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let's go "outfront." >> good evening. i'm erin brunette. are super pacs super shady? >> i think when they know the truth, they'll find that governor romney is not as conservative as his pac and his campaign has said that he is. >> so super pacs came out of the ruling in 2010. what they're not allowed to do is take any direction from the candidates. they have to be independent. but are they? we looked into it and what we found is that the ties between the candidates and the super pacs seems pretty close. for example, the pro mitt romney super pac's treasurers spees was romney's general counsel in 2008. the pro gingrich super pac co-founded by rick tyler. he's gingrich's former press secretary. and bill burton is the president's former deputy press secretary. these super pacs do seem to be run by some of the candidate's super close friends. if you listen to the candidates, you'd think they want nothing to do with the pacs. >> campaign finance law has made a mockery of our campaign system. we really should let campaigns raise the money they need and get rid of the super pacs. >> millions of americans are struggling to get by and their voices shouldn't be drowned out by millions in secret, special interest advertising. >> get rid of the super pacs, the negativity, and then the candidates would be in control and the candidates would be responsible. it would be a dramatically better system and a more honorable system. >> so, where's the disconnect? all right. we're joined by bill burton, who runs priorities usa, and charlie spees, from the pro romney super pac. okay, so let me just put the question to you both directly. you friends with mitt romney? >> sure. >> friends with barack obama. >> i love the guy. think he's doing a great job as president. >> but you know him personally for a long time. >> i do, sure. >> okay, so when regular americans hear this, super pacs are supposed to be separate from the candidates, how do each of you answer the question that guys, you're obviously fond of personal personally, you know personally and fighting for professionally, that there's a line? >> it's no secret that we support the candidates who we support in this race and that we know them from before. but there are rules that have had to follow throughout there's been campaigns in this country, we're sort of following the letter and spirit of those rules and i have no doubt we'll be able to. >> do you have conversations with the governor just to figure out what they want or what? >> absolutely not. it would be sort of strange if the people running pacs with respect strong supporters, so there's nothing strange about that, but there are clear legal rules about what we can and can't do in terms of coordinating on message, timing and communication and we fully abide by those rules. >> but you guys got to admit, from a regular person's perceptive, it does seem -- i get that you want to support, you know, that you're both supporters of the guys that you're fighting for. but the personal connection, how does the president not influence you, bill, when you're coming up with ads and plans for your pac? >> we do our own polling. we have our own strategy meetings, our own group of people we go to to make strategic decisions for where we're going to advertise, what we're going to say in the advertisements and why we're going to run those advertisements. it's not that hard to follow the rules. we strongly support president obama. that's why we got involved in putting this pac together and we're going to continue to follow the rules. >> so both, the president and governor romney, they've said that they don't like super pacs. you saw governor romney saying that with joe scarborough and the president referring to super secret money. now, this is a tough situation right? because the law is the law. so you've got to go ahead with it, right, even though you both don't theoretically want to? >> i think governor romney makes a good point that the current campaign finance system doesn't make a lot of sense. i would argue, however that it's based largely on mccain-feingold, the campaign finance law that pushes money to outside groups. candidates would rather control their own message. they'd rather have the money flowing to their campaigns and that would provide more accountability, but due to the campaign finance restrictions of mccain-feingold, money -- there's restrictive limits on what can be given directly to campaigns and even to political parties. that pushes money to outside groups, which sometimes are helpful to the campaigns. we certainly hope we're helpful to governor romney's campaign. >> the personal connection is important to most people, that you are on the same page. if not you, if you bill burton didn't go do a super pac for the president, someone else would? >> the issue is much less who on the democratic side would. it's the fact that who on the republican side is doing it. we didn't start this because we thought the citizens united decision was the right one, but we aren't going to let the private equity guys, karl rove, helping mitt romney's super pac get in there and raise millions while the president just stood by and his supporters did nothing. we thought if there's going to be -- >> so, he's saying you started it. >> well, bill likes to use sort of the buzz word karl rove and and karl rove has nothing to do with our super pac. >> he has his own super pac, crossroads. >> that would be great if he did, but to my knowledge, he and cross roads are neutral. our super pac is in contrast to bill's group. everything we do is above board. we fully disclose our donors. it's very transparent. >> every single donor? >> every single donor to restore our future is fully disclosed. >> early on, one of your first donations from the spawn