This Week on Midweek Politics with David Pakman / February 17th, 2010

Total Running Time: 54:45

MP3 Podcast: Available with entire Midweek Politics Archive for Members

This Week’s Topics:

–Sit-down interview with Congressman Barney Frank about financial reform, Iraq, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and more.

–New radio and television stations airing Midweek Politics in Hartford and Massachusetts.

–An incredible story about a group of evangelical churchgoers who decided to steal children from Haiti to convert them away from Catholicism and to Baptists, and who fortunately were arrested before leaving the country with any kids.

–Peter Sprigg from the Family Research Council believes that homosexuality should be outlawed and punishable by law.

–Sprigg’s colleague, Tony Perkins, also subscribes to bizarre and extreme ideology when it comes to homosexuality.

–During a hearing in New Hampshire related to repealing same-sex marriage, Representative Nancy Elliott gives some strange and entertaining thoughts about homosexual activity.

–The new national security distraction of Arabic language students from the US, highlighted by the aggressive detention and interrogation of Nick George from Pomona College who was caught with English/Arabic flashcards for words such as funny and to smile.

–We discuss whether going after students studying Arabic for 4 hours with 7 different law enforcement officials keeps us more safe, or takes resources away from actual potential terrorists.

–In explaining the difference in reactions from trying shoebomber Robert Reid in the US during the Bush administration and the underwear bomber in the US now, Newt Gingrich resorts to lying that Richard Reid was an American citizen, and Monica Crowley that there simply were no military tribunals in 2001.

–In what can only be described as a fantasy world, Dick Cheney criticizes Barack Obama and Joe Biden for trying to take credit from Bush and Cheney for the miraculous, incredible success that is the war in Iraq.

–Senator Evan Bayh says he will not seek re-election to the US Senate, and while he says the decision was not motivated by being down in the polls, which he is not, he did take a few shots at Congress, and we discuss whether it will hurt or help him in a potential run for the presidency, which some are predicting.

–Director Kevin Smith is thrown off of a Southwest Airlines flight for being too fat, and it has create a frenzy on Twitter between Smith and the airline.

–Michelle Obama will appear on Fox News with Mike Huckabee in what seems like a carefully crafted non-political appearance related to childhood obesity.

–A deluge of emails after last week’s interview with anti-gay Paul Cameron goes viral.

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