Leid Stories

Tell It the Way You See It: It’s Open Forum on Leid Stories—which means the discussion goes where callers want it to go. Postulate, opine, debate, respond, retort, analyze, theorize, criticize, decipher, challenge—just go ahead and state your case! But, as usual, be prepared to defend your point of view, because you’ll be challenged—with great love and respect, of course.

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Death Throes in Florida/Extreme Labor Pains in Several States: Gov. Rick Scott of Florida has on his desk a piece of legislation, the Timely Justice Act, that prisoner-rights advocates are hoping he won’t sign, but instead will veto. The act speeds up executions, requiring the governor to sign a death warrant within 30 days after a review by the state Supreme Court, and scheduling executions within 180 days. Marc Mauer, director of The Sentencing Project in Washington, D.C., discusses the enormous impact the legislation would have for 404 death-row inmates in Florida, and the domino effect in other states. Recent labor statistics are cause for alarm at the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute. Doug Hall, director of EPI’s Economic Analysis and Research Network, details the devastating effect of unemployment in several key states and the persistence of race as a major factor in the growing numbers of people without jobs.

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President Obama apparently deemed it irrelevant that Morehouse College has been battling educational apartheid, shaping the minds of African American men and molding them into stalwart and exemplary leaders since 1867. Or, maybe he had nothing really relevant or new to say. Morehouse’s graduating Class of 2013 sat through a steady rain, complete with thunder and lightning, to hear Obama go homie on them with his standard themes when addressing African Americans, especially men: make good choices and don’t go to jail; don’t be a sperm-donor absentee father; there’s no excuse for a lack of ambition; face up to personal responsibilities; hard work is how one achieves in life. For that Morehouse conferred on Obama an honorary doctor of laws degree. Did the president go homie at the $32,400-per-couple fundraiser held at the office of the foundation of Arthur M. Blank, co-founder of Home Depot and owner of the Atlanta Falcons, following his Morehouse gig? Nuh-uh!

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Obama: No Rescue for Haitians, But Rescue Him More than three years after a devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake and 52 significant aftershocks hit Haiti, killing 316,000 people, dispossessing 3 million others and literally shutting down the impoverished nation, a program that would have allowed U.S.-based Haitians to send for their distressed relatives and care for them while Haiti rebuilds remains in limbo. The emergency measure received bipartisan support, but President Obama has refused to green-light it. Steven Forester, immigration policy coordinator for the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, explains the current situation. Plus, Leid Stories continues the discussion on why, with the groundswell of opposition to Obama and his administration, the core constituency the embattled president has ignored will be expected to come to his aid and rescue.

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In Washington, The Blame Game’s At A Slow Burn

Fully one-third of the committees in the Republican-controlled House in some way are investigating the Obama administration. They’re not in a hurry; in fact, they really, really want to take their time—say, another three years or so. Good government is not to be rushed! The Republicans are relishing a plethora of opportunities to score points with jaded voters and regroup their fractured party. They’re hitching their horses to hearings on the IRS debacle, Benghazi-gate, the Justice Department’s spying on AP reporters, and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s solicitation of funds from health-care companies to promote Obamacare enrollment. Leid Stories explains why this “perfect storm” of political liabilities, though designed to sink Obama, could be made to backfire. But does Obama have it in him to do it?

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It’s Open Forum on Leid Stories, and listeners’ considered opinions on news issues and events they think warrant closer attention take center stage. What’s expected? Well, say what you mean, and mean what you say. It’s not about being “right” or “wrong.” It’s about presenting an idea or point of view that sparks vigorous discussion and debate. Be brave! Challenge and be challenged – with love and respect, of course!

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Ensnared in a tangle of carefully choreographed probes into his administration’s role in a range of hot-button issues, President Obama no doubt has gotten the gist of the Republicans’ true intentions: to keep him on the defensive with well-placed jabs while they hone their muscle for the lethal blow—impeachment. Leid Stories returns to yesterday’s discussion, focusing on the ways in which the president’s only hope is to re-cultivate a genuine relationship with his political base—the folks who have walked the walk with him, but whose priorities appear to have been low on his list.

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It was a bruiser of a week for President Obama, but a comeback of sorts for Republicans, who have made their intentions clear: Obama is to be a lame duck president and, preferably, impeached. Leid Stories explains how Obama and his administration breathed new life into the deflated Republican Party and why he may very well end up being the reason for major setbacks for the constituencies that have most faithfully supported him.

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Leid Stories is pleased to present noted historian, political scientist and author Gerald Horne in an exciting lecture, “The World and African Americans”-- how, from the 17th century to the present, African Americans have allied with the foes of foes to progress. Dr. Horne holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston.  A prolific author, he has written more than 30 books and 100 scholarly papers and reviews on struggles against imperialism, colonialism, fascism and racism. Dr. Horne's undergraduate courses include the Civil Rights Movement and U.S. History Through Film. He also teaches graduate courses in Diplomatic History, Labor History, and 20th-Century African American History.

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William Blum, who has been chronicling the seamy underside of U.S. foreign policy and covert operations since leaving the State Department in 1967, explains why President Obama “could be charged with serious crimes for allowing the United States to fight on the same side as al Qaeda-linked terrorists in Libya and Syria and for funding and supplying these groups.”

And yesterday’s congressional hearing on the terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, last Sept 11 not only revealed entirely different narratives of the tragic event from senior diplomatic staff, but also the surest signal yet of a Republican effort to impeach the president.

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