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a cabinet secretary starting work, right? it's not your typical multiple network life news event. but hillary clinton was never just some cabinet secretary, right? well, today, four years later at the start of the second term of the obama administration it was a similar scene for hillary clinton as she said goodbye to the same state department employees from almost the same spot where they welcomed her four years ago. >> now it's my great honor to introduce one last time the 67th secretary of state of the united states of america, hillary rodham clinton. [ cheering and applause ] >> oh. >> secretary clinton still greeted like a rock star today at the agency she has led for the past four years. hillary clinton, of course, is not just somebody who came in a very close second to barack obama in trying to win the democratic party's presidential nomination, who then got a high-ranking cabinet post as a consolation prize. no, hillary clinton is really her own thing. her career in public life, in public office is unlike anybody else in american history. she went from being an accomplished lawyer in her early career to being the first lady of arkansas. she then became a very high profile first lady of the united states for her husband's two terms in office. she was the first modern first lady to turn that role into a policy job and the first attempt at health reform. she went on to weather her husband's in-office infidelity scandal and impeachment in office. she became a senator from the state of new york and then of course that historic and very hard fought race for the democratic presidential nomination, concluding with barack obama winning the presidency, and then him nominating hillary clinton to be the highest profile secretary of state that our country probably has ever had. and we have had a lot of very high profile secretaries of state. >> so it's been quite a challenging week saying goodbye to so many people. and knowing that i will not have the opportunity to continue being part of this amazing team, but i am so grateful that we've had a chance to contribute in each of our ways to making our country and our world stronger, safer, fairer, and better. those of you who are staying, as many of you will, please know that i hope you will redouble your efforts to do all that you can to demonstrate unequivocally why diplomacy and development are right up there with defense. how when we think about who we are as americans, it's because we are united and committed across our government to do whatever is required to fulfill the missions we have assumed as public officials and public servants. >> right up there with defense. that is one of the big ideas of the obama presidency, right? essentially, reorienting how america deals with the world away from the u.s. military and toward u.s. diplomacy. to upscale our soft power capacity as a country so we have more options beyond just the option of force. this president did a lot to advance that idea simply by putting somebody as high profile as hillary clinton in the job of america's head diplomat. but the overall goal of upscaling state, upscaling diplomacy and development so they are right up there with defense, like she said today, that is widely regarded as a goal that is not yet realized. secretary clinton alluded to that fact today when she said she now plans to become an advocate for that cause from the outside. it is, frankly, easy to imagine that as the core for her return to public life and politics for hillary clinton at some point, but we shall see. the secretary also reflected today on how she is really leaving public life for the first time in a very long time. and she suggested that that might make her a little lonely. >> i am very proud to have been secretary of state. i will miss you. i will probably be dialing ops just to talk. >> dialing ops. want to know what ops? this is ops. ah, this is the state department's nerve center, better known as the operation center, better known as ops. this is the place where for the last four years hillary clinton could call any hour 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to find out what the heck was going on anywhere in the world. the operation center is sort of legendary. it was created by jfk in 1961. it is essentially the secretary of state's on call lifeline to events breaking anywhere in the world. they consider their time zone to be the time wherever the secretary is anywhere in the world, secretary time. and on a day like today, even with a handoff from secretary clinton to the new secretary, on a day like today, the ops center would have been very busy. news today of a suicide bomb attack at the u.s. embassy in ankara in turkey. no americans were hurt or killed, but one of the people who was wounded in the blast was a turkish reporter who was reportedly at the embassy to meet with the u.s. ambassador. the turkish government is blaming known members of a marxist group they say has operated in the country since the 1970s. in egypt today protesters hurling firebombs through the estate of mohamed morsi's presidential palace, taking place on the date of the uprising that overthrow mubarak. vice president biden in europe, and while he is there the syrian government is warning they may be about to launch an attack on israel in retaliation for an israeli air strike that took place inside syria a couple of days ago. and if that's not enough on the plate, we also still have a navy ship stuck on a world heritage site coral reef in our ally the philippines. and oh, by the way, north korea is gearing up for what may be yet another nuclear test. and they say that we are the reason they are doing it there is a lot going on in the world. secretary of state's a hard job, if not the hardest job in the united states government other than the presidency. you're responsible for so much. hillary clinton reflected on the breadth of responsibilities for a secretary of state during the exit interview that she did yesterday with the ap. but in that interview, she also reflected on our own country's governing capacity. look at what she said. this is how the ap wrote it up. secretary of state hillary rodham clinton is leaving office with a slap at the critics of the obama administration's critics of the handing of a diplomatic mission in libya there are some who can't be confused by the facts. they just will not live in an evidence-based world. and that is regrettable. it is regrettable for our political system and for the people who serve our government in very dangerous, difficult circumstances. they will not live in an evidence-based world. hillary clinton there talking about the conservative effort to treat the attack on the u.s. consulate in benghazi as not just an attack on our consulate, but as some sort of obama administration conspiracy, or at least scandal. that effort led south carolina republican senator lindsey graham this week to say that he think hillary clinton, quote, got away with murder. the same effort led rand paul of kentucky to do this during secretary of state clinton's senate testimony on the matter last week. >> my question is, is the u.s. involved with any procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons, buying, selling, anyhow transferring weapons to turkey out of libya? >> to turkey? i --ly have to take that question for the record. nobody's ever raised that with me. >> according to senator rand paul, the secret key to understanding what happened to ambassador chris stevens in benghazi is that a ghost secret boatful of weapons was leaving libya for turkey. and so the ambassador had to be killed to cover that up? maybe? because cia helicopters, boats, ghosts, i don't know. rand paul talked than theory that he has cooked up. he talked about that theory after that hearing to who else, but the website world net daily. rand did an interview with world net daily and told them he doesn't have any proof about this theory that guns are being smuggled out of libya into turkey, and that somehow explains what was going on there. but he wanted to enter that conspiracy theory into the congressional record anyway. world net daily is where united states senator rand paul went to go talk about his conspiracy secret boat theory about benghazi after the hearing. just for the record, this is the world net daily front page. see what the halo is? this is their current issue. inside you can read an article titled "obama's muslim childhood" by daniel pipes in which the renowned islam expert presents overwhelming evidence that the president of the united states who claimed before the election he was never a muslim was in fact born and raised a muslim. no way, way. no way, way. world net dally is where senator rand paul, i repeat, went to talk about his boat to turkey theory about why it happened. also, the guy who came in second in the republican presidential nominating contest this past year, rick santorum, his new job is that he is a columnist for world net daily. rand paul is being out theed by the supposedly serious conservative heritage foundation as the big speaker next week on reagan's birthday where he is going to give his manifesto on what republican foreign policy should be. that's going to be next week on ronald reagan's birthday, rand paul. but, you know, it's fitting, because we're coming up on reagan's birthday. and did you hear about the horrible obama muslim marxist thing about his kenyan home? did you hear? >> this is one wall that probably shouldn't be torn down. this apartment building used to be the home of a young ronald reagan. it was denied landmark status, and the university of chicago is ready to demolish it. the university is also trying to become the site of president obama's presidential library. that's drawing strong concerns the university might turn president reagan's former house into a parking lot for an obama library. >> did you hear about that? chicago close ties with the obamas, all of them, tearing down ronald reagan's boyhood home in order to make a parking lot for barack obama's presidential library. did you hear? did you hear? see, here it is on drudge. reagan's home could become parking lot for obama library. here it is on something called newsmax. reagan's childhood home to become parking lot for obama library. really? is this really happening? >> no, no. this is really not happening. i mean, in the evidence-free right-wing world, it is true, and they all link to each other. but nowhere else is it true, including in the actual world. but the actual world is not their world. when that reporting is the supposedly straight news from fox news, when the senate foreign relations committee sends its republican members to world net daily to go talk about foreign policy ideas, this is their world. this is not the fringe. this is where they live. governing the united states is a really hard job. representing the united states in the world is a really, really hard job. today john kerry was officially sworn in to take over that job from hillary clinton. and he got to what amounts from a really well informed warning from his predecessor about the difficulties of that job. the evidence-based world is a hard enough place to live and to operate for us as a nation without half of our domestic politics being dominated by the perceived desire to defend against the muslim obama jihad on ronald reagan's childhood home. are we hampered as a nation in our ability to address real problems in the evidence-based world if half of the people in politics do not live in that world? and if so, how does that get fixed? joining us now is chris hayes, who all of you will see again at 8:00 a.m. eastern tomorrow, because that's when he starts his show "up with chris hayes" here on msnbc. hi, chris. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> muslim jihad on president ronald reagan's childhood home. is she also diagnosing an american problem that should or could be fixed? >> it's -- yes. it should be fixed. and i don't know how to fix it. but i can tell you one place where it is a huge problem. and it's the biggest global problem we have, which is getting a climate change regime. i was talking to someone in washington, d.c. involved with climate negotiations for the u.s. government. now, if we're going to have an actual treaty, okay, that governs everyone's eemissions, which is ultimately what we're going to have to get, you have to take that tommy v home to a senate and get 66 votes. everyone knows who occupies the u.s. senate. they know half the representatives roughly, a little less than half are committed to this kind of denialism, which is completely out of step with the rest of the world. you can go down the list of countries, right? and it's very hard to credibly make a case that you're going to be able to go home and sell a climate treaty to a domestic political audience that everybody, they're not dummies, they understand, india, china, all the other countries that have to do with it, they understand what the modern republican party is. and they know that that cannot be sold to 66 senators in the united states senate so long as there are enough republicans to block it. >> so it interferes with our ability to take any sort of leadership role on an issue like that because of our domestic essential cramp from not being able to process that information? >> right. and people, look, in the world of international affairs, you know, other countries study our domestic politics. they understand exactly what these dynamics are. so you can try to say, well, we're going to be really tough about this, and yes, we're credible. we can go home. we can go get this carbon regime. everybody knows that's not the case. because it's manifestly not the case. because you have people like lindsey graham who was for a carbon regime before he reneged on it going around saying they're not going to support it. >> republicans threatened to hold up chuck hagel's nomination this week over benghazi. next week there is more hearings. leon panetta, the outgoing secretary is going to testify there. secretary clinton already testified there. is there anything that can be done at this point by secretary panetta or anybody else to convince republicans that it wasn't a secret ghost ship to turkey or some other conspiracy? is there any way to fact chilly disprove what they want to believe about it? >> this is going to go down as one of the right-wing myths about america that are never going to die there are a certain core that are going to keep banging the drum. at some point perhaps someone will nudge the people who are pursuing this say we actually have real problems in north africa there is an intervention happening in mali. there are substantive issues on the table. stop talking about this. but it is so hermetically sealed in that world. >> yeah. >> that i don't see them getting out of it, other than someone making some sort of crass political judgment that this is no longer bringing the benefits that they thought it would. >> on the issue of what secretary clinton said today about bringing diplomacy and development up there so they're seen right as alongside with the defense. with eknow that's a goal of the obama administration. it may be their most ambitious goal. they haven't made much progress toward it, even with somebody as high profile as hillary clinton being in that job. will john kerry being there have the opportunity for them to go forward? >> i'm so glad you played that clip, because i thought that line was so powerful and important. how far we are institutionally and the sea process inside the white house and the relative weight of defense in state. >> yes. >> and i think the single most important thing to getting us here is something you have written about a tremendous amount which is we need to as a country declare our state of war over. as long as we are in an active state of war, the center of gravity will be with the war machine, will be with the war planners, will be with the pentagon. it is only when the nation views itself as being at peace that diplomacy can take some kind of equal footing. until we get to place where we do something as dramatic as repealing or refusing to reauthorize, the authorization of the use of military force and we end our hot wars, when we have a transparent discussion about what our activities are in terms of drones and targeted killing, only at the point the nation decides to call itself at peace can diplomacy actually ascend to some kind of parity. unless and until we reach that moment, it is impossible, politically and institutionally to get there. >> at some point i want to talk about when they announce in the spring that the u.s. is going to transition to no longer being in the lead role in afghanistan when they make that announcement this spring. i want to talk to you about whether or not it's significant if they're going to rename the operation in afghanistan, whether operation enduring freedom. >> that's really interesting. >> that will be our next conversation. >> hopefully before then. >> okay. chris hayes, thanks. chris hayes hosts up up with chris hayes." you have to watch. lots to come. stay with us. but phillips' caplets don't. they have magnesium. for effective relief of occasional constipation. thanks. 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[ male announcer ] make sure america's ready. make sure you're ready. at devry.edu/knowhow. ♪ before i get too far into this next story, i want to show you this. ♪ >> that is arkansas state senator jason rappert, a tea party republican elected in the great tea party wave of 2010. and he apparently can play the living daylights out of a fiddle. wow. also, he gets stuff done in arkansas. last night on the show we reported about a new bill passed yesterday by the arkansas senate that would effectively ban abortion in the state. the bill was sponsored by jason rappert, the fiddler there. a legislator pointed out to him if his bill becomes law, doctors would need to do an internal vaginal ultrasound in order to determine which very few arkansas women would be eligible for their constitutional rights anymore. the senator asked him, quote, can you imagine what kind of feeling that would cause inserted into a woman? quote, no rapert replied. according to the local times newspaper, no, i can't imagine what kind of feeling that would cause. and then they voted for his bill. so that was arkansas, just so far this week. but then today, hmm, newly uncovered video of the same senator, jason rapert from 2011. >> i wonder sometimes when they invited all the muslims to come into the white house and had a little ramadan supper, when our president could not take the time to go attend a national prayer breakfast, i wonder what he stands for. you know what they told me that what you say -- excuse me, what you do speaks so loudly that what you say i cannot hear. i hear you loud and clear, barack obama. you don't represent the country that i grew up with. and your values is not going to save us. we're going to try to take this country back to the lord. we're going to try to take this country back to conservatism. and we're not going to allow minorities to run roughshod over what you people believe in. >> we're not going to allow minorities to run roughshod over what you people believe in. not exactly sure what he means by that. president obama has also attended the national prayer breakfast every year. so that part was just wrong. we called senator jason rapert today and wrote to him, hoping he would explain exactly which he wants what minorities to stop running roughshod over. i would love to hear him explain it without a crowd cheering him on. the clip of senator rapert was first reported by lee fong at the nation. he points that senator rapert got a lot of money from corporations on his way into office. eli lilly, nucor, based in south carolina. verizon. also, of course the koch brothers who targeted arkansas and spent there to turn the legislature from blue to red, which did happen, including the reelection of senator ultrasound roughshod minorities jason rapert. but something else is going on in arkansas. because the minorities running roughshod guy is not alone in arkansas. they're kind of making a habit of this thing recently. in the arkansas legislature, you've also got the state republican lawmaker whose letters to the local paper include the one where he said, quote, if slavery were so god awful why didn't jesus or paul condemn it? why was it in the constitution? and why wasn't there a war before 1861? that was an arkansas republican state representative writing in 2009. arkansas also has the state republican lawmaker who put his views on the subject of slavery in a book. quote, the institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may have actually been a blessing in disguise. an arkansas representative in a book he published in 2010. after the views of both gentlemen came to broader public light, both of those blessings got voted out of office this past november, along with another rep who argued that everyone in america who is muslim should be deported to another country. he said parents should be allowed at least limited access to the death penalty for their children. you should be allowed to kill your kid. arkansas republican state rep wrote that in a book in 2012. those three republican state legislators in arkansas all lost to democrats in this past election, even though the past election was one in which republicans won both chambers of the legislature in arkansas for the first time in reconstruction. and that was thanks in part to a lot of corporate money. jason rapert is from a district that leans democratic. but thanks to his very well funded campaign, thank you, verizon, he didn't get voted out at all. he is still keeping the state of arkansas safe from the minorities running roughshod over what you people believe in. arkansas, what is going on there? 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[ coyote howls ] how about no more surprises? now you can get all the online trading tools you need without any surprise fees. ♪ it's not rocket science. it's just common sense. from td ameritrade. ♪ don't know what i'd do ♪ i'd have nothing to prove [ male announcer ] zales is the diamond store. take an extra 10 percent off storewide now through sunday. on september 24th, 19 eighth, congressman henry hyde announced that the state judiciary committee would consider a resolution to begin impeachment proceedings against president bill clinton. we remember impeachment time as newt gingrich and the house republicans battling against the white house with the help of the conservative movement on the outside. but, you know, there was an outside effort fighting back against the conservative side too. on september 18th of that year, husband and wife software development team from silicon valley launched this online petition. see the title there? "censure and move on." it was a one-sentence petition. the congress must immediately censure president clinton and move on to other pressing issues facing the country. censure and move on. that petition signed up 100,000 people in a week. and then half a million people within a couple of months. they delivered hundreds of thousands of petitions to the house. they swamped congressional switchboard was a quarter of a million phone calls. they wrangled meetings with more than 200 representatives. and what blew everybody's mind at the time was not that they got hundreds of thousands of people to sign this pet addition, essentially taking president clinton's side in this fight back in 1998. what blew everybody's mind, the amazing thing that everybody thought was so incredible about it was that they did this thing using the computer machine. here is how the "washington post" led its story about the "censure and move on" campaign. the story was written february 1st, 1999. how can there be such a phenomenon as electronic political activism? what is so active about clicking a mouse button when sending an e-mail or logging on about to a website? but with $13 million and more than 650,000 volunteer hours pledged to censure and move on, the realm of political activism now must bend its boundaries to include cyberspace. the article concludes by referring to censure and move on's brand of internet activists as "word of mouse." get it? word of mouse. usa today referred to this new trend as e-politics in their august 1999 article on the subject. their piece revealed that there were skeptics of this new e-politics. quote, online politics has its share of skeptics. no medium that relies on voters to take the initiative for educating themselves can ever have the broad reach of tv where political messages intrude unbidden into livingrooms. will it revolutionize mix? that's harder to say. so said ari fleischer in 1999 before he became white house press secretary. ah, this computer thing, it's just a flash in the pan. in all fairness, though, it was not just ari fleischer. pretty much everybody in 1999 was agoing with what these california software geeks were doing with the internets and how it was affecting politics maybe some day in the future. of course, house republicans did go ahead with the impeachment process. so the censure and move on folks decided that they would not fold up. they decided to use the amazing magical power of the internet machine to try to make at least some of the pro-impeachment republicans pay for that stance. the folks with the online petition decided to reinvent themselves as a pac in 1999. they endorsed and started fundraising for a handful of progressive congressional candidates. again, the novelty was not that they were a pressure group on the left taking democrats' side in fights with republicans. the novelty and what seemed so weird about them was that they were doing this political work by using the click click, tappettety tap machine that kids were using these days. a report in december 1999, slate magazine wrote e-mailed 25,000 folks to had pledged as well to others on the mailing list. they raised a quarter million in phi days and have harvested another quarter million since, without any further solicitation. they did it just using the computer. just using word of mouse. that first electoral gambit was for the 2000 electionment and three of moveon's five candidates won. despite the computer skeptics, moveon.org ended up becoming a big deal in lefty politics. they raised money and direct it to support progressive candidates and causes. but they also hone and choose their messaging through interaction with their many, many members. moveon ends up being like a mega collective crowd-sourced advisory group for your lefty issue of choice. and the results end up being effective and pretty aggressive messages that end up in some cases using the right spokespeople. >> i want to talk to you about women. >> and about mitt romney. >> mitt romney's for ending funding to planned parenthood. >> including cancer screenings. >> he said he would overturn roe v. wade. >> we have republicans trying to redefine rain. >> trying to force women to undergo invasive ultra sounds. >> if you think that this election won't affect you in your life, think again. >> so they've got money, yes. and they've got reach, absolutely. they've got millions of members. and part of that, and the part of the way they have been able to hold on to them all these years is because of further innovation on their part. they have sort of a one-click user experience. if you think about amazon.com online, amazon organize nighed their interface specifically so you can get through it very quickly. you don't have to click on a lot of different things and go through different screens or enter a lot of data in order to buy something. it is easy and fast to buy stuff there, particularly once you have done it once. and that keeps you coming back as a customer. that's the same approach that moveon took for political activism starting back in 1999. one of the moveon founders then called it five-minute activism. slate said at the time that five-minute activism may become the fastest, fieriest method ever devised for channeling citizen outreach -- outrage, excuse me. so if you have a political impulse or political feeling, moveon tries to give you a way to actualize that in a satisfying way that doesn't make you feel like you just did something sketchy, and that makes you feel like you might want to do that again that was easy. that accomplished the goal i wanted to accomplish. i will bookmark and come back and do that again. the group's commitment to manifestation in the election in a way that was seen as controversial and had its skeptics, but show how it they continue to push the envelope. moveon this year sent voter report cards to 12 million registered voters in battleground states. these report cards showed each voter how often they had voted in recent elections, and how their frequency of voting stacked up against their neighbor's frequency of voting. it's a controversial method, but it is tested. it is effective, and nobody else is doing it. not at least until people start copying moveon for doing it. everybody in politics talks about tapping the grassroots and talks about how public polling is on their side for the issue. but having a political impact means turning those intangible theoretical political assets into real political action that has an effect. that is what makes for effective political pressure. and now one of the veteran in the trenches advocacy groups on an old school political issue has just brought on a new young leader who has come up through the most innovative part of the lefty political world, including years at moveon. also including the liberal watchdog group media matters for america that drives the right nuts. also including a superpac aimed at changing the influence of money and politics, a group she helped found. and as of today, this new young leader replaces nancy keenan, the long-standing head of naral pro-choice in america. nancy keenan came on the show to talk about her decision to step down this past summer. she made the decision she said specifically to make room for a new generation of leaders who have new ideas and have learned new ways to accomplish things in politics. joining us now for her first interview is the new president of naral is ilyse hogue. thanks for being here. >> thank you for having me, rachel. it's great to be here. >> what do you think of that context from electoral politics and moveon to the abortion rights fight. these have been seen as two totally different sectors of lefty politics. but do you represent some sort of crossover? >> well, i hope so. i mean, first of all, it was great to hear such a thorough history of my institutional alma mater. i haven't heard it in a long time. look, moveon was founded on some very basic principles that couldn't be more applicable right now to women's empowerment and choice movements. one was that politics is often slow to catch up to where the cultural heartbeat is, right? and we're seeing that now. "wall street journal" poll on the roe anniversary showed seven in ten americans support upholding roe. we have actually successfully mainstreamed choice into our culture. politics is slow to catch up. and moveon knew that. so one of the reasons that moveon has always been successful is by finding innovative ways to use technology to surface the breadth of support for these mainstream ideas. nothing is more mainstream right now than the idea that women should have the freedom to write their own destinies. and foundational to that freedom is our ability to choose when and how and with whom we have a family. when women can do that, we can dream big dreams. we can contribute to culture, business, government, and then countries function better, business, marketplaces function better, and families and communities function better. and i hope that i can bring the tools and the organizing from moveon to bring millions and millions of women's voices into this debate about what our own futures are going to look like. >> because the fight over choice and reproductive rights, we think of it as a national fight, and sort of a constant national fight. but it really the rubber hits the road in the state. >> absolutely. >> and all these district fights, a lot of them happen simultaneously. when you talk about surfacing the breadth of support for choice, what is the most effective, most important way that support for choice could surface, could be made manifest in a way that would affect what is happening in the states? >> well, i mean, i think that there is no one way, right? one of the listens of the moveon era is the understanding of the reinforcing dynamic between the online and the offline organizing. we had boots on the ground from 2004 on. great advantage of naral pro-choice america is we've had boots on the ground since '69. so our choice out loud program, our new technological platform that allows young women to tell their own stories about what choice means to them, that actually reinforces the real-life activists that we have on the ground who are both doing excellent front lines work on defensive battles like in texas, where half of poor women no longer have access to health care, much less safe and legal abortion because of the defunding of planned parenthood, to the front lines in oregon. oregon is a state where we have a long-time leadership where not a single restriction has been put on abortion since casey. it's the only state in the union. we are poised through our naral leadership and all the activists we touch there to go on offense, to actually see how we can make politics and legislative work catch up to the whole range of choices that women face in the modern-day world. >> ilyse hogue, brand-new president of naral pro-choice america as of today. ilyse, stay in touch. thank you so much. >> i appreciate it, rachel. all right. still ahead, honey badger, wolverines, weasels, and other threats to our democracy. repair moisturizes while actually repairing very dry skin. the end of trial and error has arrived. try a free sample at eucerinus.com. i wish my patients could see what i see. ♪ that over time, having high cholesterol and any of these risk factors can put them at increased risk for plaque buildup in their arteries. so it's even more important to lower their cholesterol, and that's why, when diet and exercise alone aren't enough, i prescribe crestor. in a clinical trial versus lipitor, crestor got more high-risk patients' bad cholesterol to a goal of under 100. 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[ male announcer ] how could a luminous protein in jellyfish, impact life expectancy in the u.s., real estate in hong kong, and the optics industry in germany? at t. rowe price, we understand the connections of a complex, global economy. it's just one reason over 75% of our mutual funds beat their 10-year lipper average. t. rowe price. invest with confidence. request a prospectus or summary prospectus with investment information, risks, fees and expenses to read and consider carefully before investing. cou . one when -- when well fell and fully grown, the honey badgers stretch along the east indiana ocean and africa. despite being called badgers, they are technically mustalids, think timberwolves, think pole cat. they're all kin to the honey badger. now, when honey badgers kill something, they eat the whole carcass down to the last toe bone. they will raid beehives and eat to toruses, they do what they want, no questions, no fear, they famously do not care. >> oh, it has a cobra, runs back wards, now watch this, it snakes up in the tree, it doesn't care, it just takes what it wants. >> last week on this show we compared the elected republicans of the great state of michigan to the honey badger, because the michigan republicans don't believe a care. at the time they planned to rig the election, so effectively the democrat couldn't win office again. the plan was to change the way we vote for president, under current law, most states allocate the votes to the winner as a whole. the plan was to change this in several blue states, states that vote democratic in presidential elections, they wouldn't do it everywhere, just some states. so oklahoma and arkansas and other safe red states, they would continue to deliver every single one of their electoral votes to the republican candidate for president. they wouldn't change a thing there. blue states like michigan or virginia, they would have to give away more than half of their votes to the republican side. so the red state gets the whole electoral votes. but a blue state just gets some of those votes. you still have to give some of them to the republican, the result, of course is the giant thumb on the scale for the republican hopefuls. earlier we talked about whether or not republicans are trying to make this change, florida, virginia, wisconsin, ohio, michigan and pennsylvania. but then as the story got more attention in the news, the republicans in those states started to back off. florida's house speaker said his party didn't need to change the rules, he said they, meaning republicans, just need to get better. and bob mcdonald said he was against the idea, so were a couple of key republicans in the senate. and this week, they voted it down in committee. in wisconsin, wisconsin's republican governor scott walker said he thought the idea was interesting. after that got a lot of attention back home, he said he had serious concerns about it. in ohio, where the republicans floated the idea days after the election, he and the republicans now say oh, nobody in ohio is talking about doing this thing. so that is florida, virginia, wisconsin and ohio deciding to not try to pull this off. but michigan? michigan is different. michigan, they just had their sneak attack right to work law that they came out in favor of. introduced, passed -- they came out in favor of it, introduced it, signed it into law all within a space of a week during an election in which they never mentioned it. voters repealed it. michigan republicans responded by just passing another one in the way that it couldn't be repealed this time. you know, the will of the voters. michigan republicans don't give a bleep about bad press or the will of the voters, or doing what they said they would do, and they do not care. so as republicans were bailing on this plan to rig the electoral college, michigan's republican house speaker was still talking it up. michigan's republican governor said this seems fair, we'll consider it. in theend, turns out that even michigan's honey badger republicans have their limits. just when it looked like they would gnaw to enact this scheme when nobody else could stomach it, finally, michigan republicans found they couldn't stomach it, at least not yet. michigan's republican leader in the senate doesn't want to go through it. michigan's governor, schneider, says he is very skeptical of the idea that this just is not the right time. so we started with six possible states that republicans hoped to fill the playing fld. florida, wisconsin, ohio, and finally michigan said they wouldn't do it. but there is still a holdout, not michigan, i am surprised to say i thought the holdout would be michigan. but turns out the holdout is pennsylvania. the republican senate majority leader said he would introduce a bill this month in february, even if it makes some folks in his party a little queasy, i thought it was home to the republican party in

Transcripts For MSNBC The Rachel Maddow Show 20130202

