Inside a Trump Rally (David Smalley, Dogma Debate #228)

Alix goes inside a Trump Rally, and we have audio from supporters and protestors. We’re fact checking Democrats and Republicans, and Ken Ham reviewed our science book for kids!
Interview:
http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/dogma-debate-with-david-smalley/e/228-inside-a-trump-rally-43205115

Opening The Books On Donald Trump's Business Deals In Atlantic City

Washington Post reporter Robert O'Harrow dissects Trump's acquisition of the Taj Mahal casino/hotel, which went into bankruptcy a year after it opened...
Interview: 
http://www.npr.org/2016/03/17/470806232/opening-the-books-on-donald-trumps-business-deals-in-atlantic-city

The Road To The White House Has Gotten Lumpy

The Ted-mentum might slow to a crawl now that he has to campaign to a bunch of elitists with New York values.
https://youtu.be/3m50EE8jeZA

A Torturer’s Confession: Former Abu Ghraib Interrogator Speaks Out

http://democracynow.org - Eric Fair served as an interrogator in Iraq working as a military contractor for the private security firm CACI. He was stationed at the Abu Ghraib prison and in Fallujah in 2004. In a new memoir, Fair writes about feeling haunted by what he did, what he saw and what he heard in Iraq, from the beating of prisoners to witnessing the use of sleep deprivation, stress positions and isolation to break prisoners. The military described such actions as "enhanced interrogations," but Eric Fair uses another word—torture. He writes, "If God is on anyone’s side in Iraq, it’s not mine." (Part 2 is the next post below.)
Interview:
https://youtu.be/2oGh93UnxQg

Former Abu Ghraib Interrogator: Because of Trump & Cruz, Door Still "Wide Open" for U.S. to Torture

http://democracynow.org - As Republican presidential candidates promise to bring back the torture techniques used under the George W. Bush administration, we speak with one of the men who actually carried out these policies. Eric Fair served as an interrogator in Iraq working as a military contractor for the private security firm CACI. He was stationed at the Abu Ghraib prison and in Fallujah in 2004. His new book, "Consequence: A Memoir," has just been published. Interview: 
https://youtu.be/1t54JZNbkCI

Long Lines at the Wisconsin Primaries: A Closer Look

Seth takes a closer look at the role of voter ID laws in the Wisconsin Republican primary.
https://youtu.be/fHxSfs7GfdY

Trump Praises The ‘Spirit’ Of Campaign Manager Who Grabbed A Protester

Donald Trump praised his campaign manager’s “spirit” for grabbing a protester at his rally in Tucson on Saturday. “I give him credit for having spirit. He wanted to take down those horrible, profanity-laced signs,” Trump told ABC News....

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/03/20/3761911/trump-tuscan/

If You Think Voter ID Is About Voter Fraud, This Republican Congressman Has News For You

On Tuesday, Wisconsin held its first presidential election since the state’s new voter ID law took effect. It didn’t go smoothly, with students facing long lines and residents struggling to get the ID cards needed to vote.

The voter ID bill signed into law by Republican Gov. Scott Walker is a solution in search of a problem, as study after study shows voter fraud isn’t a real issue in Wisconsin or elsewhere. But as another recent paper indicates, voter ID laws do have one benefit, at least for Republicans — suppressing reliably Democratic votes....
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/04/06/3767043/glenn-grothman-voter-id-wisconsin-partisan/

All TPM News: Ex-Staffer: Wisconsin GOPers Cheered Voter ID Bill For What It 'Could Do For Us’

A former top staffer for a Republican legislator in Wisconsin suggested this week that GOP legislators were motivated to pass the state’s tough photo voter ID law because they believed it would help them at the ballot box, an account he expanded on in a Wednesday interview with TPM....
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/todd-allbaugh-voter-id-wisconsin-gop

What Happens When Neither Political Party Answers to the Bottom 90%? America in Crisis

As Donald Trump leads a full-scale war against the Republican establishment and elites, particularly through his attack on both their military (Iraq) and their trade (NAFTA) policies, the Democratic Party is also in a predicament that Bernie Sanders’ candidacy is exposing. Both parties right now face a great crisis of leadership/ideology as well as a great opportunity for reinvention, and whichever party first reinvents itself successfully will begin winning elections the way the Democrats did in the 1932-1968 era....
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/what-happens-when-neither-political-party-answers-bottom-90-america-crisis

Obama Just Shut Down Ted Cruz’s Terrible Ideas To Combat ISIS

During a Wednesday news conference in Argentina, President Barack Obama succinctly broke down why two ideas Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has been propounding are bad ones....
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/03/23/3762866/obama-explains-why-cruz-is-wrong-carpet-bombing-muslim-surveillance/

