April 28, 2010

Whole Show Blow-by-Blow

It's Wednesday, April 28th.

The Speaker of the House has given the government two weeks to come up with a way to grant MPs access to unredacted documents related to the Afghan detainee controversy.

Currently, opposition MPs say they're serious about getting what they need from the government. Which is why they've hired Rahim Jaffer.

This is The Current.

Speaker's Ruling

We started this segment with a clip from the House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken. Yesterday, he issued a long-awaited ruling about the Federal Government's refusal to hand over un-censored documents about the Afghan detainee controversy. He ruled that the government has breached Parliamentary privilege and that parliament has the right to demand the documents in question.

But Speaker Milliken also noted that the government has an obligation to protect national security. So he asked all parties to come up with a way for MPs to look at the documents without jeopardizing national security. And he gave them an incentive.

So, with the ball firmly back in the court of our sitting MPs, we gathered three of them to talk about where things go from here. Tom Lukiwski is a Conservative MP and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Government House Leader. He was in Ottawa. Bob Rae is the Liberal Party's Foreign Affairs critic. He was in Toronto. And Jack Harris is the NDP's Defense Critic. He was also in Ottawa.


PART TWO

Restaurant Toy Ban

We started this segment with a clip from Steven Hazel. He lives Santa Clara County, California. And he's one of many people who got up to speak at a meeting of the county's Board of Supervisors yesterday. The man he's referring to as the "head grinch" is Ken Yeager, a county supervisor responsible for introducing an ordinance to ban local restaurants from including a toy with any meal that is too high in calories, sugar and salt.

The motion passed and the ordinance is now law. Of course it only covers restaurants in Santa Clara County, California. But across North America, people are watching carefully to see if it might set a precedent. Susan Linn is among them. She's a psychologist at the Harvard Medical School and the Director of the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood. She was in Boston. Radley Balko is senior editor of Reason magazine and a media fellow at the Cato Institute. He was in Alexandria, Virginia.

PART THREE

Wikileaks - Ethan McCord

It was July 12th, 2007. American soldiers were on a mission in Iraq. Even in an arena of war... it is one that has now become infamous for its brutality. It was an attack by U.S. Apache helicopters, no one has an exact count but it appeared to have killed 12 iraqis including two employees of the Reuters news agency, and an unarmed man who drove up in a van and tried to rescue the wounded. The American fire also injured two children.

A classified US military video was made public this month by the whisteblowing website Wikileaks. The video was shocking to a public that rarely gets such first-hand glimpses of war. But no one was perhaps more shocked by it than Ethan McCord. That's because he was in that video. Ethan McCord was an army specialist, deployed to Iraq between April and November 2007. He is the co-author of An Open Letter of Reconciliation and Responsibility to the Iraqi People. He was in Wichita, Kansas.

You can watch the video we've been speaking about at wikileaks.org.

Last Word - Banning Ronald

We ended the program today with some thoughts about children, fast food and toys ... something we touched on earlier in the program. This month, McDonald's has found itself in the cross hairs of Corporate Accountability International, a non-profit corporate watchdog group based in Boston. The group wants the company's mascot, Ronald McDonald, fired.

It blames the iconic red-headed clown for contributing to a growing obesity epidemic by luring youngsters to fast food outlets. So we ended with some thoughts on Ronald McDonald from Corporate Accountability International ... as well as some thoughts on Corporate Accountability International from Fox Television's Bill O'Reilly Show.