Tagged: government

Last Tuesday Puerto Ricans cast a public opinion vote to become the 51st state. But what does that mean for those voters and for the rest of the US?

Christina Duffy Ponsa is a law professor at Columbia University and the co-editor of "Foreign in a Domestic Sense: Puerto Rico, American Expansion, and the Constitution." She joins us to talk about Puerto Rico's current status and how things might change with this vote.

In January the State Supreme Court ruled that Washington has not met its constitutional duty to fund K-12 education. Representatives Gary Alexander and Ross Hunter serve on the Ways and Means Committee, and they discuss what steps the House is taking to fund basic education.

Pre-trial hearings continue this evening at Joint Base Lewis-McChord for Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales. He’s accused of massacring 16 civilians in Afghanistan, including nine children. Prosecutors say he left his base last March and went on an overnight five-hour killing spree.

The hearings will determine whether the case will advance to court-martial, where the government has said it plans to seek the death penalty. KUOW’s Sara Lerner spoke with Patricia Murphy, who’s covering the hearings.

Pretrial hearings for Staff Sergeant Robert Bales continue tonight when Afghan villagers and soldiers are expected to testify by video. The hearings are expected to run into the early morning hours US time.

Glenn Greenwald is a columnist on civil liberties and US national security issues for the Guardian. A former constitutional lawyer, he has written for Salon and is the author of three books, "How Would a Patriot Act?" a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power; "A Tragic Legacy," which examines the Bush legacy; and "With Liberty and Justice For Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful."

The results are in! Well, almost. We discuss how the races played out for each side of the isle. Joining us are Chris Vance, former chair of the Republican Party in Washington, and Christian Sinderman, a Democratic political consultant and the founder of Northwest Passage.