corporation did not disclose and it wasn't until there was public pressure that we found out who was behind it, a former partner of governor romney's at bain capital. so maybe you've been pushed into this position, but maybe you ought to share the political director, who you share with crossroads who will also be dumping million offense dollars into this trace on behalf of governor romney, that governor romney doesn't support donations from groups that don't disclose their donors. >> bill, you've cherry picked one example of the corporation where there was a mix up. yet, the reason that was came to light is because it was disclosed. you and the supporters of president obama do not disclose your donors, so in contrast to what we do with restore our future, priorities u.s.a. doesn't disclose who's giving. all this talk about secret money, you're part of the problem and i would recommend that you follow our course and disclose everybody who's giving. you could voluntarily do that. there's nothing stopping you. >> now, will you do that, bill >> we're going to follow the same rules that karl rove is following here. and the way we set up our organization is we have a super pac, 527 priorities usa action which discloses all of its donors and we have a 501 c 3. funny to hear these groups seem so unaffiliated when they have the same goal. >> and so people understand, the deal with super pacs, is you're supposed to disclose donors except if you have a chartable a.r.m. if you said i'm going to be the hero and disclose it, don't you think you could force karl rove and others to do it? >> i don't think that karl rove is taking my lead when it comes to ethics. that really hasn't been his calling card throughout his career in public service. no, what we're going to do is not give karl rove, the koch brother, the private equity guys supporting mitt romney any more advantages. they've already got hundreds of millions of dollars, we're not in the position of saying we're going to step aside and let you play by a different set of rules. >> but you guys are sitting here, mitt romney and barack obama. you're the proxies. you hadn't met before tonight, right? >> correct. >> even though you're technically you're in a full-on war. but why not just sit here and shake hands and say we're going to do it different. >> restore our future discloses and i would encourage you to do the same thing. >> i appreciate that, but as we discussed already, some of the seed money from your organization did not come from a disclosed donor. governor romney still benefits from hundreds of millions of dollars of undisclosed donations. we're not going to stand on the sidelines and let folks drive a right-wing republican agenda in a way that, you know, unfairly allows them to play by a different set of rules. >> i understand it's probably good for your fund raising to take cheap shots at karl rove, but the hundreds of millions of dollars in disclosed donations, you're making that up. the money going towards restore our future is fully disclosed. >> that's not true. you should check out some of the press clippings, but karl rove has pledged $300 million through crossroads and crossroads gps to support the republican nominee. >> but that is not -- >> that's a different super pac. >> we don't have a republican nominee yet. i certainly hope that nominee's governor romney and i would like nothing more than to have support from other groups. >> you can throw up the smoke screen to make it seem like one group is for one thing, there should be different, a whole different set of rules, but until they are, we're going to fight with the same fire that karl rove and his allies are fighting with. >> thanks very much to both of you. i appreciate you're coming in and doing it together. i hope you'll come back and let us know what you think about this. their point of view and arguments they made about how close they are to the guys they're pushing for. just five days away from the south carolina primary. how much do we know about south carolina? john avalon outfront to debunk the myth. and schools giving students high-tech watches. they count calories and weight and then track it. what are they doing with the information? and a lot of americans bought guns at christmas. were you one? like a true playa ♪ ♪ now when he's surfing down in chile'a ♪ ♪ he can see when his score is in danger ♪ ♪ if you're a mobile type on the go ♪ ♪ i suggest you take a tip from my bro ♪ ♪ and download the app that lets you know ♪ ♪ at free-credit-score-dot-com now let's go. ♪ vo: offer applies with enrollment in freecreditscore.com™. if you have painful, swollen joints, i've been in your shoes. one day i'm on top of the world... the next i'm saying... i have this thing called psoriatic arthritis. i had some intense pain. it progressively got worse. my rheumatologist told me about enbrel. i'm surprised how quickly my symptoms have been managed. 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[ male announcer ] we are insurance. ♪ we are farmers ♪ bum, ba-da-bum, bum, bum, bum ♪ five days until the south carolina primary and if you listen to pundits and washington insiders you might think to quote john avalon, south carolina is quote a swamp of sleazy politics an brutal attack ads. you say it better than i do. and a bible belt baston of rednecks and racism. but avalon, who is from south carolina, would say you're dead wrong. he's out front to debunk the myths. >> this is that time of year, you know, the ugly stereotypes disfiguring a beautiful sate. >> number one. >> this is the old one for back in strom thurmond days. it's had a 15% population growth in the last ten years. those counties along the coast, out of state immigrants, retirees looking for a better quality of life. they changed the character of the state enormously. >> a lot of those