[ cheering ] a cabinet secretary starting work, right? it's not your typical multiple network live news event. but hillary clinton was never just some cabinet secretary, right? well, today, four years later at the start of the second term of the obama administration it was a similar scene for hillary clinton as she said goodbye to the same state department employees from almost the same spot where they welcomed her four years ago. >> now it's my great honor to introduce one last time the 67th secretary of state of the united states of america, hillary rodham clinton. [ cheering and applause ] >> oh. >> secretary clinton still greeted like a rock star today at the agency she has led for the past four years. hillary clinton, of course, is not just somebody who came in a very close second to barack obama in trying to win the democratic party's presidential nomination, who then got a high-ranking cabinet post as a consolation prize. no, hillary clinton is really her own thing. her career in public life, in public office is unlike anybody else in american history. she went from being an accomplished lawyer in her early career to being the first lady of arkansas. she then became a very high profile first lady of the united states for her husband's two terms in office. she was the first modern first lady to turn that role into a policy job and the first attempt at health reform. she went on to weather her husband's in-office infidelity scandal and impeachment in office. she became a senator from the state of new york and then of course that historic and very hard fought race for the democratic presidential nomination, concluding with barack obama winning the presidency, and then him nominating hillary clinton to be the highest profile secretary of state that our country probably has ever had. and we have had a lot of very high profile secretaries of state. >> so it's been quite a challenging week saying goodbye to so many people. and knowing that i will not have the opportunity to continue being part of this amazing team, but i am so grateful that we've had a chance to contribute in each of our ways to making our country and our world stronger, safer, fairer, and better. those of you who are staying, as many of you will, please know that i hope you will redouble your efforts to do all that you can to demonstrate unequivocally why diplomacy and development are right up there with defense. how when we think about who we are as americans, it's because we are united and committed across our government to do whatever is required to fulfill the missions we have assumed as public officials and public servants. >> right up there with defense. that is one of the big ideas of the obama presidency, right? essentially, reorienting how america deals with the world away from the u.s. military and toward u.s. diplomacy. to upscale our soft power capacity as a country so we have more options beyond just the option of force. this president did a lot to advance that idea simply by putting somebody as high profile as hillary clinton in the job of america's head diplomat. but the overall goal of upscaling state, upscaling diplomacy and development so they are right up there with defense, like she said today, that is widely regarded as a goal that is not yet realized. secretary clinton alluded to that fact today when she said she now plans to become an advocate for that cause from the outside. it is, frankly, easy to imagine that as the core for her return to public life and politics for hillary clinton at some point, but we shall see. the secretary also reflected today on how she is really leaving public life for the first time in a very long time. and she suggested that that might make her a little lonely. >> i am very proud to have been secretary of state. i will miss you. i will probably be dialing ops just to talk. >> dialing ops. want to know what ops? this is ops. ah, this is the state department's nerve center, better known as the operation center, better known as ops. this is the place where for the last four years hillary clinton could call any hour 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to find out what the heck was going on anywhere in the world. the operation center is sort of legendary. it was created by jfk in 1961. it is essentially the secretary of state's on-call lifeline to events breaking anywhere in the world. they consider their time zone to be the time wherever the secretary is anywhere in the world, secretary time. and on a day like today, even with a handoff from secretary clinton to the new secretary, on a day like today, the ops center would have been very busy. news today of a suicide bomb attack at the u.s. embassy in ankara in turkey. no americans were hurt or killed, but one of the people who was wounded in the blast was a turkish reporter who was reportedly at the embassy to meet with the u.s. ambassador. the turkish government is blaming known members of a marxist group they say has operated in the country since the 1970s. in egypt today protesters hurling firebombs through the estate of mohamed morsi's presidential palace, taking place on the date of the uprising that overthrew mubarak. vice president biden in europe, and while he is there the syrian government is warning they may be about to launch an attack on israel in retaliation for an israeli air strike that took place inside syria a couple of days ago. and if that's not enough on the plate, we also still have a navy ship stuck on a world heritage site coral reef in our ally the philippines. and oh, by the way, north korea is gearing up for what may be yet another nuclear test. and they say that we are the reason they are doing it there is a lot going on in the world. secretary of state's a hard job, if not the hardest job in the united states government other than the presidency. you're responsible for so much. hillary clinton reflected on the breadth of responsibilities for a secretary of state during the exit interview that she did yesterday with the ap. but in that interview, she also reflected on our own country's governing capacity. look at what she said. this is how the ap wrote it up. "secretary of state hillary rodham clinton is leaving office with a slap at the critics of the obama administration's critics of the handling of the september attack on a u.s. diplomatic mission in libya. there are some people in politics and the press who can't be confused by the facts. they just will not live in an evidence-based world. and that is regrettable. it is regrettable for our political system and for the people who serve our government in very dangerous, difficult circumstances." "they will not live in an evidence-based world." hillary clinton there talking about the conservative effort to treat the attack on the u.s. consulate in benghazi as not just an attack on our consulate, but as some sort of obama administration conspiracy, or at least scandal. that effort led south carolina republican senator lindsey graham this week to say that he think hillary clinton, quote, got away with murder. the same effort led rand paul of kentucky to do this during secretary of state clinton's senate testimony on the matter last week. >> my question is, is the u.s. involved with any procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons, buying, selling, anyhow transferring weapons to turkey out of libya? >> to turkey? i --ly have to take that question for the record. nobody's ever raised that with me. >> according to senator rand paul, the secret key to understanding what happened to ambassador chris stevens in benghazi is that a ghost secret boatful of weapons was leaving libya for turkey. and so the ambassador had to be killed to cover that up? maybe? because cia helicopters, boats, ghosts, i don't know. rand paul talked than theory that he has cooked up. he talked about that theory after that hearing to who else, but the website "world net daily." rand did an interview with "world net daily" and told them he doesn't have any proof about this theory that guns are being smuggled out of libya into turkey, and that somehow explains what was going on there. but he wanted to enter that conspiracy theory into the congressional record anyway. "world net daily" is where united states senator rand paul went to go talk about his conspiracy secret boat theory about benghazi after the hearing. just for the record, this is the "world net daily" front page. see what the halo is? this is their current issue. inside you can read an article titled "obama's muslim childhood" by daniel pipes in which the renowned islam expert presents overwhelming evidence that the president of the united states who claimed before the election he was never a muslim was in fact born and raised a muslim. no way, way. no way, way. world net daily is where senator rand paul, i repeat, went to talk about his boat to turkey theory about why it happened. also, the guy who came in second in the republican presidential nominating contest this past year, rick santorum, his new job is that he is a columnist for world net daily. rand paul is being touted by the supposedly serious conservative heritage foundation as the big speaker next week on reagan's birthday where he is going to give his manifesto on what republican foreign policy should be. that's going to be next week on ronald reagan's birthday, rand paul. but, you know, it's fitting, because we're coming up on reagan's birthday. and did you hear about the horrible obama muslim marxist thing about his kenyan home? did you hear? >> this is one wall that probably shouldn't be torn down. this apartment building used to be the home of a young ronald reagan. it was denied landmark status, and the university of chicago is ready to demolish it. the university is also tryg to become the site of president obama's presidential library. that's drawing strong concerns the university might turn president reagan's former house into a parking lot for an obama library. >> did you hear about that? chicago close ties with the obamas, all of them, tearing down ronald reagan's boyhood home in order to make a parking lot for barack obama's presidential library. did you hear? did you hear? see, here it is on drudge. reagan's home could become parking lot for obama library. here it is on something called newsmax. reagan's childhood home to become parking lot for obama library. really? is this really happening? >> no, no. this is really not happening. i mean, in the evidence-free right-wing world, it is true, and they all link to each other. but nowhere else is it true, including in the actual world. but the actual world is not their world. when that reporting is the supposedly straight news from fox news, when the senate foreign relations committee sends its republican members to world net daily to go talk about foreign policy ideas, this is their world. this is not the fringe. this is where they live. governing the united states is a really hard job. representing the united states in the world is a really, really hard job. today john kerry was officially sworn in to take over that job from hillary clinton. and he got to what amounts from a really well informed warning from his predecessor about the difficulties of that job. the evidence-based world is a hard enough place to live and to operate for us as a nation without half of our domestic politics being dominated by the perceived desire to defend against the muslim obama jihad on ronald reagan's childhood home. are we hampered as a nation in our ability to address real problems in the evidence-based world if half of the people in politics do not live in that world? and if so, how does that get fixed? joining us now is chris hayes, who all of you will see again at 8:00 a.m. eastern tomorrow, because that's when he starts his show "up with chris hayes" here on msnbc. hi, chris. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> muslim jihad on president ronald reagan's childhood home. is she also diagnosing an american problem that should or could be fixed? >> it's -- yes. it should be fixed. and i don't know how to fix it. but i can tell you one place where it is a huge problem. and it's the biggest global problem we have, which is getting a climate change regime. i was talking to someone in washington, d.c. involved with climate negotiations for the u.s. government. now, if we're going to have an actual treaty, okay, that governs everyone's emissions, which is ultimately what we're going to have to get, you have to take that home to a senate and get 66 votes. everyone knows who occupies the u.s. senate. they know half the representatives roughly, a little less than half are committed to this kind of denialism, which is completely out of step with the rest of the world. you can go down the list of countries, right? and it's very hard to credibly make a case that you're going to be able to go home and sell a climate treaty to a domestic political audience that everybody, they're not dummies, they understand, india, china, all the other countries that have to do with it, they understand what the modern republican party is. and they know that that cannot be sold to 66 senators in the united states senate so long as there are enough republicans to block it. >> so it interferes with our ability to take any sort of leadership role on an issue like that because of our domestic essential cramp from not being able to process that information? >> right. and people, look, in the world of international affairs, you know, other countries study our domestic politics. they understand exactly what these dynamics are. so you can try to say, well, we're going to be really tough about this, and yes, we're credible. we can go home. we can go get this carbon regime. everybody knows that's not the case. because it's manifestly not the case. because you have people like lindsey graham who was for a carbon regime before he reneged on it going around saying they're not going to support it. >> republicans threatened to hold up chuck hagel's nomination this week over benghazi. next week there is more hearings. leon panetta, the outgoing secretary is going to testify there. secretary clinton already testified there. is there anything that can be done at this point by secretary panetta or anybody else to convince republicans that it wasn't a secret ghost ship to turkey or some other conspiracy? is there any way to fact chilly disprove what they want to believe about it? >> this is going to go down as one of the right-wing myths about america that are never going to die there are a certain core that are going to keep banging the drum. at some point perhaps someone will nudge the people who are pursuing this say we actually have real problems in north africa there is an intervention happening in mali. there are substantive issues on the table. stop talking about this. but it is so hermetically sealed in that world. >> yeah. >> that i don't see them getting out of it, other than someone making some sort of crass political judgment that this is no longer bringing the benefits that they thought it would. >> on the issue of what secretary clinton said today about bringing diplomacy and development up there so they're seen right as alongside with the defense. we know that's a goal of the obama administration. it may be their most ambitious goal. they haven't made much progress toward it, even with somebody as high profile as hillary clinton being in that job. will john kerry being there have the opportunity for them to go forward? >> i'm so glad you played that clip, because i thought that line was so powerful and important. how far we are institutionally and the sea process inside the white house and the relative weight of defense in state. >> yes. >> and i think the single most important thing to getting us here is something you have written about a tremendous amount which is we need to as a country declare our state of war over. as long as we are in an active state of war, the center of gravity will be with the war machine, will be with the war planners, will be with the pentagon. it is only when the nation views itself as being at peace that diplomacy can take some kind of equal footing. until we get to place where we do something as dramatic as repealing or refusing to reauthorize, the authorization of the use of military force and we end our hot wars, when we have a transparent discussion about what our activities are in terms of drones and targeted killing, only at the point the nation decides to call itself at peace can diplomacy actually ascend to some kind of parity. unless and until we reach that moment, it is impossible, politically and institutionally to get there. >> at some point i want to talk about when they announce in the spring that the u.s. is going to transition to no longer being in the lead role in afghanistan when they make that announcement this spring. i want to talk to you about whether or not it's significant if they're going to rename the operation in afghanistan, whether operation enduring freedom. >> that's really interesting. >> that will be our next conversation. >> hopefully before then. >> okay. chris hayes, thanks. chris hayes hosts "up with chris hayes" weekends. you have to watch. lots to come. stay with us. ♪ i'd have nothing to prove [ male announcer ] zales is the diamond store. take an extra 10 percent off storewide now through sunday. i've been using crest pro-health for a week. my dentist said it was gonna help transform my mouth. 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[ male announcer ] go pro with crest pro-health. i don't think i'll ever go back to another product. see. but they haven't experienced extra strength bayer advanced aspirin. in fact, in a recent survey, 95% of people who tried it agreed that it relieved their headache fast. visit fastreliefchallenge.com today for a special trial offer. email marketing from constant contact reaches people in a place they're checking every day -- their inbox. and it gives you the tools to create custom emails that drive business. it's just one of the ways constant contact can help you grow your small business. sign up for your free trial today at constantcontact.com/try. behind the silver of philadelphia cream cheese. it always begins with fresh, local milk, blended with real wholesome cream. going fresh from the farm, to our fridge, in just six days. because we believe in fresh taste. that's the way we set the standard for intensely rich, luscious flavor. so our story of fresh taste always ends... deliciously. when it comes to taste, philadelphia sets the standard. impact wool exports from new zealand, textile production in spain, and the use of medical technology in the u.s.? at t. rowe price, we understand the connections of a complex, global economy. it's just one reason over 75% of our mutual funds beat their 10-year lipper average. t. rowe price. invest with confidence. request a prospectus or summary prospectus with investment information, risks, fees and expenses to read and consider carefully before investing. before i get too far into this next story, i want to show you this. ♪ >> that is arkansas state senator jason rapert, a tea party republican elected in the great tea party wave of 2010. and he apparently can play the living daylights out of a fiddle. wow. also, he gets stuff done in arkansas. last night on the show we reported about a new bill passed yesterday by the arkansas senate that would effectively ban abortion in the state. the bill was sponsored by jason rapert, the fiddler there. a legislator pointed out to him if his bill becomes law, doctors would need to do an internal vaginal ultrasound in order to determine which very few arkansas women would be eligible for their constitutional rights anymore. the senator asked him, quote, can you imagine what kind of feeling that would cause inserted into a woman? quote, no, rapert replied. according to the local "times" newspaper, "no, i can't imagine what kind of feeling that would cause." and then they voted for his bill. so that was arkansas, just so far this week. but then today, hmm, newly uncovered video of the same senator, jason rapert from 2011. >> i wonder sometimes when they invited all the muslims to come into the white house and had a little ramadan supper, when our president could not take the time to go attend a national prayer breakfast, i wonder what he stands for. you know what they told me that what you say -- excuse me, what you do speaks so loudly that what you say i cannot hear. i hear you loud and clear, barack obama. you don't represent the country that i grew up with. and your values is not going to save us. we're going to try to take this country back to the lord. we're going to try to take this country back to conservatism. and we're not going to allow minorities to run roughshod over what you people believe in. >> "we're not going to allow minorities to run roughshod over what you people believe in." not exactly sure what he means by that. president obama has also attended the national prayer breakfast every year. so that part was just wrong. we called senator jason rapert today and wrote to him, hoping he would explain exactly which he wants what minorities to stop running roughshod over. i would love to hear him explain it without a crowd cheering him on. the clip of senator rapert was first reported by lee fang at "the nation." he points that senator rapert got a lot of money from corporations on his way into office. eli lilly, nucor, based in south carolina. verizon. also, of course the koch brothers who targeted arkansas and spent there to turn the legislature from blue to red, which did happen, including the reelection of senator ultrasound roughshod minorities jason rapert. but something else is going on in arkansas. because the "minorities running roughshod" guy is not alone in arkansas. they're kind of making a habit of this thing recently. in the arkansas legislature, you've also got the state republican lawmaker whose letters to the local paper include the one where he said, quote, if slavery were so god awful, why didn't jesus or paul condemn it? why was it in the constitution? and why wasn't there a war before 1861? that was an arkansas republican state representative writing in 2009. arkansas also has the state republican lawmaker who put his views on the subject of slavery in a book. quote, the institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may have actually been a blessing in disguise. an arkansas representative in a book he published in 2010. after the views of both gentlemen came to broader public light, both of those blessings got voted out of office this past november, along with another rep who argued that everyone in america who is muslim should be deported to another country. he said parents should be allowed at least limited access to the death penalty for their children. you should be allowed to kill your kid. arkansas republican state rep wrote that in a book in 2012. those three republican state legislators in arkansas all lost to democrats in this past election, even though the past election was one in which republicans won both chambers of the legislature in arkansas for the first time in reconstruction. and that was thanks in part to a lot of corporate money. jason rapert is from a district that leans democratic. but thanks to his very well funded campaign -- thank you, verizon -- he didn't get voted out at all. he is still keeping the state of arkansas safe from "the minorities running roughshod over what you people believe in." arkansas, what is going on there? 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[ beeping ] how are you, um, how are you doing? i'm going to keep looking over here. probably a good idea. ken: what's a good idea? nothing. with coverage checker, it's easy to find your perfect policy. visit progressive.com today. in that time there've been some good days. and some difficult ones. but, through it all, we've persevered, supporting some of the biggest ideas in modern history. so why should our anniversary matter to you? because for 200 years, we've been helping ideas move from ambition to achievement. and the next great idea could be yours. ♪ okay. so it's friday, but we are not doing an official cocktail moment tonight. however, if one was going to put together a little something special to get ready for our final story tonight, i realize now that it might be helpful to know in advance that our final story tonight pays homage to the honey badger. so this isn't a cocktail moment, but i feel duty-bound to tell you that there is a variation on the whiskey sour that is made with honey that's really good. it's called the gold rush. this is what it is. it's two ounces of bourbon, a half ounce of fresh lemon and a half ounce of honey syrup. to make the honey syrup you do two parts hot water, one part honey. you stir it up until it dissolves. a half ounce of, that a half ounce of lemon, two ounces of bourbon. shake it up. strain it over ice. honey badgers love that i'm just saying. that story is coming. 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[ female announcer ] honey nut cheerios cereal -- heart-healthy, whole grain oats. you can't go wrong loving it. [ woman ] too weak. wears off. been there. tried that. ladybug body milk? no thanks. [ female announcer ] stop searching and start repairing. eucerin professional repair moisturizes while actually repairing very dry skin. it's so powerful you can skip a day... but light enough you won't want to. dermatologist recommended eucerin. the end of trial and error has arrived. try a free sample at eucerinus.com. on september 24th, 1980, 1998, congressman henry hyde announced that the state judiciary committee would consider a resolution to begin impeachment proceedings against president bill clinton. we remember impeachment time as newt gingrich and the house republicans battling against the white house with the help of the conservative movement on the outside. but, you know, there was an outside effort fighting back against the conservative side too. on september 18th of that year, husband and wife software development team from silicon valley launched this online petition. see the title there? "censure and move on." it was a one-sentence petition. the congress must immediately censure president clinton and move on to other pressing issues facing the country. censure and move on. that petition signed up 100,000 people in a week. and then half a million people within a couple of months. they delivered hundreds of thousands of petitions to the house. they swamped congressional switchboard was a quarter of a million phone calls. they wrangled meetings with more than 200 representatives. and what blew everybody's mind at the time was not that they got hundreds of thousands of people to sign this pet addition, essentially taking president clinton's side in this fight back in 1998. what blew everybody's mind, the amazing thing that everybody thought was so incredible about it was that they did this thing using the computer machine. here is how the "washington post" led its story about the "censure and move on" campaign. the story was written february 1st, 1999. how can there be such a phenomenon as electronic political activism? what is so active about clicking a mouse button when sending an e-mail or logging on to a website? but with $13 million and more than 650,000 volunteer hours pledged to censure and move on, the realm of political activism now must bend its boundaries to include cyberspace. the article concludes by referring to censure and move on's brand of internet activists as "word of mouse." get it? word of mouse. "usa today" referred to this new trend as e-politics in their august 1999 article on the subject. their piece revealed that there were skeptics of this new e-politics. quote, online politics has its share of skeptics. no medium that relies on voters to take the initiative for educating themselves can ever have the broad reach of tv where political messages intrude unbidden into living rooms. will it revolutionize mix? that's harder to see. so said ari fleischer in 1999 before he became white house press secretary. ah, this computer thing, it's just a flash in the pan. in all fairness, though, it was not just ari fleischer. pretty much everybody in 1999 was agog with what these california software geeks were doing with the internets and how it was affecting politics maybe some day in the future. of course, house republicans did go ahead with the impeachment process. so the censure and move on folks decided that they would not fold up. they decided to use the amazing magical power of the internet machine to try to make at least some of the pro-impeachment republicans pay for that stance. the folks with the online petition decided to reinvent themselves as a pac in 1999. they endorsed and started fundraising for a handful of progressive congressional candidates. again, the novelty was not that they were a pressure group on the left taking democrats' side in fights with republicans. the novelty and what seemed so weird about them was that they were doing this political work by using the click click, tappety-tap machine that kids were using these days. a report in december 1999, slate magazine wrote e-mailed 25,000 folks to had pledged as well to others on the mailing list. they raised a quarter million in five days and have harvested another quarter million since, without any further solicitation. they did it just using the computer. just using word of mouse. that first electoral gambit was for the 2000 election. and three of moveon's five candidates won. despite the computer skeptics, moveon.org ended up becoming a big deal in lefty politics. they raised money and direct it to support progressive candidates and causes. but they also hone and choose their messaging through interaction with their many, many members. moveon ends up being like a mega collective crowd-sourced advisory group for your lefty issue of choice. and the results end up being effective and pretty aggressive messages that end up in some cases using the right spokespeople. >> i want to talk to you about women. >> and about mitt romney. >> mitt romney's for ending funding to planned parenthood. >> including cancer screenings. >> he said he would overturn roe v. wade. >> we have republicans trying to redefine rain. >> trying to force women to undergo invasive ultra sounds. >> if you think that this election won't affect you in your life, think again. >> so they've got money, yes. and they've got reach, absolutely. they've got millions of members. and part of that, and the part of the way they have been able to hold on to them all these years is because of further innovation on their part. they have sort of a one-click user experience. if you think about amazon.com online, amazon organize nighed their interface specifically so you can get through it very quickly. you don't have to click on a lot of different things and go through different screens or enter a lot of data in order to buy something. it is easy and fast to buy stuff there, particularly once you have done it once. and that keeps you coming back as a customer. that's the same approach that moveon took for political activism starting back in 1999. one of the moveon founders then called it five-minute activism. slate said at the time that five-minute activism may become the fastest, fieriest method ever devised for channeling citizen outreach -- outrage, excuse me. so if you have a political impulse or political feeling, moveon tries to give you a way to actualize that in a satisfying way that doesn't make you feel like you just did something sketchy, and that makes you feel like you might want to do that again that was easy. that accomplished the goal i wanted to accomplish. i will bookmark and come back and do that again. the group's commitment to manifestation in the election in a way that was seen as controversial and had its skeptics, but show how it they continue to push the envelope. moveon this year sent voter report cards to 12 million registered voters in battleground states. these report cards showed each voter how often they had voted in recent elections, and how their frequency of voting stacked up against their neighbor's frequency of voting. it's a controversial method, but it is tested. it is effective, and nobody else is doing it. not at least until people start copying moveon for doing it. everybody in politics talks about tapping the grassroots and talks about how public polling is on their side for the issue. but having a political impact means turning those intangible theoretical political assets into real political action that has an effect. that is what makes for effective political pressure. and now one of the veteran in the trenches advocacy groups on an old school political issue has just brought on a new young leader who has come up through the most innovative part of the lefty political world, including years at moveon. also including the liberal watchdog group media matters for america that drives the right nuts. also including a superpac aimed at changing the influence of money and politics, a group she helped found. and as of today, this new young leader replaces nancy keenan, the long-standing head of naral pro-choice in america. nancy keenan came on the show to talk about her decision to step down this past summer. she made the decision she said specifically to make room for a new generation of leaders who have new ideas and have learned new ways to accomplish things in politics. joining us now for her first interview is the new president of naral is ilyse hogue. thanks for being here. >> thank you for having me, rachel. it's great to be here. >> what do you think of that context from electoral politics and moveon to the abortion rights fight. these have been seen as two totally different sectors of lefty politics. but do you represent some sort of crossover? >> well, i hope so. i mean, first of all, it was great to hear such a thorough history of my institutional alma mater. i haven't heard it in a long time. look, moveon was founded on some very basic principles that couldn't be more applicable right now to women's empowerment and choice movements. one was that politics is often slow to catch up to where the cultural heartbeat is, right? and we're seeing that now. "wall street journal" poll on the roe anniversary showed seven in ten americans support upholding roe. we have actually successfully mainstreamed choice into our culture. politics is slow to catch up. and moveon knew that. so one of the reasons that moveon has always been successful is by finding innovative ways to use technology to surface the breadth of support for these mainstream ideas. nothing is more mainstream right now than the idea that women should have the freedom to write their own destinies. and foundational to that freedom is our ability to choose when and how and with whom we have a family. when women can do that, we can dream big dreams. we can contribute to culture, business, government, and then countries function better, business, marketplaces function better, and families and communities function better. and i hope that i can bring the tools and the organizing from moveon to bring millions and millions of women's voices into this debate about what our own futures are going to look like. >> because the fight over choice and reproductive rights, we think of it as a national fight, and sort of a constant national fight. but it really the rubber hits the road in the state. >> absolutely. >> and all these district fights, a lot of them happen simultaneously. when you talk about "surfacing the breadth of support for choice," what is the most effective, most important way that support for choice could surface, could be made manifest in a way that would affect what is happening in the states? >> well, i mean, i think that there is no one way, right? one of the listens of the moveon era is the understanding of the reinforcing dynamic between the online and the offline organizing. we had boots on the ground from 2004 on. great advantage of naral pro-choice america is we've had boots on the ground since '69. so our choice out loud program, our new technological platform that allows young women to tell their own stories about what choice means to them, that actually reinforces the real-life activists that we have on the ground who are both doing excellent front lines work on defensive battles like in texas, where half of poor women no longer have access to health care, much less safe and legal abortion because of the defunding of planned parenthood, to the front lines in oregon. oregon is a state where we have a long-time leadership where not a single restriction has been put on abortion since casey. it's the only state in the union. we are poised through our naral leadership and all the activists we touch there to go on offense, to actually see how we can make politics and legislative work catch up to the whole range of choices that women face in the modern-day world. >> ilyse hogue, brand-new president of naral pro-choice america as of today. ilyse, stay in touch. thank you so much. >> i appreciate it, rachel. all right. still ahead, honey badger, wolverines, weasels, and other threats to our democracy. 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[ female announcer ] stop searching and start repairing. eucerin professional repair moisturizes while actually repairing very dry skin. the end of trial and error has arrived. try a free sample at eucerinus.com. ♪ don't know what i'd do ♪ i'd have nothing to prove [ male announcer ] zales is the diamond store. take an extra 10 percent off storewide now through sunday. one when -- well fed and fully grown, the honey badgers stretch along the east indiana ocean and africa. despite being called badgers, they are technically mustalids, think timberwolves, think pole cat. they're all kin to the honey badger. now, when honey badgers kill something, they eat the whole carcass down to the last toe bone. they will raid beehives and eat toruses, they do what they want, no questions, no fear, they famously do not care. >> oh, it has a cobra, runs back wards, now watch this, it snakes up in the tree, it doesn't care, it just takes what it wants. >> last week on this show we compared the elected republicans of the great state of michigan to the honey badger, because the michigan republicans don't believe a care. at the time they planned to rig the election, so effectively the democrat couldn't win office again. the plan was to change the way we vote for president, under current law, most states allocate the votes to the winner as a whole. the plan was to change this in several blue states, states that vote democratic in presidential elections, they wouldn't do it everywhere, just some states. so oklahoma and arkansas and other safe red states, they would continue to deliver every single one of their electoral votes to the republican candidate for president. they wouldn't change a thing there. blue states like michigan or virginia, they would have to give away more than half of their votes to the republican side. so the red state gets the whole electoral votes. but a blue state just gets some of those votes. you still have to give some of them to the republican, the result, of course is the giant thumb on the scale for the republican hopefuls. earlier we talked about whether or not republicans are trying to make this change, florida, virginia, wisconsin, ohio, michigan and pennsylvania. but then as the story got more attention in the news, the republicans in those states started to back off. florida's house speaker said his party didn't need to change the rules, he said they, meaning republicans, just need to get better. and bob mcdonald said he was against the idea, so were a couple of key republicans in the senate. and this week, they voted it down in committee. in wisconsin, wisconsin's republican governor scott walker said he thought the idea was interesting. after that got a lot of attention back home, he said he had serious concerns about it. in ohio, where the republicans floated the idea days after the election, he and the republicans now say oh, nobody in ohio is talking about doing this thing. so that is florida, virginia, wisconsin and ohio deciding to not try to pull this off. but michigan? michigan is different. michigan, they just had their sneak attack right to work law that they came out in favor of. introduced, passed -- they came out in favor of it, introduced it, signed it into law all within a space of a week during an election in which they never mentioned it. voters repealed it. michigan republicans responded by just passing another one in the way that it couldn't be repealed this time. you know, the will of the voters. michigan republicans don't give a bleep about bad press or the will of the voters, or doing what they said they would do, and they do not care. so as republicans were bailing on this plan to rig the electoral college, michigan's republican house speaker was still talking it up. michigan's republican governor said this seems fair, we'll consider it. in the end, turns out that even michigan's honey badger republicans have their limits. just when it looked like they would gnaw to enact this scheme when nobody else could stomach it, finally, michigan republicans found they couldn't stomach it, at least not yet. michigan's republican leader in the senate doesn't want to go through it. michigan's governor, schneider, says he is very skeptical of the idea that this just is not the right time. so we started with six possible states that republicans hoped to fill the playing field. florida, wisconsin, ohio, and finally michigan said they wouldn't do it. but there is still a holdout, not michigan, i am surprised to say i thought the holdout would be michigan. but turns out the holdout is pennsylvania. the republican senate majority leader said he would introduce a bill this month in february, even if it makes some folks in his party a little queasy, i thought it was home to the

Transcripts For MSNBC The Rachel Maddow Show 20130202

