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JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Hour One

Sunday 21 September 2014  / Hour 1, Block A: Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency After 9/11 by Jack Goldsmith (1 of 2)   Many people expected a sharp change in America’s approach to counterterrorism when Barack Obama became president. But as Obama approaches the end of his first term, the continuities between the framework he inherited from President Bush and his current policies are more striking than the differences.  It is true that Obama ended the CIA’s secret detention program and overturned a series of legal guidelines on interrogation, but in practice the Bush administration had already moved away from the use of “black sites” and more extreme interrogation techniques such as waterboarding. On Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the use of military commissions, and targeted killing of terrorist suspects away from any conventional battlefield, Obama has largely maintained and even expanded his predecessor’s approach.

One of Jack Goldsmith’s aims in his new book, “Power and Constraint,” is to explain this apparently surprising outcome. Goldsmith — a conservative legal scholar who headed the Office of Legal Counsel for a time under the Bush administration — argues that Obama has been unable to shift U.S. counterterrorism policy very far because, by the time he took office, it was already pitched at the center of gravity of American political society. According to Goldsmith, it is misleading to portray Bush’s “war on terror” as an illustration of unbridled presidential power. Although the Bush administration set out to expand the scope of executive action in the field of national security, it was ultimately forced back by a framework of checks and balances built into the American political system. The restrictions imposed on Bush and his officials were frustrating, but the policies that emerged . . . [more]  ---Washington Post

Sunday 21 September 2014  / Hour 1, Block B: Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency After 9/11 by Jack Goldsmith (2 of 2)

Sunday 21 September 2014  / Hour 1, Block C:  A Thousand Hills to Heaven by Josh Ruxin (1 of 2)

Sunday 21 September 2014  / Hour 1, Block D: A Thousand Hills to Heaven by Josh Ruxin (2 of 2)

Hour Two

Sunday 21 September 2014  / Hour 2, Block A: The Fiddler on Pantico Run: An African Warrior, His White Descendants, A Search for Family by Joe Mozingo (1 of 4)

Sunday 21 September 2014  / Hour 2, Block B: The Fiddler on Pantico Run: An African Warrior, His White Descendants, A Search for Family by Joe Mozingo (2 of 4)

Sunday 21 September 2014  / Hour 2, Block C: The Fiddler on Pantico Run: An African Warrior, His White Descendants, A Search for Family by Joe Mozingo (3 of 4)

Sunday 21 September 2014  / Hour 2, Block D: The Fiddler on Pantico Run: An African Warrior, His White Descendants, A Search for Family by Joe Mozingo (4 of 4)

Hour Three

Sunday 21 September 2014  / Hour 3, Block A: Oliver Hazard Perry: Honor, Courage, and Patriotism in the Early U.S. Navy (Library of Naval Biography) by David C. Skaggs (1 of 4)

Sunday 21 September 2014  / Hour 3, Block B: Oliver Hazard Perry: Honor, Courage, and Patriotism in the Early U.S. Navy (Library of Naval Biography) by David C. Skaggs (2 of 4)

Sunday 21 September 2014  / Hour 3, Block C: Oliver Hazard Perry: Honor, Courage, and Patriotism in the Early U.S. Navy (Library of Naval Biography) by David C. Skaggs (3 of 4)

Sunday 21 September 2014  / Hour 3, Block D: Oliver Hazard Perry: Honor, Courage, and Patriotism in the Early U.S. Navy (Library of Naval Biography) by David C. Skaggs (4 of 4)

Hour Four

Sunday 21 September 2014  / Hour 4, Block A: High Voltage: The Fast Track to Plug In the Auto Industry by Jim Motavalli (1 of 2)

Sunday 21 September 2014  / Hour 4, Block B: High Voltage: The Fast Track to Plug In the Auto Industry by Jim Motavalli (2 of 2)

Sunday 21 September 2014  / Hour 4, Block C: Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency After 9/11 by Jack Goldsmith (1 of 2)

Sunday 21 September 2014  / Hour 4, Block D: Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency After 9/11 by Jack Goldsmith (2 of 2)

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