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'Up with Steve Kornacki ' for Saturday, May 18th, 2013

Read the transcript to the Saturday show

UP with STEVE KORNACKI
May 18, 2013

Guests: Joy Reid, Joan Walsh, Jamelle Bouie, Bob Herbert, Shayana Kadidal, Anu Bhagwati, Jessica Hinves, Patricia Ireland


STEVE KORNACKI, MSNBC ANCHOR: Good morning from New York. I`m Steve
Kornacki.

Federal investigators are looking into the cause of last night`s head on
commuter train collision which injured 60 people near Fairfield,
Connecticut.

And Kentucky Derby winner, Orb, is the even money favorite in the morning
line for today`s Preakness Stakes in Maryland. If the horse wins, he`ll be
one step away from claiming the first Triple Crown since 1978. Although,
if you`re looking for some value in this one, let me just give you my pick
right now. We`ll take charge with the number seven horse. You heard here
it here first.

Anyway, right now, I am joined by MSNBC political analyst, Joan Walsh.
She`s the author of "What`s The Matter With White People: Why We Long For A
Golden Age That Never Was" and also editor at large for Salon.com, Bob
Herbert, distinguished senior fellow at the progressive think-tank, Demos,
Jamelle Bouie, stuff writer for the "American Prospect," and MSNBC
contributor, Joy Reid, managing editor at our sister site, Grio.com.

If you read any headlines or watched any cable news this week, you know
that this was the week that a sudden wave of scandals, three of them rocked
the Obama administration all at once.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Obama administration is under fire.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Obama is fending off incoming fire.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The dangerous narrative.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Plaguing the White House.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It`s hard to follow.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He`s drowning in it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is so egregious.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Someone needs to be in prison.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who`s going to jail?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In impeachable offense.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I`ve never seen anything quite like this except in the
past during the Nixon years.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do these people not remember the Nixon
administration?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That`s a Nixonian tactic.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KORNACKI: And now, here`s the catch. All of that White House scandal
hysteria we`ve been inundated with stems from a news report that was
completely discredited in the middle of the week. It`s probably isn`t
quite the story you`ve been hearing, so let me try to explain. It starts
last Friday, not the Friday yesterday, but the one before that.

That`s when ABC News trumpeted an exclusive story that purported to reveal
e-mails proving that the White House had meddled with the Benghazi talking
points last September had altered them in a way that protected the State
Department.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VOICE OF JONATHAN KARL, ABC NEWS: I have obtained 12 different versions of
those talking points that shows that they were dramatically edited by the
administration. Take a look at two of them. What was taken out? All
references to al Qaeda and all references to CIA warnings before the attack
about the terror threat in Benghazi.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KORNACKI: And there it was, the major turning point in the Benghazi saga.
For months, Republicans had insisted the White House was trying to cover up
serious failures related to the attack, but they had no evidence, and the
media largely ignored them. But now, with this ABC report, well kind of
looked like the press had maybe been duped a little. Maybe the
administration had been looking out for its image, had been preoccupied
with politics when the talking points were drafted.

In context, what happened next wasn`t surprising. Hours after ABC`s report
about the Benghazi e-mails, news broke that the IRS had inappropriately
scrutinized Tea Party and other groups seeking tax exempt status ahead of
the 2012 elections. Republicans pounced. It was some kind of Nixonian
plot. The White House is using the tax man as a weapon against its
political enemies.

Any other week, the media would have taken these charges with a giant grain
of salt. But on the heels of the Benghazi e-mails, well, little more
complicated. And then came Monday when the Associated Press announced that
the justice department had secretly obtained two months worth of reporters
phone logs as part of a leak investigation. Now, the narrative was
practically irresistible. Scrub talking points.

An IRS out to get conservatives. The DOJ snooping around on reporters, and
administration hell bent on abusing its power to stay in power. The White
House was denying it had anything to do with the IRS and DOJ stories, but
of course, the White House had denied scrubbing the Benghazi talking
points, too. And so, we were told the scandal season was officially on.

And all the references to Watergate and second-term curses and mid-term
election fallout due (ph) if we followed. Which brings us to Tuesday when
the ABC report that set off this whole chain of events, the report that
threw the political world into all scandal all the time mode, basically,
crumbled apart.

We know this because CNNs Jake Tapper obtained one of the actual e-mails
regarding the Benghazi talking points which showed that the quotes in the
ABC report had been selectively edited. More than that, it turned out ABC
had never actually seen the emails. All they`ve gotten were notes from
their unnamed sources on revisions to Benghazi talking points.

The upshot, as Tapper explained, was that the notes ABC had been provided
with, quote, "made it appear that the White House was primarily concerned
with the State Department`s desire to remove references and warnings about
specific terrorist groups so as not to bring criticism to the department."
It also appears likely that the notes provided to ABC came from
Republicans, something that CBS News reported on Thursday night.

Which leaves us in a much more complicated place than it seemed like we
were at the start of the week. Benghazi scandal which was never really a
scandal in the first place has blown up. Meanwhile, the IRS and DOJ
stories raise all sorts of fascinating and controversial questions, but the
framing that they were presented with at the start of the week. White
House scandals now seems way too simplistic.

So, I want to give credit, first of all, the first person I saw to put it
together like that and said that the triggering event on this was ABC --
was Jonathan Shay of "New York" magazine. He had a great piece this week
and it really got me thinking in those terms. But that really is -- the
more I think about it, that is sort of what happened this week.

I mean, you had a very complicated and still unfolding story involving the
IRS. The news overnight, in fact, was that the IRS had actually briefed
somebody at the treasury department last year, and I think June of 2012,
and basically said that the IRS was going to be looking into this. There
was going to be an audit looking at potentially targeting conservative
groups. Nothing had been found at that point.

Apparently, this is sort of a routine thing that happens once a year. The
IRS will sit down with treasury and say this is what we`re looking at. So,
that`s sort of the news overnight. Like I said, this is an unfolding
story. But I think it would have been presented more as the unfolding
complicated sort of agency based story that it appears to be if it hadn`t
been for this ABC report two Fridays ago on Benghazi.

JOY REID, THEGRIO.COM: It kind of reminds me of shark week, right? This
is what happened like when I used to work in local news. One person gets
bitten by a shark, and then like a week later, another person get bitten by
a shark, and all of a sudden, everybody being bitten by sharks instead of
put together event (ph) even though statistically there are more shark
attack actually happening.

And I totally agree with Jonathan Shay and with you on this is that the
triggering event was the ABC report. And if you think about it, when
Benghazi was only a Fox News story, there was really no incentive for the
rest of the media to jump on it or to conflate it with other events. A
mainstream media outlet needed to pick it up. That would have been the
triggering event to get other news outlets.

(CROSSTALK)

REID: -- and that`s what happened. So, I had this question that no one in
the media except maybe Jonathan Shay, except maybe yourself. Not many
people are asking, well, who in the House of Representatives or the Senate,
the committees who got the e-mails in February and in March? who presented
those notes to Jonathan Karl?

Did they present them to Jonathan Karl in a false way or did he just
misinterpret what they gave them? I think that`s an important story that
the media, so far, hasn`t shown any interest in.

JOAN WALSH, SALON.COM: Well, Salon has -- Alex Sites (ph) were all wrote
about yesterday and said this is somebody going to be fired because the
precedent (ph) for this. In the middle of the last idiotic scandal season
in 1998, someone who worked for Dan Burton who turned out to be David Bossy
was actually fired for doctoring, I think, it was Webb Hubble`s testimony
and releasing just selectively editing things to make everything look worse
than it was, which is pretty much what happened here.

I mean, somebody went in and actually put in a -- from a White House e-mail
and put in a reference to protecting the State Department that did not
exist in the original e-mail. And I think, you know, we have to ask about
how staffers, and I think we do have to ask about ABC, because these e-
mails were presented in quotation marks.

REID: Correct.

WALSH: And for the late (ph) people out there, if you put something in
quotation marks, somebody said it. And you know that they said it.

KORNACKI: I love that you mentioned the 1990s. I want to show this,
because I think it`s really interesting to look back 15 years ago. Dan
Burton was chairman of the Oversight Committee in the House. It was
looking into all sorts of, you know, Clinton scandals. This one was about
the campaign finance stuff in the (INAUDIBLE).

And when this happened, when selectively edited stuff sort of blew up in
the face of the Republicans, this is what it looked like on the news. This
is the controversy it was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VOICE OF DAVID BLOOM, NBC NEWS: Among the president`s Republican opponents
disarray. Today, Indiana congressman, Dan Burton, fired his top
investigator, David Bossy. Burton is under fire for releasing Webb
Hubble`s taped telephone conversations from prison. Recordings that
appeared selectively edited to damage the White House.

Today, in a letter of apology to his Republican colleagues, Burton wrote,
"mistakes and omissions were made, but there was never any intent to
deceive anyone."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KORNACKI: The interesting thing to me about that is the Republicans were
clearly out to get the Clintons in the 1990s. That`s well-established, but
when this came to light that Burton and his committee had released these
selected tapes (ph), there was outrage across the aisle. There was
pressure from Newt Gingrich on Dan Burton to apologize, and there were
calls for Burton even to go.

REID: Right.

JAMELLE BOUIE, THE AMERICAN PROSPECT: There`s no -- what`s funny if you`re
looking at what other Republicans are saying is that there`s this divide
where you have Republican leadership trying to rein in other Republicans
saying, listen, we can`t take this handle media too crazy because we might
alienate Americans.

And I think part of the reason why you haven`t seen much bipartisan outrage
or at least Republican outrage over the potentially doctored e-mails is
that like there is a large chunk of Republicans who just want to see
scandals. They just -- they believe Obama is, you know, some sort of
Marxist tyrant, and obviously, there are scandals and they`re going to find
them.

REID: But that`s the motivation and then I think -- the media, we do need
to look into it. We need -- because think about it, these weren`t just
pedaled to Jonathan Karl at ABC. They were also pedaled to "The Weekly
Standard." Apparently, they also tried to pedal in to CBS.

Somebody deliberately wanted to have that information out there and if you
think about notes being what were given to Jonathan Karl, when the White
House gave the e-mails or allowed the emails to be reviewed by the two
select committees on intelligence, in the House and the Senate, they didn`t
give them the emails. They said you can come in and spend as much time as
you want reading the e-mails, taking them out and take as many notes as you
want.

Take your notes out. If those notes came out, either somebody is really
not a good note taker and inserted State Department where it didn`t belong
or those doctored notes deliberately were pedaled to multiple news
organization, I think just as our profession, we need to be concerned of
someone is attempting to put news into the either (ph) to peddle news to
reputable news organizations that`s false.

BOB HERBERT, DEMOS.ORG: Well, I mean, I agree that Benghazi is a big part
of this crazed frenzy. But, I push back a little bit on the idea that the
IRS story wouldn`t be an enormous story on its own because when it broke,
the only thing that you were hearing was that, you know, the IRS is
targeting conservative and Tea Party groups. And that would cause an
explosion in media and political circles on its face.

KORNACKI: I agree. I think it`s the framing that there was almost this
assumption that this was a White House scandal as opposed --

BOUIE: Exactly.

KORNACKI: -- in IRS scandal, which I think --

(CROSSTALK)

HERBERT: I think it would have been taken that way even without Benghazi
when the story first broke, because the assumption would have been on the
right, hey, here`s Obama targeting his enemies without make being any
distinction between the administration and IRS. And that`s what happens, I
think, in this 24-hour news cycle when everything is breaking news and, you
know, it starts out as though it`s a scandal.

WALSH: It certainly would have been a scandal on the right, and it
certainly would have been framed by right-wing media as Big Brother, big
bad Obama targeting his enemies, but I don`t think that the mainstream
media would have jumped on it quite the same way. They would have jumped
on it, Bob, absolutely, but it wouldn`t fit into this framework of, oh,
first, we discover that the White House actually was intervening and
covering up for the State Department on Benghazi.