network life news event. but hillary clinton was never just some cabinet secretary, right? well, today, four years later at the start of the second term of the obama administration it was a similar scene for hillary clinton as she said goodbye to the same state department employees from almost the same spot where they welcomed her four years ago. >> now it's my great honor to introduce one last time the 67th secretary of state of the united states of america, hillary rodham clinton. [ cheering and applause ] >> oh. >> secretary clinton still greeted like a rock star today at the agency she has led for the past four years. hillary clinton, of course, is not just somebody who came in a very close second to barack obama in trying to win the democratic party's presidential nomination, who then got a high-ranking cabinet post as a consolation prize. no, hillary clinton is really her own thing. her career in public life, in public office is unlike anybody else in american history. she went from being an accomplished lawyer in her early career to being the first lady of arkansas. she then became a very high profile first lady of the united states for her husband's two terms in office. she was the first modern first lady to turn that role into a policy job and the first attempt at health reform. she went on to weather her husband's in-office infidelity scandal and impeachment in office. she became a senator from the state of new york and then of course that historic and very hard fought race for the democratic presidential nomination, concluding with barack obama winning the presidency, and then him nominating hillary clinton to be the highest profile secretary of state that our country probably has ever had. and we have had a lot of very high profile secretaries of state. >> so it's been quite a challenging week saying goodbye to so many people. and knowing that i will not have the opportunity to continue being part of this amazing team, but i am so grateful that we've had a chance to contribute in each of our ways to making our country and our world stronger, safer, fairer, and better. those of you who are staying, as many of you will, please know that i hope you will redouble your efforts to do all that you can to demonstrate unequivocally why diplomacy and development are right up there with defense. how when we think about who we are as americans, it's because we are united and committed across our government to do whatever is required to fulfill the missions we have assumed as public officials and public servants. >> right up there with defense. that is one of the big ideas of the obama presidency, right? essentially, reorienting how america deals with the world away from the u.s. military and toward u.s. diplomacy. to upscale our soft power capacity as a country so we have more options beyond just the option of force. this president did a lot to advance that idea simply by putting somebody as high profile as hillary clinton in the job of america's head diplomat. but the overall goal of upscaling state, upscaling diplomacy and development so they are right up there with defense, like she said today, that is widely regarded as a goal that is not yet realized. secretary clinton alluded to that fact today when she said she now plans to become an advocate for that cause from the outside. it is, frankly, easy to imagine that as the core for her return to public life and politics for hillary clinton at some point, but we shall see. the secretary also reflected today on how she is really leaving public life for the first time in a very long time. and she suggested that that might make her a little lonely. >> i am very proud to have been secretary of state. i will miss you. i will probably be dialing ops just to talk. >> dialing ops. want to know what ops? this is ops. ah, this is the state department's nerve center, better known as the operation center, better known as ops. this is the place where for the last four years hillary clinton could call any hour 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to find out what the heck was going on anywhere in the world. the operation center is sort of legendary. it was created by jfk in 1961. it is essentially the secretary of state's on-call lifeline to events breaking anywhere in the world. they consider their time zone to be the time wherever the secretary is anywhere in the world, secretary time. and on a day like today, even with a handoff from secretary clinton to the new secretary, on a day like today, the ops center would have been very busy. news today of a suicide bomb attack at the u.s. embassy in ankara in turkey. no americans were hurt or killed, but one of the people who was wounded in the blast was a turkish reporter who was reportedly at the embassy to meet with the u.s. ambassador. the turkish government is blaming known members of a marxist group they say has operated in the country since the 1970s. in egypt today protesters hurling firebombs through the estate of mohamed morsi's presidential palace, taking place on the date of the uprising that overthrew mubarak. vice president biden in europe, and while he is there the syrian government is warning they may be about to launch an attack on israel in retaliation for an israeli air strike that took place inside syria a couple of days ago. and if that's not enough on the plate, we also still have a navy ship stuck on a world heritage site coral reef in our ally the philippines. and oh, by the way, north korea is gearing up for what may be yet another nuclear test. and they say that we are the reason they are doing it there is a lot going on in the world. secretary of state's a hard job, if not the hardest job in the united states government other than the presidency. you're responsible for so much. hillary clinton reflected on the breadth of responsibilities for a secretary of state during the exit interview that she did yesterday with the ap. but in that interview, she also reflected on our own country's governing capacity. look at what she said. this is how the ap wrote it up. "secretary of state hillary rodham clinton is leaving office with a slap at the critics of the obama administration's critics of the handling of the september attack on a u.s. diplomatic mission in libya. there are some people in politics and the press who can't be confused by the facts. they just will not live in an evidence-based world. and that is regrettable. it is regrettable for our political system and for the people who serve our government in very dangerous, difficult circumstances." "they will not live in an evidence-based world." hillary clinton there talking about the conservative effort to treat the attack on the u.s. consulate in benghazi as not just an attack on our consulate, but as some sort of obama administration conspiracy, or at least scandal. that effort led south carolina republican senator lindsey graham this week to say that he think hillary clinton, quote, got away with murder. the same effort led rand paul of kentucky to do this during secretary of state clinton's senate testimony on the matter last week. >> my question is, is the u.s. involved with any procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons, buying, selling, anyhow transferring weapons to turkey out of libya? >> to turkey? i --ly have to take that question for the record. nobody's ever raised that with me. >> according to senator rand paul, the secret key to understanding what happened to ambassador chris stevens in benghazi is that a ghost secret boatful of weapons was leaving libya for turkey. and so the ambassador had to be killed to cover that up? maybe? because cia helicopters, boats, ghosts, i don't know. rand paul talked than theory that he has cooked up. he talked about that theory after that hearing to who else, but the website "world net daily." rand did an interview with "world net daily" and told them he doesn't have any proof about this theory that guns are being smuggled out of libya into turkey, and that somehow explains what was going on there. but he wanted to enter that conspiracy theory into the congressional record anyway. "world net daily" is where united states senator rand paul went to go talk about his conspiracy secret boat theory about benghazi after the hearing. just for the record, this is the "world net daily" front page. see what the halo is? this is their current issue. inside you can read an article titled "obama's muslim childhood" by daniel pipes in which the renowned islam expert presents overwhelming evidence that the president of the united states who claimed before the election he was never a muslim was in fact born and raised a muslim. no way, way. no way, way. world net dally is where senator rand paul, i repeat, went to talk about his boat to turkey theory about why it happened. also, the guy who came in second in the republican presidential nominating contest this past year, rick santorum, his new job is that he is a columnist for world net daily. rand paul is being touted by the supposedly serious conservative heritage foundation as the big speaker next week on reagan's birthday where he is going to give his manifesto on what republican foreign policy should be. that's going to be next week on ronald reagan's birthday, rand paul. but, you know, it's fitting, because we're coming up on reagan's birthday. and did you hear about the horrible obama muslim marxist thing about his kenyan home? did you hear? >> this is one wall that probably shouldn't be torn down. this apartment building used to be the home of a young ronald reagan. it was denied landmark status, and the university of chicago is ready to demolish it. the university is also trying to become the site of president obama's presidential library. that's drawing strong concerns the university might turn president reagan's former house into a parking lot for an obama library. >> did you hear about that? chicago close ties with the obamas, all of them, tearing down ronald reagan's boyhood home in order to make a parking lot for barack obama's presidential library. did you hear? did you hear? see, here it is on drudge. reagan's home could become parking lot for obama library. here it is on something called newsmax. reagan's childhood home to become parking lot for obama library. really? is this really happening? >> no, no. this is really not happening. i mean, in the evidence-free right-wing world, it is true, and they all link to each other. but nowhere else is it true, including in the actual world. but the actual world is not their world. when that reporting is the supposedly straight news from fox news, when the senate foreign relations committee sends its republican members to world net daily to go talk about foreign policy ideas, this is their world. this is not the fringe. this is where they live. governing the united states is a really hard job. representing the united states in the world is a really, really hard job. today john kerry was officially sworn in to take over that job from hillary clinton. and he got to what amounts from a really well informed warning from his predecessor about the difficulties of that job. the evidence-based world is a hard enough place to live and to operate for us as a nation without half of our domestic politics being dominated by the perceived desire to defend against the muslim obama jihad on ronald reagan's childhood home. are we hampered as a nation in our ability to address real problems in the evidence-based world if half of the people in politics do not live in that world? and if so, how does that get fixed? joining us now is chris hayes, who all of you will see again at 8:00 a.m. eastern tomorrow, because that's when he starts his show "up with chris hayes" here on msnbc. hi, chris. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> muslim jihad on president ronald reagan's childhood home. is she also diagnosing an american problem that should or could be fixed? >> it's -- yes. it should be fixed. and i don't know how to fix it. but i can tell you one place where it is a huge problem. and it's the biggest global problem we have, which is getting a climate change regime. i was talking to someone in washington, d.c. involved with climate negotiations for the u.s. government. now, if we're going to have an actual treaty, okay, that governs everyone's emissions, which is ultimately what we're going to have to get, you have to take that tommy v home to a senate and get 66 votes. everyone knows who occupies the u.s. senate. they know half the representatives roughly, a little less than half are committed to this kind of denialism, which is completely out of step with the rest of the world. you can go down the list of countries, right? and it's very hard to credibly make a case that you're going to be able to go home and sell a climate treaty to a domestic political audience that everybody, they're not dummies, they understand, india, china, all the other countries that have to do with it, they understand what the modern republican party is. and they know that that cannot be sold to 66 senators in the united states senate so long as there are enough republicans to block it. >> so it interferes with our ability to take any sort of leadership role on an issue like that because of our domestic essential cramp from not being able to process that information? >> right. and people, look, in the world of international affairs, you know, other countries study our domestic politics. they understand exactly what these dynamics are. so you can try to say, well, we're going to be really tough about this, and yes, we're credible. we can go home. we can go get this carbon regime. everybody knows that's not the case. because it's manifestly not the case. because you have people like lindsey graham who was for a carbon regime before he reneged on it going around saying they're not going to support it. >> republicans threatened to hold up chuck hagel's nomination this week over benghazi. next week there is more hearings. leon panetta, the outgoing secretary is going to testify there. secretary clinton already testified there. is there anything that can be done at this point by secretary panetta or anybody else to convince republicans that it wasn't a secret ghost ship to turkey or some other conspiracy? is there any way to fact chilly disprove what they want to believe about it? >> this is going to go down as one of the right-wing myths about america that are never going to die there are a certain core that are going to keep banging the drum. at some point perhaps someone will nudge the people who are pursuing this say we actually have real problems in north africa there is an intervention happening in mali. there are substantive issues on the table. stop talking about this. but it is so hermetically sealed in that world. >> yeah. >> that i don't see them getting out of it, other than someone making some sort of crass political judgment that this is no longer bringing the benefits that they thought it would. >> on the issue of what secretary clinton said today about bringing diplomacy and development up there so they're seen right as alongside with the defense. we know that's a goal of the obama administration. it may be their most ambitious goal. they haven't made much progress toward it, even with somebody as high profile as hillary clinton being in that job. will john kerry being there have the opportunity for them to go forward? >> i'm so glad you played that clip, because i thought that line was so powerful and important. how far we are institutionally and the sea process inside the white house and the relative weight of defense in state. >> yes. >> and i think the single most important thing to getting us here is something you have written about a tremendous amount which is we need to as a country declare our state of war over. as long as we are in an active state of war, the center of gravity will be with the war machine, will be with the war planners, will be with the pentagon. it is only when the nation views itself as being at peace that diplomacy can take some kind of equal footing. until we get to place where we do something as dramatic as repealing or refusing to reauthorize, the authorization of the use of military force and we end our hot wars, when we have a transparent discussion about what our activities are in terms of drones and targeted killing, only at the point the nation decides to call itself at peace can diplomacy actually ascend to some kind of parity. unless and until we reach that moment, it is impossible, politically and institutionally to get there. >> at some point i want to talk about when they announce in the spring that the u.s. is going to transition to no longer being in the lead role in afghanistan when they make that announcement this spring. i want to talk to you about whether or not it's significant if they're going to rename the operation in afghanistan, whether operation enduring freedom. >> that's really interesting. >> that will be our next conversation. >> hopefully before then. >> okay. chris hayes, thanks. chris hayes hosts "up with chris hayes" weekends. you have to watch. lots to come. stay with us. before i get too far into this next story, i want to show you this. ♪ >> that is arkansas state senator jason rapert, a tea party republican elected in the great tea party wave of 2010. and he apparently can play the living daylights out of a fiddle. wow. also, he gets stuff done in arkansas. last night on the show we reported about a new bill passed yesterday by the arkansas senate that would effectively ban abortion in the state. the bill was sponsored by jason rapert, the fiddler there. a legislator pointed out to him if his bill becomes law, doctors would need to do an internal vaginal ultrasound in order to determine which very few arkansas women would be eligible for their constitutional rights anymore. the senator asked him, quote, can you imagine what kind of feeling that would cause inserted into a woman? quote, no, rapert replied. according to the local "times" newspaper, "no, i can't imagine what kind of feeling that would cause." and then they voted for his bill. so that was arkansas, just so far this week. but then today, hmm, newly uncovered video of the same senator, jason rapert from 2011. >> i wonder sometimes when they invited all the muslims to come into the white house and had a little ramadan supper, when our president could not take the time to go attend a national prayer breakfast, i wonder what he stands for. you know what they told me that what you say -- excuse me, what you do speaks so loudly that what you say i cannot hear. i hear you loud and clear, barack obama. you don't represent the country that i grew up with. and your values is not going to save us. we're going to try to take this country back to the lord. we're going to try to take this country back to conservatism. and we're not going to allow minorities to run roughshod over what you people believe in. >> "we're not going to allow minorities to run roughshod over what you people believe in." not exactly sure what he means by that. president obama has also attended the national prayer breakfast every year. so that part was just wrong. we called senator jason rapert today and wrote to him, hoping he would explain exactly which he wants what minorities to stop running roughshod over. i would love to hear him explain it without a crowd cheering him on. the clip of senator rapert was first reported by lee fang at "the nation." he points that senator rapert got a lot of money from corporations on his way into office. eli lilly, nucor, based in south carolina. verizon. also, of course the koch brothers who targeted arkansas and spent there to turn the legislature from blue to red, which did happen, including the reelection of senator ultrasound roughshod minorities jason rapert. but something else is going on in arkansas. because the "minorities running roughshod" guy is not alone in arkansas. they're kind of making a habit of this thing recently. in the arkansas legislature, you've also got the state republican lawmaker whose letters to the local paper include the one where he said, quote, if slavery were so god awful, why didn't jesus or paul condemn it? why was it in the constitution? and why wasn't there a war before 1861? that was an arkansas republican state representative writing in 2009. arkansas also has the state republican lawmaker who put his views on the subject of slavery in a book. quote, the institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may have actually been a blessing in disguise. an arkansas representative in a book he published in 2010. after the views of both gentlemen came to broader public light, both of those blessings got voted out of office this past november, along with another rep who argued that everyone in america who is muslim should be deported to another country. he said parents should be allowed at least limited access to the death penalty for their children. you should be allowed to kill your kid. arkansas republican state rep wrote that in a book in 2012. those three republican state legislators in arkansas all lost to democrats in this past election, even though the past election was one in which republicans won both chambers of the legislature in arkansas for the first time in reconstruction. and that was thanks in part to a lot of corporate money. jason rapert is from a district that leans democratic. but thanks to his very well funded campaign -- thank you, verizon -- he didn't get voted out at all. he is still keeping the state of arkansas safe from "the minorities running roughshod over what you people believe in." arkansas, what is going on there? what is going on with you guys? okay. so it's friday, but we are not doing an official cocktail moment tonight. however, if one was going to put together a little something special to get ready for our final story tonight, i realize now that it might be helpful to know in advance that our final story tonight pays homage to the honey badger. so this isn't a cocktail moment, but i feel duty-bound to tell you that there is a variation on the whiskey sour that is made with honey that's really good. it's called the gold rush. this is what it is. it's two ounces of bourbon, a half ounce of fresh lemon and a half ounce of honey syrup. to make the honey syrup you do two parts hot water, one part honey. you stir it up until it dissolves. a half ounce of, that a half ounce of lemon, two ounces of bourbon. shake it up. strain it over ice. honey badgers love that i'm just [ female announcer ] going to sleep may be easy, but when you wake up in the middle of the night it can be frustrating. it's hard to turn off and go back to sleep. intermezzo is the first and only prescription sleep aid approved for use as needed in the middle of the night when you can't get back to sleep. it's an effective sleep medicine you don't take before bedtime. take it in bed only when you need it and have at least four hours left for sleep. do not take intermezzo if you have had an allergic reaction to drugs containing zolpidem, such as ambien. allergic reactions such as shortness of breath or swelling of your tongue or throat may occur and may be fatal. intermezzo should not be taken if you have taken another sleep medicine at bedtime or in the middle of the night or drank alcohol that day. do not drive or operate machinery until at least 4 hours after taking intermezzo and you're fully awake. driving, eating, or engaging in other activities while not fully awake without remembering the event the next day have been reported. abnormal behaviors may include aggressiveness, agitation, hallucinations, or confusion. alcohol or taking other medicines that make you sleepy may increase these risks. in depressed patients, worsening of depression, including risk of suicide, may occur. intermezzo, like most sleep medicines, has some risk of dependency. common side effects are headache, nausea, and fatigue. so if you suffer from middle-of-the-night insomnia, ask your doctor about intermezzo and return to sleep again. ♪ on september 24th, 1980, congressman henry hyde announced that the state judiciary committee would consider a resolution to begin impeachment proceedings against president bill clinton. we remember impeachment time as newt gingrich and the house republicans battling against the white house with the help of the conservative movement on the outside. but, you know, there was an outside effort fighting back against the conservative side too. on september 18th of that year, husband and wife software development team from silicon valley launched this online petition. see the title there? "censure and move on." it was a one-sentence petition. the congress must immediately censure president clinton and move on to other pressing issues facing the country. censure and move on. that petition signed up 100,000 people in a week. and then half a million people within a couple of months. they delivered hundreds of thousands of petitions to the house. they swamped congressional switchboard was a quarter of a million phone calls. they wrangled meetings with more than 200 representatives. and what blew everybody's mind at the time was not that they got hundreds of thousands of people to sign this pet addition, essentially taking president clinton's side in this fight back in 1998. what blew everybody's mind, the amazing thing that everybody thought was so incredible about it was that they did this thing using the computer machine. here is how the "washington post" led its story about the "censure and move on" campaign. the story was written february 1st, 1999. how can there be such a phenomenon as electronic political activism? what is so active about clicking a mouse button when sending an e-mail or logging on to a website? but with $13 million and more than 650,000 volunteer hours pledged to censure and move on, the realm of political activism now must bend its boundaries to include cyberspace. the article concludes by referring to censure and move on's brand of internet activists as "word of mouse." get it? word of mouse. "usa today" referred to this new trend as e-politics in their august 1999 article on the subject. their piece revealed that there were skeptics of this new e-politics. quote, online politics has its share of skeptics. no medium that relies on voters to take the initiative for educating themselves can ever have the broad reach of tv where political messages intrude unbidden into living rooms. will it revolutionize mix? that's harder to say. so said ari fleischer in 1999 before he became white house press secretary. ah, this computer thing, it's just a flash in the pan. in all fairness, though, it was not just ari fleischer. pretty much everybody in 1999 was agog with what these california software geeks were doing with the internets and how it was affecting politics maybe some day in the future. of course, house republicans did go ahead with the impeachment process. so the censure and move on folks decided that they would not fold up. they decided to use the amazing magical power of the internet machine to try to make at least some of the pro-impeachment republicans pay for that stance. the folks with the online petition decided to reinvent themselves as a pac in 1999. they endorsed and started fundraising for a handful of progressive congressional candidates. again, the novelty was not that they were a pressure group on the left taking democrats' side in fights with republicans. the novelty and what seemed so weird about them was that they were doing this political work by using the click click, tappety-tap machine that kids were using these days. a report in december 1999, slate magazine wrote e-mailed 25,000 folks to had pledged as well to others on the mailing list. they raised a quarter million in phi days and have harvested another quarter million since, without any further solicitation. they did it just using the computer. just using word of mouse. that first electoral gambit was for the 2000 election. and three of moveon's five candidates won. despite the computer skeptics, moveon.org ended up becoming a big deal in lefty politics. they raised money and direct it to support progressive candidates and causes. but they also hone and choose their messaging through interaction with their many, many members. moveon ends up being like a mega collective crowd-sourced advisory group for your lefty issue of choice. and the results end up being effective and pretty aggressive messages that end up in some cases using the right spokespeople. >> i want to talk to you about women. >> and about mitt romney. >> mitt romney's for ending funding to planned parenthood. >> including cancer screenings. >> he said he would overturn roe v. wade. >> we have republicans trying to redefine rain. >> trying to force women to undergo invasive ultra sounds. >> if you think that this election won't affect you in your life, think again. >> so they've got money, yes. and they've got reach, absolutely. they've got millions of members. and part of that, and the part of the way they have been able to hold on to them all these years is because of further innovation on their part. they have sort of a one-click user experience. if you think about amazon.com online, amazon organize nighed their interface specifically so you can get through it very quickly. you don't have to click on a lot of different things and go through different screens or enter a lot of data in order to buy something. it is easy and fast to buy stuff there, particularly once you have done it once. and that keeps you coming back as a customer. that's the same approach that moveon took for political activism starting back in 1999. one of the moveon founders then called it five-minute activism. slate said at the time that five-minute activism may become the fastest, fieriest method ever devised for channeling citizen outreach -- outrage, excuse me. so if you have a political impulse or political feeling, moveon tries to give you a way to actualize that in a satisfying way that doesn't make you feel like you just did something sketchy, and that makes you feel like you might want to do that again that was easy. that accomplished the goal i wanted to accomplish. i will bookmark and come back and do that again. the group's commitment to manifestation in the election in a way that was seen as controversial and had its skeptics, but show how it they continue to push the envelope. moveon this year sent voter report cards to 12 million registered voters in battleground states. these report cards showed each voter how often they had voted in recent elections, and how their frequency of voting stacked up against their neighbor's frequency of voting. it's a controversial method, but it is tested. it is effective, and nobody else is doing it. not at least until people start copying moveon for doing it. everybody in politics talks about tapping the grassroots and talks about how public polling is on their side for the issue. but having a political impact means turning those intangible theoretical political assets into real political action that has an effect. that is what makes for effective political pressure. and now one of the veteran in the trenches advocacy groups on an old school political issue has just brought on a new young leader who has come up through the most innovative part of the lefty political world, including years at moveon. also including the liberal watchdog group media matters for america that drives the right nuts. also including a superpac aimed at changing the influence of money and politics, a group she helped found. and as of today, this new young leader replaces nancy keenan, the long-standing head of naral pro-choice in america. nancy keenan came on the show to talk about her decision to step down this past summer. she made the decision she said specifically to make room for a new generation of leaders who have new ideas and have learned new ways to accomplish things in politics. joining us now for her first interview is the new president of naral is ilyse hogue. thanks for being here. >> thank you for having me, rachel. it's great to be here. >> what do you think of that context from electoral politics and moveon to the abortion rights fight. these have been seen as two totally different sectors of lefty politics. but do you represent some sort of crossover? >> well, i hope so. i mean, first of all, it was great to hear such a thorough history of my institutional alma mater. i haven't heard it in a long time. look, moveon was founded on some very basic principles that couldn't be more applicable right now to women's empowerment and choice movements. one was that politics is often slow to catch up to where the cultural heartbeat is, right? and we're seeing that now. "wall street journal" poll on the roe anniversary showed seven in ten americans support upholding roe. we have actually successfully mainstreamed choice into our culture. politics is slow to catch up. and moveon knew that. so one of the reasons that moveon has always been successful is by finding innovative ways to use technology to surface the breadth of support for these mainstream ideas. nothing is more mainstream right now than the idea that women should have the freedom to write their own destinies. and foundational to that freedom is our ability to choose when and how and with whom we have a family. when women can do that, we can dream big dreams. we can contribute to culture, business, government, and then countries function better, business, marketplaces function better, and families and communities function better. and i hope that i can bring the tools and the organizing from moveon to bring millions and millions of women's voices into this debate about what our own futures are going to look like. >> because the fight over choice and reproductive rights, we think of it as a national fight, and sort of a constant national fight. but it really the rubber hits the road in the state. >> absolutely. >> and all these district fights, a lot of them happen simultaneously. when you talk about "surfacing the breadth of support for choice," what is the most effective, most important way that support for choice could surface, could be made manifest in a way that would affect what is happening in the states? >> well, i mean, i think that there is no one way, right? one of the listens of the moveon era is the understanding of the reinforcing dynamic between the online and the offline organizing. we had boots on the ground from 2004 on. great advantage of naral pro-choice america is we've had boots on the ground since '69. so our choice out loud program, our new technological platform that allows young women to tell their own stories about what choice means to them, that actually reinforces the real-life activists that we have on the ground who are both doing excellent front lines work on defensive battles like in texas, where half of poor women no longer have access to health care, much less safe and legal abortion because of the defunding of planned parenthood, to the front lines in oregon. oregon is a state where we have a long-time leadership where not a single restriction has been put on abortion since casey. it's the only state in the union. we are poised through our naral leadership and all the activists we touch there to go on offense, to actually see how we can make politics and legislative work catch up to the whole range of choices that women face in the modern-day world. >> ilyse hogue, brand-new president of naral pro-choice america as of today. ilyse, stay in touch. thank you so much. >> i appreciate it, rachel. all right. still ahead, honey badger, wolverines, weasels, and other threats to our democracy. a big development to report hey, buddy? oh, hey, flo. you want to see something cool? snapshot, from progressive. my insurance company told me not to talk to people like you. you always do what they tell you? no... try it, and see what your good driving can save you. you don't even have to switch. unless you're scared. i'm not scared, it's... you know we can still see you. no, you can't. pretty sure we can... try snapshot today -- no pressure. a big development to report in the republican party today as it relates to the united states senate. for whatever reason, former senator scott brown is, whatever, not going to run for the united states senate seat that was just vacated by john kerry. whatever. a lot was hinging on this announcement, a hotly anticipated decision from scott brown. but in the end when he decided to make the announcement, he did it by sending a text message. you are the first to know i am not running. the future senator breaking up with all of our hopes and dreams, by way of child-like text messages. nobody knows why he is not running, maybe he will run for governor, and talk to queens and kings and see what he should do. but he is not running for john kerry's senate seat. they put out a statement saying there are many personal republicans in massachusetts who could run for the seat. she just did not name any of them. so massachusetts republicans seemed very surprised that scott brown is not running and do not seem to have an idea on what to do next. watch this space. one when -- when well fell and fully grown, the honey badgers stretch along the east indiana ocean and africa. despite being called badgers, they are technically mustalids, think timberwolves, think pole cat. they're all kin to the honey badger. now, when honey badgers kill something, they eat the whole carcass down to the last toe bone. they will raid beehives and eat toruses, they do what they want, no questions, no fear, they famously do not care. >> oh, it has a cobra, runs back wards, now watch this, it snakes up in the tree, it doesn't care, it just takes what it wants. >> last week on this show we compared the elected republicans of the great state of michigan to the honey badger, because the michigan republicans don't believe a care. at the time they planned to rig the election, so effectively the democrat couldn't win office again. the plan was to change the way we vote for president, under current law, most states allocate the votes to the winner as a whole. the plan was to change this in several blue states, states that vote democratic in presidential elections, they wouldn't do it everywhere, just some states. so oklahoma and arkansas and other safe red states, they would continue to deliver every single one of their electoral votes to the republican candidate for president. they wouldn't change a thing there. blue states like michigan or virginia, they would have to give away more than half of their votes to the republican side. so the red state gets the whole electoral votes. but a blue state just gets some of those votes. you still have to give some of them to the republican, the result, of course is the giant thumb on the scale for the republican hopefuls. earlier we talked about whether or not republicans are trying to make this change, florida, virginia, wisconsin, ohio, michigan and pennsylvania. but then as the story got more attention in the news, the republicans in those states started to back off. florida's house speaker said his party didn't need to change the rules, he said they, meaning republicans, just need to get better. and bob mcdonald said he was against the idea, so were a couple of key republicans in the senate. and this week, they voted it down in committee. in wisconsin, wisconsin's republican governor scott walker said he thought the idea was interesting. after that got a lot of attention back home, he said he had serious concerns about it. in ohio, where the republicans floated the idea days after the election, he and the republicans now say oh, nobody in ohio is talking about doing this thing. so that is florida, virginia, wisconsin and ohio deciding to not try to pull this off. but michigan? michigan is different. michigan, they just had their sneak attack right to work law that they came out in favor of. introduced, passed -- they came out in favor of it, introduced it, signed it into law all within a space of a week during an election in which they never mentioned it. voters repealed it. michigan republicans responded by just passing another one in the way that it couldn't be repealed this time. you know, the will of the voters. michigan republicans don't give a bleep about bad press or the will of the voters, or doing what they said they would do, and they do not care. so as republicans were bailing on this plan to rig the electoral college, michigan's republican house speaker was still talking it up. michigan's republican governor said this seems fair, we'll consider it. in the end, turns out that even michigan's honey badger republicans have their limits. just when it looked like they would gnaw to enact this scheme when nobody else could stomach it, finally, michigan republicans found they couldn't stomach it, at least not yet. michigan's republican leader in the senate doesn't want to go through it. michigan's governor, schneider, says he is very skeptical of the idea that this just is not the right time. so we started with six possible states that republicans hoped to fill the playing field. florida, wisconsin, ohio, and finally michigan said they wouldn't do it. but there is still a holdout, not michigan, i am surprised to say i thought the holdout would be michigan. but turns out the holdout is pennsylvania. the republican senate majority leader said he would introduce a bill this month in february, even if it makes some folks in his party a little queasy, i thought it was home to the republican party in 2013.

