Federal Government

In 2010, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.   The idea was to prevent another global recession. But has it worked?  We ask former regulator and University of Maryland law professor Michael Greenberger.

Are juvenile offenders getting adequate security and treatment? Nick Moroney, director of the Attorney General's Juvenile Justice Monitoring Unit, tells us what's going well and what's not in Department of Juvenile Services institutions.

A look at the DNC and President Obama's re-election campaign, with political writer and analyst Brian Wendell Morton and Kimberly Moffitt, assistant professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and co-editor of "The Obama Effect. Plus calls to Charlotte for on-the-floor analysis with C. Fraser Smith, WYPR senior news analyst, and Ken Ulman, Howard County executive and 2012 convention delegate.

Well, it’s not quite the oratory of, say, Daniel Webster or Henry Clay. But it’s how Congress communicates these days.

Here to talk about the 2012 election and all things social media is our monthly guest Nathan Jurgenson, a sociology Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland. His co-guru P.J. Rey will be back next month.

As the deadline looms for the massive budgets cuts put in place by Congress last year to end the stalemate over the nation's debt ceiling, Pulitzer Prize-winning economics writer David Wessel describes the people and the politics behind the federal budget, and why it is on an unsustainable course. Wessel is the author of In Fed We Trust and Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget.

Should students be punished for skipping school? Or rewarded for attending? Sheilah talks with a Juvenile and Domestic Relations Master about a truancy reduction program used in some school systems in Maryland.

Giving the FBI more than they could ever ask for and turning it into art.

Musicologist Ian Nagoski brings to life the music and times of early 20th Century immigrants from the remnants of the Ottoman Empire.

This conversation originally aired on November 21, 2011.

If Congress recesses Monday without acting on the Bush-era tax cuts and the ‘sequestration’ budget cuts, the nation will get dragged even closer to a ‘fiscal cliff.’ We ask two Baltimore Sun reporters what’s at stake for Maryland--particularly its defense industry--if that happens.

Then – The national unemployment numbers for July are just out.  A Towson University economic professor is here to discuss what it means for our regional economy … and the trend for jobs in Maryland. 

The U.S.

In the first hour, a look at poverty on the national scale. Is the economy really to blame for the increase? What is happening to our safety nets? W