And then, at the end of the day, we find out that the White House is
targeting its enemies. Without that initial --

KORNACKI: And there`s a real -- a specific moment that jumped out at me
this week when I think it became sort of a cause, at least, briefly. We`ll
see what happens, but a cause for the non-right-wing media involved Jon
Stewart. We`re going to show it when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KORNACKI: So, on the right, you know, I`ve been basically looking from the
day President Obama was sworn in in January 2009. When will the articles
of impeachment be introduced by a Republican against it?

(LAUGHTER)

KORNACKI: It`s going to happen at some point. I was kind of assuming. So
-- but the question was -- the issue is that this week this became
something that the mainstream media was really following as this was White
House scandal for the mainstream media. So, how it made that jump from,
you know, Republicans thinking everything is almost an impeachable offense
to making the mainstream media focus on this as a serious White House
scandals.

And if I have to pinpoint a moment, you know, we have the ABC stuff last
Friday, but I think what it really was might have been Monday night when
Jon Stewart went on the air.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JON STEWART, HOST, "THE DAILY SHOW": In a few short weeks, you`ve managed
to show that when the government wants to do good things, your managerial
confidence falls somewhere between David Brent and a cat chasing a laser
pointer.

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: But when government wants to flex its more malevolent muscles
(EXPLETIVE DELETED) the "Iron Man."

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: You know what? I`m sorry. I`m sorry. I`m overreacting. I
still believe, I really do, that good government has the power to improve
people`s lives and that the people have the power to restrain its excesses.
I forget that sometimes and I`m sorry. It`s going to be OK. And, our form
of government is bigger than just these issues. This storm will pass.
It`s just really? Right now?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: All right. We`re just getting this into the
"Situation Room," calling it a quote, "massive and unprecedented
intrusion," the Associated Press now saying the justice department secretly
obtained two months of phone records of its reporters and editors.\

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEWART: Mother (EXPLETIVE DELETED)

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KORNACKI: That was the short version. I think it went on for about ten
minutes. But, the thing that was -- there was a lot in there in what he
said but what was most notable to me was watching my Twitter stream coming
alive with media people or mainstream media people for a lack of a better
at about 11:15 on Monday night continuing over to Tuesday morning that Jon
Stewart had sort of validated the narrative that this was sort of the Obama
(ph) scandals in a big way. I think that sort of shape the attitude with
the media, at least, the early part of the week.

REID: It was funny. All of a sudden, Jon Stewart became the favorite
comedian of every right-winger, because they`ve just been waiting for
mainstream media to see through Obama, subterfusion, see him for the evil
that he is. And they`re excited when they see someone they consider to
normally be culturally against them jump on what they see as their band
wagon.

And I think, secretly, a lot of people in media kind of craved that same
sort of affirmation from the right that, you know what, you`re not really
biased. You are independent. And I think that there is a little bit of
that even in the comedy world where it`s assumed that comedians are always
on the left.

They`re always for the left and always making fun of the right. So, the
right is desperate to have the culture turn on Obama, the people turn on
Obama if they can`t stand the fact that they`re alone on that.

HERBERT: It`s a problem when all of us see all politics all the time. I
mean, some of us and if you consider yourself mainstream, you need to just
step back and look at the facts of the situation. And I don`t think
Benghazi is a scandal at all. It`s a terrible tragedy, but I don`t think
it was a scandal. I think that with the IRS, I think it is a scandal.

The IRS for what appears to be really dopey reasons having nothing to do
with the administration, at least, at this point as far as we know, the IRS
was, in fact, targeting conservative and Tea Party-type groups, and I think
that the AP scandal is an outlandish continuing scandal that has been
undercover for the longest time by the mainstream media.

This has been an administration following on the prior administration that
has done everything in its power to intimidate the free flow -- those who
are involved in the free flow of information in our democracy, and that is
a huge and continuing scandal.


BOUIE: Right. And the fact that the focus is on these Obama scandals
takes the focus away from these actual like ongoing problems. What you
want, you want mainstream media to be covering the fact that the Obama
administration is remarkably hostile to whistleblowers and other folks who
try to leak information from the government. Lumping it in is just another
scandal, I think, really takes away from --

KORNACKI (ph): It does.

BOUIE: -- an ongoing problem.

HERBERT: It seems like it`s just like everything else.

BOUIE: It will fade away, right, because when Benghazi leaves the front
page, when the IRS scandal becomes, I think, recognized correctly as an
agency scandal, people will just forget about the AP stuff, and then a year
from now, we`ll hear about another whistleblower who is tossed in a jail by
them to the (ph) administration.

(CROSSTALK)

WALSH: -- the media plays in here, too. And the media`s own kind of self-
hatred or, you know, worried about over covering this. I mean, on one
level, there is something unseemly to even to me as a member of the media
when people who haven`t cared about other whistleblowers in any other kind
of civil liberty questions about this administration only care about the AP
scandal because it hit the press. That`s one thing.

But then you have this compensation by some people in the media, well, you
know, maybe we aren`t going to talk about this all the time because maybe -
- you know, did they follow their own guidelines. It`s complicated what
they did, in my opinion, was wrong and did violate their guidelines, but
there still a level of it that is -- that you really need to get into the
weed and understand and people just kind of chat up.

(CROSSTALK)

KORNACKI: Yes, I mean, I think -- to that (ph) point, I would just say --
you know, I completely agree. I think, to me and we`re going to talk about
this on today`s show. We`re also going talk on tomorrow`s show. We`re
going to really get into the specifics when we talk about the IRS and DOJ.
And I look at IRS and I say what`s happening right now this is what
correctional oversight is for.

BOUIE (ph): Correct.

KORNACKI: You have an agency that has raised all of these questions, and
I`m glad they`re holding hearings on it. And I want to talk about that. I
want to talk about the DOJ issues they`ve been building for years. It`s
not something specific to this week, but I do want to get back to this
issue of why the media decided this was scandal. (INAUDIBLE) it means for
how these are going to be covered going forward after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KORNACKI: Joy you had made an interesting point in the last segment,
talking about -- its sort of reminds me of working the refs in basketball,
right?

REID: Right.

KORNACKI: Like the coach will just seat there the whole game, telling the
ref he`s the worst, you know, ever on hooks in the fourth quarter and will
get the foul call when he needs that at the critical moment.

REID: Right.

KORNACKI: And I do wonder if there`s an aspect to get in packaging
everything that happened this weekend and interpreting all of it as White
House scandals. I do wonder if there`s an element of that and I much
wondering your experience as a journalist, is that a trap you ever in any
way found yourself falling into where you`re feeling pressure from the
other side or say Republicans or some interest group or anybody is putting
the pressure on you, oh you`re so biased -- your so biased to the other
side, does it mess with your head a little bit?

REID: No, I mean it --

HERBERT: I have not felt that pressure because I`ve never cared. I mean,
you know, you just --

(LAUGHTER)

HERBERT: It goes a certain way. But there are folks in the media who feel
that way, folks who are either on the left or proceed to be liberal or
progressive who feel that you know, they have to, at some time, give a shot
to the other side, you know, and say, you know, well, I`m just not -- I`m
not just this crazed ideologue or something like that.

But it`s --you can`t lump all even the mainstream press together, because
people and organizations and outlets function differently. I think the
times has been, for example, very good on all of these issues as they`ve
unfolded.

REID: Well, I mean, and also --you know, if you`ve ever dealt with
communication staffs of either this White House, previous White Houses, you
know, I`ve dealt with RNC communication, they will literally try to brow
beat you at a good (ph) stories. You know, it`s hard to sort the function
of the press. Personally, I`ve, in the past, worked on the other side.
And part of your job is to sort of work the rest and say, no, you don`t
want to do that story.

That story is, you know, not real or try to, you know, take down stories
that will hurt your side. There is a game that goes on between political
communication staff and the media, and it`s constant. There`s complaining
about headlines. There`s complaining to news organization about coverage
period. It isn`t just this administration. It`s all administration. They
don`t want negative stories out.

HERBERT: Right, exactly.

REID: And they try to put --

HERBERT: That`s the nature of power.

REID: It`s bipartisan.

KORNACKI: You get -- the only thing I`ve noticed -- I don`t mean to pick
on him, but it`s an interesting example to follow over the last few months
is Bob Woodward, because Bob Woodward has gotten into a couple of high-
profile dust ups with the White House. And, you know, Bob Woodward, the
guy who is reporting take -- took down President Nixon, and you know, sort
of I think it -- conservatives probably saw him for years as part of the
liberal media.

And I`ve seen him over last few months sort of reassessed as all the stuff
has played out by the right, and the right now holds up Bob Woodward. A
lot of people on the right called him up as sort of, you know, this is now
a brave journalist, and he`s getting accolades from corners who never did.

He made a comment this week that, again, I notice this just a lot of
concern were passing this around. This was Bob Woodward basically saying
there may be a Watergate panel out here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOB WOODWARD, AMERICAN INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: I hate to show that this
is one of the documents with the editing that one of the people in the
State Department said, oh, let`s not-- let these things out, and I have to
go back 40 years to Watergate when Nixon put out his edited transcripts of
the conversations, and he personally went through them and said, oh, let`s
not tell this, let`s not show this. I would not dismiss Benghazi.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: I -- something more complicated is going on with Bob Woodward.

(LAUGHTER)

WALSH: I mean that`s embarrassing.

HERBERT: It`s embarrassing.

WALSH: He embarrassed himself this week.

HERBERT: I agree.

WALSH: He embarrassed himself a few -- a couple months ago when he picked
a fight over what was supposed to happen with the sequester and insisted
that his version was right and peddled the line that he had been
intimidated by someone in the White House when they said merely, and this
is a good example of what you were saying, Joy, I think you`re going to
regret doing that story.

REID: Right.
WALSH: They said that in the sense your story is wrong and you`re going to
regret it. Now, maybe they were -- but maybe they were messing with him.
His story was wrong, so they were right.

(LAUGHTER)

WALSH: But he went out to fox and he went out to the media and said, you
know, these Chicago thugs or I mean -- it was like they were going to come
break my legs if I did the story. So, something is very, very weird --

REID: Well, I think with him, you have a celebrity journalist who because
of Watergate became accustomed to absolute access to these White Houses.
And maybe his access is quite what it used to be and he`s got a little bit
of an axe (ph) to grind with this administration.

BOUIE: Let`s not pick too much on Woodward --

(LAUGHTER)

BOUIE: I say there`s no but there.

(LAUGHTER)

BOUIE: You know, I think there`s a familiar frame here that like people,
media figures are used to White House and scandal. And so, I think it`s
just sort of -- it`s all these things come together and it`s people are
lazy, frankly. Most people do what they know and White House scandal is
something they know.

And I think that`s also why you`re seeing like the Watergate and Nixon and
Iran/contra comparisons come in because these are things that people are
familiar with even though the issues especially Iran and contra have -- I
mean, there are genuine constitutional issues there that don`t quite exist
with anything but maybe the AP scandal.

KORNACKI: Well in the Watergate one, you know, people know the term
Watergate. And I often wonder, you know, its 40 years ago basically --

REID: Right.

KORNACKI: -- when the hearings took place. And I wonder how many people
remember, and people -- you`ll drop the comparison so easily and I -- you
know, obviously, Woodward lived it and knows it better than me. But just
to remind people, I mean, you talk about the IRS, Nixon, and Watergate.
This was a president who is directly involved in -- we`re going to audit
Hubert Humphrey.

We`re going to audit Ed Roski (ph). Anybody who wants to run s against me
in 1972 is going to be the subject of a politically motivate -- that is
hugely different today. Anything, so far --

(CROSSTALK)

KORNACKI: And Joy, you have something -- after the break, we`ll be right
back for Joy.