Transcripts For MSNBC The Rachel Maddow Show 20130202

network life news event. but hillary clinton was never just some cabinet secretary, right? well, today, four years later at the start of the second term of the obama administration it was a similar scene for hillary clinton as she said goodbye to the same state department employees from almost the same spot where they welcomed her four years ago. >> now it's my great honor to introduce one last time the 67th secretary of state of the united states of america, hillary rodham clinton. >> oh. >> secretary clinton still greeted like a rock star today at the agency she has led for the past four years. hillary clinton, of course, is not just somebody who came in a very close second to barack obama in trying to win the democratic party's presidential nomination, who then got a high-ranking cabinet post as a consolation prize. no, hillary clinton is really her own thing. her career in public life, in public office is unlike anybody else in american history. she went from being an accomplished lawyer in her early career to being the first lady of arkansas. she then became a very high profile first lady of the united states for her husband's two terms in office. she was the first modern first lady to turn that role into a policy job and the first attempt at health reform. she went on to weather her husband's in-office infidelity scandal and impeachment in office. she became a senator from the state of new york and then of course that historic and very hard fought race for the democratic presidential nomination, concluding with barack obama winning the presidency, and then him nominating hillary clinton to be the highest profile secretary of state that our country probably has ever had. and we have had a lot of very high profile secretaries of state. >> so it's been quite a challenging week saying goodbye to so many people. and knowing that i will not have the opportunity to continue being part of this amazing team, but i am so grateful that we've had a chance to contribute in each of our ways to making our country and our world stronger, safer, fairer, and better. those of you who are staying, as many of you will, please know that i hope you will redouble your efforts to do all that you can to demonstrate unequivocally why diplomacy and development are right up there with defense. how when we think about who we are as americans, it's because we are united and committed across our government to do whatever is required to fulfill the missions we have assumed as public officials and public servants. >> right up there with defense. that is one of the big ideas of the obama presidency, right? essentially, reorienting how america deals with the world away from the u.s. military and toward u.s. diplomacy. to upscale our soft power capacity as a country so we have more options beyond just the option of force. this president did a lot to advance that idea simply by putting somebody as high profile as hillary clinton in the job of america's head diplomat. but the overall goal of upscaling state, upscaling diplomacy and development so they are right up there with defense, like she said today, that is widely regarded as a goal that is not yet realized. secretary clinton alluded to that fact today when she said she now plans to become an advocate for that cause from the outside. it is, frankly, easy to imagine that as the core for her return to public life and politics for hillary clinton at some point, but we shall see. the secretary also reflected today on how she is really leaving public life for the first time in a very long time. and she suggested that that might make her a little lonely. >> i am very proud to have been secretary of state. i will miss you. i will probably be dialing ops just to talk. >> dialing ops. want to know what ops? this is ops. ah, this is the state department's nerve center, better known as the operation center, better known as ops. this is the place where for the last four years hillary clinton could call any hour 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to find out what the heck was going on anywhere in the world. the operation center is sort of legendary. it was created by jfk in 1961. it is essentially the secretary of state's on-call lifeline to events breaking anywhere in the world. they consider their time zone to be the time wherever the secretary is anywhere in the world, secretary time. and on a day like today, even with a handoff from secretary clinton to the new secretary, on a day like today, the ops center would have been very busy. news today of a suicide bomb attack at the u.s. embassy in ankara in turkey. no americans were hurt or killed, but one of the people who was wounded in the blast was a turkish reporter who was reportedly at the embassy to meet with the u.s. ambassador. the turkish government is blaming known members of a marxist group they say has operated in the country since the 1970s. in egypt today protesters hurling firebombs through the estate of mohamed morsi's presidential palace, taking place on the date of the uprising that overthrew mubarak. vice president biden in europe, and while he is there the syrian government is warning they may be about to launch an attack on israel in retaliation for an israeli air strike that took place inside syria a couple of days ago. and if that's not enough on the plate, we also still have a navy ship stuck on a world heritage site coral reef in our ally the philippines. and oh, by the way, north korea is gearing up for what may be yet another nuclear test. and they say that we are the reason they are doing it there is a lot going on in the world. secretary of state's a hard job, if not the hardest job in the united states government other than the presidency. you're responsible for so much. hillary clinton reflected on the breadth of responsibilities for a secretary of state during the exit interview that she did yesterday with the ap. but in that interview, she also reflected on our own country's governing capacity. look at what she said. this is how the ap wrote it up. "secretary of state hillary rodham clinton is leaving office with a slap at the critics of the obama administration's critics of the handling of the september attack on a u.s. diplomatic mission in libya. there are some people in politics and the press who can't be confused by the facts. they just will not live in an evidence-based world. and that is regrettable. it is regrettable for our political system and for the people who serve our government in very dangerous, difficult circumstances." "they will not live in an evidence-based world." hillary clinton there talking about the conservative effort to treat the attack on the u.s. consulate in benghazi as not just an attack on our consulate, but as some sort of obama administration conspiracy, or at least scandal. that effort led south carolina republican senator lindsey graham this week to say that he think hillary clinton, quote, got away with murder. the same effort led rand paul of kentucky to do this during secretary of state clinton's senate testimony on the matter last week. >> my question is, is the u.s. involved with any procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons, buying, selling, anyhow transferring weapons to turkey out of libya? >> to turkey? i -- i will have to take that question for the record. nobody's ever raised that with me. >> according to senator rand paul, the secret key to understanding what happened to ambassador chris stevens in benghazi is that a ghost secret boatful of weapons was leaving libya for turkey. and so the ambassador had to be killed to cover that up? maybe? because cia helicopters, boats, ghosts, i don't know. rand paul talked about that theory that he has cooked up. he talked about that theory after that hearing to who else, but the website "world net daily." rand did an interview with "world net daily" and told them he doesn't have any proof about this theory that guns are being smuggled out of libya into turkey, and that somehow explains what was going on there. but he wanted to enter that conspiracy theory into the congressional record anyway. "world net daily" is where united states senator rand paul went to go talk about his conspiracy secret boat theory about benghazi after the hearing. just for the record, this is the "world net daily" front page. see what the halo is? this is their current issue. inside you can read an article titled "obama's muslim childhood" by daniel pipes in which the renowned islam expert presents overwhelming evidence that the president of the united states who claimed before the election he was never a muslim was in fact born and raised a muslim. no way, way. no way, way. world net dally is where senator rand paul, i repeat, went to talk about his boat to turkey theory about why it happened. also, the guy who came in second in the republican presidential nominating contest this past year, rick santorum, his new job is that he is a columnist for world net daily. rand paul is being touted by the supposedly serious conservative heritage foundation as the big speaker next week on reagan's birthday where he is going to give his manifesto on what republican foreign policy should be. that's going to be next week on ronald reagan's birthday, rand paul. but, you know, it's fitting, because we're coming up on reagan's birthday. and did you hear about the horrible obama muslim marxist thing about his kenyan home? did you hear? >> this is one wall that probably shouldn't be torn down. this apartment building used to be the home of a young ronald reagan. it was denied landmark status, and the university of chicago is ready to demolish it. the university is also trying to become the site of president obama's presidential library. that's drawing strong concerns the university might turn president reagan's former house into a parking lot for an obama library. >> did you hear about that? chicago close ties with the obamas, all of them, tearing down ronald reagan's boyhood home in order to make a parking lot for barack obama's presidential library. did you hear? did you hear? see, here it is on drudge. reagan's home could become parking lot for obama library. here it is on something called newsmax. reagan's childhood home to become parking lot for obama library. really? is this really happening? >> no, no. this is really not happening. i mean, in the evidence-free right-wing world, it is true, and they all link to each other. but nowhere else is it true, including in the actual world. but the actual world is not their world. when that reporting is the supposedly straight news from fox news, when the senate foreign relations committee sends its republican members to world net daily to go talk about foreign policy ideas, this is their world. this is not the fringe. this is where they live. governing the united states is a really hard job. representing the united states in the world is a really, really hard job. today john kerry was officially sworn in to take over that job from hillary clinton. and he got to what amounts from a really well informed warning from his predecessor about the difficulties of that job. the evidence-based world is a hard enough place to live and to operate for us as a nation without half of our domestic politics being dominated by the perceived desire to defend against the muslim obama jihad on ronald reagan's childhood home. are we hampered as a nation in our ability to address real problems in the evidence-based world if half of the people in politics do not live in that world? and if so, how does that get fixed? joining us now is chris hayes, who all of you will see again at 8:00 a.m. eastern tomorrow, because that's when he starts his show "up with chris hayes" here on msnbc. hi, chris. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> muslim jihad on president ronald reagan's childhood home. is she also diagnosing an american problem that should or could be fixed? >> it's -- yes. it should be fixed. and i don't know how to fix it. but i can tell you one place where it is a huge problem. and it's the biggest global problem we have, which is getting a climate change regime. i was talking to someone in washington, d.c. involved with climate negotiations for the u.s. government. now, if we're going to have an actual treaty, okay, that governs everyone's emissions, which is ultimately what we're going to have to get, you have to take that tommy v home to a senate and get 66 votes. everyone knows who occupies the u.s. senate. they know half the representatives roughly, a little less than half are committed to this kind of denialism, which is completely out of step with the rest of the world. you can go down the list of countries, right? and it's very hard to credibly make a case that you're going to be able to go home and sell a climate treaty to a domestic political audience that everybody, they're not dummies, they understand, india, china, all the other countries that have to do with it, they understand what the modern republican party is. and they know that that cannot be sold to 66 senators in the united states senate so long as there are enough republicans to block it. >> so it interferes with our ability to take any sort of leadership role on an issue like that because of our domestic essential cramp from not being able to process that information? >> right. and people, look, in the world of international affairs, you know, other countries study our domestic politics. they understand exactly what these dynamics are. so you can try to say, well, we're going to be really tough about this, and yes, we're credible. we can go home. we can go get this carbon regime. everybody knows that's not the case. because it's manifestly not the case. because you have people like lindsey graham who was for a carbon regime before he reneged on it going around saying they're not going to support it. >> republicans threatened to hold up chuck hagel's nomination this week over benghazi. next week there is more hearings. leon panetta, the outgoing secretary is going to testify there. secretary clinton already testified there. is there anything that can be done at this point by secretary panetta or anybody else to convince republicans that it wasn't a secret ghost ship to turkey or some other conspiracy? is there any way to fact chilly disprove what they want to believe about it? >> this is going to go down as one of the right-wing myths about america that are never going to die there are a certain core that are going to keep banging the drum. at some point perhaps someone will nudge the people who are pursuing this say we actually have real problems in north africa there is an intervention happening in mali. there are substantive issues on the table. stop talking about this. but it is so hermetically sealed in that world. >> yeah. >> that i don't see them getting out of it, other than someone making some sort of crass political judgment that this is no longer bringing the benefits that they thought it would. >> on the issue of what secretary clinton said today about bringing diplomacy and development up there so they're seen right as alongside with the defense. we know that's a goal of the obama administration. it may be their most ambitious goal. they haven't made much progress toward it, even with somebody as high profile as hillary clinton being in that job. will john kerry being there have the opportunity for them to go forward? >> i'm so glad you played that clip, because i thought that line was so powerful and important. how far we are institutionally and the sea process inside the white house and the relative weight of defense in state. >> yes. >> and i think the single most important thing to getting us here is something you have written about a tremendous amount which is we need to as a country declare our state of war over. as long as we are in an active state of war, the center of gravity will be with the war machine, will be with the war planners, will be with the pentagon. it is only when the nation views itself as being at peace that diplomacy can take some kind of equal footing. until we get to place where we do something as dramatic as repealing or refusing to reauthorize, the authorization of the use of military force and we end our hot wars, when we have a transparent discussion about what our activities are in terms of drones and targeted killing, only at the point the nation decides to call itself at peace can diplomacy actually ascend to some kind of parity. unless and until we reach that moment, it is impossible, politically and institutionally to get there. >> at some point i want to talk about when they announce in the spring that the u.s. is going to transition to no longer being in the lead role in afghanistan when they make that announcement this spring. i want to talk to you about whether or not it's significant if they're going to rename the operation in afghanistan, whether operation enduring freedom. >> that's really interesting. >> that will be our next conversation. >> hopefully before then. >> okay. chris hayes, thanks. chris hayes hosts "up with chris hayes" weekends. 8:00 eastern. you have to watch. lots to come. stay with us. wears off. been there. tried that. ladybug body milk? no thanks. [ female announcer ] stop searching and start repairing. eucerin professional repair moisturizes while actually repairing very dry skin. it's so powerful you can skip a day... but light enough you won't want to. dermatologist recommended eucerin. the end of trial and error has arrived. try a free sample at eucerinus.com. i don't have to leave my desk and get up and go to the post office anymore. [ male announcer ] with stamps.com you can print real u.s. postage for all your letters and packages. i have exactly the amount of postage i need, the instant i need it. can you print only stamps? no... first class. priority mail. certified. international. and the mail man picks it up. i don't leave the shop anymore. [ male announcer ] get a 4 week trial plus $100 in extras including postage and a digital scale. go to stamps.com/tv and never go to the post office again. you ready? [ female announcer ] second kid by their second kid, every mom is an expert and more likely to choose luvs. after thousands of diaper changes, they know what works. luvs lock away wetness better than huggies for a fraction of the cost live, learn, & get luvs. before i get too far into this next story, i want to show you this. ♪ >> that is arkansas state senator jason rapert, a tea party republican elected in the great tea party wave of 2010. and he apparently can play the living daylights out of a fiddle. wow. also, he gets stuff done in arkansas. last night on the show we reported about a new bill passed yesterday by the arkansas senate that would effectively ban abortion in the state. the bill was sponsored by jason rapert, the fiddler there. a legislator pointed out to him if his bill becomes law, doctors would need to do an internal vaginal ultrasound in order to determine which very few arkansas women would be eligible for their constitutional rights anymore. the senator asked him, quote, can you imagine what kind of feeling that would cause inserted into a woman? quote, no, rapert replied. according to the local "times" newspaper, "no, i can't imagine what kind of feeling that would cause." and then they voted for his bill. so that was arkansas, just so far this week. but then today, hmm, newly uncovered video of the same senator, jason rapert from 2011. >> i wonder sometimes when they invited all the muslims to come into the white house and had a little ramadan supper, when our president could not take the time to go attend a national prayer breakfast, i wonder what he stands for. you know what they told me that what you say -- excuse me, what you do speaks so loudly that what you say i cannot hear. i hear you loud and clear, barack obama. you don't represent the country that i grew up with. and your values is not going to save us. we're going to try to take this country back to the lord. we're going to try to take this country back to conservatism. and we're not going to allow minorities to run roughshod over what you people believe in. >> "we're not going to allow minorities to run roughshod over what you people believe in." not exactly sure what he means by that. president obama has also attended the national prayer breakfast every year. so that part was just wrong. we called senator jason rapert today and wrote to him, hoping he would explain exactly which he wants what minorities to stop running roughshod over. i would love to hear him explain it without a crowd cheering him on. the clip of senator rapert was first reported by lee fang at "the nation." he points that senator rapert got a lot of money from corporations on his way into office. eli lilly, nucor, based in south carolina. verizon. also, of course the koch brothers who targeted arkansas and spent there to turn the legislature from blue to red, which did happen, including the reelection of senator ultrasound roughshod minorities jason rapert. but something else is going on in arkansas. because the "minorities running roughshod" guy is not alone in arkansas. they're kind of making a habit of this thing recently. in the arkansas legislature, you've also got the state republican lawmaker whose letters to the local paper include the one where he said, quote, if slavery were so god awful, why didn't jesus or paul condemn it? why was it in the constitution? and why wasn't there a war before 1861? that was an arkansas republican state representative writing in 2009. arkansas also has the state republican lawmaker who put his views on the subject of slavery in a book. quote, the institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may have actually been a blessing in disguise. an arkansas representative in a book he published in 2010. after the views of both gentlemen came to broader public light, both of those blessings got voted out of office this past november, along with another rep who argued that everyone in america who is muslim should be deported to another country. he said parents should be allowed at least limited access to the death penalty for their children. you should be allowed to kill your kid. arkansas republican state rep wrote that in a book in 2012. those three republican state legislators in arkansas all lost to democrats in this past election, even though the past election was one in which republicans won both chambers of the legislature in arkansas for the first time in reconstruction. and that was thanks in part to a lot of corporate money. jason rapert is from a district that leans democratic. but thanks to his very well funded campaign -- thank you, verizon -- he didn't get voted out at all. he is still keeping the state of arkansas safe from "the minorities running roughshod over what you people believe in." arkansas, what is going on there? 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[ coughs ] [ male announcer ] you can't let a cold keep you up tonight. ♪ vicks nyquil -- powerful nighttime 6-symptom cold & flu relief. ♪ marie callender's gives you a way to make any day a special occasion. new mini cream pies for one. real whip cream and a cookie-crumb crust. marie callender's. it's time to savor. real whip cream and a cookie-crumb crust. is bigger than we think ... sometimelike the flu.fer from with aches, fever and chills- the flu's a really big deal. so why treat it like it's a little cold? there's something that works differently than over-the-counter remedies. prescription tamiflu attacks the flu virus at its source. so don't wait. call your doctor right away. tamiflu is prescription medicine for treating the flu in adults and children one year and older whose flu symptoms started within the last two days. before taking tamiflu tell your doctor if you're pregnant, nursing. have serious health conditions, or take other medicines. if you develop an allergic reaction, a severe rash, or signs of unusual behavior, stop taking tamiflu and call your doctor immediately. children and adolescents in particular may be at an increased risk of seizures, confusion or abnormal behavior. the most common side effects are mild to moderate nausea and vomiting. the flu comes on fast, so ask your doctor about tamiflu. prescription for flu. okay. so it's friday, but we are not doing an official cocktail moment tonight. however, if one was going to put together a little something special to get ready for our final story tonight, i reali now that it might be helpful to know in advance that our final story tonight pays homage to the honey badger. so this isn't a cocktail moment, but i feel duty-bound to tell you that there is a variation on the whiskey sour that is made with honey that's really good. it's called the gold rush. this is what it is. it's two ounces of bourbon, a half ounce of fresh lemon and a half ounce of honey syrup. to make the honey syrup you do two parts hot water, one part honey. you stir it up until it dissolves. a half ounce of, that a half ounce of lemon, two ounces of bourbon. shake it up. strain it over ice. honey badgers love that i'm just saying. that story is coming. [ male announcer ] i've seen incredible things. otherworldly things. but there are some things i've never seen before. this ge jet engine can understand 5,000 data samples per second. which is good for business. because planes use less fuel, spend less time on the ground and more time in the air. suddenly, faraway places don't seem so...far away. ♪ on september 24, 1998, congressman henry hyde announced that the state judiciary committee would consider a resolution to begin impeachment proceedings against president bill clinton. we remember impeachment time as newt gingrich and the house republicans battling against the white house with the help of the conservative movement on the outside. but, you know, there was an outside effort fighting back against the conservative side too. on september 18th of that year, husband and wife software development team from silicon valley launched this online petition. see the title there? "censure and move on." it was a one-sentence petition. the congress must immediately censure president clinton and move on to other pressing issues facing the country. censure and move on. that petition signed up 100,000 people in a week. and then half a million people within a couple of months. they delivered hundreds of thousands of petitions to the house. they swamped congressional switchboard was a quarter of a million phone calls. they wrangled meetings with more than 200 representatives. and what blew everybody's mind at the time was not that they got hundreds of thousands of people to sign this pet addition, essentially taking president clinton's side in this fight back in 1998. what blew everybody's mind, the amazing thing that everybody thought was so incredible about it was that they did this thing using the computer machine. here is how the "washington post" led its story about the "censure and move on" campaign. the story was written february 1st, 1999. how can there be such a phenomenon as electronic political activism? what is so active about clicking a mouse button when sending an e-mail or logging on to a website? but with $13 million and more than 650,000 volunteer hours pledged to censure and move on, the realm of political activism now must bend its boundaries to include cyberspace. the article concludes by referring to censure and move on's brand of internet activists as "word of mouse." get it? word of mouse. "usa today" referred to this new trend as e-politics in their august 1999 article on the subject. their piece revealed that there were skeptics of this new e-politics. quote, online politics has its share of skeptics. no medium that relies on voters to take the initiative for educating themselves can ever have the broad reach of tv where political messages intrude unbidden into living rooms. will it revolutionize mix? that's harder to say. so said ari fleischer in 1999 before he became white house press secretary. ah, this computer thing, it's just a flash in the pan. in all fairness, though, it was not just ari fleischer. pretty much everybody in 1999 was agog with what these california software geeks were doing with the internets and how it was affecting politics maybe some day in the future. of course, house republicans did go ahead with the impeachment process. so the censure and move on folks decided that they would not fold up. they decided to use the amazing magical power of the internet machine to try to make at least some of the pro-impeachment republicans pay for that stance. the folks with the online petition decided to reinvent themselves as a pac in 1999. they endorsed and started fundraising for a handful of progressive congressional candidates. again, the novelty was not that they were a pressure group on the left taking democrats' side in fights with republicans. the novelty and what seemed so weird about them was that they were doing this political work by using the click click, tappety-tap machine that kids were using these days. a report in december 1999, slate magazine wrote e-mailed 25,000 folks to had pledged as well to others on the mailing list. they raised a quarter million in phi days and have harvested another quarter million since, without any further solicitation. they did it just using the computer. just using word of mouse. that first electoral gambit was for the 2000 election. and three of moveon's five candidates won. despite the computer skeptics, moveon.org ended up becoming a big deal in lefty politics. they raised money and direct it to support progressive candidates and causes. but they also hone and choose their messaging through interaction with their many, many members. moveon ends up being like a mega collective crowd-sourced advisory group for your lefty issue of choice. and the results end up being effective and pretty aggressive messages that end up in some cases using the right spokespeople. >> i want to talk to you about women. >> and about mitt romney. >> mitt romney's for ending funding to planned parenthood. >> including cancer screenings. >> he said he would overturn roe v. wade. >> we have republicans trying to redefine rain. >> trying to force women to undergo invasive ultra sounds. >> if you think that this election won't affect you in your life, think again. >> so they've got money, yes. and they've got reach, absolutely. they've got millions of members. and part of that, and the part of the way they have been able to hold on to them all these years is because of further innovation on their part. they have sort of a one-click user experience. if you think about amazon.com online, amazon organize nighed their interface specifically so you can get through it very quickly. you don't have to click on a lot of different things and go through different screens or enter a lot of data in order to buy something. it is easy and fast to buy stuff there, particularly once you have done it once. and that keeps you coming back as a customer. that's the same approach that moveon took for political activism starting back in 1999. one of the moveon founders then called it five-minute activism. slate said at the time that five-minute activism may become the fastest, fieriest method ever devised for channeling citizen outreach -- outrage, excuse me. so if you have a political impulse or political feeling, moveon tries to give you a way to actualize that in a satisfying way that doesn't make you feel like you just did something sketchy, and that makes you feel like you might want to do that again that was easy. that accomplished the goal i wanted to accomplish. i will bookmark and come back and do that again. the group's commitment to innovation manifest in the past election in a way that was seen as controversial and had its skeptics, but show how they continue to push the envelope. moveon this year sent voter report cards to 12 million registered voters in battleground states. these report cards showed each voter how often they had voted in recent elections, and how their frequency of voting stacked up against their neighbor's frequency of voting. it's a controversial method, but it is tested. it is effective, and nobody else is doing it. not at least until people start copying moveon for doing it. everybody in politics talks about tapping the grassroots and talks about how public polling is on their side for the issue. but having a political impact means turning those intangible theoretical political assets into real political action that has an effect. that is what makes for effective political pressure. and now one of the veteran in the trenches advocacy groups on an old school political issue has just brought on a new young leader who has come up through the most innovative part of the lefty political world, including years at moveon. also including the liberal watchdog group media matters for america that drives the right nuts. also including a superpac aimed at changing the influence of money and politics, a group she helped found. and as of today, this new young leader replaces nancy keenan, the long-standing head of naral pro-choice in america. nancy keenan came on the show to talk about her decision to step down this past summer. she made the decision she said specifically to make room for a new generation of leaders who have new ideas and have learned new ways to accomplish things in politics. joining us now for her first interview is the new president of naral is ilyse hogue. thanks for being here. >> thank you for having me, rachel. it's great to be here. >> what do you think of that context from electoral politics and moveon to the abortion rights fight. these have been seen as two totally different sectors of lefty politics. but do you represent some sort of crossover? >> well, i hope so. i mean, first of all, it was great to hear such a thorough history of my institutional alma mater. i haven't heard it in a long time. look, moveon was founded on some very basic principles that couldn't be more applicable right now to women empowerment and choice movements. one was that politics is often slow to catch up to where the cultural heartbeat is, right? and we're seeing that now. "wall street journal" poll on the roe anniversary showed seven in ten americans support upholding roe. we have actually successfully mainstreamed choice into our culture. politics is slow to catch up. and moveon knew that. so one of the reasons that moveon has always been successful is by finding innovative ways to use technology to surface the breadth of support for these mainstream ideas. nothing is more mainstream right now than the idea that women should have the freedom to write their own destinies. and foundational to that freedom is our ability to choose when and how and with whom we have a family. when women can do that, we can dream big dreams. we can contribute to culture, business, government, and then countries function better, business, marketplaces function better, and families and communities function better. and i hope that i can bring the tools and the organizing from moveon to bring millions and millions of women's voices into this debate about what our own futures are going to look like. >> because the fight over choice and reproductive rights, we think of it as a national fight, and sort of a constant national fight. but it really the rubber hits the road in the state. >> absolutely. >> and all these district fights, a lot of them happen simultaneously. when you talk about "surfacing the breadth of support for choice," what is the most effective, most important way that support for choice could surface, could be made manifest in a way that would affect what is happening in the states? >> well, i mean, i think that there is no one way, right? one of the listens of the moveon era is the understanding of the reinforcing dynamic between the online and the offline organizing. we had boots on the ground from 2004 on. great advantage of naral pro-choice america is we've had boots on the ground since '69. so our choice out loud program, our new technological platform that allows young women to tell their own stories about what choice means to them, that actually reinforces the real-life activists that we have on the ground who are both doing excellent front lines work on defensive battles like in texas, where half of poor women no longer have access to health care, much less safe and legal abortion because of the defunding of planned parenthood, to the front lines in oregon. oregon is a state where we have a long-time leadership where not a single restriction has been put on abortion since casey. it's the only state in the union. we are poised through our naral leadership and all the activists we touch there to go on offense, to actually see how we can make politics and legislative work catch up to the whole range of choices that women face in the modern-day world. >> ilyse hogue, brand-new president of naral pro-choice america as of today. ilyse, stay in touch. thank you so much. >> i appreciate it, rachel. all right. still ahead, honey badger, wolverines, weasels, and other threats to our democracy. ♪ [ construction sounds ] ♪ [ watch ticking ] [ engine revs ] come in. ♪ got the coffee. that was fast. we're outta here. ♪ [ engine revs ] ♪ olaf gets great rewards for his small business! pizza! 