Photo, above: Where Were the Old Testament Kings of Ancient Jerusalem Buried?  Nearly a century ago, the French archaeologist Raymond Weill excavated what he identified to be tombs in Jerusalem’s City of David—perhaps the royal necropolis of the earliest Old Testament kings. Some scholars have since disputed this claim, but a new examination of the evidence by the archaeologist Jeff Zorn suggests that Weill might well have been right.  Although King David’s tomb has been erroneously identified with a location on Jerusalem’s Mt. Zion since the days of the Jewish historian Josephus (first century C.E.), earlier Biblical references make it clear that David and many other Old Testament kings were buried near the southern end of the City of David in ancient Jerusalem. But where exactly? Jeff Zorn believes we may already know.

The archaeologist Jeff Zorn believes these two quarried-out tunnels in the City of David may have once held the remains of the earliest Old Testament kings of ancient Jerusalem. The Nineteenth-Century diplomat and explorer Charles Clermont-Ganneau believed the circuitous path of Hezekiah’s Tunnel offered a major clue. Clermont-Ganneau suggested the looping semicircular path followed by Hezekiah’s Tunnel towards its southern end was dug to avoid disturbing the burial grounds of the ancient Jerusalem kings that lay above. Within a couple of decades, Baron Edmond de Rothschild had purchased land in this area of the City of David to test the hypothesis through excavation.

Weill directed excavations on Baron Rothschild’s City of David property in 1913–1914 and again in 1923–1924. Though the area was greatly disturbed by later quarrying, Weill discovered ancient walls, ritual pools, cisterns, a circular tower (now believed to be a columbarium) and, most remarkably, nine rock-cut features that he identified as “tombs.” Weill interpreted the three most prominent tombs (labeled T1–T3) to be part of the royal necropolis of the Old Testament kings of ancient Jerusalem.Photo, above: 

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Co-host: Larry Kudlow, The Kudlow Report, CNBC; and Cumulus Media radio

Hour One

Tuesday  21 January 2014 / Hour 1, Block A:  Steve Moore, WSJ and just-appointed chief economist at Heritage Foundation, in re:  agrees with Larry Kotlikoff – abolish corporate income tax.    State of the Union next week: Mayor de Blasio "is the puppeteer". . . Left wants equal outcomes, not equal opportunity – and it's our job to provide more equality of opportunity.  Keeping families together, no drugs and dysfunctional activities: these are important to reducing poverty in this country. Obamacare, massive debt, others: all have made income equality worse, not better.  Free trade back on the agenda:  every president since Herbert Hoover has favored that except this one, who’s captive of he unions. The solution to poverty is capitalism.

Tuesday  21 January 2014 / Hour 1, Block B:    William Whalen, Hoover, in re:  Jerry Brown, fourth-term governor  California; Neil Kashkari and Donnelly in an open primary (top-two runoff: everybody on the same ballot irrespective of party). Donnelly: Tea Party, favors guns.  Kashkari worked on TARP, peaks of immigration reform, pro-economic growth, was at PIMCO.  Donors are starving for someone good to run.   1. Strengthen economy  2. Improve job mkt  3.  Balance budget.  At the bottom of the list: global warming and high-speed rail.  Kashkari needs some handfuls of money PDQ – needs to have  YouTube presence.   Hank Paulson will help raise money; also, a lot of guys with money at PIMCO who could provide seed money.  Diane Feinstein will step down in 2018 at the age of eighty-__; Jerry Brown will step down in 2018; need the GOP to be back in action by 2018.

Tuesday  21 January 2014 / Hour 1, Block C: Lee Ohanian, UCLA and  FoxNews.com, in re:   Why We Continue to Lose the War on Poverty. A hypothetical person in Pennsylvania can do better with govt funding and earning $5,000 than earning $35,000 with no aid. We've failed this group of people. I advocate letting people earn as much as they can while having some public assistance: for a limited time.  Let them build skills and value or employers. Note marriage deductions and child credit – tax implications to family strength.  I’d say: from age 18 to 22 you can take jobs, build skills, establish work history – and then you’re on your own. 

Tuesday  21 January 2014 / Hour 1, Block D:  David Malpass, Encima Global, in re: Govt can’t help the middle class. Agree we need a social safety net for poor people, but not the middle class – that's basically a definition of socialism.  North Carolina a mfg hub; GOP vision is private-sector growth, need a head-on confrontation with "I want a bigger mfg center here" -- that's the govt deciding.  Now the govt is a full partner with the private sector, so if you increase private growth, you also expand govt.  Need GOP platform rewritten to . . .   ACA is guaranteed to make your life awful; the site doesn't operate yet; workers given a stipend, told to buy their own healthcare.  Still haven’t written the regulations to ACA.  Object: creating agencies within federal depts without permission.  Under the Fed's policies, rates to zero, which drives income to the rich.  There's  giant problem.  US producing sweet light crude, but e have no refinery for it. Need to deregulate refinery process so we can use the oil from fracking.   Alaska can't send its oil to Japan except on superexpensive shipping under US govt control. A better future for the middle class: requires limits on govt. How Big Government Drives Inequality; Stifling economic growth and benefiting insiders with Washington access do not help the middle class.

