Guest host Patt Morrison discusses military options to counter terrorism, the Muslim community deals with the public's reaction following Beirut and Paris attacks & an award-winning film director unveils his conclusion about Jack the Ripper
World weighs military, counterterrorism options after Beirut and Paris attacks
After the unprecedented attacks on Paris Friday, world leaders are weighing their options to contain the terrorist network that calls itself the Islamic State.
Over the weekend, France launched a bombing campaign against two ISIS training camps in Syria. Following suit, U.S. warplanes struck a fleet of trucks used by the terrorist group to smuggle oil in Syria on Monday.
The coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris came after suicide bombers killed 43 people in Beirut and a Russian airliner full of passengers was downed in Egypt. ISIS has claimed responsibility for both attacks, and many say that backlash against Muslims as a result of these attacks are playing right into the Islamic State’s hand.
The attacks, they suggest, are part of a larger plan to generate hostility among citizens of Western nations towards Muslims in their countries in the hopes that the backlash will drive Western Muslims back to their native countries to organize and radicalize against the Western nations who ostracized them.
Joining guest host Patt Morrison to discuss the situations in France and Lebanon, as well as counterterrorism and military issues are our panel of guests.
Guests:
Brian Michael Jenkins, Senior Advisor to the President of the Rand Corporation and one of the nation's leading experts on terrorism and homeland security
Phil Ewing, national security editor for NPR. He tweets
Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs of the American University of Beirut and a nonresident senior fellow in the Middle East Initiative at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Khaled Beydoun, Professor of Law, Barry University School of Law, in Orlando, FL; Beydoun’s scholarship focuses on the intersection of race, religion and national security
Ruth Bader Ginsburg: From SCOTUS justice to feminist icon
She is the second woman justice to be appointed to the US Supreme Court, having served in the post for more than two decades.
Now in her 80s, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has become a bona fide cultural icon to a generation of millennials, many of which weren’t even born when she first took her seat in the high court.
In a new biography, journalist Irin Carmon and legal expert Shana Knizhnik trace the career and life of the so-called “Notorious RBG.”
Guest:
Irin Carmon, national reporter for MSNBC, where she covers gender, politics and law. She is the co-author of the book, “Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg” (Dey Street Books/HarperCollins, 2015)
Supreme Court to hear challenge to Texas law regulating abortion care
The Supreme Court is giving an election-year hearing to a dispute over state regulation of abortion clinics in the court's first abortion case in eight years.
The justices said Friday they will hear arguments in Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole, probably in March, over a Texas law that would leave about 10 abortion clinics open across the state. A decision should come by late June, four months before the presidential election.
The issue split the court 5-4 the last time the justices decided an abortion case in 2007, and Justice Anthony Kennedy is expected to hold the controlling vote on a divided court.
The case tests whether tough new standards for clinics and the doctors who work in them are reasonable measures intended to protect women's health or a pretext designed to make abortions hard, if not impossible, to obtain.
Abortion rights supporters say the law - H.B. 2 - would close 75 percent of clinics in the state. The two controversial provisions include requiring physicians who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital no more than 30 miles away, and requiring abortion clinics to to have facilities equal to an outpatient surgical center.
In 1973, the Roe v. Wade ruling established that states cannot create "undue burdens" or "substantial obstacles" restricting abortion access.
With files from the Associated Press.
Guests:
Dahlia Lithwick, senior legal editor for Slate
Stephanie Toti, lead attorney for the plaintiffs in Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole and senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights
John Eastman, Ph.D., Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service at Chapman University Fowler School of Law
Should Muslims feel pressured to speak out about terrorism?
Muslim communities around the world have come out over the weekend to condemn the attacks in Paris.
Here in Southern California, the Islamic Center of Southern California brought together several speakers to condemn the terrorist attacks in Paris.
Twitter campaigns like
encourage Muslims to speak out and let the world know that IS does not represent all Muslims.
But others reject that idea and feel that, as Muslims, it’s not their job to speak out about IS and terrorist attacks. If you’re a Muslim, we want to hear what kind of pressure you might be feeling to speak out.
Guests:
Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council
Sadia Saifuddin, former student regent for the University of California system and the first Muslim to be a UC student regent
‘Withnail and I’ filmmaker turns his gaze in new project on Jack the Ripper
This year marks the 127th anniversary of the five brutal deaths attributed to the murderer dubbed Jack the Ripper, who earned the moniker from the immense brutality he used to murder his victims.
The bodies of five women were found ripped apart in London’s Whitechapel district in 1888 – four of them are said to have been prostitutes.
Award-winning film director and screenwriter Bruce Robinson reexamines the case and draws his own conclusions about the identity of the world’s most famous serial killer in his new book, “They All Love Jack.”
Guest:
Bruce Robinson, a British director, screenwriter, and author of the new book, “They All Love Jack” (Harper Collins, 2015)