LISTEN ONLINE TO THIS SHOW – SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST
The constitutional challenge to Prop. 8, Calfiornia’s initiative banning gay marriage, went to trial on Monday in San Francisco. STEPHEN ROHDE will comment, he’s a constitutional lawyer, lecturer, writer and political activist. and Chair the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.
Also: FDR provides the model of a liberal activist president against which Obama is being measured – historian ALAN BRINKLEY will talk about what FDR did—about the banks, unemployment, social security, and racial justice–and how he did it. His new book is Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Plus: Palestinian life in Gaza – now, and in 1956, when Israelis killed 275 people in two forgotten massacres. JOE SACCO, the pioneering comics journalist, will tell that story—and explain why it matters now. His new book is Footnotes in Gaza. He will be reading and signing next Tues., Jan. 19, 730pm, at Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont Av.
READ Patrick Cockburn’s review in the New York Times HERE
SEE Joe Sacco’s drawings from Footnotes in Gaza HERE.
In 1969, as the anti-war movement was reaching a peak, Richard Nixon’s White House staff debated what they could do to “show the little bastards” what kind of man they were up against. They were concerned about what would be the biggest antiwar demonstration in US history on Nov. 15, 1969, when half a million people came to Washington D.C. to demand that an end to the war in Vietnam.
Los Angeles County has more uninsured people than anyplace else in the country – three million, many of them immigrants, and many of those undocumented. If the Senate version of health bill passes, with its ban on federal coverage of non-citizens, a million people in California will be denied health insurance–the great majority of them in L.A.
Student protests against tuition increases at the 10-campus University of California system pushed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to announce on Tuesday an initiative to guarantee that the state spends more on universities than it does on prisons.
Plus: It’s 
Also: 
“For a long time now there’s been too much secrecy in this city.” That’s what President Obama said on his first day in office. He was talking about the way George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had used 9/11 as a pretext for pulling a veil over many of their key policies and actions. Last week, Obama announced he was replacing Bush’s executive order on classified documents with a new one designed to reduce secrecy. Obama’s policies are a distinct improvement, but they don’t really solve the underlying problem.
“They’ll send me to jail if I don’t sign up for Obama’s health care,” an 89-year-old woman said at my family holiday gathering last week. She was agitated and angry. “Imagine sending someone to jail – at my age!”
Plus: 
“War Is Over! If you want it” – a full page ad in the Sunday New York Times Dec. 27 must have puzzled many readers. The ad marked an anniversary: it was 40 years ago today that John Lennon and Yoko Ono launched their “War Is Over!” campaign, with billboards in New York, London, Hollywood, Toronto, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Athens and Tokyo – and in much smaller type at the bottom, “Happy Christmas, John and Yoko.” The message was repeated on posters, leaflets, and newspaper ads.
