Orange County Sheriff's Race; Orange County Journalists Roundtable; NSA Amassing Database of Americans' Phone Calls; Is U.S. Foreign Aid Being Spent Wisely?
Orange County Sheriff's Race
Orange County voters will cast their vote for the next Sheriff in the June Primary. The county's current sheriff, Mike Carona, is running for re-election. Larry moderates a debate between his three top challengers in the upcoming race. (Larry's interview with Sheriff Mike Carona can be heard Friday, May 12th.)
Orange County Journalists Roundtable
Larry Mantle talks with Los Angeles Times staff writer Jean Pasco, Orange County Register op-ed column editor Steven Greenhut, and OC Weekly senior editorial writer and columnist, Gustavo Arellano about the latest news events and developments in Orange County.
NSA Amassing Database of Americans' Phone Calls
The government is secretly collecting records of ordinary Americans' phone calls in an effort to build a database of every call made within the country, it was reported Thursday. AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth telephone companies began turning over records of tens of millions of their customers' phone calls to the National Security Agency program shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said USA Today, citing anonymous sources it said had direct knowledge of the arrangement. The program does not involve listening to or taping the calls. Instead, it documents who talks to whom in personal and business calls, whether local or long distance, by tracking which numbers are called. The NSA is the same spy agency that conducts the controversial domestic eavesdropping program that has been acknowledged by President Bush. The President said last year that he authorized the NSA to listen, without warrants, to international phone calls involving Americans suspected of terrorist links. Larry Mantle talks about this alleged program with Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman, LA Times National Security Correspondent Greg Miller, and Chapman University School of Law Professor John Eastman.
Is U.S. Foreign Aid Being Spent Wisely?
In his new book, White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, William Easterly takes issue with the trillions of dollars in foreign aid he says have been squandered over the last fifty years. Easterly contends that aid organizations are judged on how much money they hand out, rather than what they actually achieve with the aid. Larry talks with the NYC Economics professor about his call for a complete overhaul to how we approach foreign aid.