(LAUGHTER)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KORNACKI: Joy was about to say.

REID: No. You were talking about Watergate. And I think that it`s great
that you brought it up because these are questions of scale. You had Nixon
actually auditing his political enemies. If you want to talk about
something that`s symmetrical to that, you know, during the Bush
administration, I thought (ph) always bring up Bush, but you did have
entities and individuals who were audited for speech.

This is very different when you had the NAACP going as far back as 2000.
Republican lawmakers demanding that the IRS strip the NAACP of its 501(c)3
because of speech not because of some practice but because of what they
were saying and that is a lot more symmetrical to something like what Nixon
did when you had a private contractor hired in 2006 that looked at
taxpayers in 20 states, including asking political affiliation.

Things like that never became scandals, never rose to this level. In this
case in the IRS, you know what, people applying for a special dispensation
for the tax code, applying to be tax exempt even though they are clearly
political PACs. I think that has to be a part of the investigation, but it
won`t be because Congress is just grandstanding to take down the president.

KORNACKI: Well, there seems -- there`s a category here that maybe you
wouldn`t call it scandal, you call it like, you know, bureaucratic, you
know, problem that I`m not going to coming up with --

(LAUGHTER)

KORNACKI: I`m sorry, but what I mean is think about these stories, like,
1992, I remember during the campaign in 1992, it came out that somebody at
the State Department had looked at Bill Clinton`s passport files, right? I
think in 2008, there was a similar story. It was bipartisan. It was
McCain, it was Obama, it was Hillary, somebody in the State Department was
looking at it.

They never (ph) establish, I think, in the areas. It didn`t go to the
White House. It wasn`t -- it was bad. It shouldn`t have happened. It
raised some questions. It deserved coverage, but to automatically take
that -- these were not White House scandals. These were, you know,
bureaucratic situations.

WALSH: I mean, I know. I`m a Democrat. I admit it, but there is a
different standard it held. Democratic presidents are held to a different
standard. And so, you know, early this week, I thought I was going to have
a nervous breakdown because a major figure who I will not name here
tweeted, "welcome to tea 1990s." And it was like, oh, we`re going to go
back into the Clinton scandal.

And, you know, it was written that this is going to -- Benghazi will hurt
Hillary Clinton because she already has a credibility problem because of
unproven and unfounded allegations against her 1990s that left her with the
credibility problem because the media said she has a credibility problem,
even though -- and I have talked to people in our business who were around
back in the Clinton days who are now ashamed of the way they pursued those
scandals who now look at him as a terrific president and forget, you know,
glass ceilings (ph) and not some great things he did but who are now caught
up in this frenzy and can`t see that there are similarities.

They`re not the same, but there are similarities. And as Joy says, when
Bush or someone in the White House used the IRS against green peace,
against big --

(CROSSTALK)

WALSH: -- black churches, Episcopal Church in L.A., you know -- it wasn`t
a Bush scandal. And I don`t know if it`s the people just expected less of
Bush or --

REID: It`s a soft bigotry of low expectations.

(LAUGHTER)

BOUIE: I think some of it is the general, I think, cult of the presidency
that`s grown over the last four years that even in journalism there are
lots of people -- I mean, we saw this with the sequester and the constant
calls for Obama just to lead. If he can just lead, it will solve these
problems, right?

There`s this view that anything that happens in the federal government,
obviously, the president has something to do with it, but it`s just not
true. It prevents people, I think, from seeing the extent of which
bureaucracies have their own inertia (ph) and their own force and do things
(INAUDIBLE).

HERBERT: Well, also, the media have changed. I mean, it used to be that
folks would dig, dig, dig, get the story, and then, the scandal would
emerge. It`s now reversed. What happens now is like there`s a headline
out there. This is the scandal. And then you dig, dig, dig to see what
really happened. And, you know, most of the time, you end up rolling it
back.

WALSH: While using the word scandal.

(CROSSTALK)

KORNACKI: There`s a backward --

BOUIE: Was there some way you could -- like the talking to distinguish
between scandal and like scandal italics exclamation mark, because what
we`re seeing now is sort of like scandal and not necessarily --

(CROSSTALK)

KORNACKI: My little bureaucratic situation thing you just expressed it
much better than me. You know, I want to thank MSNBC contributor, Joan
Walsh, editor at large of Salon.com. She doesn`t it know yet, but she just
perfectly teased what`s coming up next, what the Republican obsession with
Benghazi is really all about. After this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KORNACKI: You know what makes me feel old sometimes? Well, there`s the
fact that I now go to sleep at 8:00 p.m. on weekends, but I can probably
blame this job for that. There`s also the fact that I`ve caught myself
more than one occasion recently using expression that I`m old enough to
remember -- that I`m old enough -- you know what guys? I`m sorry. We`re
just going to -- we`re going to take a break and we`re going to try this
again. I`m sorry.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KORNACKI: So, I think the euphemism for what just happened is technical
difficulties. I think what that actually means is the host just kind of a
dummy and screwed up, but we`ll get to what I was starting to talk about
there in the next hour. In the meantime, we`re going to keep going with
the show as we had it plan.

We had been talking about three supposed scandals that have besieged the
Obama administration this week. Scandals or whatever you want to call
them. The one that seems the most problematic and the most directly
connected to the White House is the justice department seizure of two
months worth of phone logs from journalists at the Associated Press.

The AP says it was part of an investigation into a leak about a CIA
operation in Yemen last year. This is part of a pattern. No
administration in recent history has investigated leaks and prosecuted
government whistleblowers as aggressively as the Obama administration has.
So far, under President Obama, there have been six indictments of suspected
leakers under the espionage Act.

Double the number indictments under all other presidents since 1917
combined, 1917 when the espionage was enacted. The administration`s
aggressive pursuit of leakers and its broader embrace of -- and national
security tactics has paid political dividends by taking away a historical
advantage for Republicans on national security issues.

But it has exposed tensions on the left between civil liberties concerns
and instinctive loyalty towards a Democratic president. For his part,
Obama defended his administration`s record on leaks and national security
at a press conference on Thursday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Leaks related to national
security can put people at risk. They can put men and women in uniform
that I`ve sent into the battlefield at risk. I make no apologies and I
don`t think the American people would expect me as commander in chief not
to be concerned about information that might compromise their missions or
might get them killed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KORNACKI: I want to bring in Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney of
the Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative at the Center for Constitutional
Rights. And so, we were talking about this in the first part of the show
that there is, you know -- the term scandal in way really could apply to
this ongoing story of, you know, aggressive tactics by this administration
and by the administration before it, the Bush administration, towards
government whistleblowers.

We`ve had six prosecutions of government leakers, six indictments of
government leakers under Obama and it does seem to raise -- to raise some
questions that maybe are uncomfortable for the left because you want to
defend the president, you certainly want to defend the president in a week
like this, and at the same time, wow, this is a continuation of what Bush
did in so many ways. Maybe even an acceleration of what Bush did.

REID: Well, I mean, it`s also a demonstration of the very true fact that
when you give any institution power, it rarely gives it back, right? And
there was a lot of enthusiasm among the American people if you look at the
polls for the crackdowns on civil liberties that happened during Bush,
because we were afraid after 9/11.

So, things like the Patriot Act that were stunning reversals on civil
liberty, stunning withdrawals of, you know, basic sort of civil liberty
rights happened during that time passed by Congress. A lot of them, these
(INAUDIBLE) warrants, sneak and peek warrants, things that we wouldn`t have
imagined in a modern America. If people thought that those things would
were going to be given back because a Democrat became president, then they
really don`t understand the way power works.

Once you give an institution, that kind of power, they`re going to use it.
And this administration like every other does not like leaks, does not
tolerate them, and they`ve just been very aggressive about it.

SHAYANA KADIDAL, CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS: Yes. I think, you
know, Obama`s great switch on this happened when he was a senator in the
summer of 2008 after criticizing the NSA surveillance program for years.
He decided that he would switch positions and sign off on a statute that
actually allowed the government to carry out that sort of broad program of
surveillance with Congressional authority.

And it`s really taken surveillance off the table. I mean, you see from
what he said there that most of the media discussion about this issue has
been about whether the AP actually threatened national security by
publishing this story which the government knew about before it was
published. What most of the coverage hasn`t touched on is the fact that
the government doesn`t actually need a warrant from a court to get your
phone records, to get your banking records, to get your internet surfing
records, to get even your stored e-mails.

They can do this with a subpoena, and because they don`t need a warrant,
they use subpoenas much more than they ever go to courts under those
expanded surveillance authorities that were passed in 2008.

KORNACKI: And you`re getting at a point there which is this is a story
that has been brewing for a long time. And it`s sort of been relegated to,
you know, sort of civil libertarians on the right and left, you know, both
make plenty of noise about this and having being plenty (ph) noise about
this, and it`s largely been ignored by more mainstream voice.

And it`s interesting to watch it this week get folded into. We talked
about its scandal week in Washington. Therefore, this is a big scandal,
all of a sudden. So, you have voices, first of all, I think, you know, on
the Republican side primarily who really haven`t cared about these issues
before suddenly embracing this and you also have voices in the media, I
think amplifying it in a way you wouldn`t (ph) before.

So, it`s so -- I don`t know. Is that -- in a way, is it a good thing that
this has been folded into sort of a fake scandal week and then it gives
attention to something that`s deserves attention for a long time?

BOUIE: I was actually just about to say that. The fact that Republicans
now have this to be outraged about, it makes it more likely that there`s
going to be scrutiny of it, right? Now, there`s partisan advantage
attached to not in the administration and civil liberties. So, Republicans
are going to try to get that partisan advantage.

And for those of us who care about civil liberties, this is great news.
Now, it`s a political football, and because it`s a political football, both
sides are going to be trying to get their own advantage and that might mean
actual action taken on sort of bringing the government away from the powers
its claimed for the last ten years.

HERBERT: I might disagree with that because I don`t think the Republicans
for a minute are going to give any ground on these issues that are
allegedly related to national security. And I also think that there`s not
a good understanding of the importance of this issue either in media
circles, in general or in the wider public.

A free press goes to the heart of what the democracy is supposed to be
about. It is -- it has to do with the free flow of information and if you
have -- if voters are not well-informed about the issues, then democracy
loses all of its meaning because it`s an ignorant vote that is cast and
what this is really about is intimidation.

You indict people and you send people to prison if you can and what that is
is it sends a chill out there and nobody wants to talk to reporters about
the sensitive issues anymore, and it has been very effective. There is a
chill in Washington, and people are more reluctant than ever to talk about
national security issues.

KORNACKI: Where I wonder does it come from -- I mean, we can talk about --
Joy makes the point right. You give any administration power, it`s just --
it`s not going to want to give it back. We can sort of assume that, but I
wonder if there`s a particular concern or particular sensitivity on the
part of the Obama administration because this whole idea we alluded to --
at the beginning, there were historically Republicans that had the
advantage on security, politically.

Democrats have sort of felt defensive on that. It`s probably a lot of
reason why they nominated John Kerry in 2004. Like, we got up with the
warrior or up to running (ph) against the war time president. This sort of
mentality -- you know, I wonder if there`s sort of, at some level, a
political calculation here that has guided this on the Democratic side
within this administration that, politically, it is safer to err on the
side of, you know, stifling leaks because --

REID: Well, if you think like just at the national security construct for
this administration in general. They`ve done a lot of things that have
triangulated, to use the old Clinton term, against the Republicans. I
mean, this is the administration that got Bin Laden. They brought in David
Petraeus before he fell from grace, and they brought him in to run the CIA.

They sort of co-opted a lot of the Republican themes and not having major
breakdowns other than Benghazi which, you know, is questionable whether
it`s a scandal again, but it was obviously a breakdown in security. CIA
probably larger (ph) responsible, we will go into that. You know, that`s
been one of the hall marks of the administration. It raised the Republican
advantage on that issue.

