We begin with a posse of angry old white men in the  White House and the Republican Senate determined to “plow through” with the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court regardless of Thursday’s testimony by Dr. Blasey Ford and have a vote of the full senate on his confirmation as early as next Monday or Tuesday. Bob Schiff, an attorney who served as Chief Counsel for former Senator Russ Feingold for 12 years and is the co-author of an article at Time Magazine“Brett Kavanaugh Can’t be Trusted. We Know Because We Worked as Counsel to Senators When He Was in the Bush White House”, joins us. We will discuss the contrast between the growing evidence against Kavanaugh and the increasing resolve of the Republicans to ram his confirmation through the senate, in stark contrast to the 8 months Mitch McConnell held up Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court who never even got a hearing. We will assess whether Kavanaugh’s third accuser who her lawyer Michael Avenatti is scheduled to unveil on Wednesday, could be sufficient for Senators Collins and Murkowski to break from the lockstep of GOP determination not to have an FBI investigation into these new and perhaps even more damning charges. Apparently she is accusing both Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge who the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are preventing from testifying.

Then we speak with the founder of PassBlue, Dulcie Leimbach, who has covered the United Nations for decades and was an editor of The New York Times for more than 20 years. She joins us to discuss President Trump’s address to the United Nations General Assembly at which his absurd boasts about being the greatest president ever who has achieved a miraculous turnaround having made America great again in just two years, was greeted with mocking laughter from the leaders of the world gathered in the chamber. We assess whether the two thirds of Americans who are embarrassed by Trump’s pandering to the ignorant isolationist delusions of the one third minority of the country who believe a global bureaucracy is about to destroy America’s sovereignty, will stand up and be counted in November.

Then finally with President Trump chairing tomorrow’s UN Security Council meeting at which he is expected to single out Iran as enemy number one, we will speak with revolutionary Iran’s first Ambassador to the United Nations, Mansour Farhang, a professor emeritus of international relations at Bennington College. He joins us to discuss the overheated belligerent threats today from Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton warning Iran “If you cross us, our allies, or our partners; if you harm our citizens; if you continue to lie, cheat and deceive, yes, there will indeed be HELL TO PAY’

We begin with Congressman Ted Lieu who serves on the House Judiciary Committee and today called upon the House Judiciary Committee to open an investigation into the allegations by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and a second accuser Deborah Ramirez, whose story of graphic and naked sexual harassment allegedly by Brett Kavanaugh at a drunken party of undergraduates at Yale, was just published by The New Yorker. In addition a third accuser has come forward who is represented by Michael Avenatti and she has made similar accusations which Congressman Lieu feels are sufficiently serious that together they raise the question of whether Judge Kavanaugh should keep his current job on the Federal Appeals Court, let alone the Supreme Court, and whether there are grounds for his impeachment. We also look into how much the White House is leaking reports that the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein who oversees the Mueller investigation is about to resign, and is it a distraction from the chaos and uncertainty now facing the nomination of President Trump’s second pick for the Supreme Court. He is expected to testify on Thursday amid growing calls by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee for an FBI investigation into the accusations from an increasing number of women coming forward who are questioning Kavanaugh’s honesty and fitness to serve on the highest courts in the land.

Then with more chaos gripping the leadership of the Department of Justice, with an increasingly tenuous Attorney General Trump claims he does not have, and a Deputy Attorney General Trump is threatening to fire while pressuring him to resign, we will speak with a veteran of the Department of Justice who served for 26 years, assuming a series of management positions, including Acting Assistant Attorney General of the United States. Bill Yeomans, a Senior Fellow for Justice at the Alliance for Justice who is now a lecturer at Columbia Law School, joins us to discuss the repercussions of the recent New York Times story which alleged Rod Rosenstein considered wearing a wire to record Trump and that he questioned whether the 25^th Amendment should be invoked to remove Trump from office. We assess whether Trump is trying to force Rod Rosenstein to resign at their upcoming showdown meeting on Thursday so that he can replace him under the Vacancy Act and thereby neuter the Mueller investigation, as opposed to firing him which would mean Trump would need Senate confirmation for a replacement for Rosenstein.

Then finally we speak with Lena Zwarensteyn, the fair courts campaign director at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights who previously served as the director of strategic engagement at the American Constitution Society where she oversaw judicial nominations. She joins us to discuss the apparent determination by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to “plow through” with Thursday’s hearing in spite of growing calls for an FBI investigation into the increasing number of accusers coming forward raising the likelihood that Kavanaugh is guilty of perjury. With Dr. Ford having been denied her request to speak after Kavanaugh and be questioned by the Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee and have Kavanaugh’s friend Mark Judge testify, we assess the extent to which the Republicans are stacking the decks against her.

We begin with the attack on an Iranian military parade in the south-western city of Ahvaz which Iran's President Rouhani blames on the “bully” the U.S. and its Gulf state allies for backing and enabling. Dr. Trita Parsi, a Professor of International Relations at Georgetown University, who has an article at Middle East Eye “Is the Ahvaz terror attack aimed at dragging the U.S. into a larger war?” joins us. We discuss the competing pressures on Trump who promised his base he would not dig the hole deeper for the U.S. in the Middle East and get into more wars while at the same time, being susceptible to Saudi money and the wishes of his biggest financial backer Sheldon Adelson who along with Adelson’s hero Netanyahu and the Saudi Crown Prince, would, as former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates warned, like to fight the Iranians to the last American. And while the Iranian economy is in freefall and the country is ripe for another people-power revolution against the corrupt ruling theocracy, military threats by hawks in the White House only play into the mullah’s hands. Furthermore with Putin now having buyer’s remorse that his puppet in the White House is unstable enough to launch a war to distract the American people from the Mueller investigation, Russia’s leader is privately warning the White House not to go to war against Iran and if they do, Russia would back Iran.

