-American outrage overseas and remarks by the former president on whose watch torture and rendition took place, that those operatives and officials involved in torture are “patriots”.

Part 2

Then we discuss deteriorating race relations in the country as growing evidence of the disproportionate killing of black men by police officers and the subsequent sense of their impunity because of the failure of the justice system to even put them on trial, appears to be taking its toll on the notion that we are a colorblind society with equal justice for all. Chris Parker, a Professor of Social Justice and Political Science at the University of Washington who is the principal investigator of the Multi-State Survey on Race and Politics, joins us to assess what can be done to restore justice and the belief that we are a just society.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with a Senior Editor of The New Republic John Judis, who along with almost all of his colleagues on the staff of the magazine, just quit in protest at the about face of the owner Chris Hughes, the co-founder of Facebook, who pledged to “double down on in-depth rigorous reporting and keep long-form quality journalism strong in our country”, but instead decided to turn the company into a vertically integrated digital media company. We will discuss how much this is about old media versus new, or the actions of a callow dilettante.