And if you remember, the public back when -- I think it was the "New York
Times" that exposed that the U.S. was operating black sights, right, around
the world. The American people didn`t respond with outrage at the black
sights. They were mad at the press for exposing that, and there was this
belief among a lot of Americans if you look at the polls that it was the
press that was the bad guy for endangering national security.

And this is another case where nobody really loves the press. So, the
American people aren`t going to be mad at the administration for going
after the leaks. They`re going to be mad at the AP for exposing the story.
And at the same time, Republicans who were demanding that the White House
find the leaker, they were coming down and saying the White House is weak
for not finding a leaker are in a, awkward position to now be upset at the
way they`re going after the leakers.

Republicans are also for the kind of surveillance society that was set up
under Bush. They voted for it. They pushed it. They`re really not going
to say, well let`s dismantle it now.

HERBERT: Republicans were pushing the issue of outrage about the leaks to
start with. They were going crazy. You know, the administration has to do
something to stop these leaks. But, I don`t want to let the Obama
administration off the hook. They have gone, you know, in this direction
hook, line, and sinker. They didn`t need a lot of pushing.

BOUIE: There`s another group, I think, has been put on the hook as well
and that`s Congress, right? Like, in the past -- past times of
presidential overreach, I`m thinking after the civil war when radical
Republicans went after Andrew Johnson, after Congress pushed back against
Wilson, you have a Congress that`s sort of like views its institutional
prerogatives quite jealously and one of those is actually national
security.

Congress has a role in national security. And it`s abdicated it and that`s
for a variety of reasons. It`s partly because of partisanship. I think a
lot of lawmakers see themselves as Democrats and Republicans and not
necessarily as a congressman. But for whatever reason, Congress, for
decades, has just been uninterested in reining back the White House on
this.

And so, you have, you know, presidents, in particular, Obama who is trying
to avoid political damage. You have a Congress that just could care less.
And the combination of those two things is just going to be a progression
of power grabs.

(CROSSTALK)

KADIDAL: Two more parties to that list of people to blame, the telecom
companies and the media itself. The telecom industry is so heavily
regulated, so dependent on government largesse and the anti-trust area in
terms of the fees that it can charge and taxes that they don`t have any
incentive to push back. So, Google got 10,000 of these subpoenas for this
kind of records in the last six months of 2012.

And if you hardly ever see them challenged, we know that only one telecom
company stood up to the widely illegal NSA program, right? So, that`s one
thing. You know, the phone companies are kind of in on this. It has every
incentive to cooperate with the government, and then, you know, there is a
sense, I feel like of chickens coming home to roost with the media on this.

We see so much, I think, gullibility in the media on whether or not any of
this kind of things that are just close to the press threaten national
security. We see Julian Assange, you know, a classic journalist portrayed
as Deep Throat (ph) rather than Bob Woodward. And you know, I can`t help
but feeling that years and years of being kind of credulous on issues like
whether Guantanamo lawyers pose some threat to national security have kind
of let us to this moment.

KORNACKI: I want to put up on the screen, there`s an interesting episode
that played out in the middle of the week. It was a group I`ve never heard
of before, actually. I`ve heard their parent group. It is group called
"Message Matters." And this is affiliated with media matters who I haven`t
(ph) heard of. And they released in the middle of the week basically
talking points.

They were talking points for Democrats, for people on the left, to go on
the air and to defend the idea of going after the AP, the idea of the DOJ
going after the AP. And you can see some of the talking points there up on
the screen. These are sort of suggestions if you`re going to go on TV,
this is what you should say.

And there was -- what was interesting to me, Alex Pareene who writes for
Salon -- had a really good point on this because this caused a lot of, you
know, sort of media outrage, you know, that -- you know, how can the left
suddenly, you know, be ignoring the civil liberty concerns like this, but
Alex Pareene made the point that nobody wanted the talking points.

Did you actually -- you know, I didn`t see anybody or hear anybody on the
left on the air this week saying any of this stuff. So, it was sort of
interesting to watch that play out.

REID: The left is disorganized. The left isn`t organized (INAUDIBLE).

(LAUGHTER)

REID: I`ve never known the left to be that organized. And also, I think
there is this ambivalence among the media about the idea of if you are
reporting something that really could outsource -- apparently, there were
CIA agents who had to move their families as a result of this coming out.
I mean, there really is a true danger of exposing information that could
get somebody killed.

Let`s just keep it real. And I think a lot of the media is ambivalent
about that. That`s why you have organizations including the Associated
Press actually go to the administration, warn them they`re doing the story
and hold the story which the AP did in this case for a certain amount of
time.

And you have major media outlets like the "Washington Post" and "New York
Times" to do the same thing, because I think there is a worry that in the
zeal to get out information, the media and reporters individually don`t
want to be responsible for getting someone killed or for threatening
national security.

KORNACKI: You raised an issue that I really want to get into. That`s
interesting between the responsibility of journalists to readers and to
public and the responsibility to, you know, not compromising national
security, and it gets to a proposal that the administration got behind this
week in response to this, and we`re going to talk about that after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KORNACKI: Hello from New York. I`m Steve Kornacki. Here with MSNBC
contributor Joy Reid of thegrio.com, Shayana Kadidal with the Center for
Constitutional Rights, Bob Herbert from the progressive think tank Demos,
and Jamelle Bouie with "The American Prospect".

So, you know, we`re talking about "The A.P.", the DOJ story, and I`m sort
of interested in first of all why the administration has felt such pressure
to prosecute so aggressively all these leak cases and the administration
seemed to shift its posture a little bit this week, I would say. We had
news coming out that in response to this -- the shield law, proposed shield
law would be reintroduced, the media shield law, to protect reporters,
would be reintroduced in the House.

We have a little sound here. I want to play, this is John Conyers, a
Democrat from the House, sort of talking, responding to this and talking
about reintroducing the shield law. Let`s play it for a second.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JOHN CONYERS (D), MICHIGAN: I`m troubled by the notion that our
government would pursue such a broad array of media phone records over such
a long period of time. At the same time, I know also that the attorney
general himself has recused himself from the investigation and we`ll hear
more about that.

Policy questions on this topic are fair and I want you to know that I
intend to reintroduce the free flow of information which passed the House
floor with overwhelming support bipartisan in both the 110th and 111th
Congress. And we hope to do s with the continued support of members of
this committee on the other side of the aisle.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KORNACKI: So, there was the proposed shield law that the idea was to
prevent jail time from being used as a threat to get reporters to reveal
source, to make it difficult, much more difficult for prosecutors to be,
you know, going after sources from reporters, they have to get some sort of
court approval to begin the subpoena process.

There are also, though, in the sort of compromise that nearly made it
through last time and the whole WikiLeaks happened a couple of years ago.
That`s what killed the momentum of shield law back then. But in the
compromise that made its way through at that point, there was a pretty
broad carve out at the administration`s insistence for national security
concerns.

So, basically allowing the administration to say, well, we like the shield
law, but in this case, we decided it doesn`t apply. It sounds that`s the
basic language that`s reintroduced here. It raises the question, you know,
is this window dressing? Is this administration trying to look like it`s
responding to something or is this shield law worth something?

BOB HERBERT, DEMOS: It`s called hypocrisy. It gets to this issue you were
suggesting or asking the question of whether the Obama administration has
been pushed into this, the Democrats have to be tough on national security
and stuff.

It seems to me this something that the president believes in. That when he
looks at the calculus of the free flow of information, free press on one
hand and what he perceives as national security matters on the other, he`s
going to come down on national security. And part of the problem is, they
always say, the government officials always say that lives are at risk
here, that terrible things will happen if this information gets out.

And that I can`t think of an example where that was ever the case. They
would have said that about the Pentagon papers. You know, would we have
been a better society, for example, if Daniel Ellsberg had gone to jail.
They would have said that about My Lai. You know, there`s all kind of
scandals that are out there, waiting to be reported on.

So, you know, I can`t give the administration a pass on this.

JOY REID, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: The question is, it isn`t true there`s never
instances were --

HERBERT: I didn`t say there`s never, I`m saying there are very few
instances that any one can think of where the stories were reported,
because you made the case that responsible media outlets, very often, I
think, most often try not to be irresponsible.


REID: Right.

HERBERT: They work with the administration and frequently hold, withhold
stories that are, in fact, are going to endanger lives.

REID: Because the question would be then, you know, under a shield law,
let`s say, for instance, a journalist were to find out that a CIA operation
was going to take place in Kandahar on this date at this time. We knew
that American troops were headed in that direction.

Would the media then be in their rights because of a public right to know
to report on that? Would they have been within the rights to find out
about the Osama bin Laden raid in advance to report interest potentially
disrupt it, potentially ruin it, potentially expose the identity of the
SEALs? Would the media be in their rights to do that, because of a
public`s right to know?

So, there is a line. I mean, it isn`t impossible to endanger lives by
reporting a story.

(CROSSTALK)

HERBERT: What government would say --

(CROSSTALK)

HERBERT: We don`t even know is that you can`t report on those stories even
after the fact. In other words, if you had the raid and the raid went
badly and civilians were killed, for example, they could just put a top
secret clamp on it and say you go to jail if you find out about this and
report on it.

KORNACKI: But I think in this particular case with "The A.P." and Yemen
and with the story that set up on this, I don`t think we`ve established
exactly what the, you know, critical national security information was that
"The A.P." was endangering exposing.

I`ve heard different versions. Part of it gets to having, you know, a
double agent that provide critical information who is trying to leave Yemen
and it`s critical that, you know, the story not come out until they are
sure the agent has left and it`s also critical for trying to ensure future
cooperation from other potential sources, that, you know, they`re going to
be able to protect their identity.

It does -- I`m not coming down either way here. I guess, I`m just --

HERBERT: Who is trying to leak those stories? They`re going after -- they
are going after the leakers. They want to intimidate the people who are
talking to the reporters. Who is leaking the story saying that a double
agent is trying to get out of Yemen?

REID: I`ll give you an example of one who did --

HERBERT: To Joy`s point, if any responsible journalist got that story, I
mean, why would the reporter go with it?

REID: Right. Well, I mean, there are examples. When your talking points
game up, the Valerie Plame is what the administration is trying to put out
and that was a situation where everyone on the left wanted to see -- to
quote the ambassador (INAUDIBLE) White House over that, because that was a
politically driven, deliberately of the identity of a CIA covert operative
that did indeed potentially endanger lives.

So, when you have a politically driven leak where you`re having an
administration say, I`m going to punish Joe Wilson by leaking the identity
of his wife`s name, in a situation like that, do we want prosecution for
the leaker in that case? I guess it`s a very nuanced question.

SHAYANA KADIDAL, CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS: You know, look, maybe
what they didn`t want in the media was the fact that on the one year
anniversary of the bin Laden killing, there`s a retaliatory attack planned,
right? Maybe this makes a tool operation that seemed not designed to
capture bin Laden, to actually had some negative consequences for national
security, right?

And, you know, look, again this, is the big story we`re hearing about in
the media, whether or not "The A.P." threatened national security by
publishing a story that the government knew was coming out. But, you know,
I think we may never know the answer to that, but it`s very clear based on
the scope of the phone records investigation, that this was designed to
intimidate.

So, they were looking at seven journalists here, but they got phone records
for 20 different lines in four bureaus, that 100 different "A.P." reporters
used. You know, there`s these guidelines that are supposed to be in place
to limit the practice of using these subpoenas to go after phone records of
journalists, put in place after the Watergate era in 1980.

And we know that one of the aspects of this that they ignored was the fact
they are to negotiate and inform you ahead of time if they are going after
your phone records. If they had done that here, the key point is that "The
A.P." could have gone to a court and asked the court, you know, maybe
ultimately to overturn this notion that phone records, records of who
you`ve called or where you`ve gone on the Internet or your emails are
somehow different than the contents of your phone calls, for which they
neither want.