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[ coyote howls ] how about no more surprises? now you can get all the online trading tools you need without any surprise fees. ♪ it's not rocket science. it's just common sense. from td ameritrade. so we created the extraordinarily comfortable sleep number experience. a collection of innovations designed around a bed with dualair technology that allows you to adjust to the support your body needs - each of your bodies. our sleep professionals will help you find your sleep number setting. exclusively at a sleep number store. sleep number. comfort ... individualized. at the ultimate sleep number event, queen mattresses start at just $599 . and save 50% on our innovative limited edition bed. a big development to report in the republican party today as it relates to the united states senate. for whatever reason, former senator scott brown is, whatever, not going to run for the united states senate seat that was just vacated by john kerry. whatever. a lot of hinging on this announcement. a hotly anticipated decision from scott brown, but in the end, when he decided to make the call, he broke the news by sending a text message to "the boston herald." ur -- just the letters, not the word. ur the first to know that i am not running. nobody knows why he is not running. maybe he will run to governor. maybe he will talk to some kings and queens to see what they think he should do. brand new head of the massachusetts republican party say there are many potential republicans in massachusetts who could run for the seat. she just did not name any of them. massachusetts republicans are genuinely surprised that scott brown is not running they don't seem to i have any idea what to do next to get the seat. watch this space. lily...she pretty much lives in her favorite princess dress. but once a week i let her play sheriff so i can wash it. i use tide to get out those week old stains and downy to get it fresh and soft. you are free to go. [ dad ] tide and downy together. i'm up next, but now i'm singing the heartburn blues. hold on, prilosec isn't for fast relief. cue up alka-seltzer. it stops heartburn fast. ♪ oh what a relief it is! cue up alka-seltzer. it stops heartburn fast. all stations come over to mithis is for real this time. step seven point two one two. verify and lock. command is locked. five seconds. three, two, one. standing by for capture. the most innovative software on the planet... dragon is captured. is connecting today's leading companies to places beyond it. siemens. answers. when the doctor told me that i could smoke for the first week... i'm like...yeah, ok... little did i know that one week later i wasn't smoking. [ male announcer ] along with support, chantix is proven to help people quit smoking. it reduces the urge to smoke. some people had changes in behavior, thinking or mood, hostility, agitation, depressed mood and suicidal thoughts or actions while taking or after stopping chantix. if you notice any of these stop taking chantix and call your doctor right away. tell your doctor about any history of depression or other mental health problems, which could get worse while taking chantix. don't take chantix if you've had a serious allergic or skin reaction to it. if you develop these stop taking chantix and see your doctor right away as some can be life-threatening. if you have a history of heart or blood vessel problems, tell your doctor if you have new or worse symptoms. get medical help right away if you have symptoms of a heart attack. use caution when driving or operating machinery. common side effects include nausea, trouble sleeping and unusual dreams. it helps to have people around you... they say, you're much bigger than this. and you are. [ male announcer ] ask your doctor if chantix is right for you. when well fed and fully grown, the honey badger can weigh up to 25 pounds. they live in subsahara africa. they are technically mustalids. when you think honey badger, think weasel family, wolverine, think pole cat. all genealogical kin to the honey badger. when honey badgers kill something, they eat the whole carcass, down to the last toe bone. the honey badger is a level of ferocity unknown. they will eat tortoises, crushing their shells. cobras they'll eat for crying out loud. honey badgers famously do not give a [ bleep ]. >> it's got i cob remark runs backward. the snake in the tree, the honey badger don't care, it don't give a [ bleep ]. it takes what it wants. last week we compared the michigan republicans to the honey badger. they do not give a bleep. they had begun to bail on the plan to rig the presidential election so effectively a democrat could not win the presidency again. the plan, to change the way we vote for president. under current law, most allocate all electoral votes to the winner. republicans planned to change the law in some states, not where republicans controlled the election. in safe red states, they would continue to deliver every single one of the electoral votes to republican candidate, but blue states like michigan or virginia, they would have to give away half or more of their electoral votes to the republican side. a red-state win gets a whole state worth of the electoral votes, but a blue state win for democrat gets some votes. you still have to give some of them to republicans. results, a giant thumb on the scale in presidential elections. six states where republicans had been mulling over making this change. florida, virginia, wisconsin, ohio, michigan, and pennsylvania. but then as the story got more attention in the news, republicans in those six states started backing off. florida's republican house speaker says his party did not need to change the rules, they just need to get better, meaning they, republicans need to get better. virginia's republican governor, governor ultrasound, bob mcdonnell are against the idea and this week, republicans in the virginia senate voted the bill down in committee. in wisconsin, wisconsin's republican governor scott walker told the conservative meeting in washington, he thought the idea was interesting. after that got a lot of attention back home in wisconsin, actually he had serious concerns about it. in ohio, where the republican secretary of state floated the idea days after the election in november, he and other republicans now say, oh, nobody in ohio is talking about doing this thing. so that's florida and virginia and wisconsin and ohio. deciding not try to pull this off. but michigan, michigan is different. michigan, where they just had their sneak attack right to work law that they came out in favor of, they came out in favor of it, introduced it, passed it, all within the space of a week of an election in which they never mentioned it voters repealed the emergency manager law, but lawmakers passed another one in a way that couldn't be repealed this time. michigan republicans do not give a bleep about bad press or the will of the voters or doing what they said they would do when they do not do it they do not care. so as republicans in other states were bailing on the plan to rig the electoral college in blue states, michigan's house speaker was still talking it up. michigan's republican governor saying, hey, this seems like a fair time to consider it. in the end, it turns out even michigan's honey badger repun i had -- republicans have their limit. just whether it looked liked nobody else could stomach it, michigan republicans decided they could not stomach it either, at least not yet. michigan's republican leader in the senate doesn't want to go through with it. michigan's governor rick snyder now says he's very skeptical of the yad that this just isn't the right time. we started with six possible states where republicans helped to tilt the playing field. they all said no, they are not going to do it. but still one holdout. not michigan. i thought the holdout would be michigan. it turns out the holdout is pennsylvania. the republican senate majority leader will introduce a new bill in february, even if it makes some folks in his party a little queasy. i have been thi

Transcripts For CURRENT Liberally Stephanie Miller 20130311

show." [ ♪ theme ♪ ] >> stephanie: happy monday morning, jacki schechner. look what i got you. eye candy. hal sparks is filling in for jim ward today. >> ooh, good thing i worked out extra yesterday. >> stephanie: you and melissa fitzgerald and i went spinning yesterday. >> we did. >> stephanie: she will be here in about an hour. the truffle will be reunited. >> it is sad when we can't go a day without each other. >> can we re-create that experience? i'll play the bike. [ laughter ] >> stephanie: little sexy liberal sandwich between melissa and i. >> my hands can be the pedals. we'll work it out. >> stephanie: "l.a. times," things to watch while john is on vacation. is that stephanie miller? why thank you "l.a. times." you like me. you really like me. >> we've got wonder woman on today. lynda carter. [ ding ding ] [ applause ] >> stephanie: i gotta get some bracelets. here she is, jacki schechner my wonder woman in the current news center. >> president obama is planning to head up to the hill to meet with democratic and republican caucuses in both the house and the senate separately. it is latest step in his step to circumvent republican leadership which has been stub stubborn. he's trying to cut the sequester cuts already impacting the economy. paul ryan plans to release his latest proposal this week and early reports indicate it will be just as useless as his past proposals because he's got a blueprint that would repeal healthcare reform in addition to remaining medicare and curbing the growth of medicaid by $770 billion over the last decade. the president is also planning to reach out to supporters and volunteers at a dinner wednesday night. organizing for action, the nonprofit that was created out of the president's re-election organization. it's holding a two-day summit in d.c. his appearance comes in the wake of accusations that donations by foa provides access but the truth was laid out in an op-ed saying the group will report all donations greater than $250,000. it will not take money from federal lobbyists or foreign interests. if you have a question for the first lady about her let's move initiative, you can hop on twitter today at 11:15 eastern time. mrs. obama is going to be online with answers. it will be under the hashtag ask plotus. interesting to see what she has to say. stay with us. >> jack, how old are you? >> nine. >> this is what 27 tons of marijuana looks like. (vo) with award winning documentaries that take you inside the headlines, way inside. (vo) from the underworld, to the world of privilege. >> everyone in michael jackson's life was out to use him. (vo) no one brings you more documentaries that are real, gripping, current. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] the next wave of italians has come to america, and the fiat 500 with beats audio is rockin' the block. the italian designed fiat 500. you're invited to take the lysol wipes challenge. try lysol dual action wipes and see the cleaning power. lysol dual action wipes have 2 sides instead of one. a scrubbing side that cleans tough stains better than clorox. and a smooth side for everyday touchups. all while killing 99.9% of germs. take the lysol wipes challenge today. available at walmart. in brookside chocolate a world of remarkable tastes comes together. rich, dark chocolate meets sweetened soft centers flavored with exotic fruit juices, like pomegranate goji with raspberry, and acai with blueberry. it's chocolate like you've never experienced it before. and it comes from a place called brookside. discover brookside. >> announcer: ladies and gentlemen, it's "the stephanie miller show." ♪ i'm walkin' on sunshine ♪ ♪ i'm walkin' on sunshine ♪ ♪ and it's time to feel good ♪ ♪ hey, all right now ♪ ♪ and it's time to feel good ♪ >> stephanie: woo-hoo it is the "the stephanie miller show." welcome to it. happy monday. six minutes after the hour. 1-800-steph-12. why, jim, huh? [ ♪ dramatic ♪ ] >> hal: what is that? >> stephanie: it's like bewitched. somebody replaced my darren. hal sparks is filling in for jim ward. >> i don't know if i'm dick sergeant or dick york. >> dick york was the latter one. [ scooby-doo's "huh?" ] >> stephanie: i think it would have been funnier if i didn't notice all three hours just like samantha. anyway jim. >> hal: someone else says i'm not -- coughs over by correcting you. [ ♪ magic wand ♪ ] >> stephanie: do we have a show today or do we have a show? >> it's packed. >> stephanie: wonder woman lynda carter is on the show! >> very exciting. [wonder woman theme song] >> stephanie: you told the most totes adorbs story. >> hal: true story. when i was a kid living in kentucky i had a huge painful spine curling -- >> stephanie: me too. >> crush on lynda carter. >> stephanie: i only had mary or bionic woman. >> yours was a junior dike version. >> stephanie: that's why it's so cute. >> so i figured out a scheme to call her because i needed to talk to her. >> stephanie: the bionic man -- >> the $6 million man. hello. that was the noise i made. anyways, so i called -- i think somewhere in the order of 35 different phone numbers long distance at 7 years old and i finally got to the set phone while they were shooting the show. they were shooting wonder woman. posing as her lawyer's son and saying it was my birthday and my dad said it was okay if i called. because i figured if i could get her on the phone that's all i needed. and apparently she couldn't come to the phone. she was in the middle of spinning or something. not class. the actual turning into a super hero. then my parents came home and i had written on a note card all of the phone numbers that i called. i was so busted. but on the other side of the card, i had written the last two. i said i only called these numbers and i was technically telling the truth because i was holding the card in my hand. [ wah wah ] then i didn't realize the bill would come later. >> long distance, too. >> stephanie: i guess you did not know that you would grow up to know stephanie miller and be able to meet lynda carter. >> over the phone. >> stephanie: i can get her on the phone for him see? >> can you get erin gray on the phone from buck rogers? >> stephanie: patience, grasshopper. >> in her silver jumpsuit? >> you keep setting them up, i'll keep knocking them down. >> stephanie: all things come true when you know -- >> announcer: stephanie miller. >> erin gray was probably a little too beyond your -- because that was the '80s. >> stephanie: who is erin gray? >> wilma dearing on buck rogers. >> even i had a crush on her. >> stephanie: okay. >> when i was 9 -- i met her when i was 9 at a car show. you can see the look on my face like this is the first time i've had this kind of experience. [ laughter ] >> stephanie: all right. again, speaking of smokin' hot chicks, hot brie, melissa fitzgerald activist extraordinaire right in that seat in like an hour. snot hot brie on with -- ♪ hot brie on with stephi ♪ >> stephanie: i saw the correspondence between her and travis and we're talking about the booking and uganda. travis shared his recipe for hot brie. all right. 7:30 live in the studio. don't overbake the filo dough. >> amongst the tragedies going on in you on uganda. >> stephanie: make sure it bubbles over. >> he's right though. he's right. >> stephanie: sexy liberal all three hours. speaking of sexy liberals, it is happening, kids, it is coming up fast! ♪ look at all the sexy liberals ♪ ♪ i look at all the sexy liberals ♪ ♪ stephanie miller takes a flight to the windy city ♪ ♪ with babies between ♪ ♪ drinking some wine she keeps in a box by the door ♪ ♪ that's what it's for ♪ ♪ all the sexy liberals ♪ ♪ where do they all come from ♪ ♪ all the sexy liberals, chicago's where they'll come ♪ >> oh, yeah! >> stephanie: thank you rocky mountain mike. >> that was beautiful. that was rocky mountain mike. >> stephanie: we got another one from audra too i believe. >> that one says that i'm going to the sexy liberal show and i'm not. [ buzzer ] >> if we play that, that's a lie. >> hal: why not! >> stephanie: tsa is allowing knives now. why not go! [ ♪ "world news tonight" ♪ ] >> it is exactly like escape from new york. you can have the same weapons they allow escape from new york. >> stephanie: i saw the story in the "l.a. times" over the weekend. tsa asked to reconsider move allowing small knives on planes. what could go wrong? a move by federal officials to allow passengers to board airlines has sparked backlash by airline workers. the union representing air marshals joined pilots and attend assents to reconsider its list of prohibited carry on items. more than 12,000 people have signed an online petition urging president obama to keep knives off planes. here are the fun facts i loved in the article. the tsa as we know, this was last week. they said it would allow air travels to board u.s. aircraft with small folding knives, golf clubs, novelty bats -- >> what's? >> stephanie: i don't know. hang on. hockey sticks, lacrosse sticks and pool cues. >> that's okay. the novelty bats, you gotta draw the line somewhere. >> stephanie: how often is someone going to break a pool cue over your head. >> the novelty bats are kid size often are pens. if you go to louisville, kentucky and you get a louisville slugger -- aused to go to dodger games when i was a kid. >> if you can hijack a plane with a novelty bat, you kind of deserve the plane. >> stephanie: i think i'm going to get liquored up and hit someone with a novelty bat on the way to chicago. >> it is too loud a noise. you need a little -- yeah, there you go! take this! turn this plane around. we're going to dell lago. >> stephanie: i said hurry! >> stephanie: okay. the agency said the move which would take effect april 25th was aimed at freeing up security officials to focus on bigger threats. >> bigger than a novelty bat? >> stephanie: the more freedom to hit someone on the head with a knowlety bat. >> i don't want knives. i do want to bring my shampoo. is that too much to ask? >> stephanie: no, i will hit with you a lacrosse stick. smack you in the head. >> with a lacrosse stick. again, if you can take -- >> stephanie: hot brie said she had a friend whose actual last name was mafia. he used to travel with a hockey stick in his trunk for when there was trouble. i don't think it is a good idea. >> trouble playing hockey? >> stephanie: no, trouble, he would just get it out. right. exactly. >> hockey sticks on planes? i don't think it is a good idea. >> well, here's the problem. this happened -- musicians will tell you about this. you couldn't bring stringed instruments on for awhile because somebody might loosen the key string on the guitar and use it to -- no violins. people were having to put these half a million violins in hold. >> garroted the stewardess with a string. >> all of the sports teams touring around are having to put their stuff in the hold and their stuff gets lost and games forfeit because a big plastic stick is not allowed. >> stephanie: thank you so much "l.a. times." >> it is on your facebook page. >> stephanie: it is going to be a long, dull summer without jon stewart. top things you might watch. >> no offense, john olver. >> stephanie: giant picture of mama. thank you "l.a. times." here's a look at the competitor who stand to pick up ground in stewart's absence. [ ♪ dramatic ♪ ] or i might be one of the long shots. >> no, you're number three. >> stephanie: i'm number three. okay. thank you "l.a. times." [ applause ] >> stephanie: all right. >> lovely. >> stephanie: you know i don't like to name drop. >> yeah, sting told you not to. >> stephanie: so because hal's a musician, i -- and hot brie -- she got to go with me. we got to hang out with -- [ ♪ "world news tonight" ♪ ] steven stills friday night again. listen to his new album and he played guitar with it. that was the best seat ever for a cosby stills concert. he was right there. i was right here. we were kind of in heaven. [ ♪ "world news tonight" ♪ ] it was pretty awesome. >> what's the contact buzz? >> i'm sure there was one. >> i don't think he smoked in 20 years. i doesn't have to. there was a period of time, it just emanates. kind of puffs off of him. >> stephanie: no it does not either. >> like the bags gymnasts use you give them a hug and poof. >> stephanie: i can confirm that. >> steven stills, everyone gets high for a block and a half. i'm kidding. that's not what happens. i'm just being silly. >> stephanie: when we come back someone with an even more exciting weekend than me. vibrating til gets stuck up his -- and a live tweet. >> he posted pictures, too. >> they were a little blurry and it is hard to aim. >> stephanie: right. we'll talk about much more as we continue. 17 minutes after the hour. it's "the stephanie miller show." >> i got her number off the men's room stall. 1-800-steph-12. (vo) always outspoken now unleashed. joy behar. >> guess who i'm going to spend the night with? hmmm? lily tomlin! want to join us and make it a three way? ♪ one night in bangkok ♪ ♪ can't be too careful with your company ♪ ♪ i can feel the devil walking next to ♪ >> stephanie miller. ♪ i kept my kicks above the waistline, sunshine ♪ >> stephanie: it is "the stephanie miller show." sadly. that's not my choice. i can't get any below the waistline. >> i'm sure if you put the word out there you're looking for a little something something. >> chicago sexy liberal. >> stephanie: hello. kicks below the waistline. take a number. >> one night in chicago. >> stephanie: makes a hard man humble. okay. 22 minutes after the hour. hal sparks in for jim ward today. he's off on a voice job. we have rude pundit coming up. eric boehlert. >> a voice job? >> this is a job. >> stephanie: this is just a hobby. >> he found a job where he can sleep in. >> stephanie: can i tell you one thing? >> what? >> stephanie: ask hot brie in about an hour, jim ward left the funniest phone message. we played some of his phone messages. we have one. >> really? >> stephanie: his voice message -- >> i'm not leaving messages for you people ever again. >> stephanie: usually with a lot of voices. but anyway, he had some thoughts chris about road flare mary that couldn't be shared -- i couldn't send this to you because of the fcc. okay. >> tired of hearing from her? >> stephanie: she said mean things about him last week. i think maybe we shouldn't talk to mary anymore because i might say this and it went on about five minutes. a lot of use of a certain word. hilarious. >> i would like you to forward it to me for my own entertainment. >> stephanie: i played it for hot brie. we had to stop the car because we were laughing so hard. this was one from a few years ago. >> first new message sent yesterday at 8:09 p.m. >> what are you wearing? she's got some big ole [ bleep ] um it's jim. >> bail out early. i -- hmm. we've got a power outage here and my computer does not work. so i cannot look at the things that you sent me with the things. so i'm flying blind tomorrow. well, ya know, no big deal. no big whoop. i do have a battery-powered alarm clock so i should be up in time. [ laughter ] anyway. i think the power will be on again tomorrow morning. there was apparently an underground explosion. who is underground? dick cheney. bum bum bum. see you tomorrow. i'm pretty much on vacation already, i guess. all right. bye. >> hi, there hello. how are you? >> end of message. [ applause ] >> that was epic. >> yeah. >> stephanie: conspiracy corner in there. >> par for the course. i think. seemingly. by the way, all of those messages will be available soon in the stephanie miller digital archives available on itunes. all of those great singular moments. >> stephanie: someone had an even more exciting weekend than did i. >> oh, yeah, this guy. [ ♪ "world news tonight" ♪ ] >> stephanie: social media allows you to share and share and share. the headline is oversharing dude gets vibrating. >> sex toy -- adult toy -- >> stephanie: trip to the e.r. i'm not sure why people feel the need to do this. guess who has one -- and a vibrating -- up his -- twitter user snow mange is his handle as the kids say. >> it was like his initials at the end then it turned out to be snow mange but he still doesn't understand it. >> stephanie: he announced to several hundred twitter followers, a number that grew exponentially thereafter. he somehow managed to get a vibrating -- stuck inside his body and needed medical assistance to remove it. his first one was yo, guess who has to go to the hospital because he shoved a [ bleep ] up his [ bleep ] answer, it's me. >> i love he started with yo. >> stephanie: guess what all. my favorite tweet later i looked at the woman in the e.r. desk dead in the eye and said there is no other way to put this. i have a vibrating [ bleep ] inside my [ bleep ] all caps. he said oh, my god the nurse just told me there was another patient right here who also shoved [ bleep ] up his [ bleep ] life lesson, when using a vibrating [ bleep ] attach the string to the end. >> he said the battery lasted seven hours. [ laughter ] >> stephanie: now that's an exciting weekend. >> a new energizer bunny. and just have him walking by in the background. is my phone going off? no that's gary. going and going and going. >> stephanie: his name is gary. gary, what did you shove up your [ bleep ] again. >> i have no evidence of this but i personally believe he blacked out early and the paramedics were doing the tweeting for him. >> stephanie: i'll take over for you! laura in pennsylvania. welcome. >> caller: hi, stephanie. i have something -- and everybody else too. i have something very important to say to the american people. i watched ed schultz's show the other night and bernie sanders was on. let me tell you bernie said -- all about the big three. social security, medicare and medicaid. they want to take it away and it doesn't look good for us. and what i didn't know before was it affects not only us senior citizens but it affects the veterans who fought in the war and it affects their wit doughs. it -- widows. it affects the guys and girls who came back with no arms or legs. we have been paying into this forever. he said there's $2.7 trillion in there and there's no reason they should want this money something we paid for. obama has me scared to death. because i campaigned for him. i'll tell you right now, a lot of people and i'm still campaigning because of this, they said that there will be a war. people told me they aren't going to steal my money. we'll have a revolution. i said ya know, i said nobody's more scared than i am. >> stephanie: laura hal andry going to address this when we come back with rude pundit. right back on "the stephanie miller show." criticizing, and holding policy to the fire. are you encouraged by what you heard the president say the other night? is this personal or is it political? a lot of my work happens by doing the things that i am given to doing anyway. staying in tough with everything that is going on politically and putting my own nuance on it. not only does senator rubio just care about rich people but somehow he thinks raising the minimum wage is a bad idea for the middle class. but we do care about them, right? vo: the war room tonight at 6 eastern break the ice with breath-freshening cooling crystals. ice breakers. >> how old do you think i am? >> i don't know. 29. >> wow. you are good at guessing ages. i am exactly 29. >> stephanie: it is the "the stephanie miller show." hal sparks in for jim ward today. so before the break, a woman calls scared to death about entitlements, what the president is going to do. >> hal: the issue for a lot of people is unfortunately on the republican side, bringing up entitlement reform means cutting them and getting rid of them. and bringing up entitlement reform on the democratic side means refining and making them better over time. now, it is an expensive part of our budget facility is huge. it is growing because of the aging population, a wa of aging population specifically the baby boomers, the cost will go up for awhile and then it will level off again and even out. but for all practical purposes, the trust fund is solvent until 2038. inity current form. >> stephanie: she was saying bernie sanders was on. he speaks so eloquently on the subject about trying to say we're not in crisis. this is what george bush tried when he said we have to privatize it now. it is not in crisis. >> that is the biggest false like information push that's been -- they've been doing it for three, four decades now. that the first part was when reagan was releasing lps against medicaid and social security and these kinds of things. socialized -- the socialism of march in america. people would gather around and play an album of ronald reagan going this is the worst thing that could ever happen to america and it would bankrupt us and it didn't. there are refinements that can be made because as medical advancements are made, you can go back in and go why are we paying all of this money at this point when we can actually pay a lot less at this point and people will get healthier and not die of that. so you're not spending all of this money in end of life care when this is preventable diseases so the refinements that the democrats are talking about and that the president are talking about are legitimate ways to fix it that way. what the republicans want to do is get rid of it. >> stephanie: paul ryan, he's back again with his voucher plan. but no! just lost in a landslide. >> it assumes the repeal of obamacare. >> that's coming enough -- up. >> stephanie: good morning papa. >> good morning. so are you going to be on "the view" because it seems like there is a perfect slot for you to slide in there. >> replacing elizabeth? >> stephanie: joy behar is leaving as well. it has been proposed. chris can't live without me. i would have to move to new york. >> i would move to new york. >> stephanie: you're not invited. >> wow! >> stephanie: rudeness, i love your stuff on random observations on rand paul's filibuster. it is improvey senator rand paul is talking but mostly rand paul [ bleep ] watching people support that bastard who looks like he smoked a bong [ bleep ] blowup doll in his office because this one side is like listening to someone say how cool it is when the westboro baptist church shows up to protest things you hate, too. you summed it up perfectly. >> great, he's bringing this to the attention of the public and later to fund raise on it. but you know, who doesn't? and but yeah. everybody forgot that this is rand freakin' paul. fetal personhood paul. >> phony libertarian that he is. he's such a libertarian he's against gay marriage. >> stephanie: i would have filibustered longer to keep black people away from your lunch counter. >> he would have worn the depends so he wouldn't have had to take a -- i'm going to go with dump after 13 hours. because you know what? taking a leak is just too easy. i want it to be rand paul suddenly realize he had to have a screaming bowel movement in the senate bathroom after this. >> hal: he did. that's why they let ted cruz talk. that is it. >> stephanie: that's the equivalent of a screaming pile of [ bleep ] [ ♪ "world news tonight" ♪ ] also laura your state sucks arkansas sucks because your legislature hates women. just to wrap your mind around this overriding the veto. to ban abortion after weeks to get the supreme court to revisit roe v. wade by violating roe v. wade. jason rapert -- >> i've heard it pronounced rapert. >> it was changed from ist. >> stephanie: he wants to defund it. including little rock schools on sexually transmitted diseases. arkansas ranks in the top ten for the number of cases of syphilis gonorrhea and chlamydia. why educate kids on stds when you're on top right? >> chlamydia. >> way to go, arkansas on all of that chlamydia. >> chlamydia. >> driving out west toward california, this den of inequity, keep the pedal to the metal. no place to slow down and get a piece. >> stephanie: get a souvenir for me, wouldn't you. arkansas enjoy how much you're going to spend on the court challenges and how much you'll spend on all of the unwanted kids. you're number five in unwanted pregnancies. most especially, enjoy the syphilis. as an addendum, your state ranked number four for incidents of domestic violence but look here, all four of your congressional representatives and one of your senators voted against the violence against women act. you get points for consistency of stephanie. >> i would love that to be a replacement for that word. [ laughter ] >> stephanie: the button is right next to the -- [ bleep ] >> yeah, you know, it is one of those things. the governor of course, has said flat out the abortion law is unconstitutional. and he -- he vetoed it. but in arkansas, they only do a simple majority -- need a simple majority to overcome a veto. >> simple majority is a great parody of words when it comes to the arkansas house. >> you know why? it is because of what syphilis does to the brain. >> stephanie: right. >> i'm not saying the arkansas legislature is filled with syphilitic members how far it is filled with syphilitic members. >> stephanie: all right. you do agree, a lot of people, they just -- they don't realize how insane some of the laws these states are passing individually. i was on friday on cnn talking about georgia just passed a law that requires everyone to be -- to be armed. requires everyone to have a gun even if you don't want one. these are the small government people? the government's now going to force you to have a gun. >> which does seem -- the right to bear arms does also seem to indicate the right not to bear arms. >> stephanie: right. >> by the way there goes their obamacare defense. the idea that -- the government can't force you to buy a product. this is the first time the government has ever forced -- that's not -- that's a service actually. >> stephanie: what could possibly go wrong? how many studies do we need that the less gun crime -- states with the fewest guns, shockingly, have the least gun crimes. >> the hits keep on coming on guns because south dakota is -- i think it is almost ready to pass a teachers can carry loaded guns in the classroom. which i just was thinking about my crazed ex-vietnam vet american history teacher who never blinked and smoked constantly. >> stephanie: we had a priest with a bad anger management problem and the one woman with the lazy eye. all of them, really, should have been armed. >> wow, i would like to see a shoot-out between them. >> stephanie: kids in the crossfire. >> a nun with a chanky eye. >> stephanie: she wasn't a nun. rudeness great stuff as usual. talk to you next week. [ applause ] >> stephanie: am i the only one who is terrified when you see the pictures of the gun shows? >> hal: i like them all grouped in one place. >> they're all just laying out on tables. not under glass or anything. wow. >> stephanie: i thought this was surprising. [ ♪ "world news tonight" ♪ ] it would make wayne lapierrre do a doody in his pants. the share american households with guns has declined over the past four decades. [ scooby-doo's "huh?" ] >> stephanie: i'm sorry wayne? [ scooby-doo's "huh?" ] a national survey shows some of the most surprising drops in the south and western mountain states, the gun ownership rate has fallen across a broad cross section of households since the early 1970s. it is the opposite of the stories you see, people are going crazy and buying -- >> hal: there are a lot of gun sales. >> stephanie: it is a concentrated bunch of nuts. >> hal: if you look statistically, it is the exact same number of hard line republicans still left in the country. it is almost exactly the number between 28 and 32% all the time with some mild variance. >> stephanie: the fox news. it was interesting. the household gun ownership rate has fallen from 50% to 43% in the '90s. 35% in the 2000s and 2012, share of american households with guns was 34%. and again, this is what they're saying. the findings contrast with the impression left by a flurry of news reports with people rushing to buy guns and clearing shelves i suspect the increase in gun sales has been limited to current gun owners. wild crazy stockpiling. that's what this is. the decline which has been studied by researchers for years but is relatively unknown among the general public suggests even as the conversation on guns remains contentious a broad shift is underway in a growing number of american homes. it raises questions about the future politics of gun control. will efforts to regulate guns eventually meet with less resistance if they're increasingly concentrated in fewer hands or more resistant. >> it is an interesting take. i watch the same news stories. everybody's got a gun. yeah. offer different theories for these trends. this one interesting many americans nowed to gun -- introduced to gun. now that they're introducing it, it is a less of a gateway for gun ownership. sorry. >> hal: i was just saying my gun-owning friends who are a lot of guys who works in stunts and films who used them for all kinds of different things, they're hoping their reaction after newtown was -- genuine respect for the victims and that kind of stuff. if you're going to buy a gun of a certain type, buy it now because they're not going to take it back from you. they'll limit sales in the future. buy it now. that was the general mentality. these guns are not going to be available in the market. so go buy them by the handful. and they did. they find out that the store that the aurora shooter -- somebody had walked an ar-15 out of there they have 100 guns not accounted for. >> stephanie: oi. there was an accompanying piece in "the new york times" yesterday. i thought it was interesting in terms of the future of gun politics. it says for some owning a gun isn't the same as liking it. it was interesting even the gun owners they interviewed sonya wolfe said i never wanted a gun. now i own a smith & wesson revolver. why? when push comes to sho, i would rather have one but if i had my way, nobody would have a gun. the competitive sharpshooter agreed. i thought the second amendment was secondary to everyone feeling safe and secure in their lives. fewer guns would lead to fewer deaths. he's a gun enthusiast. another couple, first time gun owners, they were shocked by how easily they bought their guns. the husband said it freaked me out how easy it was. i think it is harder to buy an iphone than a gun. i'm a gun owner who believes there needs to be more regulation. >> it is an ever refining group of people. they overlap with the other groups that we consistently see this off the charts legal stuff from. there aren't any -- right now republicans who -- you know, the pro-choice who don't overlap with the gun lobby. anti-choice ones who don't overlap with the gun lobby that don't overlap saying minority won't run roughshod over it. >> stephanie: we continue on "the stephanie miller show." >> announcer: join the party. 