January 06, 2013

It looked as if the nomination of former Senator Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense was fated to follow a familiar pattern: the prospective nominee's name is leaked, the right-wing piles on her/him with a series of smears, the wounded candidate withdraws from the fray. Today's host, Esther Kaplan, talks with Ali Gharib, senior editor for The Daily Beast's Open Zion, about why the Hagel nomination seems to be breaking with the pattern.  And what is there for liberals to like, if anything, in the Hagel nomination?

For four years Jewish Week reporter Hella Winston has indefatigably reported on the failure of prosecutors in New York City and New Jersey, notably Brooklyn District Attorney Hynes's office, to aggressively prosecute cases of sexual abuse and evidence of a pattern of intimidating and discrediting victims within ultra-orthodox communities.  Winston talks with Beyond the Pale about two recent developments:  the conviction of Nechemya Weberman, an unlicensed counselor from the Satmar community, for repeatedly sexually abusing a girl in his care and the filing of charges by the Brooklyn DA against several men for attempted interference in the case; and the disclosure by The Foward newspaper, of a decades long cover-up of sexual abuse accusations against two teachers at Yeshiva University's high school for boys, a bastion of modern orthodoxy.

You cannot buy an assault weapon in New York State, but that hasn't deterred New York's economic development officials from subsdizing the manufacture of assault weapons in the state.  Beyond the Pale talks with Nathaniel Herz, a reporter with The New York World about his discovery (with the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting) that New York ranks second nationally in the size of its aid to these manufacturers.