KORNACKI: And we should point out, I think this administration and every
administration, too, is not, you know, averse necessarily to when it`s in
their, to their benefit, in their advantage, to provide information to leak
on its own.

I mean, think of the aftermath of the bin Laden raid, when this is
something the administration wants to have everybody to know all sorts of
detail about.

(CROSSTALK)

HERBERT: That`s a good point.

KORNACKI: The government sometimes likes it --

KADIDAL: Stuxnet virus, right? You would think that capacity might be
something we might want to keep secret. But, hey, this is a great secret.
So, we want to leak it.

Where this "A.P." story, we want to use this as a vehicle for intimidating
future government sources.

REID: Well, I mean -- it just I think makes Jamelle`s point again, is that
you have do -- every administration it`s in their interest to control
information and sort of use the press as an adjunct to their own
communications department, right? That`s not unique to Democrats or
Republicans, it`s what they all want to do.

So, Congress has a role. I wish we had a Congress that is functional,
because Congress does have an oversight responsibility where they can rein
back some of the Patriot Act provisions, rein back some of these abilities
to get warn and to get information, to surveil whether it`s the press or
ordinary public, but they aren`t going to do it because you just have a
Congress that`s only functioning as a campaign operation constantly and
they`re not doing oversight.

JAMELLE BOUIE, THE AMERICAN PROSPECT: At the same time, though, while we
don`t have a Congress that doesn`t do oversight, we do have a president who
when he was running for president that said that he cared about civil
liberties and he cared about transparency. So, I think it`s perfectly
reasonable to say what`s going on, right?

Like you campaign on these things, you promise to give us the most
transparent administration in history, you promised those of us who were
exhausted by the parade of Bush violations of privacy that you would be
different and you aren`t. So, why not?

KADIDAL: And let`s add the courts to that too. I mean, you know, we`ve
been litigating the issue whether the NSA surveillance program has been
legal and the courts basically said that you don`t have standing to set
foot in court to challenge that if you don`t have proof that you were the
target the secret surveillance program. You know, I think the time has
long passed for the Supreme Court to overturn the third-party doctrine,
this idea that the phone numbers you dial somehow you have less privacy
interest in that.

REID: But do you think this particular Supreme Court would ever -- I mean,
the Supreme Court is not going to do that.

KADIDAL: They might. Look at the GPS case opinions and you`ll see a lot
of discomfort with this idea of the third-party doctrine, especially
Justice Sotomayor`s opinion. I think there`s some hopeful signs there that
the court might actually --

KORNACKI: There you go. The John Roberts court is now the great hope for
civil liberties.

I want to thank MSNBC contributor Joy Reid of thegrio.com, Shayanan Kadidal
with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Bob Herbert from the progressive
think tank Demos, and Jamelle Bouie with "The American Prospect".

We will try this one more time. What the Republican obsession with
Benghazi is really about. That`s next, hopefully.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KORNACKI: I think I feel kind of phony if I read through that elaborate
intro I started to read last hour and got all mix up. So, I`m going to
pick this up midstream. This is what we started last hour.

I`m old enough to remember when the right kind of liked Barack Obama and
when conservatives treated Hillary Clinton the way they now treat Obama.
It is a story that begins in 1992. The Republican Party controlled the
White House for 12 years, two terms of Reagan and one of Bush Sr.

But that 12-year run was in grave danger. Economy was in rough shape.
Bush`s approval rating was sinking. And Bill Clinton was running almost 20
points ahead in polls that summer.

Republicans had their convention, and for four days in Houston, they bashed
Bill Clinton. They called him names. They shredded his record, they
ridiculed his character. This was all expected. It`s what parties do at
conventions. Nothing to really see here.

Except, they went further. It wasn`t just Bill Clinton they attacked, it
wasn`t just his running mate they attacked, it wasn`t just his party they
attacked, they also attacked his wife.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAT BUCHANAN (R), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What does Hilary believe?
Well, Hillary believes that 12-year-olds should have the right to sue their
parents. And Hillary has compared marriage and the family as institutions
to slavery and life on an Indian reservation.

This, my friends, this is radical feminism.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KORNACKI: This was a major Republican theme in 1992. Hillary Clinton as
the radical anti-family feminist lawyer and they kept right up after Bill
Clinton won the election. For most of the 1990s, it was hard to tell which
Clinton the right despised more. Sometimes, it seemed like it was Bill,
like when North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms suggested the president,
quote, better have a bodyguard if he visited his state. Or when Robert
Dornen, a Republican congressman from California who ran for president in
1996, said of Bill Clinton, quote, "The thought makes me sick to have this
SOB," except he didn`t say SOB, "of such low character commanding this
country."

Other times, it seemed it was Hillary who bothered the right more, like
when William Safire, then a columnist for "The New York Times" wrote in
1996 that, quote, "Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the
sad realization that our first lady is a congenital liar."

There was a sort of backward working logic that prevailed on the right in
the 1990s. The Clintons have to be devious and corrupt. They just have to
be. And if we look hard enough, we`ll find the proof.

And so, we got travel-gate, and the Rose Law Firm, and Whitewater, and
Vince Foster conspiracies, and Kenneth Starr and suggestions that the
president and his wife have been involved in drug-running and even murder.
Bill Clinton was impeached. I think you remember it all.

There were a lot of reasons why this happened and, yes, Bill Clinton did
bring some of it on himself. He brought plenty of it on himself. But the
root of that anti-Clinton hysteria was simple -- it`s how the hardcore
right reacts when Democrats gained power.

Almost by definition, a Democratic administration is illegitimate to them.
It must be resisted ferociously and relentless. It`s how the Birchers
treated JFK in the 1960s and it`s what happened to Bill and Hillary in the
1990s, and it kept happening to the Clintons after they left the White
House. Why? Because everyone knew that they`d be trying to get back to
the White House. That Hillary would soon be running for president herself.
So, the hysteria persisted, and we got, for example, the right trying to
pin 9/11 on Bill Clinton.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS: Do you think you did enough, sir?

BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT: No, because I didn`t get him.

WALLACE: Right.

CLINTON: But at least I tried. That`s a difference between me and some,
including all of the right-wingers that are attacking me now.

They ridicule me for trying. They had eight months to try. They did not
try. I tried.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KORNACKI: That was in the fall of 2006. Circle that date because
something funny happened not long after that. After the 2006 midterms that
Hillary formally jumped into the 2008 race, and so did Barack Obama.

The conventional wisdom was that Clinton would win easily. She had the
name, she had the money, she had the machine. Nominating a black candidate
would be too risky for the Democrats, all of that. So, Hillary was the
inevitable Democratic nominee.

The right`s anti-Clinton hysteria persisted, at the same time -- and this
is what`s so easy to forget right now, Obama had a very different role in
the right`s narrative. He was the well-meaning reformer who was about to
get plowed over by the ruthless Clinton machine. They treated him almost
sympathetically, all the (INAUDIBLE) to reinforce their Clinton caricature.

Until -- well, until Obama started winning and it became clear that he and
not Hillary would be the face of the Democratic Party in 2008. And
suddenly, it was in the right`s interest to paint him as the dangerous
radical and Hillary as the innocent victim of his machine.

It happened very fast, this melting away of 16 years of anti-Hillary
caricaturing. You can almost pinpoint the moment.

Here`s Pat Buchanan, the same Pat Buchanan who riled against Hillary, the
lawyer`s lawyer spouse in 1992, rediscovering her in 2008 as a working
class icon.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUCHANAN: She ran a terrific campaign as Frank Rich said. She reinvented
herself as the love child of Joe Hill and Norma Rae -- you know, the
gunfighter, tough babe. She ran a wonderful campaign and she`s a
sentimental favorite now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KORNACKI: That was after Hillary posted a win in the April 2008
Pennsylvania primary. But the race was really over at that point. Obama
was safely ahead in delegates.

And so, the new characters on the right stuck. From that point forward,
Obama would be the bad Democrat and Hillary would be the good Democrat. If
only Obama could emulate Hillary, we wouldn`t be in so much trouble.
You`ve heard it all for the last four or five years. All at once,
conservatives stopped attacking Hillary and her husband for that matter and
actually started praising her sometimes.

The result: look at her favorable rating. It`s steady for years and then,
right there, you can see on that right, in the spring of 2008 when those
conservative switched, it rockets up and it stays there. That`s where it
still is, which is suddenly a problem for the right because it puts Hillary
in great shape for 2016, which is really all you need to know about the
supposed Benghazi scandal. It`s partly a way for the right to attack an
administration that it`s never liked.

But it`s really a way to turn back the clock, to reintroduce the
conservative base to the joys of Clinton bashing. And all of it just
proves to me that if you live long enough, you`ll see everything twice.

Another story that should be a much bigger scandal, that`s next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KORNACKI: By the way, there`s another story brewing out there that might
deserve the label scandal. But no one is calling that, at least not yet.
It has to do with sexual assault in the military and it`s a story that does
at least partly involve President Obama. I`ll explain that in a minute.

But, first, just consider what we`ve learned in the last few days.

On Wednesday, an Army lieutenant colonel in charge of the sexual harassment
and assault response program at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was arrested for
violating an order of protection and stalking against his ex-wife.

Day before that, it was revealed that a coordinator for the Army sexual
assault program in Fort Hood, Texas, is under investigation for sexual
assault and forced prostitution.

And then there was last week when the chief of the Air Force sexual assault
prevention and response branch was charged with sexual assault of a woman
in a parking lot in Virginia.

These incidents follow a high-profile case from February in which an Air
Force commander, Lieutenant General Craig Franklin, used his authority to
nullify a military jury sexual assault conviction, even though his own
legal counsel advised him to let the verdict to stand. Franklin said he
had reasonable doubt about the defendant`s guilt.

And this is where President Obama comes in here, because advocates for
military sex assault victims are calling on the president to dismiss
Franklin. But so far, Obama has taken no action.

It also came to light last week that Obama`s nominee for vice commander of
the Air Force Space Command, Lieutenant General Susan Helms is her name,
also nullified a sexual assault conviction just months ago.

Senator Claire McCaskill from Missouri has put a hold on Helms` nomination,
but again, no action from the administration yet.

Responding to what could be the called of scandal of sexual assault in the
military on Thursday, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand led a bipartisan group of
senators and House members in introducing a bill that is aimed at
preventing military commanders from mishandling sexual assault cases in
their ranks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D), NEW YORK: Today, we`re standing in united
front to take on these issues, with new legislation that will fundamentally
remove the decision-making from the chain of command and gives that
discretion to an experienced military prosecutor, where it belongs.

Under our bill, serious crime punishable by more than a year of confinement
would be investigated and prosecuted by the JAG Corps. Experts
specifically trained on this issue who know how to carry out the
investigation take cases to trial.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KORNACKI: Just hours later, President Obama met with Secretary of Defense
Chuck Hagel and other military leaders to discuss the matter, and
afterwards, talked about the importance of accountability.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Even though I think there`s
a level of concern and interest that is appropriate, we haven`t actually
been able to ensure that our men and women in uniform are not experiencing
this and if they do experience it, that there`s serious accountability.

So, what I`ve done is I`ve asked Secretary of Defense Hagel and Marty
Dempsey to help lead a process to continue to get at this. That starts
with accountability, and that means at every level.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KORNACKI: I want to bring in Patricia Ireland, she`s the former president
of National Organization for Women, Anu Bhagwati, executive director and
cofounder of the advocacy group, Serviced Women`s Action Network, MSNBC
contributor Goldie Taylor, a former U.S. Marine, and Jessica Hinves, former
member of the U.S. Air Force, now in the advocacy board of Protect Our
Defenders, which works to reduce sexual assault in the military. Jessica
became involved with her group after she was assaulted while enlisted.


Thank you all for being here.