1-800-steph-12. honest. they know that i'm not bs'ing them with some hidden agenda, actually supporting one party or the other. when the democrats are wrong, they know that i'm going to be the first one to call them out. they can question whether i'm right, but i think that the audience gets that this guy, to the best of his ability, is trying to look out for us. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] the next wave of italians has come to america, and the fiat 500 with beats audio is rockin' the block. the italian designed fiat 500. can become major victories. i'm phil mickelson, pro golfer. when i was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis my rheumatologist prescribed enbrel for my pain and stiffness, and to help stop joint damage. 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[ doctor ] enbrel, the number one biologic medicine prescribed by rheumatologists. >> "viewpoint" digs deep into the issues of the day. >> has the time finally come for real immigration reform? >> with a distinctly satirical point of view. if you believe in state's rights drug war you must be high. >> only on current tv. >> announcer: stephanie miller. ♪ perfect day ♪ ♪ nothing standing in my way ♪ ♪ on this perfect day ♪ >> stephanie: mm-hmm. it is "the stephanie miller show." welcome to it. eric boehlert from media matters coming up to cohost right-wing world at the top of the hour. hal sparks in for jim ward who is off on a job. >> hal: i will be over here for those of you watching on current, i will be look at semi nude pictures of girls. >> stephanie: just like jim. and snacking on bagels. >> hal: i have the stinkiest food i could find. normally, he could clear the area with whatever mixture -- >> that's usually stephanie that does that. >> stephanie: i just brought salad today. >> i'm downwind from both of them. >> she brings in salmon and brussels sprouts. >> a day old. from last night. [farting sounds] >> if it was fresh it wouldn't be as much of a problem. >> stephanie: roughage. the president on the sequester. barack obama making progress on these issues won't be easy. there will be more contentious debate and disagreement between principles people who want what's best for this country. >> stephanie: then there are the republicans. you notice these dinners someone was saying part of it is because we had to actually tell them to their face this is what i put on the table which you're not aware of because you have to check my web site. you don't even know -- >> they were arguing with reporters about it. i would like to see something like that. if the president said that, i would like to see it. he said it on his address at the last presser he had in the letter he sent to the republicans in congress. >> yep. >> stephanie: how do you negotiate with people who don't even avail themselves of current information about what you're offering. >> hal: the only reason they want to meet with him and have him call them is because they need something to legitimize them after the last election because quite frankly, the republicans are on the outs as far as the productivity in congress. they're no longer useful party and they need voters to see the president talking to republicans as if he needs to -- and it is for their own value. it is a media moment. >> stephanie: eric boehlert, as usual wrote a great piece about this. mainstream media false equivalency about why isn't the president leading? okay. the president. >> i still believe compromise is possible. i know there are leaders on the other side of the aisle who share that belief. >> really? >> yeah, there are. two of them. they're in a corner afraid of being primaried. >> stephanie: exactly. the boner yesterday. >> i think it's a sign, a hopeful sign and i'm hopeful that something will come out of it. but if the president continues to insist on tax hikes, i don't think we're going to get very far. >> yeah, because a tax hike -- >> stephanie: that would be a nonstarter. >> closing a loophole where a multinational oil company not only doesn't have to pay taxes but gets a subsidy for work they're making billions of dollars of profit on and never doing the safety work paying for the stuff that they're getting the tax break for in the first place, that's our tax hike. according to john boehner. >> stephanie: and senator jeff sessions the senator from -- >> keebler. >> stephanie: right. from the little tree in alabama. >> president obama speaks of his deep concern for struggling americans. yet his plans are focused on growing government, not the economy. >> stephanie: you know -- >> that is a lie. >> stephanie: i was reading this story. just kills me, hal over the weekend about these amazing job numbers we just had in february. unemployment down to 7.7%. the recovery, housing market is recovering. i'm like just in time for the sequestration to hit. i mean -- it is really -- >> nothing like green shoots to bring out a lawnmower. >> stephanie: scott in iowa, you're on with hal and company. >> caller: good morning, everybody. hey, you know, it was on the news two or three weeks ago that the scooter store got busted for ripping off medicare for $108 million. >> hal: right. >> caller: boehner sitting there saying we've got to cut spending. why don't we investigator the companies, clients contractors that are ripping off the government first before we want to cut spending and just see how much money that could actually save us without raising taxes or doing anything. investigate these companies! >> hal: you're on to something because that's exactly what the $716 billion was based on was going after waste and fraud and eliminating all of the overpayments and that kind of stuff. >> stephanie: yes. >> hal: plus if you'll notice, like the south is full of those ads. they are run everywhere. like i go to kentucky to visit family and those ads, there would be no television, live in kentucky were it not for -- >> hoveround ads. >> get your free scooter. so you can ride it to washington like an army of elderly -- >> stephanie: well-regulated militia. mary jo in maryland, you're on real quick. >> caller: how is everyone doing? >> stephanie: good. 30 seconds. >> caller: they're not taking my money away. they're not taking medicare, medicaid, social security. we're all social security. i have a daughter who is 24, cerebral palsy. she can't work. i'm a caregiver. they won't mess up my household. we're going to march. >> stephanie: or you're going to scooter. >> caller: maybe it is time to riot. i don't know. we've done everything logical. and logic is not working. >> stephanie: time to get the scooters. >> hal: i think we have to address that some, too. >> a million scooter roll. >> stephanie: there we go. eric boehlert in right-wing world next on "the stephanie miller show." [ ♪ theme ♪ ] >> stephanie: hello current tv. hour number two. eric boehlert coming up to cohost right-wing world. jacki schechner, the third member of our truffle hot brie, mel its is a fitzgerald -- melissa fitzgerald will be there in about half an hour. >> sounds good. >> stephanie: the three of us went spinning yesterday to spinning class then to brunch. you guys were in the bathroom and you left me alone entirely too long. you know what i did? >> you assaulted a celebrity. >> who? >> stephanie: i was waiting for them and laura dern came in. i blurted out oh, my god i love you. she looked a little frightened. >> i would be, too. >> you probably made some really old movie reference. i loved you in blue velvet. >> stephanie: i tend to blurt things. >> you were great as super girl. totally -- >> that's the fun thing about hollywood -- about l.a. you run into these people in random places. >> stephanie: and you're not prepared. >> you're often not supposed to assault them. >> stephanie: calm down. it is jacki schechner in the current news center. >> a gunman dressed in an afghan police uniform opened fire at a training facility in afghanistan today killing at least two americans and three afghans. american troops were visiting the police facility as part of the on-going effort to get the afghans ready to take over their own security. president hamid karzai had ordered all u.s. special forces out of there by yesterday in the wake of accusations that afghans working for those u.s. troops had tortured and murdered innocent civilians. general joseph, the top u.s. commander in afghanistan said he has spoken with president karzai about the issue and the u.s. is working on a plan to transfer vardok security over to u.s. forces. the general is rejecting president karzai's claim that somehow the u.s. is in collaboration with the taliban to prove that violence will escalate once u.s. forces leave. president karzai made those inflammatory remarks during a nationally-televised speech on sunday. operation key resolve is now underway on korean peninsula. every year the u.s. and south koreans together conduct military drills. this year's comes at the same time the u.n. has unanimously approved new sanctions against north korea. this is its punishment for its latest nuclear test. in response, north korea has upped its threatening rhetoric saying it is now dismissing the cease-fire that ended the korean war and threatening a nuclear attack on the united states. typical north korean rhetoric. we're back after the break. billy zane stars in barabbas. coming in march to reelz. to find reelz in your area, go to reelz.com in brookside chocolate a world of remarkable tastes comes together. rich, dark chocolate meets sweetened soft centers flavored with exotic fruit juices, like pomegranate goji with raspberry, and acai with blueberry. it's chocolate like you've never experienced it before. and it comes from a place called brookside. discover brookside. >> announcer: ladies and gentlemen, it's "the stephanie miller show." ♪ i'm walkin' on sunshine ♪ ♪ i'm walkin' on sunshine ♪ ♪ and it's time to feel good ♪ ♪ hey, all right now ♪ ♪ and it's time to feel good ♪ >> stephanie: oh yeah, it is. six minutes after the hour. hal sparks in for voice deity jim ward. jim off on a voice job. >> another voice job. >> stephanie: this is a hobby really. this is just nap time. time he comes in to kind of ignore me. stephaniemiller.com. the web site. "l.a. times" piece about things to watch while jon stewart is on vacation. thank you "l.a. times." up on the facebook page. hal sparks, john fuglesang and i and probably chris lavoie if we can scrape up -- some money -- >> hal: community organizing organizing -- >> i heard some real great things on "the stephanie miller show." you know that gorgeous hunk of a man, chris? chris lavoie? well, he's coming to the sexy liberal show too. >> sexy liberal! ♪ sexy liberals everywhere ♪ ♪ there's a sea of sexy liberals everywhere ♪ ♪ stephanie and hal sparks, too ♪ ♪ john fuglesang is gonna meet and grope with you ♪ ♪ come on, now ♪ i'm so excited i might even shay my legs ♪ ♪ sexy liberals celebrate and have a great time ♪ ♪ sexy liberals are having a good time ♪ ♪ stephanie miller comedy tour is making its way to the midwest ♪ ♪ chicago here they come ♪ ♪ woo-hoo ♪ ♪ april 13th in chicago ♪ >> stephanie: thank you, audra. audra and kate coming down from minneapolis. speaking of sexy liberals, first time i saw him on it, what did i say? eric boehlert from media matters for america doing the lord's work as usual. >> announcer: eric boehlert. ♪ hurts so good ♪ ♪ hurts so good ♪ >> stephanie: let's dye into the right-wing world. >> i don't know what that means. >> stephanie: eric boehlert from media matters. good morning your hotness and your smartness. >> good morning. >> don't do that. >> hey eric. >> stephanie: just your tweets, where do we start? weird week. hannity praising ryan's rising g.o.p. star. rand paul end aid to israel. >> that was from either 2011 or 2012. look, the rand paul thing was very interesting. there was lots of great stuff about it. a lot of odd stuff about it. i think it was probably -- you know, if you lived on the twitter universe, it was slightly blown out of proportion in terms of what is it going to mean in the long run. that's what a filibuster should look like. not this nonsense they tried with hagel and a lot of the other obstructionist tactics for the republican views. there was lots of interesting mixed alliances. we just don't see anymore. usually so cut and dry. everyone forms a line behind certain people. but to see hannity touting rand paul as a rising star, fresh face i think -- he might want to look at some of his libertarian policies. particularly the middle east stuff. >> stephanie: has caused yet another [ bleep ] fight in the republican party. that's all that matters. from the department of awesome timing, column on jobs. hashtag priceless hashtag i heart peggy. [ laughter ] >> it was literally like 30 minutes after the jobs numbers came out friday morning. they always post pentagongyien into an's col -- peggien into an's column. i also tweeted david brooks had that colossal blunder with not knowing that obama had a plan for deficit reduction. do these people only exist for comic relief? because there's no intellectual behind it. they're not changing the dialogue of the debate or anything. here's peggy noonan hitting obama on a jobs crisis. to minutes after 236 jobs are created. >> stephanie: i love this tweet. if under romney the dow hit 14,000 and jobs jumped 236,000 fox would launch a campaign to add mitt's face to mt. rushmore. >> friday was a quiet day on fox and friends. they have to deal with the great jobs report. gas prices aren't up. they can't talk about that. the dow, you would not know the dow existed if you touched fox news. it has more than doubled. in obama's first term. all of this stuff. could you imagine if mitt sort of waltzed in? the dow hits record high every day and we got the jobs report. literally, they would be crowing that mitt had saved us from despair. but it happens under obama and it basically doesn't exist. >> stephanie: i love this tweet. how is that rebranding going? they prefer hillary clinton over marco rubio. >> let's face it. the reason rubio has been giving the star treatment within the republican party and even the press, i think, is this idea he might be able to turn around the fiasco in terms of latino voters. hillary clinton who doesn't even -- doesn't even campaign. hasn't even been in politics for five years polls like 65 to 25. it wasn't even close. put the word in a poll and they're going to trounce it. >> hal: in his defense though, by the way hillary though she has not been campaigning has not given an awkward speech where she reached for a water bottle like it belonged to someone else and she was shoplifting it. she doesn't have that going against her. >> stephanie: we were just talking about the gun issue in georgia. i was just on cnn talking about this friday. your tweet you just write dear god, new georgia bill expands gun rights to "those deemed to have mental health problems." >> i put it in all caps. are you kidding me? it is not a law yet but it passed easily thanks to republicans, expanding more people with diagnosed mental problems, should be able to own guns in the state of georgia and it is just -- it is beyond comprehension. one other quick plug, mother jones has this great article i saw this morning similar bill expanding gun rights in utah. utah has a gun suicide epidemic. go take a look at it. statistics are amazing. they want more people to have guns in their hands. >> stephanie: absolutely. we've been talking about it. by the way, i was telling hal about your piece how the liberal media keep blaming obama for republican behavior. it continues to be infuriating on the sequester. you say the problem with so much of the beltway media's on-going commentary regarding the sequestration showdown, two republicans and president obama is it reflecting the central failing and it blames the president for the g.o.p.'s ingrained signature on stinnancy. it is unbelievable, isn't it. >> it is. i did a couple of things last week. the update -- my main point was they keep blaming obama for not getting -- for not avoiding sequestration when it was obvious the republican strategy was not to come to a deal. they were quite plain about it. then at the end of the week, i updated it because we saw the reports that republicans didn't even know what obama was offering with his deficit reduction plan. that came out of the dinner that he had with some senators and a couple of other reports. >> stephanie: he told them to their face at dinner. >> hal: their negotiating point most of the time is sticking their fingers in their ears and going -- >> stephanie: the republican position is that this negotiation is of vital importance to the future of the country, so important they may be willing to shut down the government, let the full faith and credit of the united states be destroyed. they also can't be bothered to understand what it is the other side wants. remember beltway pundits agree the partisan impasse that led to the sequestration was obama's fault. >> yeah. i think some of that was paul waldman wrote in american prospect. it is obama's fault even though republicans don't even know what he's offering. i mean come on. the press has to make a break. and -- >> stephanie: when they keep saying why won't the president read? read the web site! let's dive into the right-wing world. this is someone new. nicole who? >> when you see the unemployment rate dropping, you have to take it with a grain of salt. does it mean so many more americans got jobs that they wanted or does it mean that the labor participation rate, the rate at which people actually are in the work force are the people who just said you know what? i'm not looking for a job anymore. >> hal: yeah, they actually factor that into the number. that's part of how they gather that statistic. >> she's not much of a business reporter, is she? >> not so much. >> media matters clipped the video from fox and friends i think friday morning. basically, warning the readers to take these unemployment numbers with a grain of salt. basically, telling them don't get too depressed you know. hopefully more people won't have jobs this year. they have to put everything through their filter. which is -- which is basically rooting for a better economy. >> stephanie: this is the piece we were talking about. paul ryan on with chris wallace. >> are you saying that as part of your budget you would repeal, you assume the repeal of obamacare? >> yes. >> well, that's not gonna happen. >> well, we believe it should. that's the point. it was a big issue in the campaign between romney/ryan versus obama/biden. they think they won. that's one of the reasons they won. a lot of independent studies that say if you put this into effect, the net effect will be that seniors will end up having to pay more of the share of their healthcare costs. >> wow. >> stephanie: wow. that was on fox news, eric. holy cow! >> every now and then chris wallace decides you know, to get off the talking points. >> stephanie: in fact, mitt romney just said the president won because of obamacare. right? >> think about it. his budget proposal is based -- it is built around the idea that obamacare is going to be -- >> because it should. >> that's the key. because it should be. this fantasy should come true. therefore, let's build a federal budget. >> hal: i personally think an asteroid with a core made of diamonds and gold should land softly somewhere in upstate new york so we can use it to pay off everything that we -- debt and whatever. but it is not going to. you can't budget for that. that's ridiculous. >> stephanie: eric boehlert remains in the sidecar. we continue more right-wing world after the break. >> this is the dirtiest show i've ever been on in all of my life. >> announcer: it's "the stephanie miller show." you're invited to take the lysol wipes challenge. try lysol dual action wipes and see the cleaning power. lysol dual action wipes have 2 sides instead of one. a scrubbing side that cleans tough stains better than clorox. and a smooth side for everyday touchups. all while killing 99.9% of germs. take the lysol wipes challenge today. available at walmart. a closer shave in a single stroke for less irritation, even on sensitive skin. ♪ ♪ gillette mach3 sensitive. gillette. the best a man can get. [clucking]. everyone wants to be the cadbury bunny. cause only he brings delicious cadbury crème eggs, while others may keep trying. nobunny knows easter better than cadbury! current tv is the place for true stories. with award winning documentaries that take you inside the headlines. real, gripping, current. documentaries... on current tv. ♪ i've got one hand in my pocket and the other one is hailing ♪ >> stephanie miller. >> stephanie: yeah, it is the "the stephanie miller show." 22 minutes after the hour. hal sparks in for jim ward. eric boehlert in the sidecar from media matters for america to continue right-wing world. how did i know hugo chavez dying was not going to prevent rush limbaugh from comparing the president to him yet again. >> fidel taught him p.r. stuff and how to make it look like you're doing everything for the people when, behind the scenes, you're doing it all for yourself. this is our future. in fact, are we not watching the people of this country become poorer? under the guise of everything being fair? are we not watching the people of this country become poorer under the guise of equality? are we not watching people become poorer under the guise of making sure all of the unfairness and bigotry in the past is being fixed? >> stephanie: hmm. wow. okay. >> obama doesn't care about poor people? >> stephanie: always been his main concern. >> it always has. >> talking about inequities and poor people. i saw people on rush limbaugh, everything was based on corporate profits where the dow is. everything was based on -- >> stephanie: but that's not important. >> labor union leader. hey, i'm all for talking about inequity in the poor. from rush limbaugh -- >> hal: he's talking about people like him becoming poorer because you can't be as racist and sexist on the radio as you used to be and keep all of your advertisers. that's what's means. >> stephanie: ben shapiro from breitbart. >> country supported mussolini early on. left wing press supported hitler the left wing begins to start back away from left wing dictators. >> of course hitler was a left winger. he redistributed wealth. he shut down businesses. this argument that hitler was a right-winger is absurd. it is absolutely ridiculous and it is historically ignorant. it is a slander put forward by the left in order to try to shut down all debate on the fact that socialism and the rise of the left in countries in a major way usually leads to dictatorial natures far more often than, for example, a limited government. >> stephanie: wow. how do you unpack that little -- >> how do you argue with that lodgic? >> stephanie: hitler well-known liberal. >> of course you know, hitler was a liberal right? he was a person of the -- a leader of the people, redistributing wealth and all of that stuff. you know, ben shapiro and the folks at breitbart don't even understand 20th century history. they also don't understand satire by the way because over the weekend they posted his news, paul krugman had filed for bankruptcy when it was in fact a satire piece that was making the rounds online. they don't know anything about history. and they don't know anything about satire. but they do provide comic relief for a lot of us. >> stephanie: all right. sean hannity yet again with the nazis. >> i say we're going to look back on this period of history as through the prism of history and say this was the rise of the radical islamists. to me, there is an eerie similar feeling to the 1930s. that they want a worldwide -- first battle will be against israel. then it will be against the west. >> stephanie: yep. >> i don't quite follow the connection. >> very glenn beck of him. >> wow. >> rude goldberg of him. >> stephanie: okay. peter johnson whose name is peter johnson. >> they've become kind of the pets of the environmental industry including al gore to say oh look what's happening to the polar bears. they've been protected to a great, great degree and that they will continue to thrive. there are some in the government who say the opposite. by 2050, they'll be greatly greatly dissipated so it is global warming -- so is global warming real or not real? i've heard people say it is not really real. it is science moving forward. it indicates that they're wrong about it. >> hmm. >> stephanie: it is just an entirely fact and science-free zone over there, isn't it? that's the problem. too many polar bears. >> there is this book out now saying there are a ton of polar bears overrunning the towns up by the north pole and gee but that's an argument about whether it is protected species. there's no argument about -- just pick up the "wall street journal" over the weekend, had a story, hottest decade in i believe in the history of recorded times. these people are still sort of clinging on to some people say you know, global warming doesn't exist. you know. >> stephanie: eric, before you go, i have to ask you did you see fox and friends founding father friday. they're reduced to interviewing fictional characters now from history. >> speaking of glenn beck, very glenn becky. they had a thomas jefferson impersonator but like it was -- not only was the whole thing goofy, but just as like entertainment like no one really knows what thomas jefferson sounded like it. could have been some guy off the street in period garb. whole thing was great. >> stephanie: steve ducey noted sketch artist, introduced him as the third president of the united states on a budget cutter. jefferson agreed he was. i believe that the government needs to be simple and frugal. we're not only being irresponsible but stealing from posterity. the segment was reminiscent of the show's interview with santa claus in december when gretchen carlson spoke to him to make the case on the war on christmas. there really is no difference between "saturday night live" and fox and friends. >> glenn beck must be fuming. they're stealing his shtick. they boot him off the air and now they're stealing his shtick. >> stephanie: unbelievable. eric boehlert, great stuff. we'll see you next week. [ applause ] eric boehlert from media matters. that's it. historical characters. >> right. >> played by impersonators. >> stephanie: were there auditions? maybe jim is auditioning for the next founding fathers. >> he's auditioning to be hoover. >> hal: to glenn beck's credit over the fox and friends crowd if he interviewed thomas jefferson, he would have used quotes from him out of context but he would have pretended he would have the guy quote back jefferson stuff. whereas they just made it up. >> stephanie: 29 minutes. fox news making stuff up? what are you saying? 29 minutes after the hour. hot brie in the city, activist melissa fitzgerald next on "the stephanie miller show." are you encouraged by what you heard the president say the other night? is this personal or is it political? a lot of my work happens by doing the things that i am given to doing anyway. staying in tough with everything that is going on politically and putting my own nuance on it. not only does senator rubio just care about rich people but somehow he thinks raising the minimum wage is a bad idea for the middle class. but we do care about them, right? vo: the war room tonight at 6 eastern hershey's simple pleasures chocolate. 