Month: April 2023

Background Briefing: April 19, 2023

How Innocent Mistakes Can Get You Killed in the NRA’s America 

We begin with a series of shootings in the last few days in which victims making everyday mistakes such as ringing the wrong doorbell, entering the wrong driveway or getting in the wrong car that looks like yours, results in being killed or gravely injured. We discuss the change in the country’s laws pushed by the NRA that have allowed legalized murder in 33 states based on “stand your ground” laws which have replaced “duty to retreat” laws aimed at avoiding confrontation into a selective right to kill. Joining us is Caroline Light, director of undergraduate studies in the Program in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Harvard University. She is the author of That Pride of Race and Character: The Roots of Jewish Benevolence in the Jim Crow South, and her latest book is Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense.

 

A $787 Million Loss For Fox is a Win In Not Having Tucker Carlson Squirm on the Witness Stand Confronted by His True Statements About His Repeated Lies

Then we look into how Dominion’s win of $787.5 million from Fox News is a loss for the rest of us who were denied the opportunity to see Tucker Carlson and other Fox hosts squirm on the witness stand when confronted by their own true statements about the lies they repeatedly told. Meanwhile we continue to subsidize Fox News via our cable bills whether we watch it or not. Joining us to discuss the need for a movement to free us from paying to be poisoned by Fox News is Harold Meyerson, one of the nation’s best-known progressive columnists and editor-at-large of The American Prospect. He also writes regularly about California politics for the Los Angeles Times and other national publications, and his latest article at the American Prospect is “Dominion, Fox, and Us.”

 

Will the Supreme Court Continue Their Moral Crusade Against Abortion or Accommodate Big Pharma?

Then, finally, with the Supreme Court extending the deadline for a decision on a nationwide ban of a medical abortion pill from midnight tonight to midnight on Friday night we speak with Carol Sanger, a Professor of Law at Columbia Law School where she teaches courses on reproductive rights, family law, the legal profession, and law and gender. Her latest book is About Abortion: Terminating Pregnancy in the 21st Century. We discuss whether the far-right majority on the Supreme Court, who recently took away a woman’s bodily autonomy, will ban the main safe alternative left for abortions as they choose between continuing their moral crusade or accommodating Big Pharma’s business needs.