Hour Two

Tuesday  21 January 2014 / Hour 2, Block A:  Claudia Rosett, FDD, in re: 3,500 years of Jewish culture and relationship to the Holy Land, then another 2,500 from the beginning of the New Testament.   UNESCO had an exhibit on this in Paris, all organized –w=then suddenly backed off at the lat moment. Seems that the 3,500 year would constitute a problem for he peace process – 22 Arab states wrote a letter saying it'd be bad. So UNESCO announced it'd "postpone the exhibition lest it produce confrontation" – at the same moment that the UN in New York announced thee Year of Solidarity with Palestinian People. To deny the 3,500 years before Jesus is to deny history. Abu Ammar, the dead Egyptian buried in a blacktop parking lot, had a theory that the Jews had ever lived in the Hold Land.  This is the effort to delegitimize Israel, on which UNESCO has now put its imprimatur. A deliberate slight, remaking reality the same way that Communist states did in the last century.  The City f David excavation ahs been going n or years; archaeologist have found David's palace from before the siege of Jerusalem. All this is being denied – that I stood in nothing, that I climbed down into a well that didn't exist.  Alternative universe – where the UN wants your tax dollars. Exhibition was supposed to open last Monday; the Arab states objected and the UN bowed deep, made it’s point: no room for hard facts of history; this is culture-science education as the UN would have it.  What we need to replace is not false history but the UN that rewrites history for us.  UNESCO's disgrace.

Tuesday  21 January 2014 / Hour 2, Block B: John Fund, National Review Online, in re: Oregon launched its own website for north of $300 mil; in the first month it enrolled 23 people.   Governor said: "I was out of the loop." A watchdog hired, Maximus of Virginia, exercised oversight; site managers got upset, told 'em to shut up, and when they wouldn't, Oregon cut off payments.   Email trail alternated from utter despair to giddy optimism.  Rocky King, exec dir of Cover Oregon – now on leave, about to retire. Now have 23 thousand people signed up, but no clue who's paid, if anyone.  feds send monitors to overlook; they had a great time, but never asked relevant questions.   See video of Lawson Cover Oregon; effort to interview her; she turns and walks away – reminded me of a stake-out interview of a mobster.  Federal site is guaranteed not secure.  Everybody's being fired, running away.

 An Obamacare Website Failure Even Bigger Than Washington’s    Oregon, a state of 4 million people at the forefront of “progressive” health reform, isn’t being touted by liberals these days as a model. That’s because Cover Oregon, its state-run health-care exchange, is the worst in the country, so bad that officials there may decide soon to unplug it and hook up to the faltering federal exchange.

How did it happen? The Oregonian, the largest newspaper in the state, did a public service Sunday detailing through a review of state e-mails how all the warnings about the site’s inadequacies were ignored. “Among those who raised the alarm were technology experts from the state Department of Administrative Services and the Legislative Fiscal Office. Also issuing repeated warnings was Maximus, a Virginia company hired to exercise independent oversight,” the paper reported. But all were ignored. Things got so bad that Ying Kwong, a technology analyst working for the state, talked about going to Oregon’s Department of Justice to block the exchange from going live. “How can the state conduct business like this?” he asked in an e-mail.   Kwong compared the relentless advance of the exchange website to the monster in the sci-fi movie classic The Blob. The Oregonian reported that Cover Oregon “seemingly couldn’t be stopped due to its amorphous shape and political momentum.” Kwong wrote that “you simply don’t know how to shoot this beast, because it does not have a known anatomy with the normal vital organs that make it tick.”  [more]

Tuesday  21 January 2014 / Hour 2, Block C:  Taegan Goddard, Political Wire, in re: David Remnick: On and Off the Road with Barack Obama : The New ... Obama's Presidency is on the clock. The coming year is a marker, the final interval before the fight for succession becomes politically all-consuming. “The things ...

Tuesday  21 January 2014 / Hour 2, Block D: Taegan Goddard, Political Wire, and John Avlon, editor-in-chef, The Daily Beast, in re: Pre-K on the Starting Blocks Inside. Mayor Bill de Blasio's plan to offer full-day preschool to every New York City 4-year-old hasn't yet rounded ...

Hour Three

Tuesday  21 January 2014 / Hour 3, Block A:   Jillian Kay Melchior, National Review Online, in re: Felonious Obamacare Navigators?   Only six states have laws requiring all types of navigators to pass background checks. Most states have nonexistent or only partial requirements for background checks for Obamacare navigators. But new legislation introduced in Arizona, Colorado, and Virginia would mandate background checks for all navigators, establishing strict guidelines for what offenses the state would consider disqualifying.