I want to put one graph up to set this up. It`s a statistic that`s gotten
a lot of play in the last couple of weeks, but I want to put this up. This
is looking at the problem of sexual assault in the military.

In 2012, the total number -- this is estimated from a recent Pentagon
report, the total number estimated is 26,000 assaults taking place in the
military in the year 2012. Of those, only 3,374 actually reported.
Further reduce that to 238 convicted.

And that 26,000 number is up kind of considerably from a year before.
Although I guess, this is -- if you go back over a decade, it kind of
fluctuates. We`ve been near 30,000 before.

This is a longstanding problem. And I think there`s a lot of different
ways to look at it. To me, there`s two issues. One is the culture of the
military, one is specifically to the justices in the military.

Maybe I`m curious to start with the culture of the military. You know,
Anu, is there something particular about the military that feeds this, that
encourages this?

ANU BHAGWATI, SERVICE WOMEN`S ACTION NETWORK: I think there is. I mean, I
think part of the problem lies in the fact that there are very few women in
the military, only 15 percent of the military is female and while sexual
assault in the military affects actually more men than women, whenever you
have so few women in an institution, you`re likely to see more sex
discrimination, re sexual harassment and more condoning of sexual assault.
I mean, we know that from studying this on the outside.

And so, the military has to do several things all at once. It has attacked
this problem by turning to folks like us who know what it`s like on the
inside but also have the sense of what a real criminal justice system
should look like. But also by making sure more women are entering the
military, are being recruited and being retained.

I mean, you know, I was lost to this problem because the Marine Corps did
not treat this right. Certainly, Jessica was and many of our peers.

And, right now, they are facing a recruitment challenge as well, if this
story continues, it very likely well. Women are not going to want to
serve, and neither are men, when men realize that men are being attacked on
the inside as well.

KORNACKI: I see, you know, I think it was Chuck Hagel, or at some point in
the last week, specifically talked about drinking, the problem of drinking,
drinking is a significant factor.

I also heard a number of people in the military talk about that there seems
to be what they see as a culture of disrespect towards women both in the
military and, the implication is that it`s in the broader culture and sort
of comes in the military, whether it`s through video games or movies, the
message there percolating in the culture that get into the military, and
then, you know, you have men being fed these messages and around women who
until recently couldn`t serve in combat roles so there was this unequal
situation to begin with.

You know, Goldie, how do -- how do you make sense of it?

GOLDIE TAYLOR, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: You know, the maladies, the pathologies
that, you know, our present and our broader society don`t check themselves
at the door when you get to camp. And so, what you present in boot camp,
what you present is what society you`ve been drawn from.

The military, however, known for as well-trained as we are, you know to
become a fighting machine, it does not address appropriately some of those
maladies that we bring forth. In fact, it reinforces many of them
especially when we talk about, you know, the roles that men and women
traditionally should or would play. In the military, those roles are
supposed to be broken down because we`re one fighting force when, in fact,
they aren`t.

Not until recently have we been able to serve in combat roles. That has
been a major part of why women are seen as second or third class citizen,
you know, in the military. When I served, I don`t believe that this is a
new problem, frankly just because what I saw 26 years ago when I enlisted.

Women were -- you know, yes there is the issue of alcohol and sometimes
under age drinking and all those things are against the law. But women are
placed in a situation where they are responsible for what the men are
doing. And you can see it in the training videos, you can see it in the
literature that they are held responsible for what happens to them.

I`ve also seen some information where it says maybe women should take more
advantage of the base resources available to them. She will tell you when
she talks about her testimony, that you can`t take advantage of it because
none of it is anonymous.

So, if I go to see a base therapist to talk about what happened to me, all
of that information is available to the base commander. Yes, I think that
those are kinds of issues that we have to address. Yes, it is a cultural
issue. Are we at a point where we`ll break it down once and for all? I`m
not sure about that, seeing what we`ve so far.

KORNACKI: Well, Jessica, Goldie alluded to it you have horrible real world
experience with this and I want to hear some of your stories about what it
was you sort of -- what the institutional barriers were that you came up
against in searching for justice.

And I want to give you time to do it. So, we`ll do that after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KORNACKI: So, Jessica, I really would love to hear your story and what
lessons maybe in terms of reforming the military we can find in your story.

JESSICA HINVES, FORMER U.S. AIR FORCE MEMBER: First of all, I would like
to say it`s ridiculous for General Walsh to say people are raped because
they are drunk. That`s accusing and it`s actually blaming the victim and
saying that a hook up culture is saying that women are coming into the
military to hook up with men which is very false.

Women need to be considered as soldiers. It`s 2013. It`s time women are
given their place in the military and treated equally as men. What
happened to me, I was a jet mechanics on F-15s. I was one of three females
in my squadron. I was walked to my room using the buddy system like the
military, you know, tells us to do.

My rapist who I worked with broke in through my bathroom, raped me and
while I was getting a rape kit the female in the room next door reported
it, which opened the investigation. So, right out of coming out of the
hospital, I was taken in and investigated for eight hours and the
investigation continued for a year.

Well, JAG recommended it go through an Article 32 hearing. The court date
was set. Two days before the court hearing, there had been a change of
command, in his command.

The commander decided that he did not act like a gentleman but there wasn`t
reason to prosecute. This commander had no legal background or education.

I couldn`t take to it civilian court because it was a military
jurisdiction. I called the base inspector general. They said they were
too busy to handle this case.

A few months later I was discharged having PTSD. I feel like it was biased
because in the middle of my investigation, my rapist was given an Airman of
the Quarter Award, saying he was the top performer for our squadron, out of
that -- out of hundreds of people saying he was a top, exemplary airman.

I tried to stand but couldn`t keep my career, even though I was put in
counseling with combat veterans who had PTSD and allowed to continue their
career. Because I was raped, I had to lose my career.

KORNACKI: And this is -- your story gets to an issue I think that`s part
of the political debate in Washington. We talked about the bill that
Gillibrand and others are introducing now, the idea is, you mentioned it
there, it`s not a legal background. It`s a commanding officer right now
who makes the decision, should this be prosecuted, should this go to trial,
and who has the power after a conviction -- as we saw in that intro -- who
has the power to invalidate these convictions.

It seems like this is -- if there`s a role for the political system to step
in, this seems to be it.

PATRICIA IRELAND, FORMER PRES., NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR WOMEN: You
absolutely hit on it. I mean, on the one hand, the commanding officer
decided what cases get prosecuted. And on the other hand, they can nullify
a jury verdict.

And so, we have senator Gillibrand`s bill that would take those serious
crimes out of the commander`s authority and give them to experienced
military prosecutors. We have Claire McCaskill`s bill that would prohibit
a commander from overturning a jury verdict. We have another bill that
Susan Collins put I that would remove sexual offenders from the military.

That combination of political approaches, I think, will have a great deal
of effect. It is the case that we have to have the political will. This
is not just a problem in the military.

I think that Goldie made a very important point that we see all of the
problems from the culture at large brought into the military.

But I think it`s very interesting that the women in the Senate and in the
House, Jackie Speier in the House, is co-sponsoring the bill to remove the
authority -- put the authority with prosecutors to decide what cases to
take forward.

But that it is the women who are taking the lead here and like Anu, I think
we have to have more women in leadership in the military, that couldn`t
happen as long as women were not considered 100 percent warriors. They
were prohibited from the kinds of assignments in combat that would enable
them to have a full career.

So there`s lots that the political community has to do, needs to do, and
that`s where some of the solutions have to come.

KORNACKI: And you mentioned Claire McCaskill -- I want to talk
specifically about what Claire McCaskill is trying to now, not just with
the legislation but a hold she placed on a nomination and I want to talk
about that after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KORNACKI: Patricia was mentioning the role of having more women in the
Senate, more women in Congress may have played in putting this on the
radar, and I wanted to just play a clip here of Claire McCaskill. But I
want to set it up and say, the key point here I think is to remember, she
was running against Todd Akin last year. You all remember Todd Akin`s
comments about rape.

Well, Claire McCaskill won the election -- and we alluded to this in the
intro, a woman named Susan Helms was on track for a nomination, NASA
nomination, turned out she nullified a sexual assault conviction. And this
is what Claire McCaskill did.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CLAIRE MCCASKILL (D), MISSOURI: This case, frankly, did not get out
in the public domain until I discovered it through conversations with a lot
of different prosecutors the military. And then I said to my staff, let`s
check and make sure she`s not going through on a promotion and sure enough,
we found her name.

So, we`ll withheld her nomination for now, and I`ve had an opportunity to
visit with her and looking at the specifics of the case. It`s a tough
situation she`s had, an outstanding career, but she did decide to overturn
the decision of a jury she handpicked over, you know, whether or not there
was sufficient evidence and who was telling the truth. And, frankly,
that`s what we got to stop.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KORNACKI: Just to raise two immediate issues to me. One is, obviously,
there is the political question here, will the Obama administration go
forward with this nomination? Is there a case to be made for rescinding
it?

But also, I guess my instinctive reaction is, you know, there`s a general
overturn the conviction and the general was a woman.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right.

KORNACKI: And that surprised me.

TAYLOR: You know, to be successful, you know, in an organization, to rise
to its highest ranks, whether corporate or here in this building, you need
be table buy into that culture. Clearly, she bought into the culture that
is most prevalent across our military ranks.

It`s important to note the UCMJ, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, is
not something brand new. It`s something that was derived out of the
Revolutionary War, that, you know, you didn`t have courts or jails around,
so you had to police your own troops.

And so, the idea that a general or any commanding officer with one more
stripe than you, I have absolute control and that was important during the
Revolution War, and important during the Civil War.

Not so important today when we`ve got a JAG Corps, when we got other
resources, you got a civilian court who can take over these kinds of issues
in a meaningful way.

For a commanding officer to have the ability to decide if there`s going to
be an investigation, to decide, you know, if there`s going to be a
conviction, to decide if there`s going to be punishment, most of the cases
where there is a conviction of sexual assault in the military, there`s
about 60 days in the brig and then you get a dishonorable discharge. A
sexual assault in the civilian world will get you 10 to 15. And I think
that that is a stark difference that there is no real punishment for the
perpetrator in these issues.

So, in effect, it`s rewarded like the Catholic Church, you move around from
base to base. And the women on the other hand, she is investigated. She
is taken through psychological barriers and profiles and such, and her
career is ended.

And so, she`s treated as if she is the perpetrator.

KORNACKI: And there is a lot -- go ahead.

HINVES: Military leaders that condone this kind of behavior need to be
held accountable. Like in the case of Lieutenant Colonel Wilkerson,
there`s a female I know that I went to tech school with, very good friend
with, she`s getting stationed at the because he`s at now. Would you want
your sister, cousin, niece, friend, neighbor to be stationed --

KORNACKI: This was a guy who was convicted and his conviction was thrown
out by his commanding officer saying, I actually think he`s a good guy.

HINVES: Because he was good family man, we later found out this good
family man cussed out the military police on base because he burned a
couch. He was seen peeping over a bathroom stall of female, of a gentleman
that he worked with.

He also -- it was biased. That`s the problem. The military is such a
small community. You live and work around this people. And they know
people that knew you.

So they cannot be able to govern themselves like this, because the general
that dismissed this case knew his father-in-law. He was actually stationed
with Lieutenant Colonel Wilkerson when they were deployed.

So, they worked in close vicinity together. And who wants these women --
and men are being raped more than women. It`s not being talked about for
some reason, because it`s easier to excuse, well, this is because the woman
does that.

But these are rapists. This is really going on. People are losing their
career because of this. And this affects people`s lives. It doesn`t just
end there.

But who wants these people to work in the vicinity of rapists and just
passing, you know, programs is not working any more. Like we found out
this week, three people that the military said can handle these cases, they
are the people in charge of dealing with rapes and sexual assault, they are
raping people.

