July 24 - Arizona's Botched Execution; Israeli Tourism Takes a Hit; GOP Immigrant-Bashing Will Backfire Over the Long Term

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the botched execution in Arizona and speak with a retired judge Donna Hamm, who is the founder and executive Director of Middle Ground Prison Reform in Arizona where she is an expert witness in executive clemency and prison policy and procedure. We discuss the two hour-long drawn-out death of James Wood who gasped and snorted 660 times according a reporter who witnessed his barbarically incompetent execution by lethal injection that the Chief Judge of the Ninth Circuit Court described as “a misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and peaceful…but executions are, in fact, nothing like that. They are brutal, savage events, and nothing the state tries to do can mask that reality.”

Part 2

Then we speak with Juan Cole, a professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan and author of the new book “The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation are Changing the Middle East”. We discuss the growing strength of the Islamic State in Iraq who are now turning on their erstwhile allies, executing Baathist generals, while making military gains to the point they are threatening Baghdad. We also discuss Juan Cole’s article at truthdig.com “Gaza War Devastates Israeli Tourism Revenue, Points to Fragile Apartheid Future.”

Part 3

Then finally with the Texas Governor grandstanding on the border with the National Guard as a prop for Rick Perry’s presidential ambitions, we look into the Republican Party’s seizure of the issue of the influx of unaccompanied children crossing the border as an election year issue to beat up on Obama and the Democrats, with Dr. Manuel Pastor, a Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He joins us to discuss the extent to which immigrant-bashing may backfire later in terms of the millions of potential Latino votes Republicans will lose, and his article in the Los Angeles Times, “GOP Focused on the wrong set of children”.