30% less fat, 100% delicious. ♪ well, look what the whore cat dragged in. >> no, i'm -- >> announcer: stephanie miller. >> stephanie: it is "the stephanie miller show." 34 minutes after the hour. could there be too much hotness? could captain america's underpants explode? ♪ hot brie on with stephy ♪ ♪ looking sexy ♪ ♪ hot brie on with stephy ♪ >> stephanie: there she is. actress melissa fitzgerald. >> hello. i've missed you so much. i've hardly seen you at all. in hours. >> stephanie: how many hours do you think we've spent together this weekend? you just moved about five minutes away from me. >> almost all of them. >> stephanie: you came in. here's your glasses honey you left them at my house. i get my show prep and it says hot brie. hot brie is on. >> i got my hot brie recipe from travis. this is what's -- >> stephanie: because you did an amazing film documentary on uganda called after kony which we've talked about. we have another guest coming on to talk about killing gays in uganda, all of your favorite subjects. she calls and says would you like to go to a dinner party about genocide? yes. >> a dinner party to celebrate genocide? >> not celebrate. i was invited because i've done some work against genocide. >> stephanie: she's a do-gooder. that's jim's job is to turn it into the melissa fitzgerald is pro genocide. [ buzzer ] >> no! >> how to make it quicker. >> stephanie: all right hot brie. here's how -- we shared his mom's recipe. it looks really good. >> i haven't done it yet. >> stephanie: melissa fitzgerald makes it. that's why she has her name, hot brie. >> it will only get better now that i have this recipe. >> stephanie: take four or five sheets of filo dough and brush them with butter and layer them. pour the jam on top. wrap the dough over the top -- >> pomegranate preserves right? >> it will be this time. thanks to travis' mom. >> mama bone. >> stephanie: wrap the dough up over the jam. bake at 350 until bubbly inside or the filo is golden. we use fig or pomegranate jam. >> apricot is good, too. >> i did apricot the first time i did it. >> any time you're using butter as a sealant you're in a good situation. that's what you're sealing things with. >> stephanie: jim ward said that would be a good stripper name, hot brie. let me go on record as saying melissa fitzgerald has not now or never been a stripper. because she's probably going to run for congress at some point and then this is what's going to torpedo her. isn't she hot brie from the sexy miller show? >> hal: didn't she once -- especially with the right wing constantly going to satire pieces of news and believing them to be real like reading onion articles and going busted! you're like no. >> stephanie: i've run into people who think i'm a dancer at the itchy kitty. >> the itchy kitty is in ca noga park. >> stephanie: research people. [ cuckoo clock chimes ] >> stephanie: because we were saying -- >> hal: next up, crystal. >> stephanie: we've spent about 75 and a half hours together in the last four days. we've talked about all of this. ashley judd it looks like is going to run. i'm excited. poke the turtle. source close to actress ashley judd told a reporter she's serious about challenge mitch mcconnell. at least in ashley's mind, it's happening. she's devoted herself to many of causes. she's stepped away from the hollywood spotlight. they've already started this whole campaign against her. >> attacking her for roles she's played for nudity on film and she's done so many great things and done great work. let's talk about thework she's done and the things that are actually important to the job she's possibly going to want to get rather than things that have nothing to do with that. >> stephanie: let's set the record straight on hot brie. [ ♪ "world news tonight" ♪ ] our very own future congressional candidate melissa fitzgerald has never been naked. she's never been naked ever. okay. [ laughter ] >> i don't think there are any nude scenes. >> no. >> stephanie: you were saying when -- what did they do? they ran an ad or something. >> they took a picture of me in a movie premiere and i wasn't even running. they said the thought of her running is titillating. i thought really? i've done so many things and have worked on behalf of a lot of people and that's the thing? >> hal: wait until i run. yeah. my bumper stickers are going to say hal sparks, safe search off. that's my whole campaign. let's do this, righties! there are pictures of me wearing nothing but a badminton shell cock. >> then you have to run. >> stephanie: just for that. >> they'll leave you alone after that. i got nothing. i got nothing. >> stephanie: that's what they're doing. they're scared. his approval ratings are -- >> terrible. terrible for the state. he's on a practical level he's bad for kentucky. regardless of whatever control or how he's been able to manipulate and be anti-obama and running things -- the reality is kentucky's in trouble. it is largely in trouble because of rand and mcconnell's ideas and stuff at the expense of the state. >> they don't bring anything back to the state of kentucky. >> they slow down everything that might move kentucky forward insofar as manufacturing i.t. everybody who learns a computer trade in kentucky, splits. they leave. they go someplace elsewhere the business really is. >> what? >> stephanie: use kentucky and brain drain. [ ♪ circus ♪ ] >> stephanie: hal's gone. pretty much the i.q. -- >> me, johnny depp, we all left. >> if ashley judd wins, you can go back. >> occasionally. >> stephanie: hot brie. [ ♪ "world news tonight" ♪ ] so you're going -- which i'm getting a little panicky already since we spend as we reviewed every waking moment together pretty much. you're leaving -- you're going to d.c. because -- >> i'm doing a bunch of things. i'm going to go to d.c. -- first, i'm going to philadelphia to do a presentation at my 9-year-old nephew's class on africa. most important thing. >> stephanie: can you please tell a couple of the nephew stories. all of her nephews are like -- they're like stand-up comedians all of them. >> yeah, well, one of them was trying to set me up with people. and we were in a hot tub in florida last year and there was a very young looking guy in the hot tub. what about him? i said oh, sweetie he's too young for me. he walks right over to him and he said how old are you? the guy said 18. and my nephew says he's 18. like that's a good thing. i said that's way too young for me. he said how old are you? i said well, i'm -- and i'm 46 and he goes -- [ laughter ] >> stephanie: he did the comedic jaw drop. he had to manually -- >> snap it back in. >> oh, yeah, radio. then some people got in the hot tub. he said this is my aunt. she's not married and she's 46. >> oh, god! [ buzzer ] >> stephanie: children are precious, aren't they? [ ♪ magic wand ♪ ] >> i believe they're the future. >> hal: i don't think so. i know for a fact children aren't the future because they don't stay children. so they're adults. >> stephanie: the story of a neighbor of mine said her 8-year-old, we were standing at a vet. he was staring at me and he goes why don't you have a husband? i said you know what? [ buzzer ] that's a whole discussion that you're not ready for. >> some day. >> stephanie: although they do come in handy, you were talking about the one that is a sprks ido expert. >> he had a plan for one of your exes. >> he had a plan for one of my exes. i had just broken up with someone. i was crying a little. and i was in bed crying and he came in. he said what's wrong? i said i have a friend who's not my friend anymore. he thought about it. he said i'm going to go to california and i'm gonna bring six spiders and put one on his head, two on his tummy two on his legs and one in his shoe. and then he goes what do you think he'll do? i said well, i think he will be scared. he says i think he'll be dead. >> stephanie: that's spectacular. >> do not mess with my aunt! >> stephanie: i love an 8-year-old with a vengeful streak. i could use one of those about now. >> hal: when you're reliant on people around you to feed you your limitation of the moral choices are very narrow. look, i will kill somebody if they mess with someone who's responsible for the people who give me food. seriously, i will f somebody up. >> stephanie: put a spider on their head. >> and one arachna in his shoe. >> stephanie: he's an expert. so you're going to the hill. you're going to film the final episode. >> yes. we're going to go to d.c. this week after my nephew's school. after the big presentation. >> different nephew but close. we're going to go to d.c. and richard schiff who is a wonderful actor who is doing a play. west wing. he's doing a play in d.c. >> stephanie: can i name drop in the middle of this. guess what i met at melissa fitzgerald's housewarming party. allison janney. >> she's the greatest. >> she can do anything. she's in every movie. >> nonstop. we're going to see -- >> stephanie: in juno. >> in nurse betty. >> she's unrecognizable in a lot of things. >> stephanie: she's impossibly tall and thin and glamorous. >> nice. kind good, great friend. >> stephanie: she brought a giant jug of vodka to your house. she said i'll be back. >> good friend. >> stephanie: go ahead. >> i need that. >> hal: for the next spider-man you break up. you broke up with spido man. >> stephanie: special screening of chasing the hill. >> we're filming the final episode and also doing a special screening as part of the environmental film festival on saturday night in d.c. and you can get tickets through -- i think through the environmental film festival. >> stephanie: right. >> the reason we're doing this through the environmental film festival is because my character plays a green tech millionaire who's running for congress. >> stephanie: i see that here. an ambitious green energy millionaire. >> that was my idea to make her that because we were deciding on what her career would be. i said wouldn't it be good to have first of all a woman who's made her own money and done her own thing and someone who's done it in new technologies because people do make money. it is good role modeling. >> stephanie: chasing the hill is fabulous because it mixes real politicians ed rendell your good friend, terry mcauliffe lawrence o'donnell our mutual crush. >> i could barely act when he was in the scene with me. >> stephanie: he makes me giggly. >> really? >> yes really! [ laughter ] >> we love him! >> stephanie: she can tell you about the amazing amount of -- let's just say man experiences i had this weekend. >> a lot. >> stephanie: i don't know what's happening. >> every man loves her. >> did you get some man action? >> stephanie: yeah. 46 minutes -- we'll talk about that. that's a tease. 46 minutes after the hour. >> that means he petted her dog. >> oh, no. >> stephanie: oh, no. 46 minutes after the hour. more hot brie after this on "the stephanie miller show." >> what's all that noise? >> announcer: it's "the stephanie miller show." going to do the young turks. i think the number one thing that viewers like about the young turks is that we're honest. they know that i'm not bs'ing them with some hidden agenda, actually supporting one party or the other. when the democrats are wrong, they know that i'm going to be the first one to call them out. they can question whether i'm right, but i think that the audience gets that this guy, to the best of his ability, is trying to look out for us. 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[ male announcer ] enbrel may lower your ability to fight infections. serious, sometimes fatal events including infections tuberculosis lymphoma, other cancers, nervous system and blood disorders, and allergic reactions have occurred. before starting enbrel your doctor should test you for tuberculosis and discuss whether you've been to a region where certain fungal infections are common. you should not start enbrel if you have an infection like the flu. tell your doctor if you're prone to infections, have cuts or sores have had hepatitis b have been treated for heart failure, or if you have symptoms such as persistent fever bruising, bleeding or paleness. since enbrel helped relieve my joint pain, it's the little things that mean the most. ask your rheumatologist if enbrel is right for you. [ doctor ] enbrel, the number one biologic medicine prescribed by rheumatologists. you've heard stephanie's views. >>no bs, authentic, the real thing. >>now, let's hear yours at the only online forum with a direct line to stephanie miller. >>the only thing that can save america now: current television. >>join the debate now. ♪ runnin' and runnin' and runnin' and runnin' and runnin' and runnin' ♪ ♪ everybody everybody get into it ♪ >> stephanie miller. ♪ get started ♪ ♪ let's get it started ♪ ♪ let's get it started in here ♪ ♪ let's get it started ♪ ♪ let's get it started in here ♪ ♪ woo-hoo ♪ ♪ woo-hoo ♪ >> stephanie: uh-huh. get the party up in here. we've got the hot brie. we've got the sexy liberal hal sparks. we've got the par at-tay. you moved two minutes away from me. 1-800-steph-12. >> very exciting. [ applause ] >> stephanie: here's why god made her pretty. so we exchanged keys so we can check on each other's houses and dogs. >> even though i don't have a dog. >> stephanie: whatever. >> on a euphemism. >> stephanie: literally the first time i picked her up to go somewhere, she left her keys inside. if i had not had my key we couldn't have gotten her back into her apartment. >> did stripper pole make the move? >> it diddity but my place -- it did. but my place is carpeted. it is still there. i'm waiting to give it to somebody who has a hardwood floor. >> stephanie: it comes with knee pads, hal. >> for real. >> hal: your stripper pole? >> stephanie: it is her stripper pole. >> because you know, i needed them. my knees would get bruised up when i would do stuff. >> stephanie: if jim ward is listening on the way to his voice job right now -- hot brie and knee pads. jim ward just drove off the 405. >> they sell tell they class that i take because everybody needs them. >> stephanie: right. all right. so let's talk about our weekend for a second. what did we get to do friday night? >> which one was friday. oh right! that was so exciting. [ screaming ] we did so many things. couldn't remember which night. >> stephanie: we got to hang out with steven stills in his studio. he played some of his new music. we were like oh, my god! irma gird. >> it was incredible. >> best seat ef fear crosby stills concert. >> stephanie: his wife is amazing. good time was had by all. >> i can't imagine what it would be like to be that gifted. >> stephanie: me, too. i do this for a living. [farting sounds] >> there's no gift involved there. >> stephanie: no gift really. anyway and here's the kind of political geeks we are. i learned something new about you this weekend having spent about 75 hours in a car with you going somewhere. you have a pocket mirror. >> oh, i do. >> stephanie: this is the kind of political geek she is. >> everybody in america. >> my favorite one. >> i am pissed. that's my favorite. >> stephanie: i was trying to find gum in her car. you have a pocket renegen. >> you can order them online. i have many but i like this one because you can work it into a conversation and throw people off on the phone. all of a sudden, you go -- >> i am pissed. >> stephanie: i'm going to find gum and i'm like what the hell is that? i'm sorry hal. >> hal: first of all, that's not what i would have in my pocket. >> stephanie: huh? >> i want one of my own. can you make your own? can you fill in your own voice things? >> you want a pocket hal sparks. >> that's a great idea. >> dinosaur noise and a couple of other things. >> the company should do it. >> hal: i'm going to get on that. now, granted the pocket hal sparks would actually make kind of warm and supportive phrases and then vibrate. [ laughter ] because i'm in your pocket. >> stephanie: it is only for political geeks. we went to a barbecue. here's the kind of geeks we are. want to go home and watch "meet the press"? yeah. so we left early. >> "meet the press" is on at 8:00 in the morning here. >> i dvr it. >> stephanie: this is another episode of america's funniest lesbian pranks because i swear to god i don't know how to use the dvr. it is only in my bedroom. so we went to my bedroom. >> you had to make an apology phone call. >> i did not make a pass at her. >> we had ice cream and watched "meet the press." >> stephanie: i can't believe she fell for that. i only know how to do it. >> you had a pillow fight in your bra and panties. >> stephanie: david gregory makes me so mad i want to take my bra o -- off. >> all of the david gregory pillow fights that happen every weekend. >> we were loving his wife. she told him at the roundtable to shut up. >> stephanie: he should listen to her more often. it was one of the best conversations i've seen on the show in awhile. sheryl sandberg. my wife told me to listen more. good idea! stop being such a right wing tool! >> that's not true. he listens to insert talking points awkwardly into a conversation. it is hard-hitting question. >> stephanie: you don't even have to listen to him. just look at the chyron. [ screaming ] >> david gregory formula which is hard-hitting question, softball follow-up and republican talking point. in that order. and a loop. >> in an endless loop. >> i do feel like that's a little bit -- it was the "meet the press" format. the last one. it was the initial question then the follow-up and then moving on. >> yeah. >> that's why i like my chris matthews too because he does not move on. dog with a bone. >> i like that. >> stephanie: mickey in south dakota real quick. you're on with melissa and hal. hi mickey. >> howdy mooks. howdy, mama. >> stephanie: hello. >> caller: you're all so good-looking that i would like to see any of you strip. >> stephanie: chris hit the music. let's do this. okay. >> caller: i heard the rude pundit -- >> better than stripper music. >> i was going to take my pants off and then you played that music. i can't do that. >> caller: anyway, what i'm calling about is i heard the rude pundit speaking about the south dakota law about guns. anyway, our state now has signed in that teachers and school employees are to carry guns on to school grounds and also -- >> stephanie: what could go wrong? >> south dakota is the state where dick cheney got to shoot his friend in a face and not get in trouble. >> stephanie: not have to talk to police until the next day as you do when you shoot your friend in the face. more hal sparks, more hot brie. we continue on "the stephanie miller show." [ ♪ theme ♪ ] >> stephanie: hello. hour number three. oh, my god explosion hotness. wonder woman lynda carter coming up. it is third member of our truffle, there she is. melissa fitzgerald. >> hi, jacki. >> good morning. you sound a little raspy. >> i think it was going out too much this weekend. i'm too old for this. and spinning. >> stephanie: i won the east side, west side. it was like. >> it pack -- i won the war and i got melissa on to the east side. we had a little brunch yesterday. didn't we? >> yeah, we've come to some negotiated -- there's some middle ground there. >> stephanie: i know. brentwood. we found safe meeting ground in the middle. >> oat bran pancakes. >> stephanie: we felt bad like we were cheating on you when we got our gels done. jacki will be jealous. >> whatever. i just have to make a new friend somewhere along the way. >> no! >> i'm fine. i'll find someone who wants to hang out with me. >> stephanie: we love you jacki schechner. in the current news center. >> it is not like i have a miserable schedule or spend my mornings alone. >> stephanie: i'm spooning you. here she is, jacki schechner. >> good morning, everybody. representative ed marquee is starting to rack up the endorsements in his bid to win john kerry's former seat in the senate. democracy for america the howard dean founded political action committee is putting its support behind marquee today. move on.org registered backing for markey last week. the congressman is going up against fellow representative stephen lynch and the democratic primary on april 30th. a special election for kerry's former seat is june 25th. dfa has more than 33,000 members in massachusetts. it is calling markey a tried and true progressive with a long record of standing up to conservative democrats. a u.s. poll shows that primary voters are in favor of markey at this point too. at the moment, he leads 50-21. meanwhile, former massachusetts senator scott brown said he's going to make a nonpolitical announcement today. he put the teaser out on twitter this morning. newark mayor cory booker who has more than 1.3 million followers on twitter has a note for the federal government when it comes to social media. loosen up. booker told an audience south by southwest in austin over the weekend that the problem with the government's use of social media is it ignores the social aspect. that it uses things like twitter as a p.a. system to make announcements when it should be using it to have a conversation. we're back with more show after the break. wonder woman coming up. stay with us. (vo) next on current tv, vanguard, the documentary series that raised the bar for excellence. >> wherever the story is, we will go to get it. >> we dive deep into the topics that we cover. doesn't get any more real than this. (vo) and on the next vanguard >> this is what 27 tons of marijuana looks like. (vo) it is mexico's largest cash crop, and as it heads north onto american soil, current tv follows the money. >> this industry is just huge. break the ice with breath-freshening cooling crystals. ice breakers. >> announcer: ladies and gentlemen, it's "the stephanie miller show." ♪ i'm walkin' on sunshine ♪ ♪ i'm walkin' on sunshine ♪ ♪ and it's time to feel good ♪ ♪ hey, all right now ♪ ♪ and it's time to feel good ♪ >> stephanie: oh, yeah, it is "the stephanie miller show." six minutes after the hour. wow! hal sparks sexy liberal in for jim ward. jim is going to be mad he decided to take today off. >> oh, yeah. >> stephanie: because hot brie melissa fitzgerald, activist extraordinaire and also lynda carter. wonder woman! [ explosion ] >> stephanie: cap dane america's underpants are going to explode because all of the sexy liberals are here. ♪ i look at all the sexy liberals ♪ ♪ i look at all the sexy liberals ♪ ♪ stephanie miller picks up a flight to the windy city where she'll be ♪ ♪ with babies ♪ ♪ look at her working drinking some wine she keeps in a box by the door ♪ ♪ that's what it's for ♪ all the sexy liberals ♪ ♪ where do they all come from ♪ ♪ all the sexy liberals ♪ ♪ chicago's where they'll come ♪ >> stephanie: thank you, rocky mountain mike. april 13th. hurry, get the tickets. looky here. speaking of traveling i saw a billboard for canada. welcome to canada where we don't care who you marry as long as you both watch hockey. [ ♪ "world news tonight" ♪ ] all right. here's a part of the show where when melissa is on, we talk about genocide. >> that's what we do. >> stephanie: only show in america you can go from stripper pole to genocide like that. that's why i love it. stephanie miller show, bitches. this is something you care about. you've done a great film called after kony about uganda and what's happened there. >> in the north, yeah. it is interesting because as many places are it is an interesting country. northern uganda has suffered under brutal rebel war for so many years. i went there and did a theatre program because i firmly believe that theatre can really move social issues and also be tremendously healing thing. we worked with former abducted child soldiers there and then somebody who is going to be on asked me to participate in a reading of a play that is about something different but it is in uganda about the legislation that they call it -- >> the kill the gays bill. >> stephanie: if we had that here in l.a., your apartment wouldn't be unpacked yet because i wouldn't be here to help you. >> i was incapable of doing it myself. >> stephanie: i mentioned this before. you have to get her film, my favorite part of it is when people in uganda, they're talking, all of the people who came over. they're like none of you are married. what is wrong with you. >> oh. >> stephanie: we're like -- we've got trouble here but you guys are losers, really? >> you're all alike in this way. >> stephanie: okay. good morning sara to talk about the play you were just talking about. randy rhodes producer gave us a heads up about this important play. it is a ugandan man killed because he's gay right? >> caller: sean pierce hooked me up with you guys. we've been friends since 1989. i'll let you guys do the math. >> stephanie: oh, wow! >> caller: yeah, this is a really extraordinary play because it is the very first thing ugandan history to have a gay character. and, as a result of being in this play, everyone who is involved with the play began to see their lives change in really drastic ways. the man who produced it was deported. one of the gentlemen in the play got deported. the main actor a guy named -- prince -- a fabulous name. >> stephanie: easy for you to say, gesundheit. >> he's coming over to the united states to explain what has changed in his life since he played the role of samson. one of the thing that's changed is they put him in a tabloid accusing him of murdering prostitutes in china and silling their organs and their proof he did this is he was sick enough to play a gay man. >> stephanie: certainly that's an easy connection to make there. what? >> they didn't even blink. it was in four consecutive tabloids that he did this because he was sick enough to play a homosexual. he's an organ stealer. >> stephanie: wow. listen i've done that a couple of times at the organ bank when i was drunk. >> for the record, i played a gay man in television. i guess i've been -- i've played around with some female parts in my life. so -- >> for the record, anybody that knows this show knows it's not long to connect the dots between youtube. >> stephanie: it will be running for four days. march 21-23. following the show on saturday, march 23rd, actress melissa fitzgerald will be in attendance. >> i will read one of the parts too. i'm going to play a preacher. >> place the evangelist that helps corrupt the ugandans. >> stephanie: that's right out of book of mormons. >> hal: are you saying that americans, religious and civic leaders actually played a hand in furthering this bill? >> stephanie: sara, that's an interesting point hal brings up. i don't know if people in america largely know that. the religious rite here has supported this. >> caller: yeah, they have. as a matter of fact, they were a primary instigator. if you take a look, all you have to do is look up scott lively. scott lively is one of the major instigators of the anti-homosexuality feeling that is going on in uganda right now and the people at smug which stands for sexual minorities uganda, their leader, frank, has actually been in contact with me several times. they're suing scott lively. and they thanked us for bringing the play over here to help educate people on how americans really are going over and really are fanning the flames of hatred as it were. >> stephanie: when you look at all of the issues coming before the supreme court and meanwhile like you say they're actually giving aid and comfort to this idea in uganda. this is not what we want to be exporting. >> no. >> not at all. >> i'm also really offended by the fact that one of the reasons i want people to see this play is because we need to remind americans that good stewardship of our government means constantly telling our own government we won't settle for anything less than complete human rights for our gay citizens. >> stephanie: yeah. and that's when you look at the depth of that kind of homophobia. they're just not talking about gay people not having equal rights. it is okay if we kill them. >> yes. >> stephanie: it is hard for us to believe this exists in uganda but it does. >> stephanie: the execution part has been in and out of the legislation. >> that potentially might not end up in there. >> sometimes it being pulled out was because of pressure in the united states on the very senators that were supporting it being in there in the beginning and they kind -- they basically got caught. scott lively is the guy who claims that obama's secretly gay and is in a relationship with reggie love. >> stephanie: yes. >> hal: and along with i think a poster at world net daily said obama used to go to the bath house scene in chicago all the time. he was notably there on wednesdays. this didn't come out during the campaign. there was not a single picture of this ever happening but it happened -- he was apparently into older white guys which if you believe that, you would think you would have an easier time dealing with congress. [ laughter ] >> stephanie: good night everybody. sarah -- so tell us again the river and the mountain running four days. march 21-24. >> it kicks off at spotlighters bat -- in baltimore. you have to see melissa in arlington on saturday 23rd. she's going to be amazing. the fact she's agreed to help us is amazing. >> stephanie: i know. i've spent almost 75 and a half hours with her over the last four days. i'm still excited to see her every day. so i can only imagine if you've not seen her what that would be like. >> i really want to meet her once. >> well, i'm excited to do it and i'm honored you asked me because it is such an important topic. i do have a particular kinship to people who are using theatre in a positive way because i do think a good story artfully told can move mountains. >> stephanie: in fact, sara, in melissa's documentary after kony, there is a touching moment where one of them says to melissa, are you going to forget about us. melissa tears up and says no i'm not going to. knowing her, i know is true. she's going to be there supporting you. we wish you all of the best. >> thank you. yeah. you know what? we're going to put a big picture of melissa on riverand riverandthemountain.com. >> stephanie: we put pictures of hot brie on everything. >> she took this one on a wing and a prayer. i'm going to come do this. i could not be more thankful because it is a really big deal. >> stephanie: is there a link up? >> on your facebook page. >> stephanie: stephanie miller facebook. thanks sarah for what you're doing. >> see you soon, sarah. >> stephanie: you're just a do-gooder. you're smokin' hot. >> all you do is good. >> stephanie: oh, my god. every cause that comes up in conversation. i did a thing for that. all right. 17 minutes after the hour. much more to come. lynda carter, wonder woman. as we continue on "the stephanie miller show." >> announcer: don't you wish your girlfriend was a freak like her? it's "the stephanie miller show." dude, i need your help fast. well, clearasil's fast. yeah, but is it this fast? faster! how about this fast? clearasil's faster! this fast?? faster!! woh! that is fast! fix breakouts fast with clearasil ultra. it starts working instantly, sending the max amount of medicine allowed deep into your pores for visibly clearer skin in as little as 12 hours. yeah, it's fast. clearasil, the science of clear skin. [ male announcer ] it's red lobster's lobsterfest our largest selection of lobster entrees like lobster lover's dream or new grilled lobster and lobster tacos. come in now and sea food differently. visit redlobster.com now for an exclusive $10 coupon on two lobsterfest entrees. >> "viewpoint" digs deep into the issues of the day. >> has the time finally come for real immigration reform? >> with a distinctly satirical point of view. if you believe in state's rights but still believe in the drug war you must be high. >> only on current tv. >> announcer: stephanie miller. ♪ all the world's waiting for you ♪ ♪ and the power you possess ♪ >> stephanie: that's right. ♪ fighting for your life ♪ ♪ in the all red, white and blue ♪ >> stephanie: it is "the stephanie miller show." we're having a little geek out. hal sparks and melissa fitzgerald geeking out. lynda carter is coming up at the bottom of the hour. >> irma gird. >> in her satin tights fighting for your rights. that's awesome. the bass line of that song, of the wonder woman theme song is the devil's music in devil went down to georgia. >> you're right. >> it is the same song. just has a different evil fiddle over top of it. secondly -- >> stephanie: soul. >> hal: i can't listen to this. i went into the charlie daniels store in nashville. >> why? >> it was like -- becausely go anywhere because it's funny and come away with a joke. >> stephanie: just to say that. >> there is a shelf in the back with black salt -- >> here's the devil's music coming up. >> hal: wait. >> stephanie: hang on. >> here it comes. ♪ ♪ wonder woman ♪ >> stephanie: okay. >> not fooling anyone, charlie daniels. you're a lynda carter fan, too. the only ingarbiating thing about you. >> stephanie: you told melissa you have a friend who named her dog -- >> barbara walters. barbara walters used to get out every morning and run down the street and my friend who lived with us for awhile would have to chase after barbara walters yelling barbara walters no! barbara walters is a bad girl. sit, barbara walters sit. so my neighbors thought my girlfriend and i were having some freaky sex three-way with barbara walters. >> stephanie: barbara walters is a bad girl. >> she likes a spanking. >> really? i'm going to have to get the book. >> stephanie: i got chickenpox from lank langella -- from frank langella. itchy, itchy itchy. >> i got stephanie miller a job as a cocktail waitress. >> stephanie: we're thinking what we would name our next dogs. maybe jim lehrer, come here. >> that's a good one. >> hal: i would do -- just call it -- you don't want to rub his nose in it like that. that's not right. >> oh! [ ♪ "world news tonight" ♪ ] >> stephanie: kids. "l.a. times." it will be a long, dull summer without jon stewart unless you're watching stephanie miller on the current television network. i'm behind bill maher and stephen colbert. thank you "l.a. times." you can see hal and john and i live at the chicago theatre april 13th. we were talking about this weekend, you can fly now with hockey sticks and novelty bats. in addition to knives. >> i'm so happy about. >> stephanie: you were telling me a story about your friend. >> i heard you talking about that earlier my friend, his last name is mafia. he used to drive around in his car with a hockey stick in the back. if someone cut him off, he would put it in his hand and be like having a bad day there chief? >> get out with a hockey stick and say let's do this. then they would have this game of street hockey. roller skates. >> stephanie: philly fan. throw a battery. it's on. >> he was from queens. >> i was living in toronto. i'll try to keep this short. at that point, they were immigrating big groups of tutsis and you had you its. >> speaking of genocide. >> they have been warring forever. >> they both went to work for rival cab companies. this was a big outbreak. a tutsi would see a hutu and they would notice what was hanging from their rear-view mirror. they would pull over and pull bats out of their trunks and seven other cabs would roll up. >> i remember that. >> hal: this was amazing. the mayor of toronto and the governor of ontario and i believe the prime minister went on tv at the same time and they went all right! the next time this happens nobody else gets in from tutsi and you had you -- hutu tribe. it ended that day. it ended up being this bridge between them healing it. now that they're getting along in ontario. >> stephanie: they never seemed real to me. it was like from whoville. >> we drove around it a few times. they were taking us in a little van. we would have to change what route we were because there was a big bat fight going on. >> stephanie: chuck schumer talking about the ban of knives on planes. >> does anyone think this, a bottle of shampoo is more dangerous than this? a sharp and deadly knife? >> stephanie: he did a little show and tell. he brought out -- >> the knife he showed was an exacto knife and you can't bring those on. >> stephanie: you can still bring your pocket ray nagin. >> ever have shampoo in your eyes? >> baby shampoo. >> hal: oh, foiled again! you're only allowed -- i will bring down this plane. >> i would leave the novelty bat at home. if you want the line to move, bring your pocket ray nagin. >> i am pissed. >> there are a lot of knives on planes again. >> stephanie: let's talk about the republican's latest [ bleep ] fight. john mccain and lindsey graham, his southern belle and rand paul. >> the party of ronald reagan is the party that believes that we should have peace through strength. that's the best way to prevent these things. i'm of the party of ronald reagan. and there's been a debate in our party for years and years about whether we should withdraw to fortress america or not. but to say we're interventionsists is a mislabeling and absolutely false. we're for a strong america. we believe that's the best way to prevent war rather than a weakened military which many of my colleagues now support who are -- isolationists which goes all the way back to post-world war i. >> stephanie: fight fight fight, fight shove each other into the bleachers. gingrich is siding with rand paul. he said i don't know what's happened to john mccain. >> join the club. >> stephanie: he said he's really disappointed. he was saddened by john mccain's response to rand paul. i'm disappointed and saddened by it. >> hal: good. >> ha ha! >> stephanie: conservatives are flipping out over john mccain and lindsey graham. such disarray. hours after they slammed rand paul, conservatives are turning on them as the republican party's old -- mccain accused paul of using the filly buster to fire up the libertarian kids. it was embarrassing said a senior republican aide. it looks like two guys whose time have passed. they're the only people in the room who don't know it yet. freedom works were already asking supporters to sign a petition demanding mccain apologize to paul. fight, fight fight. >> hal: in mccain's defense he wasn't actually -- he was quoting the "wall street journal." he was riding. i think they hated the filibuster because they hate speaking unscripted for any length of time because they know they'll say things like the locker in ways was a good idea. that was rand paul's big slip. >> stephanie: 29 minutes after the hour. wonder woman next! [ screaming ] that raised the bar for excellence. >> wherever the story is, we will go to get it. >> we dive deep into the topics that we cover. doesn't get any more real than this. (vo) and on the next vanguard >> this is what 27 tons of marijuana looks like. (vo) it is mexico's largest cash crop, and as it heads north onto american soil, current tv follows the money. >> this industry is just huge. 