And at Fort Hood which is the largest Army installation in the world, it`s
like a city down there, I`ve been to that base, that guy was actually
coercing people into prostitution. So, are we dealing with sexual slavery
here if you report that you`re retaliated against until you`re thrown up or
suck it up and keep getting assaulted and deal with it?

KORNACKI: And we talk about, the bill here, the major piece of
legislation, that Senator Gillibrand one, which would remove that power
from a commanding officer. But that`s an issue, it`s an open question
whether that will get through because there`s a lot of automatic deference
I think on Capitol Hill and in politics to the military.

I wish we had more time for this. I`m really -- I`m glad you came in.
Thank you.

So, what do we know now that we didn`t know last week? My answers, after
this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KORNACKI: In just a moment, what we know now that we didn`t know last
week. But first, a quick update on the story we did last Sunday, when the
state of Minnesota was in the final state of passing marriage equality,
capping off a two-year political battle.

Republicans in the state legislature there had tried to ban gay marriage in
the state constitution, but instead, Minnesotans voted against that
amendment in 2012, and put Democrats in control of both houses of the
legislature. And on Tuesday, Democratic Governor Mark Dayton signed
marriage equality into law, making Minnesota the 12th state in the country
to recognize gay marriage.

So what do we know now that we didn`t know last week?

We know that Jason Richwine resigned from the Heritage Foundation last week
after "The Washington Post" Dylan Matthews uncovered his 2009 dissertation.
It was entitled "IQ and Immigration Policy. And in it, Richwine claims the
average IQ of immigrants is lower than, quote, "the white, native
population." This come to light just after the conservative think tank had
a released a study Richwine about the supposed cost of immigration reform,
a reported that was widely panned by immigration reform advocates in both
parties.

Heritage has denounced Richwine`s comments, but Richwine himself says he
doesn`t apologize for what he wrote, only for how wrote it.

We know now that Richwine has already cost Republicans at least one
Hispanic voter. His name is Pablo Pantoja. He was the RNC`s 2012 director
of Hispanic outreach. In an e-mail published by the floridanation.com,
Pantoja revealed that Richwine`s comments and other anti-immigrant
sentiment from Republicans have caused him to leave the party.

He writes, quote, "The pseudo apologies appear to be a quick fix to deep
rooted issues in the Republican Party, in hopes that it will soon pass and
be forgotten."

We now know why Ben Jones, he`s a former Georgia congressman who may
remember as Cooter from the "Dukes of Hazzard", we now know why he didn`t
appear at a fund-raiser for his old House colleague, Ed Markey, who`s
running in a special Senate election in Massachusetts. Markey`s campaign
had invited Jones and his band to play at the event, then abruptly withdrew
the invitation when they learned that this outspoken advocacy of the
Confederate flag.

A Markey spokesperson said, quote, "Ed believes such Confederate relics are
highly offensive and should not be displayed in public settings, period."

Jones, though, hit back at Markey`s campaign in a "Boston Globe" op-ed on
Wednesday, writing that, "Rather than having a serious discussion about the
use of symbols and the context of symbols and the meaning of symbols, the
argument has been boiled down to something like this: rebel flag, bad,
racist. Me good, not racist."

We know despite this op-ed, and Jones telling a Markey staffer to fold it
four ways and to put it where the sun don`t shine, Jones says that if he
lived in Massachusetts, he would nonetheless still vote for Ed Markey.

And, finally, we no know that only 16 percent of Americans have a favorable
view of hipsters, in their bicycle riding, ironic t-shirt-wearing ways.
The finding was part of a poll released by Public Policy Polling. It also
included questions like, do you think Pabst Blue Ribbon, also known as PBR,
is a good beer or not?

The poll has been criticized for its leading questions and overall
absurdity, including from UP producer Henry Milcher (ph), who like 77
percent of those polled says he doesn`t consider himself a hipster.
Milcher told us, quote, "This poll is another post-modern attempt to re-
appropriate, arbitrary social norms. I`d read further into it, but I
scratched my nerdy biker glasses when I fell off my bike in Williamsburg
riding to my vegan food co-op."

I need my hipster to English translation for that I think.

Anyway, I want to find out what my guests know now that they didn`t know
when the week began.

I`ll start with you, Patricia.

IRELAND: Well, Senator Elizabeth Warren has filed a bill to make student
loans pay the same interest or require the same interest as the banks pay.
I now know that student loans pay over 6 percent interest, while banks are
paying, I don`t know, what, less than 2?

KORNACKI: Anu?

BHAGWATI: We now that the president of the United States actually cares
about military sexual violence. He`s finally taking it most seriously. We
know that the Joint Chiefs and the president are still not looking to
outside experts to fix this problem.

We know that military officers are not in fallible. That they themselves
engage in domestic violence, and sexual assault, and battery and stalking.
And that we need to fix if I can this problem from the outside in.

KORNACKI: And Goldie?

TAYLOR: What we know is that prosecutions were vastly up after the tale
book scandal and that the pendulum swung the other way, where there were a
few prosecutions and many, many more discretionary dismissals. But what we
know is that after this week, we are going to see more prosecutions. And
we know that, given the women at this table, that we`re going to keep this
issue on the front burner. And we also know that I am the only three-time
patriot.

KORNACKI: I have no idea what that mean.

Jessica?

HENVIS: I now know that the Senate is taking this serious, and they
understand that this is a systemic problem. Prosecutions, it`s good to
good to get the predators out, but it`s not a fix. And I like to thank
Congresswoman Speier for leading the charge in that, creating the Stop Act,
and I urge Congress and Senate to really investigate, look at the
statistics, and realize this is -- this cannot be governed within the
military. They need outside accountability.

KORNACKI: Yes. I`ve been, we talked about it earlier, the idea of women,
the voices of women really changing the nature of the debate in Washington.
This is a week that kind of drove it home to me. I think that`s very real
to talk about.

Anyway, my thanks to Patricia Ireland, former president of the National
Organization for Women, Anu Bhagwati of the Service Women`s Action Network,
MSNBC contributor Goldie Taylor, and Jessica Hinves with the group Protect
Our Defenders. Thanks for getting UP.

And thank for joining us today for UP. Join us tomorrow, Sunday morning at
8:00 when we`ll be talking about the IRS and Bangladesh.

And coming up next is "MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY". On today`s "MHP", the
business of politics is overshadowed by the personal. What could it be
about President Barack Obama that makes Republicans in Washington obsessed
with him as an individual, as opposed to his policies? And lessons learned
from Olivia Pope. That`s "MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY". She is coming up next.

And we will see you right here tomorrow morning at 8:00. Thanks for
getting UP.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)



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much more of an epidemic of gun violence that it`s turned into an emotional
issue for a lot of people. And that, as a politician, is very hard to go
up against, I think.

FMR. REP. PAUL HODES, (D) NEW HAMPSHIRE: You know, it`s pretty basic. For
years, what we heard was the problem isn`t guns it`s the people who are
holding the guns. And everybody`s always said let`s make sure that we keep
guns out of the hands of people who shouldn`t have them.

So, when you see in New Hampshire starting in January, polls coming out
anywhere between 89 to 92 percent of people in New Hampshire across all
demographic lines, across all political parties, coming together to say,
let`s do something about this. Let`s do it now. This is beyond politics.
The message is pretty clear. This is a common sense basic measure that
have been widely supported even by Wayne Lapierre of the NRA.

KORNACKI: Look, Paul, I wonder, I look at the town hall and say, one thing
I think is this could have been you. You ran against Kelly Ayotte in 2010.
You serve two terms in the House from New Hampshire before that.

I wonder if you could speak a little bit to sort of the politics and the
gun culture of New Hampshire because the state motto live free or die, guns
are kind of embedded into the states culture and its history. How does a
politician think about guns in a state like New Hampshire?

HODES: Well, I think how a politician in New Hampshire thinks about guns
has changed. I had an "A" rating from the NRA. I always took a very
libertarian. Let the states decide approach to firearms. And, when I saw
my former colleague, Gabby Giffords, gunned down, when I saw what happened
in Newtown, I know something happened inside for me in a big way.

And I came to grips with what we need to do in this country, and it`s a
constellation of things, certainly, but we could certainly start in
Congress with making sure that people who shouldn`t have guns don`t have
them. And so, I went through that kind of change, and apparently, 90
percent of the people in New Hampshire did also.

So, for a politician like Senator Ayotte to be so out of touch with the
people she represents, to be so out of touch that she lectures the
daughter of somebody gunned down at Newtown about mental health issues,
we`re just -- we`re not talking -- I mean, we can talk about mental health,
but let`s start somewhere. Let`s start with background checks.

KORNACKI: What I`m trying to figure out with -- let`s take Kelly Ayotte as
an example because I think she could, in some way, stand for other
senators, you think of like Jeff Flake in Arizona, Dean Heller in Nevada,
who are from, you know, swing states, states where they could pay a general
election price for being against the large majority of the public.

I look at Kelly Ayotte and I remember when she ran in 2010, she had a
Republican primary against sort of a Tea Party Republican who nearly beat
her in that primary. And I guess, I`m kind of wondering, if she were now -
- let`s say, she were to reevaluate -- what`s the word -- we always say
evolve, if she evolve on guns right now and change her position, is there
suddenly a serious risk for Kelly Ayotte in the Republican Party, you know,
for a conservative challenge?

Is that part of the calculation that`s holding back Republicans maybe in
these swing states?

HODES: Kelly Ayotte is no moderate. When she ran in 2010, she was good
friends with Sarah Palin. She`s a right wing Tea Party extremist. She was
then. She may have hid it better than some of the other candidates she ran
against, but she`s very, very far to the right. She has now staked out, I
think, a pretty clear position to the far right and on the right wing of
the Republican Party.

And at least if you believe the press, she`s -- she may be in some real
trouble in the Republican Party as the Republican Party comes a little bit
back to the center on all kinds of issues, whether it`s immigration or
others, and it may be that she`s going to have some real trouble in 2016.

ESTHER ARMAH, WBAI FM RADIO HOST: You know, to me, the success of the town
halls and listening to the constituents is maintaining a link between the
policy and the people. It is not disconnecting the politics from the
legacy of the kinds of trauma that those who lost family members maintained
because of their presence in the town hall.

The connection the lefty (ph) made between how are gun stores burdened, how
is that higher than that which happened to my mother who was gunned down?
Maintaining that connection is really important because, you know, the
question marks and the critique organizing fraction (ph) is that it hasn`t
necessarily succeeded.

But the history of movement is that, you know, you don`t have 140 character
revolutions no matter what the cycle of media would like to think. And so,
just this week, I was in Harlem watching a documentary called "Triggering
Wounds" made by whole group of young people personally impacted by
violence.

Doing the same thing on the streets of New York and stuffs out of Chicago,
connecting the politics, the policy to the personal and saying to the
politicians, you cannot disconnect the two. And so, I think the landscape
has moved.

And so, whether somebody like Kelly Ayotte thinks she can stand in the face
of a lie when the legislation says there is no registration, there is no
registry, and continue to repeat it, the voice of those people and maintain
that connection, I think, is what`s going to shift her. Not even other own
vested interest but she absolutely stands to lose.

JAMELLE BOUIE, THE AMERICAN PROSPECT: I`m not sure that landscape has
shifted for Republicans. I think that`s certainly the case for a lot of
different kinds of politicians and maybe in different states, but Kelly
Ayotte still has to deal with the fact that if she were to adopt a position
on gun control that runs counter to the Republican base, she`s going to
face a Tea Party challenger.

She`s going to face someone who`s going to try to knock her out and she`ll
probably lose. This is a problem you`re seeing for Republican candidates
throughout the country. I don`t think it`s a surprise that Ted Cruz of
Texas who`s become superstar among right wing conservatives also was
someone who is resolutely opposed to any sort of gun regulation, and in
fact, introduced a bill that would loosen regulation on guns.

