Politics

In the first of a two-part series on immigration, former NPR correspondent Andrea Seabrook’s political podcast, Decode DC, explores this serious and volatile subject and looks at how humor can get closer to solving a problem than political talking points ever could. Guest host Korva Coleman

Last week, President Obama re-committed himself to closing the detention center for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. Obama’s remarks came during a mass detainee hunger-strike and on the heels of a renewed conversation about terrorism in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings.

We all know that in case of an emergency, call 9-1-1. For information, press 4-1-1. But last year, more than 96,000 Maryland residents dialed 2-1-1. Sandy Monck, chief impact officer at United Way of Central Maryland tells us how UWCM's 2-1-1 Maryland is assisting residents in need.

The Maryland GOP elected a new chair last weekend. We ask Diana Waterman of the Eastern Shore about her plans for the party after a General Assembly session that was tough for Republicans.

Then, on the eve of Baltimore Civic Work’s 20th anniversary, we speak with co-founders Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Dana Stein about the service organization's past and future.

With the epic fail of his post-Newtown gun reforms and the first terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11, President Obama arrives at the 90-day mark of his second term with his job approval slipping and many wondering what, if anything, he can achieve before midterm elections. Our guests: Ari Shapiro, NPR White House correspondent; Michael Reisch, professor of social justice at the University of Maryland School of Social Work; and Barry Rascovar, political commentator and communications consultant.

April 23, 2013

The Maryland Republican Party elected a new chair over the weekend. Diana Waterman, a bookkeeper from Queen Anne’s County, will lead the party through the gubernatorial election in 2014. 

William Dobson is the foreign affairs editor of Slate; before that he was an editor for Foreign Affairs. He has traveled around the world, logging some 93,000 miles to report on the changing ways dictators do their thing. North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is not one of them -- the young leader of an old-school, frozen-in-time regime that stands in stark contrast to the many other dictatorships that survive and even thrive by adapting to life in the digital age.

A look at the top stories of the region with the reporters who covered them. Special guest: Andor Skotnes, author of "A New Deal For All? Race And Class Struggles in Depression-Era Baltimore."

This morning the House of Delegates begins debating Governor O'Malley's gun control bill.  As it stands, the measure would ban assault-style weapons and strengthen the requirements to buy a handgun in Maryland.  We talk with two of the delegates involved in the debate:  Luiz Simmons, Democrat of central Montgomery County, and Mike Smigiel, Republican of the Upper Shore.

Under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, enacted during the Great Depression, when more than half of the nation’s senior citizens were in poverty. Ira Katznelson, professor of political science and history at Columbia, expands our definition of the New Deal by examining the domestic and global forces behind it. Katznelson is the author of Fear Itself: The New Deal and The Origins of Our Time.