Today, the New York radio station WOR announced that Glenn Beck’s nationally syndicated radio show will be dropped on January 17, 2011, and hate radio host Mike Gallagher, a familiar New York name, will be taking Beck’s spot. According to Scott Lakefield, the WOR program director, the reason is due to Beck’s drop in ratings. Scott explained that the “show wasn’t getting what we wanted”:

WOR (710 AM), one of the city’s two biggest talk radio stations, said this morning it is dropping Beck’s syndicated show as of Jan. 17 and replacing him with a familiar New York name: Mike Gallagher.“The reason is ratings,” said WOR program director Scott Lakefield. “Somewhat to our surprise, the show wasn’t getting what we wanted.”

Beck’s drop in popularity isn’t new, as seen by the plethora of major companies who have dropped advertising from Beck’s show on Fox News. Additionally, Beck’s show in the U.K. ran without any advertisements for five consecutive days during February 2010, and according to Color of Change, a total of 81 companies have withdrawn their advertising to date.

– Paul Breer

In the waning days of the lame duck session, the Senate had the opportunity to pass the Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Deterrence and Victims Support Act. Aimed at creating “a comprehensive, victim-centered approach to addressing the sex trafficking of minors,” the bill is “the first of its kind to deal with young trafficking victims domestically” by providing $12 million in off-set funding for state and local law enforcement to shelter, rehabilitate, prevent, and protect child victims of the sex trade.

Originally introduced by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and John Cornyn (R-TX) in 2009, the Senate Judiciary Committee adopted, amended, and passed the House version of this bill last summer which then passed the Senate by unanimous consent on December 9, 2010. The bill returned to the House, underwent further revision, and finally passed by voice vote on December 21, 2010. But when the Senate attempted to pass the bill again by unanimous consent, Sen. Jeff Sessions put a hold on the bill. The sole objector, Sessions effectively defeated its passage in the 111th Congress.

Sessions is pushing back against claims that he believes child victims deserve to be arrested as prostitutes, something the conservative Concerned Women of America alleged. In defending Sessions’ decision, a Republican Judiciary aide told ThinkProgress that Sessions was instrumental in helping the bill clear the Senate Judiciary Committee but had to object after the House removed two of his amendments that he said toughened the bill. One measure required a mandatory minimum sentence “for transporting, receiving or distributing” child pornography. The other expanded subpoena authority to the U.S. Marshals Service over unregistered sex offenders. But because the House removed these measures in its final revision, the Senate aide indicated several members opposed the new version. Thus, the staffer told us that, as the Ranking Member of the committee, Sessions had to be the one to block the bill.

According to his spokesman Ron LeGrand, Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) — the outgoing Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security — dropped the subpoena position because there already was a precedent established for law enforcement agencies to receive subpoena authorization through the Department of Justice. Scott also dropped the mandatory minimum measure because minimums are “irrelevant, ineffective” sentences that “tend to have a very negative impact on people of color.” LeGrand said no one has ever presented Scott with “evidence-based research instead of knee-jerk slogan and soundbites” as rationale for the minimums, and in “the closing weeks of his chairmanship, that was still the case.” In removing the measures, LeGrand said Scott “stood on principle.”

But the Republican aide said their removal required Sessions to act on principle too. The hotlining process prevents members from changing the bill. Believing the bill to be brought up at the midnight hour of lame duck session, the aide said Sessions would not clear a watered down bill and preferred to take it up in the new session.

This is certainly not the first time a procedural impasse has jeopardized important legislation, nor is it the first time the GOP used time as an excuse to “run out the clock.” But anti-sex trafficking advocates said this time the procedural stalemate forced the sacrifice of the greater welfare of abused children. “Though we did not object to the Sessions amendments, we would have liked for Senator Sessions to put aside his objection to their removal in the House,” said Shared Hope International’s Senior Director Samantha Healy Vardaman.

Advocacy groups worked hard “to carefully craft a bill that provided solutions to the gaping problem of lack of shelter for child victims of sex trafficking and bolster support for law enforcement entities eager to investigate and prosecute these crimes,” she said. The Senate’s failure “results in a further delay in fulfilling the promise of the federal trafficking act to protect and restore victims of domestic minor sex trafficking.”

Still, Vardaman is “optimistic” that the momentum from last year “is sufficiently high in Congress to allow the bill to pass quickly in this new session.” While new efforts are likely to start in the House under the new Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX), the Republican aide insisted that Sessions is supportive of the Senate bill and will work to see it passed this year. However, given the Senate GOP’s penchant for obstruction, advocates might need more than optimism.

Today, as Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) was sworn in as the Speaker of the House for the 112th Congress, ThinkProgress witnessed a group of Koch Industries lobbyists entering the Capitol along with members of Congress and their families. Tim Phillips, a former business partner to Jack Abramoff who now leads the Koch front group Americans for Prosperity, was with Nancy Pfotenhauer, a former corporate lobbyist for Koch Industries. ThinkProgress learned that David Koch, the polluter billionaire who has bankrolled groups organizing the Tea Parties and much of the modern conservative movement, was also in attendance in the Capitol for Boehner’s swearing-in event.

After the ceremony, David Koch walked up to Rep. Frank Guinta (R-NH) — a freshman Republican Koch helped to elect using his front group, Americans for Prosperity — and asked him to confirm that he will be attending a party that Koch is hosting for Republicans. Guinta said he would be at the party, which began at 5:00pm today.

Koch has been one of the most active players in Republican politics in the Obama era. His group Americans for Prosperity helped orchestrate much of the Tea Party movement; he funds many of the top conservative think tanks, like Heritage and the American Legislative Exchange Council; and, he also ran tens of millions of dollars in attack ads to elect the new Republican Congress. As ThinkProgress reported, Koch convened a secret meeting of top business leaders — mostly bankers, industrialists, and oil men — to meet with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Glenn Beck to plan the midterm election in June 2010.

ThinkProgress also spoke to Mr. Koch, and will post a video of the interview soon.