Different states classify types of navigators differently — there are “navigators,” “in-person assistors,” “certified application counselors,” and “health-care guides,” to name a few — but all have the same basic job: helping Americans sign up for health coverage.  These navigators work with vulnerable populations and have access to confidential data, including Social Security numbers, financial information, and health records. Nevertheless, the federal government does not require Obamacare navigators to undergo background checks.  As many as 31 states do not require background checks, suggests a survey compiled in December by . . .   Also confirmed this week that in Connecticut, at least one class-B felon is working as a navigator.

Tuesday  21 January 2014 / Hour 3, Block B:  Conrad Black, Canadian, in re: Sarah Palin, Aljazeera and the Jerusalem Post weigh-in on Stephen Harper's Israeli stance
Yahoo News Canada (blog) ‎- 5 hours ago 
From the blog Canada Politics: Stephen Harper's middle eastern tour is getting a lot of media coverage, not only in Canada, but around the ...

Jewish Holocaust victims 'remembered always': Stephen Harper  /  
Harper: Through fire and water, Canada will stand ... - Jerusalem Post
  Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper received a very warm welcome ... Canada not asked to take in Palestinian refugees, PM Harper says.

/  Stephen Harper, Benjamin Netanyahu sign agreements - Politics ...
   Prime Minister Stephen Harper has received a warm welcome from Shimon ... to expand a free trade pact during their meeting in Jerusalem.  . . . The prime minister said the aim of the new round of talks is to reduce technical barriers to trade, more quickly resolve market access irritants and create new opportunities for Canadian agriculture, agri-food, and fish and seafood companies in the Israeli market.  "An expanded and modernized trade agreement with Israel will generate more jobs and economic growth at home and in Israel, while strengthening the close friendship that both countries enjoy," said Harper.  The two leaders also agreed Tuesday to a lengthy list of . . 

Tuesday  21 January 2014 / Hour 3, Block C:   Ann Marlowe, Hudson Institute,  in re: Kabul restaurant was beloved refuge; now it's terrorists' rubble
Kamal Hamade's Kabul restaurant, targeted in a Taliban attack, was a ... On Saturday, the Taliban attacked the cozy Lebanese restaurant in ... Taliban Attack on Kabul Restaurant Rattles Close-Knit Expat Community   Taliban's Kabul Attack Kills 21, Heightens Security Concerns  Islamist party quits Libya's government

Tuesday  21 January 2014 / Hour 3, Block D:  Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: Opportunity begins its second decade roving the Martian surface.  The rover’s surface mission was originally scheduled to last only 90 days.  A donut-sized rock suddenly appears in front of the Mars rover Opportunity.  NASA announced the discovery of the rock at an event at Caltech in Pasadena this past Thursday night, dubbing the rock “Pinnacle Island.” “It’s about the size of a jelly doughnut,” NASA Mars Exploration Rover lead scientist Steve Squyres told Discovery News. “It was a total surprise, we were like, Wait a second, that wasn’t there before, it can’t be right. Oh my God! It wasn’t there before!’ We were absolutely startled.

After three years in hibernation, Europe’s Rosetta comet probe has successfully come back to life.  The craft at the heart of ESA’s €1-billion (US$1.4-billion) comet-hunting mission was shut down in 2011 to save energy while travelling in deep space. Rosetta successfully re-established communications with Earth on 20 January. 
With an alarm pre-set for 10:00 GMT, a signal was expected at any time from 17:30 GMT, once the spacecraft had warmed up and turned its antenna toward Earth. But Rosetta kept everyone guessing, with the first sign that everything had gone to plan arriving only around 40 minutes later.

ESA’s European Space Operations Centre erupted in cheering and hugging as small spikes appeared in radio signals received at NASA deep-space communications centres in Canberra and in Goldstone, California.

Because of a computer reboot, Rosetta’s revival from hibernation came 18 minutes late.  [Rosetta] awoke yesterday as planned, to the relief of ESA scientists – but the signal it sent home to confirm it was awake reached Earth late, fraying the nerves of some mission controllers in the meantime. Due to call at 1745 GMT, Rosetta did not announce its revival until 1818. Fifteen minutes could be explained because the spacecraft’s computer checked the on-board clock only every quarter of an hour. The additional 18 minutes, however, was a mystery. Now, the telemetry has shown that soon after Rosetta’s first revival sequence started, the on-board computer automatically rebooted and the sequence started again, causing 18 minutes of delay. It seems all is well now, though the engineers plan to spend some time pinpointing the cause of the reboot.

Hour Four

Tuesday  21 January 2014 / Hour 4, Block A: Six Months in 1945: FDR, Stalin, Churchill, and Truman - from World War to Cold War by Michael Dobbs (1 of 4)

Tuesday  21 January 2014 / Hour 4, Block B: Six Months in 1945: FDR, Stalin, Churchill, and Truman - from World War to Cold War by Michael Dobbs (2 of 4)

Tuesday  21 January 2014 / Hour 4, Block C: Six Months in 1945: FDR, Stalin, Churchill, and Truman - from World War to Cold War by Michael Dobbs (3 of 4)

Tuesday  21 January 2014 / Hour 4, Block D: Six Months in 1945: FDR, Stalin, Churchill, and Truman - from World War to Cold War by Michael Dobbs (4 of 4)

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