people coming from the north? >> the north, the northeast. a lot of jobs, manufacturing plants. we've got an indian american governor and then the new representative from charleston, tim scott. an african-american tea party leader representing the first district. he beat thurmond's son in the primary. it's a great story and it's a sign of how the stereo e types don't hold. >> oh, they say, south carolina, it's all about evangelicals. is it? >> bob jones university seems to become shorthand for the entire state's politics and it's not true. in fact, in 2008, you see john mccain won the state. he didn't have evangelical support, but was able to win the coastal cities because the majority of people do live in the cities in suburban areas. mike huckabee did well. mitt romney got bob jones' university endorsement. he came in fourth. there's a lot of room for a center-right candidate to play in south carolina. >> all right. and now, to myth number three. you mentioned her, nikki hailey. nationally, lots of attention. a darling, but locally, darling ruler ore the tea party? >> no. and this is one of the most fascinating things. she's a national rising star, but her reputation is outstripping her current poll numbers in the state. only 35% approval. that's less than barack obama in the state of south carolina right now. so while it's a great endorsement to have and mitt romney saying it signifies tea party support, not so fast. in fact, the numbers tell a very different story. >> and this means that we'll see how we go this weekend. people think the evangelical sign means everything. or tim scott means everything. no. we shall see. thanks very much. thanks very much, john avlon. under surveillance tonight, your children. the government is monitoring the weight of students. this is an effort to curb childhood obesity. schools are giving kids high-tech watches to help them count calories and loose weight. school officials then track the data, but it's unclear where the information actually goes from there. according to several published report, students have received the devices in new york city, new jersey and st. louis. joining me now is paul cowen and mimi roth, president of the national action against obesity. good to have both of you with us. i got one of these watches. it's actually pretty cool. i would think a kid would like to have this. i would love to have it. especially if it came in fipinkr yellow or something like that. so, what do you think about this idea? >> well, on the surface, i think it's not a bad idea. we want to encourage fitness among our kids and this is a way to monitor it, but i worry about the privacy implications. do we have the right for instance to find out how active a kid is after school, track his sleep patterns? these devices are getting very sophisticated now and i'm wondering if they're going to get too intrusive and we're going to become a nanny state with the schools raising the kids. >> the percentage of childhood obesity has tripled in 30 years. kids between 6 and 11, 7% were obese in 1970. now, it's 20%. >> i love how paul invokes the word, nanny state. what about the people who pushed these kids into becoming fat in the first place? they were bad nannies. let me have my moment to answer. >> teachers are responsible -- >> these kids got fat and it was adults who did it to them. i think it's a great thing and this is why. it's information. teachers can use the information, the parents can use the information and interestingly, the kids have access to this so they can involve themselves in making good decisions based on the information they're getting back from these devices. i think that's great. >> fitness is a great idea and anything that will encourage it, i'm for, but we have to worry that some of the information could be leaked to sources that maybe shouldn't have access. >> let's put one of those sources out there. the insurance company. kid who and again, this is an issue of whether it's the kid, the parent or the teacher. but is not exercising, isn't doing what they're supposed to do and is eating too many twinkies. >> yes, we would worry about that. >> then the insurance company could charge you more. >> what's not going to be news to the insurance company is that the kid is fat, which means diabetes, stroke, heart conditions. they're already tallying up that bill before they find out the other information. these kids are doomed. >> mimi has little appetite for privacy. >> where do you get that from? i didn't say that! i think they should have parent permission to wear these. >> i wanted to add another thing to this. i found to be very interesting. i was talking to dr. michael nagler. he was telling me you're thinking of this as monitoring the kids. you know what this is really about, it's monitoring the teachers because we're looking for a way to figure out how for instance, phys ed teachers are doing with these kids. these watches are saying what the heart rate is and how fast they move and how much activity. >> these things barely get more than a treadmill used to get. you shouldn't get so paranoid. >> we're not arguing here. what we're saying is this information is flowing in both directions. we're monitoring the effectiveness of teachers. and whether kids remain fit. >> here's what i have to say. forget this other stuff. these kids are doomed if we don't intervene. i applaud new jersey and new york for doing something. these kids deserve the right and chance to grow up healthy. >> thank to both. we'll hit pause on this. let us know what you think. paul v mimi. we'll tell you who wins. >> till the next time. next, three iranian nuclear scientists assassinated. iran says it's proof the cia was to blame. and how many guns did americans buy at christmas? we'll be back. 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