Immigration memo: will authorities stop deportations for students and military? Driving stoned: slow or dangerous? And is there a good way to test drivers' THC? Obama plans troop drawdown in Iraq. Later, a case for turning your air conditioning down, or off.
Immigration memo sparks controversy
A draft memo prepared by the US Citizenship and Immigration Service is stirring up the immigration debate again. Immigration reform opponents see the memo as an attempt by the Obama administration to bypass Congress and open the floodgates by granting citizenship to the nation’s estimated 11.5 million illegal immigrants. Advocates for comprehensive immigration policy reform champion the memo’s provisions that “promote family unity, foster economic growth, achieve significant process improvements and reduce the threat of removal for certain individuals present in the United States without authorization.” Is the memo a chance to cut red tape and move the immigration process forward? Or might it be a path to blanket amnesty?
Read the memo in full (via ProPublica).
Guests:
Mark Krikorian, Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies
David Leopold, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association
Rep. Brian Bilbray, Republican Congressman 50th District (Encinitas, Escondido), US House of Representatives; Chair of the Immigration Reform Caucus
Driving while stoned?
If Prop 19 passes, anyone aged 21 and older could legally possess and smoke marijuana. Would more legal weed pose a danger for California drivers? Studies indicate that pot hinders one’s sense of timing and causes users to be more distracted behind the wheel. How can police test if a driver is too high? And, how much marijuana would you need to have in your system to classify you as legally “stoned?”
Guests:
Kim Raney, Chief of Police in Covina
Tony Garrett, Recruitment and Public Information Officer, California Highway Patrol
U.S. combat operations in Iraq will come to an end
President Obama announced this morning that he will fulfill his campaign promise of ending the war in Iraq and vowed that by August 31st, only 50,000 military personnel will remain there. Although there is not yet political stability in Baghdad, Obama will transition the U.S. military’s role from combat to advising Iraqi security forces. Then, by the end of 2011 all American forces are scheduled to be withdrawn from the country. But, with Iraq’s political impasse showing no signs of ending, will Obama succeed in helping to implement a newly elected Iraqi government by then?
Guests:
Liz Sly, LA Times reporter, Baghdad bureau
Matthew Duss, National Security Researcher/Blogger at the Center for American Progress (CAP)
Tom Donnelly, director of the Center for Defense Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
Too hot to cool it: are we too dependent on air conditioning?
Imagine spending the summer in Phoenix, Arizona without air conditioning---sounds miserable, doesn’t it? That’s probably why the population of Phoenix was 100,000 in 1950. It is currently 4.3 million. In his book Losing our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World, writer Stan Cox looks at the impact of air conditioning and steps we can take to minimize its environmental costs. For example, does it really make sense to have tie-and-jacket dress codes in sweltering climates? Or to construct buildings with windows that don’t open? Have we gotten carried away with this ubiquitous invention?
Guest:
Stan Cox, writer of Losing our Cool: Uncomfortable Truth About Our Air-Conditioned World (The New Press)