Then we examine the increasing political power of women’s anger and the revolutionary rage galvanized around the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings as the all-male Republican Senate Judiciary Committee “plough’s through” the confirmation of an anti-choice corporatist judge who will move the Supreme Court to the far right for generations. Joining us is Christine Fair, a Professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service who has been singled out by Fox News and The Daily Caller for her profane tirade against Kavanaugh and the GOP, resulting in her address being published on white supremacist websites and wanted posters of her distributed on cars and tacked on trees in her neighborhood.

Then finally we look into how this sordid Washington drama is highlighting another ugly side of the thinking of many men about women in which the “boys will be boys” defense of Kavanaugh sends the message that pushing women and teenage girls to have sex is a normal part of being a real man. Andrew Yarrow, a Senior Fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute whose latest book is “Man Out: Men on the Sidelines of American Life”, joins us to discuss his article at The New York Daily News “Kavanaugh, Sex and Modern Masculinity: What the Standoff Reveals about Men in Our Culture.”

We begin with the breaking news from ABC News that the special counsel Robert Mueller has been questioning Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen extensively in interviews in Washington D.C. and New York and that Mueller has primarily been focusing on Trump’s dealings with Russia. Scott Horton, a Professor at Columbia Law School and a contributing editor at Harper’s in legal affairs and national security, joins us to discuss how Mueller has been wary of dealing with Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis since Davis represents prominent Russian oligarchs and organized crime figures. But apparently Cohen’s alleged visit to Prague to pay off Russian hackers involved in meddling in the 2016 campaign, which was first noted in the Steele dossier, has been part of the discussions. And since Cohen himself has ties to Russian and Ukrainian gangsters that preceded Trump’s ties to the Russian and Ukrainian mob, and Cohen first met Trump when he bought condos in Trump properties for his Russian and Ukrainian criminal clients, the combination of what Cohen knows about who funded the Trump Organization together with what the Chief Financial Officer of the Trump Organization knows and is telling Mueller, could prove fatal to Trump.

Then with today’s email from the lawyers for Kavanaugh’s accuser to the Senate Judiciary Committee stating that Christine Blasey Ford “would be prepared to testify next week” if the senators offered her “terms that are fair and which ensure her safety”, we speak with Mike Zubrensky, Chief Counsel at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. He was Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Obama Administration working on judicial nominations for the Department of Justice and joins us to discuss his article at Medium“Judicial Nominee Background Investigations – Fact vs. Fiction” and how flimsy and fatuous Trump’s and the Republican’s excuses are for why the FBI can’t do a quick investigation of Dr. Ford’s charges against Kavanaugh.

Then finally we speak with Daniel Bessner, a Professor in American Foreign Policy at the University of Washington’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies who has an article at The New York Times “What Does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Think About the South China Sea? The rising left needs more foreign policy. Here’s how it can start”. We discuss the sweet spot in American politics the left has yet to discover in which you can be an idealist on domestic issues while being a realist on foreign policy.

We begin with the standoff between Judge Kavanaugh and his accuser Professor Christine Ford who wants an FBI investigation before testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee which President Trump is denying her offering the most flimsy of excuses. Eric Segall, a Professor of Law at Georgia State University and author of “Supreme Myths: Why the Supreme Court is not a Court and its Justices are not Judges” joins us to discuss whether Professor Ford’s lawyers are overplaying their hand in making demands on the U.S. Senate whose members are notorious for guarding their privileges and protocols. With Senator Graham warning bluntly that if Professor Ford does not show to testify on Monday, the Committee will go ahead and vote on Wednesday, we assess the chances of a compromise since the excuses for not having a quick investigation by the FBI then a hearing don’t add up. But in the meantime Professor Ford has had to go into hiding due to death threats, hacking and impersonation online, and with the senile patriarch Senator Hatch already calling her “mixed up”, a repeat of the treatment Anita Hill got might not play too well in the #MeToo era and further erode the chances of Republican women remaining loyal to Donald Trump’s GOP at the polls in November.

Then we examine the looming collision if not a constitutional crisis resulting from President Trump’s order to declassify secret work product of on on-going investigation in which the president himself might be a target. Andy Wright, a Senior Fellow and Founding Editor of Just Security who served in the White House as Associate Counsel to President Barack Obama and also worked in Congress conducting oversight of U.S. national security matters, joins us. We will discuss the possibility that both the Director of the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence will be forced to resign to protect intelligence sources and methods from a cynical attempt by Trump to bolster a conspiracy theory cooked up by Fox News and the so-called Freedom Caucus in the House.

Then finally we look into the deal Russia’s President Putin has made with Turkey’s President Erdogan to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe by setting up a buffer zone on Turkey’s southern border for three million Syrian citizens trapped with the remnants of the jihadist opposition to the Assad regime. An expert on U.S.-Turkey relations, Aaron Stein, a Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Hariri Center for the Middle East, joins us to assess whether the plan is workable and how much the U.S. has been sidelined in the region by Russia’s diplomatic initiatives.