September 17 - The House Republican Follies on Capitol Hill; Comparing Spending on Climate Security and the Military; James Bamford on his Three Days in Moscow with Edward Snowden

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with a new low in the theater of the absurd that has become the trademark of the House Republicans on Capitol Hill as two hearings begin, one the umpteenth investigation into Benghazi and the other even more farcical, a hearing chaired by global warming denier Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas aimed at criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to curb global warming CO2 pollution from power plants. Norman Ornstein, who write a weekly column for Roll Call, “Congress Inside Out”, and is the author with Thomas Mann of the recent best-seller “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism”, joins us to discuss how far the Republicans have gone off the rails since President Nixon founded to EPA and President Theodore Roosevelt established the Republican Party as the stewards of the environment.

Part 2

Then we look into a new study “Combat Versus Climate: The Military and Climate Security Budgets”, and speak with its co-author Miriam Pemberton, a Research Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies where she directs the Peace Economy Transitions Project. We discuss the modest increase in the Pentagon’s climate security budget from 1% in 2008 to 4% in 2013, which pales in comparison to China, which allocated nearly as much to climate change - $162 billion in 2013 as it did for its military forces - $188.5 billion.

Part 3

Then finally, we speak with James Bamford, the author of “The Shadow Factory: Inside the Ultra-Secret NSA, From 9/11 to Spying on America”. He is an investigative journalist specializing in national security issues who writes for Wired Magazine and spent three days in Moscow this summer with Edward Snowden, the fugitive former NSA contractor living in exile in Russia. We discuss what Snowden told him about the activities of his former employer and James Bamford’s article at the New York Times, “Israel’s NSA Scandal”.