Politics

President Barack Obama will be sworn in for his second term on Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. How many presidents have given second inaugural addresses? On our last show before the historic event, we take the Inauguration Quiz with presidential history buff and Baltimore attorney Frank Gorman, and we talk about second-term presidency with Kenneth Davis, author of, "Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents."

We examine President Obama’s strategy of linking a deficit deal to another attempt at crafting a “grand bargain.” Is the president conceding too much to congressional Republicans by accepting the premise that Social Security and Medicare contribute to the deficit and that such entitlements need to be cut to improve the national economy?

Wednesday is the deadline for Governor Martin O’Malley to give the legislature his proposal for how much money the state should spend in the coming year, and how to pay for it. 

Another in our series of discussions about the Newtown massacre, the focus this time on the massive number of firearms in the United States -- and how we reconcile the Second Amendment right to bear arms with the right to be safe from gun violence. A conversation with former New York Times correspondent and editor Craig E. Whitney, author of "Living With Guns: A Liberal's Case for the Second Amendment."

The 2013 Maryland General Assembly convenes Wednesday with the president of the Maryland Association of Counties calling for legislators to give local jurisdictions a break from spending mandates and to provide more funding for roads. On the day before the legislative session begins, we speak with three executives about the financial burdens their counties face as the O'Malley administration tries to balance the state budget. Our guests: Ken Ulman of Howard County, David Craig of Harford County, and Kevin Kamenetz of Baltimore County.

In the wake of the Newtown massacre, which left 27 people dead, Baltimore County Police Chief Jim Johnson talks guns and public safety.

In the aftermath of the deadliest elementary-school shooting in the nation's history, what saddened and outraged Americans can do to keep more gun massacres from occurring. Guests: Colin Goddard, a survivor of the Virgina Tech massacre and now with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence; and Brad Sachs, Columbia-based family psychologist and author of books on adolescents and young adults.

Whether you call it the fiscal cliff, fiscal slope or something else, the series of mandatory spending cuts and tax increases that could take place January 1 is the dominant subject on Capitol Hill. Former NPR Washington correspondent Andrea Seabrook, who has started her own blog and podcast, “DecodeDC,” will give us the latest on the talks to avoid “the cliff,” the debate over entitlements and more.

Two stories in this hour: Baltimore native Matthew VanDyke, journalist-turned-self-styled freedom fighter, has just returned from Syria to tell about his experiences with the rebels trying to overthrow the Assad regime. He is working on a film about the civil war in Syria. Then, Gregory Johnson, former Fulbright fellow in Yemen, explains why that country has become the U.S.’s most urgent terrorist concern. Johnson is the author of The Last Refuge: Yemen, Al-Qaeda and America's War in Arabia.