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[ male announcer ] to many men, shaving can be a sensitive issue. but take comfort. it may not be you; it may be your razor. upgrade to gillette fusion proglide. our micro-thin blades are thinner than a surgeon's scalpel to put less stress on your skin by gliding through hair. switch to fusion proglide. number one dermatologist recommended on sensitive skin. and now introducing new fusion proglide sensitive shave gel. gillette. the best a man can get. from silver screens... to flat screens... twizzlerize your entertainment everyday with twizzlers the twist you can't resist. >> announcer: stephanie miller. >> radio contact is sufficient. no need to extend your middle finger. >> stephanie: it is "the stephanie miller show." okay everybody calm down. >> i can't. >> stephanie: 34 minutes after the hour. we're having a collective freakout over our childhood hero, wonder woman who is also a fabulous singer and performing in l.a. this weekend. lynda carter joins us now. good morning lynda. >> good morning. >> stephanie: oh, my god. >> we're all blacking out. i'm getting light-headed. >> you guys are so funny. >> stephanie: here is a sad little story. when i was a park leader, a teenager, all of the kids used to call me wonder woman because i had a vague resemblance and a very -- you know, kind of b grade kind of way. >> she looked like your stuntwoman. >> stephanie: a really ugly stuntwoman double. we love you. melissa fitzgerald is here. >> hello, i love you. >> hello. >> stephanie: hal sparks has to tell this story really quick. when he was 67. >> i called -- when he was 7. >> i called. you called 35 numbers trying to reach you on the set of the show because i had a mad crush on you. >> that is so adorable. >> it was brutal. i got in so much trouble because the long distance calls. >> oh, no. >> but they were very forgiving about it ultimately. literally, i called -- i made it all the way to set pretending to be your lawyer's kid and it was my birthday. this is the story i made up. i told them it was my birthday and my dad said i could call because he was your lawyer and they were like she's really busy right now but i'm sure she would wish you happy birthday. >> that is one of the more amazing stories i've ever heard. i've heard a lot of stories. >> i don't think i've heard one like that. >> stephanie: wonder woman the untold superhero of american heroines. you and the bionic woman are going to be on. the story of female empowerment melissa and i our whole generation of women grew up watching you and loving you. >> it was kind of a phenomenon and it is long -- it always kind of amazes me it was so long ago and yet it really does evoke some great memories for people. it really -- there is a accepts of empowerment there. i think it is very cool. >> stephanie: it is a position at this role model for little girls. that feeling when you talk about female empowerment one episode when an entire building fell on you and you came out and your makeup is perfect. i was like i can do anything. >> that was movie magic. >> stephanie: the film goes behind the scenes with you lindsey wagner, others who offer -- it is sort of a counter point to the whole male super hero genre right? >> yes, it is. you know what's interesting, i don't know why they've not been able to crack the code -- if we did it in the '70s, there's no reason why they can't do that again. on the big screen and make a nice little franchise out of it. >> stephanie: yeah. >> it has always baffled me. i think it is because they try to -- they try to impose a guy superhero on to a female -- they did give my alter ego character things to do, you know. and she wasn't -- certainly as the series went on, i just couldn't stand that whimpering, you know, alter ego. totally powerless. >> stephanie: without your satin tights. >> right right. and so she became -- and that was also part of her. people forget that it was -- you know, that there were two characters. but i just -- you know, i changed it. they've allowed me to. >> stephanie: i have to say i didn't realize -- i just read an interview with you how political you've been. someone asked you i'm sure you've seen all of the comparison in the media and republicans of sarah palin to wonder woman. how do you feel about that? you said don't get me started. she's the anti-wonder woman. judgmental and dictatorial telling people how they should live their lives. that's not what wonder woman is about. hillary clinton is a lot more like wonder woman than sarah palin. that had to have just killed them. >> i got a little blow back from that. when i did that, that was right at the height -- that was when she was first out. first announced. everyone agreed with me a year later. >> stephanie: you said great stuff in the interview. it goes with what's going on. you said i hate this demonization of everyone in one position. you're unamerican because you're against the war. it is such [ bleep ] i love that wonder woman dropped the f bomb. fear is a finite way of thinking about god. very little god that way. i think god's bigger. i don't presume to know his or her mind. we all remember that. we were all demonized if you thought the iraq war was a bad idea. >> absolutely. we weren't patriots. >> stephanie: the iraq war was a bad idea and sarah palin was no wonder woman. >> so glad you're on my side. >> absolutely. >> stephanie: my dad ran with barry goldwater in '64. you come from a family of republicans in arizona. melissa comes from a republican family as well. >> it is interesting. arizona is really not as republican as it used to be. you know, it's kind of going to a purple state. but yeah. everyone in my family is a republican. and -- well not everyone. nephew that is right-minded. [ laughter ] i think i'm a -- i don't think i'm -- far far left. i think most people are in the middle but when you get lied to. i told my brother i said the only news -- if the only news i ever watched was fox news, i would be mad as hell. >> stephanie: that's what they're spreading fear and hate. >> fear and hate. it started way back with lee -- >> stephanie: atwater. >> atwater. he was kind of the architect of the rove -- >> stephanie: awhile back, you said the only problem i really have is the spreading of hate by the right wing. the spreading of hate, i don't get it. i don't understand it. it is inexplicable to me not to understand wanting the best for people. if you disagree politically but you know i think it is bad for mental health to listen to hate 24/7. you say give them a break president obama. you point out he supercharged a whole generation of people. most americans, you know, want the best for our country and our president, right? >> well, yeah. to want it to fail and to have people that are in important political positions, you know, that are helping run the country like mitch mcconnell to have said we just -- we're just going to defeat it. we don't have to do anything. we don't have to have a plan. we just have to say no. >> stephanie: right. >> we just have to obstruct. we don't have to have a plan. we don't need to do it. we just need the white house back. i think that there's some -- there may be some interesting people challenging his re-election. >> stephanie: right. when you say people -- that's right. we've been talking about this. ashley judd. >> yeah. >> stephanie: melissa may run for congress at some point. it is a generation of people that grew up -- >> let me know and i'll contribute. >> how exciting. >> really. i just think that when you have -- you know, in the '80s -- in the '60s, '70s, '80s when women were fighting for title nine and that sort of thing, you know, we still don't have an e.r.a., you realize that. but that it now -- there are so many women in there but it is still not enough. but it's not against men. it is all -- i know so many great women in politics that just have killer husbands. they've got great husbands. so it is really not about -- it is not about empowerment for women over men. it is in addition to. >> stephanie: i just met elizabeth warren and her husband in d.c. for the inauguration. that's a perfect example, you know. >> right. >> stephanie: i thought i had a brief conversation with them and i thought that's what you're talking about is a partnership. wow, this must be like being reincarnated in the next lifetime. he stead is our next adventure. >> paul and nancy pelosi. paul is a very charismatic guy. very handsome, charming, charismatic. they have a bunch of children. he's got his own thing. she raised their kids. you know, he's got a -- she's very smart. i would say you don't see a lot of stupid women in politics but i have to take that back. laugh -- [ laughter ] >> michele bachmann. >> stephanie: yea, lynda carter is getting in trouble on my show. press for me. >> i don't know how she got re-elected. >> go to the district. you'll understand. [ laughter ] >> don't stay there. don't do your singing in minneapolis proper. >> i have nothing against her personally but she just should go and get an education. >> stephanie: there you go. female empowerment. >> be informed. it is like -- man talk about a silver foot in the mouth. great line. >> stephanie: ann richards. speaking of wonder women. you're in addition, a fabulous singer. i'm going to see you. kathleen madigan we're both going to go. march 14th through the 16th at the catalina club in hollywood. >> the jazz club is on sunset on east highland. whatever direction that is. and it is a funky old place that is a blast. it is so cool. we usually -- it is usually kind of filled to capacity. and i've got my great big band. i even added a guy. louis who has been percussionist of the year for -- i don't know how many years but it is a lot. and he is so -- you know, these two drummers that i actually worked both of these guys. you know. back in the day when i was doing vegas shows and things. and so we've got a lot of new music and a lot of wonderful things and it is a fun show. we just have a blast. >> stephanie: i can't wait. i know you're off to d.c. in new york. >> when people say cabaret i wouldn't say you've been to my show right? >> stephanie: i have not. i'm so excited i can't wait to see it this weekend. >> well, i almost think of a cabaret show as a low-key songs and -- >> leaning half drunk against the piano. >> we have people up. it is like a big party. >> stephanie: i cannot wait. >> people talk to me. they say hey we have a -- >> it is just -- there is a -- it is great. we really just have -- the people i work with are so cool. these are all studio musicians. mostly out of l.a. i mean nashville. but they've -- between them, i would have no idea, maybe into certainly many hundreds if not thousands of grammy winning records. >> stephanie: wow. >> platinum records they've played and sung on. they're really cool. >> stephanie: i cannot wait. if you would -- we're so excited and also my set that i'm talking to you from looks exactly like the shorts you wore on wonder woman. we'll see you this weekend. >> make sure that my p.r. guy sends you backstage. >> stephanie: yeah. >> if you're there early and sometimes the end of the show is a little bit harder but pop your head in. >> stephanie: i will. the more excited i get the farther out my front teeth get and i get really inappropriate. >> don't trip. >> what is the guy's name? the actor that played the mask, you know. >> jim carry. >> jim carrey. >> wonder woman lynda carter. thank you so much, lynda. what a thrill to meet you. >> bye. [ screaming ] >> she's the coolest person ever! >> stephanie: okay. >> and still ludicrously gorgeous. >> stephanie: she looks the same. >> she was a d.c. wife. she was married to a congressman. >> stephanie: we didn't get to that. 48 minutes after the hour. back with the remaining moments of hot brie in the city as we continue on "the stephanie miller show." >> it even vibrates like real. >> it's "the stephanie miller show." documentaries that are real, gripping, current. compelling true stories. >> jack, how old are you? >> nine. >> this is what 27 tons of marijuana looks like. (vo) with award winning documentaries that take you inside. (vo) from the underworld, to the world of privilege. >> everyone in michael jackson's life was out to use him. (vo) no one brings you more documentaries that are real, gripping, current. (vo)the documentary series that raised the bar for excellence. (vo) and on the next vanguard >> this is what 27 tons of marijuana looks like. (vo) follow mexico's largest cash crop as it heads north onto american soil. ♪ i am strong ♪ ♪ i am invincible ♪ ♪ i am woman ♪ >> stephanie: we're in a wonder woman superhero frenzy. a feminist frenzy. >> for the record, i have never sung this into a hairbrush into a mirror. i think i'm the only person who can say that. >> stephanie: this hour brought to you by therabreath. knocks out bad breath and therabreath is available at target and walgreens. i go everywhere with melissa fitzgerald and she does not have mints. all she has is a pocket ray nagin in her car. >> search for gum. >> check out the -- on facebook, lynda carter has a page. it is official lynda lynda with a y. >> beautiful. >> go to lynda carter sings.com and they have clips of her songs. she's awesome. >> lynda carter.com. you can bookmark that. >> stephanie: all right. >> i can't wait to see the pbs show. >> the documentary on wonder woman, female superheroes on pbs next month. >> there is a really good one on now, makers, women who had leadership roles in creating our country. really good. >> stephanie: fabulous. all right. >> lindsey wagner in that special, does she explain why she could hear through walls but she had to move her hair out of the way? >> stephanie: she had to move the hair. then she could hear. >> her hair was made of asbestos. >> stephanie: like a lead curtain. >> she had mesothieloma. >> jeby. >> will never be president. >> some people say that obviously you're very proud of your family and proud of their accomplishments but the question is would it be a political burden. i think it is fair to say that when your brother left the presidency, he was somewhat unpopular. we looked around the most recent poll shows that 46% view favorably. 47% view him unfavorably. do you think there is any bush baggage? do you think that would be a problem? >> no. i don't think there's any bush baggage at all. i love my father. i'm proud of his accomplishments. i'm proud to be a bush. if i run for president, it is not because of something in my dna that compels me to do it. it is the right thing to do for my family. the conditions are right and that i have something to over. >> stephanie: someone with a lot of bush baggage. [ ♪ circus ♪ ] he's got bush baggage. >> there is no way. >> it is a low bar known as the smart bush. >> he's not anymore. he's flip-flopped on immigration. >> stephanie: you're going to see your nephew. [ ♪ "world news tonight" ♪ ] he's painted 50 dogs. i painted dogs. >> only 43 of them bit him. >> stephanie: that's what he's doing. clinton is busy saving the world. he's painting dogs. it doesn't surprise me. >> stephanie: it is a labradoodle. what do you think? georgia artist is his art teacher. do you think laura puts his things on the refrigerator with a magnet? george, that's the best schnauzer ever! thank you! he said he's since turned to landscapes after he painted his 50 dogs. >> self-portrait nudes. >> in the shower like almost like an iphone picture you take of yourself to put on your -- >> stephanie: your junk. >> to put on your zoosk profile. >> show what kind of guy iage. i am. >> stephanie: he will go down in history books as a great artist. [ whatever! ] >> i'm going to go with the chances of that are as high as jeb bush becoming president. >> i don't even know why we did the second round of how w even got considered because i thought we fought a revolutionary war to avoid having our government pass from father to son. we're really going to say in a country of 330 million people, the best person to run has to be that guy's son because he did it before. we want the country run like every middle management jerk whose dad owns the company. he got his job because of

Transcripts For KPIX CBS Evening News With Scott Pelley 20130308

a time. but connolly says, over a few years, n.e.c.c. went national. he told us that quantities of drugs increased by a factor of 1,000. >> we became a manufacturer overnight. so we were basically trying to have the best of both worlds trying to manufacture without the oversight of a manufacturer. and there was-- we all got... >> pelley: a month before the first steroid death, connolly says he warned his supervisor. >> something's going to happen. something's going to get missed and we're going to get shut down. >> pelley: what did you mean by that? >> that we were going to hurt a patient. we were just thinking "hurt a patient." we weren't compounding anymore we were manufacturing. >> pelley: when you went to your supervisor and told him that, he said what? >> that's verbatim. he shrugged. that was his response for a lot of our questions or comments or concerns was a shrug. >> pelley: meaning? >> "just do it." either he didn't care or he was powerless to change it. >> pelley: as joe connolly predicted, n.e.c.c. was shut down by the authorities. the president of the company is barry cadden, and when subpoenaed by congress, he pleaded the fifth. cadden declined to be interviewed for our story. today, his lawyer told us cadden does not know how the contamination happened. the state of massachusetts examined n.e.c.c.'s lab in 2011 and found it satisfactory, but tomorrow on this broadcast another company insider will tell us how n.e.c.c. concealed its true operations from inspectors. we'll have our full investigation for you on "60 minutes" this sunday at 7:00 6:00 central time. the winter storm that hit the midwest and mid-atlantic states is now bringing rain, snow, and high winds to the northeast tonight. yesterday, parts of virginia got as much as 20 inches of snow. at last word, more than 100,000 homes and businesses were still without power. further north, giant waves and 50-mile-an-hour wind gusts have been battering the coast. jim axelrod is in massachusetts. >> reporter: the wind and waves are battering coastal towns from rhode island to maine and pushing water into the harbors. rick judge is the fire chief in situate. >> it seems with each tide is a little more intense than the previous one, because the water doesn't have a chance to recede from the previous tide. >> reporter: the storm grounded more than 700 flights; 160-plus were canceled at new york's laguardia airport. jeff glick was trying to get back to st. louis. >> i guess what are you going to do about it? we don't own a private plane, so we're at the mercy of the airlines. >> reporter: on the jersey shore, the high surf breached sand berms, up to three feet of water poured into some towns still recovering from super storm sandy. residents were trapped in sea bright, new jersey. >> we've had, you know northeasters, but this is the most amount of water i've seen since sandy. >> reporter: here in situate they're anxiously awaiting the next high tide tonight, but they're even more concerned about the one that will roll in after that, tomorrow morning at 8:00. and scott, this storm could dump as much as eight inches of snow inland before finally heading out to sea. >> pelley: more weather tomorrow, jim. thanks very much. the senate today confirmed john brennan to be the director of the c.i.a. brennan has been president obama's top counter-terrorism adviser, and earlier spent 25 years at the c.i.a. the confirmation came after senator rand paul ended a 13- hour filibuster. he'd been demanding that the administration say publicly whether the president has the authority to use a drone to kill a u.s. citizen on american soil. in the end, both paul and the president got what they wanted. and here's nancy cordes. >> no president from no party gets to be judge, jury, and executioner. >> reporter: kentucky's junior senator was seeking a guarantee that drones would not be used to target citizens on u.s. soil unless they were engaged in a terrorist attack. >> i will speak today until the president responds and says no we won't kill americans in cafes; no, we won't kill you at home in your bed at night. >> reporter: senator paul's monologue reflected wider confusion over the government's use of weaponized drones, a controversy which erupted in january after the president nominated his top terrorism adviser, john brennan, to head the c.i.a. under brennan, drone strikes overseas have increased 500%. >> we only take such actions as a last resort to save lives when there's no other alternative to taking an action that's going to mitigate that threat. >> reporter: the filibuster caused a sensation online and drew some support from paul's g.o.p. colleagues. others, such as arizona's john mccain, called him "misguided." >> we've done, i think, a disservice to a lot of americans by making them believe that somehow they're in danger from their government. they're not. >> reporter: do you really believe this administration wants to kill americans who are sitting in cafes? >> not necessarily. but i'll tell you why i think it's an honest question and a serious question. our drone strike program now currently does kill people in cafes overseas. you don't have to be holding a weapon to be killed by a drone strike overseas. so that's a standard that i don't think is acceptable here. >> reporter: this afternoon, the attorney general sent senator paul a terse two-sentence letter assuring him that the president does not have the authority to order drone strikes on u.s. citizens here at home unless they are engaged in combat against the u.s. senator paul said he's satisfied, scott, but still has concerns about the program. >> pelley: nancy, thank you. tonight, a man who was once osama bin laden's right-hand man is in the hands of the united states. sulaiman abu ghaith was flown to new york to face trial for conspiring to kill americans. and we asked bob orr to tell us more about him. >> reporter: sulaiman abu ghaith is one of the last remaining members of osama bin laden's inner circle. abu ghaith, who married one of bin laden's daughters, was a chief spokesman for al qaeda, a leading propagandist in the months surrounding 9/11. on september 12, one day after the attacks, abu ghaith appeared next to bin laden in this al qaeda video, warning america to brace for follow-up blows from the terror group. but when the u.s. military launched its war in afghanistan in late 2001, abu ghaith dropped out of sight. in early 2002, counter-terrorism officials say, abu ghaith, and a handful of other al qaeda fugitives fled to iran where they spent several years under house arrest. he resurfaced some time last month in turkey. u.s. intelligence was tipped off, and sources say abu ghaith was arrested by the fbi last thursday, february 28, and then secretly flown to new york. on monday, a federal grand jury in new york indicted abu ghaith on a charge to conspiracy to kill united states nationals. the capture of abu ghaith further thins the ranks of a badly depleted al qaeda. only a few top operatives remain around the leader ayman al- zawahiri. among them are two terrorists with u.s. connections, california-born adam gadahn, and one-time florida resident adnan shuknjumah. sulaiman abu ghaith will make his first court appearance tomorrow morning in new york. critics say he should actually face military charges at guantanamo bay, and they're accusing the administration of quietly sneaking him into the civilian court system. >> pelley: north korea appears to have angered its best friend in the world. today, china joined with the united states and voted at the u.n. to increase economic sanctions against north korea. recently, the youthful new dictator there, kim jong un, tested a nuclear weapon and a ballistic missile. earlier today, the north koreans staged a massive rally and threatened a preemptive nuclear strike against the u.s. but their missile isn't that good and the white house wasn't impressed. hugo chavez never missed a chance to demonize the united states when he was president of venezuela. today, his countrymen said good- bye. some waited ten hours to file past his casket. chavez died of cancer on tuesday. the funeral is tomorrow. will the nation's toughest restrictions on abortion survive a legal challenge? why did a bolshoi ballet star order an attack on his boss? and from the looks of it, it was a good day to stay out of the water. when the cbs evening news continues. remember when you said men are superior drivers? yeah. yeah. then how'd i get this... [ voice of dennis ] ...allstate safe driving bonus check? what is that? [ normal voice ] so weird, right? my agent, tom, said... [ voice of dennis ] ...only allstate sends you a bonus check for every six months you're accident-free... [ normal voice ] ...but i'm a woman. maybe it's a misprint. does it look like a misprint? ok. what i was trying... [ voice of dennis ] silence. ♪ ♪ ask an allstate agent about the safe driving bonus check. are you in good hands? ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] pain not sitting too well? burning to feel better? itching for relief? preparation h offers the most maximum strength solutions for all hemorrhoid symptoms. from the brand doctors recommend most. preparation h. don't stand for hemorrhoids. both tylenol and bayer advanced aspirin are proven to be effective pain relievers. tylenol works by blocking pain signals to your brain. bayer advanced aspirin blocks pain at the site. try the power of bayer advanced aspirin. >> pelley: yesterday, arkansas changed the landscape in the national battle over abortion rights by enacting the toughest restrictions on abortion of any state. we asked our chief legal correspondent jan crawford to tell us what this will mean. >> reporter: support for the law in arkansas was so solid, the republican-led legislature managed to override a veto by the democratic governor who said it was flatly unconstitutional. called the "human heartbeat protection act," it's the only law in the country to ban almost all abortions after 12 weeks the point when a fetal heartbeat can be detected by an abdominal ultrasound. the law's sponsor, jason rapert, said it won't be the last. >> i believe that you will see many states take the legislation that's been filed here in the state of arkansas and file that in their own legislatures. >> reporter: but critics say it's the latest frontal assault on "roe v. wade," the supreme court decision guaranteeing a woman's right to abortion. seven states, including arkansas earlier passed laws banning most abortions after 20 weeks. those laws also will face legal challenge. >> lawmakers at the state level are sensing an opportunity at the supreme court. >> reporter: donna crane is the national policy director for the abortion rights group naral. >> anti-choice lawmakers in the state think there's an opportunity to get the supreme court to reopen the "row v. wade" decision and make abortion illegal in some and maybe all cases. >> reporter: senator rapert called the law an opportunity for the courts to develop a more humane abortion policy. >> when there is a heartbeat there is life, and an innocent life is something that should be protected. >> reporter: opponents are preparing legal challenges to block this law from taking effect, but rapert insists it's constitutional. he points out, scott, that the law has exceptions for rape, incest, if the mother has a medical emergency, or if prenatal testing after 12 weeks reveals the fetus has a lethal disorder. >> pelley: but a long way to go to the supreme court. jan, thank you very much. on wall street, it's getting to sound like a broken record. and it is. the dow gained 33 points today to close at 14,329, the third straight record high. the federal reserve said today that the stock market's recovery, along with rising home prices, have now pushed household wealth back to where it was before the recession. there are more twists in the drama involving the world's most famous ballet company and that's next. ] include headache abdominal pain, and diarrhea. call your doctor right away if you have persistent diarrhea. other serious stomach conditions may exist. don't take nexium if you take clopidogrel. ask your doctor if nexium is right for you. find out how you may be able to get nexium for just $18 a month at purplepill.com >> pelley: there were more >> pelley: there were more plot twists today in the acid attack on the artistic director of the bolshoi ballet. the performer accused of planning the attack told his side of the story in court. here's elizabeth palmer. >> reporter: the bolshoi theater, the most glamorous in russia, and home to one of the most prestigious ballet companies in the world. but behind the scenes, an ugly drama of jealousy and violence is playing out. pavel dmitrichenko made a name for himself playing villains on stage, but today, he was led handcuffed into a moscow court accused of a real-life crime. "i didn't order anyone," he said, "to splash sergei filin with acid." sergei filin was the glamorous artistic director of the bolshoi, but in mid-january, outside his apartment building a masked man threw a jar of acid in his face. surgeons are still fighting to save his eyesight. dmitrichenko did admit to police that he had masterminded the attack, but he said he thought it would be a simple beating. the acid, he said, was the idea of the hit man, yuri zarutsky. irina noikova runs the bolshoi press office. >> this particular thing, apart from being simply horrible, it's also disgusting. but they want to try to destroy the face of one of the most handsome men in the company, surely, one of the greatest artists of this company? >> reporter: no one knows for sure why dmitrichenko ordered the attack, but backstage speculation puts a woman spurned at the center of the scandal. anzhelina vorontsova, a talented ballerina, was passed over for the lead role in "swan lake" by sergei filin. the word is he said she was too fat, and that her boyfriend, dmitrichenko, was simply seeking revenge. elizabeth palmer, cbs news london. >> pelley: israel tonight is fighting an invasion of biblical proportions. locusts have crossed the border from egypt, threatening to destroy israeli crops. according to the bible, of course, locusts were one of the ten plagues inflicted on egypt to force the pharaoh to release the israelites from slavery. beaches along florida's atlantic coast were closed today after thousands of black-tipped and spinner sharks were spotted along the shore. we're told this is part of the sharks' annual migration north. every american school kid learns about the u.s.s. 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(regular) (live) >> pelley: finally tonight finally tonight, america is about to pay final respects to two of its fallen heroes more than a century after they lost their lives. but we can't tell you who they were, and david martin tells us we may never know. >> reporter: it's a solemn fact that the remains of americans killed in conflicts dating back to world war ii keep coming home from distant battlefields. today was different. those flag-draped caskets held unidentified sailors from the civil war. >> two human beings buried under there for 140 years or so. >> reporter: joe hoyt was one of the divers who discovered their remains in 240 feet of water off cape hatteras, north carolina, when they had gone down with one of the navy's most famous ships, the uss monitor. >> arguably more significant than almost any shipwreck certainly in u.s. history. and to get down there and actually see it, there's really nothing else like it. >> reporter: the hull of the monitor still lies where it sank, designated a marine sanctuary. but its gun turret with the remains still inside was raised from the bottom in 2002 and brought to the mariners museum in newport news, virginia, where anna holloway is head curator. >> this is the ship you read about in fifth grade, the monitor and the merrimack. >> reporter: the pride of the union navy earned its place in history on the day it fought the confederate ship merrimack to a draw. >> this was the first battle of ironclad warships ever in history, and that's really what makes the battle of hampton roads of march 9, 1862, so significant. >> reporter: but 10 months later the prototype for today's iron warships went down in a storm. she had a pretty short and violent life. >> very short life, but a very monumental one if you think about her impact on modern warships. >> reporter: when the turret was brought up, pieces of the sailors' lives came with it. this mismatched pair of shoes gave silent testimony to curator david krop about the shift's final moments. -- about the ship's final moments. >> i think about the chaos and i think if there's water coming into the ship, it's dark, you may just grab what's closest to you, put those on in order to get out of the vessel. >> reporter: each artifact is a possible clue to the identity of the two unknown sailors. >> this particular ring was actually found on the right ring finger of one of the sets of human remains inside of the gun turret. >> reporter: but despite facial reconstructions and dna samples, there is still no positive identification. history has not yet given up all its secrets about the monitor. wouldn't you like to know what that would open up? >> that's been the question since day 1 when this key was found, what secrets are locked behind that. so we don't know. we would love to. >> reporter: on friday, the two sailors will be laid to rest at arlington national cemetery, still unknown but with the full military honors they deserved. david martin, cbs news, at the mariners museum in newport news, virginia. >> and that's the "cbs evening news" for tonight. for all of us at cbs news all around the world, good night. captions by: caption colorado comments@captioncolorado.com >> your realtime captioner: linda marie macdonald we are left to ask, will the pain ever end? >> gathering in grief and saying good-bye to the fallen santa cruz police officers. ♪ [ music ]♪ sergeant loran "butch" baker -- >> daddy, i love you more than you will ever know. >> officer elizabeth butler. >> good-bye, my love. >> their memorial service full of sorrow and silver linings. >> butch and beth's legacy gives me true hope for tomorrow. >> the 30-mile motorcade starting this morning in santa cruz greeted with salutes as the procession passes by ending at the hp pavillion in san jose where the american flag and sea of officers await. good evening, i'm look. >> i'm allen martin. you know, as the good guys go, they were two of the best. mourners came by the thousands today to pay tribute to detective sergeant loran "butch" baker and detective elizabeth butler. but the most heartbreaking goodbyes came from the fallen officers' families. [ bagpipes ] >> reporter: two fallen officers whose lives were cut short surrounded by thousands who traveled many miles to pay their respects to the first officers ever killed in the line of duty in santa cruz. police chief kevin vogel on detective elizabeth butler. >> elizabeth just wanted to make sure santa cruz was safe for families like hers any way that she could. she wanted a place where families can go to the beach, walk on the boardwalk, ride the roller coaster, hike, cook, or even get some of those delicious morning buns at kelly's. >> reporter: deputy chief steve clark was asked to speak about the humor of his good friend sergeant butch baker. >> in fact, governor, has anybody ever told you, sir, that you bear a striking resemblance to me? [ laughter ] >> actually, butch was one of the first people who pointed that out to me. >> reporter: alexus butler spoke of how proud she was of her younger sister elizabeth >> she was a breath of fresh air -- in the lives of so many. >> reporter: but the silence was deafening when elizabeth's partner and father of their two boys brought young joaquin with him to the podium, the two children without a mother. >> i want to share with you a vow that i had wished to her as i view her body. i whispered to her that i would take

Oregon House panel: Reschke's comments about non-Christians didn't break rules | Local&State

A southern Oregon lawmaker’s comments on a podcast suggesting non-Christians aren’t qualified to hold elected office didn’t violate legislative rules around a safe and respectful workplace, a House panel determined

Oregon House panel: Reschke's comments about non-Christians didn't break rules

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US Embassy Rejected Call for Help Before Americans Killed in Haiti: Hawley – HAITIAN-TRUTH.ORG Proud to be Haiti's most informative NEWS site