Led by a New Generation, Muslim Americans Are Making Their Presence Felt in the Presidential Campaign

...Led by a new generation that came of age after 9/11, Muslims have shifted their support to the Democratic presidential candidates seeking the outsized voting power of political minorities to help defeat an increasingly white, male and overwhelmingly evangelical Christian Republican party...
http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/led-new-generation-muslim-americans-are-making-their-presence-felt-presidential

Ted Cruz Has Absolutely Nothing to Say to the GOP Voters He Needs Most

Ted Cruz’s impressive (though predicted) win in Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary will probably do little to seriously change the contours of the race. Cruz certainly did better than expected, beating Donald Trump by a very solid double-digit margin. But his victory speech, a windy and repetitive accounting of delegate math and conservative talking points, showed that the Texas senator still has a ways to go in shaping his persona and image going forward. Outliving his many rivals and pushing Trump toward a contested convention, Cruz has run an astute campaign thus far, but his message remains as narrowly tailored as it did when he started....
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/04/05/ted_cruz_wins_wisconsin_then_blows_it_with_his_speech.html

2 Reasons Paul Ryan Would Be A Hard Sell To Republican Voters

...Politico's Republican source said Ryan makes sense because he's "the most conservative, least establishment member of the establishment." But there are two issues for Republican voters where Ryan is less conservative than Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the leading contenders for the GOP nomination who between them have already received more than 13 million votes this primary season....
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/04/04/3766138/paul-ryan-republican-nomination-trump-cruz/

House Republicans Say Oil Spill Prevention Rule Should Be Easier On Oil Companies

Almost five years after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill sent millions of barrels of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration announced a set of new offshore drilling rules that it hoped would prevent another massive oil spill. Now, as those rules appear to be racing towards finalization, House Republicans are asking the administration to revise the rules to lessen the burden on the oil industry....
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/04/04/3766124/offshore-drilling-republican-revision/

GOP Sen. Collins: Meeting SCOTUS Nom Left Me ‘Convinced’ We Need Hearings

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) emerged from an hour-long Tuesday meeting with Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland “more convinced than ever” that the Republican-controlled Senate should hold hearings for him.

 “The next step in my view should be public hearings before the Judiciary Committee,” Collins told journalists gathered outside their meeting, according to NBC’s Luke Russert. Collins said she found Garland “impressive” and refused to rule out voting for him if hearings do proceed.

She also suggested other Republican senators may change their mind about moving forward with the process if they met with him, according to CNN’s Manu Raju....
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/susan-collins-meets-merrick-garland

Roger Stone Threatens To Sic Trump Voters On Delegates Who 'Steal' Nom (VIDEO)

Roger Stone, an informal adviser to Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, said Monday that in the event of a contested GOP convention he planned to disclose where delegates are staying in Cleveland so that Trump supporters could give them a piece of their mind.

Stone issued a scathing condemnation of the GOP nomination process in an interview on Freedomain Radio, and urged Trump's supporters to "march on Cleveland" if delegates were to "steal" the nomination from the real estate mogul....
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/roger-stone-steal-trump-nomination

For Ohio Women, Kasich’s Anti-Choice Policies Extend Beyond Abortion

Our community health workers do in-home visits and teach everything from safe sleep, to birth spacing, to nurturing the baby, to making sure there’s the healthiest experience for the infant as possible, and the mom too.
We've been doing this program for 18 years. We were doing it in one county for many years, and we did such a great job that we were allowed to add a county. So we are actually currently the only agency in the state of Ohio that’s allowed to run the program in two counties, and that’s because we’ve had such a great success rate with the program...
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/03/15/3760507/planned-parenthood-kasich-ohio/

Ted Cruz Tells Fox America Has 'Never Engaged In Torture'

On Fox & Friends Wednesday morning, presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) claimed that the United States has “never engaged in torture.”

“America has never engaged in torture and we’re not about to,” Cruz responded after being asked whether he would engage in torture, enhanced interrogation, and waterboarding by the show’s three hosts.

Cruz, whose father was tortured in Cuba, has changed his stance on torture several times in the past — so his comment on the show simply adds to the confusion regarding what the presidential candidate actually thinks of its use....
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2016/03/23/3762638/ted-cruz-torture/

Robert Reich: The Republicans Are Determined to Suppress the Vote

A crowning achievement of the historic March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King gave his “I have a dream” speech, was pushing through the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. Recognizing the history of racist attempts to prevent Black people from voting, that federal law forced a number of southern states and districts to adhere to federal guidelines allowing citizens access to the polls.

But in 2013 the Supreme Court effectively gutted many of these protections. As a result, states are finding new ways to stop more and more people—especially African-Americans and other likely Democratic voters—from reaching the polls....
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/robert-reich-republicans-are-determined-suppress-vote