I mean, we`re in this unusual situation where you have one party that`s
more or less responsive to public opinion and another party that has just
gone off the rails when it comes to the media in America.

ARMAH: The question then when you have that reality is, it`s the people in
between those two spaces, because as you said, Kelly Ayotte stands to lose
from the Republicans, the point of the strategy of activism, you stand to
lose even more when you go against the people because that`s the only
leverage that you have.

HODES: Well, in the state like New Hampshire, you have this huge block of
independent voters, which is really representing -- where a lot of the
people in the country are going. And, on this issue, certainly, they`ve
swung. I mean, their voice has been heard. The independent voters are
saying, we`re for universal background checks. We want something done.

(CROSSTALK)

KORNACKI: There are -- I guess the question then is -- how many states
like New Hampshire are there out there right now? We can put some numbers
to that, and I want to do that when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KORNACKI: So, Kelly Ayotte got the most attention this week because she
answered the most public reaction to her no vote on background checks, but
there was some polling affecting other senators who voted no, some other
noteworthy polling affecting other no votes on background checks.

We can put those up on the screen right now. Just look at Rob Portman from
Ohio, swing state, Republican, his approval rating. Now, again, this is
compared to last October, a lot`s happened but down nearly 20 points. Lisa
Murkowski, Alaska, little more recent here since the last February down 16.
We have Ayotte right there, there`s polling, showing her down 15 points in
their approval rating.

Then, you`ve got Mark Begich, Democrat from Alaska, up next year down 16,
Heller Nevada, he had a swing state down two since last November. I`m not
sure if that, you know, if you can read much into that, but the question,
again, that we were posing last block, you know, we can look at this in the
Senate where the target was 60 votes, and they worked that far off.

And I can look at this and I could say, maybe you can put Ayotte on there -
- maybe you can put Dean Heller on there, maybe Mark Begich is scared of
something in 2014. You get the 60 there. That`s one issue. That`s a
maybe to me.

And then, you got this whole issue of a Republican-controlled House of
representatives where you have almost none of those Republicans coming from
districts that President Obama carried last year. So, what do we think the
prospects are of universal background checks really being revisited and
enacted this year?

ZORNICK: I`m a little bullish on that because I think what would happen is
say the Senate passes something, it would necessarily have to have some
Republican support. So, then and debate all it`s focused on John Boehner.
It`s John Boehner, will you bring this to a vote? You don`t have to say
yes. Will you at least let the Congress vote on this?

Presumably, at some point, he does. And you don`t have to collect that and
get to collect, what, 16 votes from Republicans assuming many is not all
Democrats go with it. I think, given the momentum that would come from a
technically bipartisan bill coming out of the Senate, the emotion impact
behind it and being so close to getting something pass. Not only that
because you`re going to have the NRA`s power sort of in a way weakened in
the sense by the Senate passing this out.

I mean, power in Washington is about fear. People will fear the NRA less
if they are not able to hold the line in the Senate, and so, it kind of
emboldens the Republicans, any moderate Republicans in the House who might
want to get this thing pass to say, well, the Senate has done it --

KORNACKI: This is the new model that sort of emerge, right, rack up the
big number in Senate and try to isolate John Boehner and hope he`s not too
scared of a mutiny in the House. This is government in action in 2013.

HODES: Well, fear is a great motivator. And, I think that the outpouring
of sentiment that we`ve seen certainly in New Hampshire and in other places
and the poll numbers that you`ve put up on the screen are not going to be
lost on House members who are coming up in 2014. For somebody like Ayotte,
she`s got three and a half years to 2016, maybe she figures, OK, they`ll
forget about it.

But if you`re up for election in the House in 2014 and you`re looking at
those poll numbers and the Senate moves again on this and can get it
through, you`re going to have to be thinking, where am i? Do I want to
keep my job?

ARMAH: The question for the movement, the question for the grassroots
campaign is sustainability, is maintaining this kind of pressure in a cycle
when we so easily become distracted by the next great, frankly, or non-
great event and we create one out of that.

And how do you sustain that kind of pressure in order that an Ayotte still
recognizes and feels the weight, the lens, and the scrutiny of the
constituents we saw in the town halls even as we proceed closer to 2014,
because of course, what the NRA always relies on is the distraction of
something else and the dissipation of energy.

That does spell danger, certainly. But if sustainability can be maintained
and then that becomes about strategy and what organizing to action can do
around this maintaining that connection between the people and the
legislation and not letting pure power and money interrupt that process.
That`s a challenge.

BOUIE: On the other end, on the other end for Boehner, though, he only has
so much political capital, right? He can`t pull this move all the time,
because there will be revolt -- does. And so, the question is, how much
momentum can you built behind the Senate vote? I think one that just
passed 60 votes, which is at a bare minimum because of the filibuster isn`t
enough.

It`d have to be 70 or 75 votes for Boehner, really, to feel genuine
pressure to be able (ph) to say to his members, listen, it would be in our
best interest as a collective to just do this and avoid the pressure. But
if a Senate bill passes with bare minimum, I`m not sure. I`m very
skeptical that Boehner will take that step because he`s looking out for
himself as well.

ZORNICK: Well, it`s a good question for the movement to consider, too.
The gun control movement is -- you know, if you bring it back in the Senate
now, necessarily it would have to be a compromised bill. You can`t put the
same (inaudible) thing back on the table and expect them to flip-flop just
on that. So, you have to weaken it, then, you have to send it to the House
and maybe it gets weakened again.

So, the question for the gun control movement now is, you know, to have a
better bill five, ten years from now. Are you better off waiting,
hammering Republicans for two years, seeing what happens in the next
midterm, and then the next Congress bringing a stronger --

KORNACKI: But what would you -- what would you -- I`m curious, what would
you -- because it was already pretty watered down and pretty narrow to
begin with. I know they had that provision in there that was like to try
to stop the talk of the national registry. There was like an automatic 15-
year prison term. Maybe you could up that to the death penalty. I don`t
know --

(LAUGHTER)

KORNACKI: What is the further watering down of this and could be done and
they could still meaningful or is this get to the point where it just the
act of beating the NRA on something is in of itself meaningful and gives
you momentum --

BOUIE: I mean, that might be the thing that just by knocking the NRA for
the first time in decades would really give enthusiasm and energy to gun
rights activists -- or not gun rights but gun control activists to push
something through or begin working on something later on. I mean, this
will be a long battle.

It took the NRA a very long time to get to the point where politicians were
afraid of it. And it will take gun control advocates if not as long been,
perhaps, longer to do the same.

ARMAH: And no movements in marathons not sprint (ph). History has taught
us that. Look at the LBGT movement, look at what happened with the
dreamers -- all movements in marathons. I think the other challenge there
in terms of the content of the bill is to mitigate against the power of the
life because the reality is, there is no -- the registry, and that is
specifically stated in the bill.

But the currency of the lie overwhelm the truth of what was in the actual
bill. So, I think part of the work outside of the activists maintaining
that pressure is Democrats being much more willing to push harder on the
truth of the bill having the same kind of currency as the lie created,
because Kelly Ayotte is standing in front of people still saying, my
concern is this is going to become a registry when we know that she knows
that that is an absolute lie.

KORNACKI: You talk about the importance of activists keeping this on the
agenda. And I do think for gun control advocates, there`s some reason to
be optimistic here because I think there was something that struck me as
very different about the debate we`ve had over the last few months. We`re
going to talk about that after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KORNACKI: So, I was saying something struck me as a little different about
this sort of episode in the gun control, you know, saga. And that is sort
of the engagement and the very public visibility of women, in particular
mothers. A lot of this, I think, came out of Sandy Hook, but I`ve seen a
number of mothers from past, you know, shooting -- you know, shooting
tragedies. We had a mother from Virginia Tech on the show a few weeks ago.

And you know, I saw an ad, there was an ad that`s being run, a radio ad in
New Hampshire clearly aimed at women, you know, going after Kelly Ayotte
for voting against background checks. What was interesting is the NRA has
picked up on this. It is now trying to win back some of these -- some
women, some mothers out there. And this is an ad they were running about
Kelly Ayotte defending her in New Hampshire this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Kelly Ayotte is not just a senator, she`s also a mom
who cares about protecting our kids. She knows the only way to prevent
tragedies like Sandy Hook is to fix our broken mental health system.
That`s why Kelly Ayotte brought Republicans and Democrats together on a
bipartisan solution and it`s why Kelly had the courage to oppose misguided
gun control laws that would not have prevented Sandy Hook.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KORNACKI: So, fix the mental health system don`t keep guns out of
anybody`s hands, but it does strike me, look, the NRA sort of sees a clear
threat here in terms of the engagement of mothers on this issue and it`s
trying to respond. It strikes me. Maybe that`s something a little
different this time. If mothers are mobilized, that`s a group that gets
attention.

HODES: You know, that`s especially true in New Hampshire. We have an all-
female federal delegation. Women voters are a powerful force in New
Hampshire. You can really look to the voter women to see why people who
got elected in 2012, who got kicked out in 2010, it was around women`s
reproductive rights, so as big wave (ph) in the other direction. So, in
New Hampshire, women really matter.

ARMAH: I just want to add as well that I think this is a crossroads
movement thinking about women, not has been (ph) mobilized against guns
particularly in urban communities all over the country for a long time but
minus the national attention that Sandy Hook received.

So, in terms of sustainability and how does the movement maintain the
pressure, this could be a really important movement to connect the dots
between mothers and also kids who are losing folks in the urban communities
together because what you have had is the privileging of location in terms
of this should never happen in an area like this, like language around
Sandy Hook.

And the kind of -- the absence of national outrage at the vast majority of
killings which is so often done on the streets of south side of Chicago, in
New York, in Detroit, in L.A. But what you do right now is have a moment
when you connect those spaces. Bring the young people who`ve lost so many
extraordinary friends.

Like I said, I was watching a documentary called "Triggering Wounds." The
young man who made the film, in the two years it took him to make the film
lost eight friends to gun violence. They are a mobilized focused group who
are putting down guns and picking up cameras. And so, that capital should
also be harnessed and marginalized.

And for too long, they have been outsiders because this country, in too
many ways, practices the policy of the privileging of one set of lives
versus another set of lives. But in this gun safety legislation moment is
an opportunity to connect those spaces.

So, mothers have been organizing for a minute, but to marry those spaces,
it`s to potentially create the kind of movement that cannot be -- it
doesn`t have the investment in political capital and power and money that
the NRA does, all the politicians and they just don`t care. They`re like
tunnel vision, focused, let`s do something more than accept this rhetoric
of paralysis and, quote/unquote, "mental health."

KORNACKI: Well, I can say, it`s -- at the beginning, it really comes down,
I think, to just changing incentives in the political system and that`s
why, I think, 2014 -- gun sets up so critically because if we leave that
election and the message that politicians have taken is, you know what,
there`s also a price to be paid if I vote against gun control, that`d be a
major change from what`s define politics for last generation.

Anyway, I want to thank former Democratic congressman, New Hampshire, Paul
Hodes, Esther Armah from New York`s WBIA radio, and George Zornick at "The
Nation."

What happens when one party rules a state for Decades? That`s next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(INAUDIBLE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KORNACKI: Do you remember this commercial? Come on -- I think you do.
It`s the famous Big Brother ad from when a new company called Apple
launched this thing called the Macintosh personal computer. The ad was a
pretty big deal, actually. Apple spent a fortune on it. They got a famous
director to make it, Ridley Scott (ph). They even screened it in movie
theaters. It actually only aired on television once, though, but just
about the whole country saw it, because it happened to air during the Super
Bowl.

Really, it was the ad that made Super Bowl commercials a thing. That Super
Bowl, the Super Bowl when tens of millions of Americans watched the Big
Brother ad and collectively asked, what was that? It took place in January
of 1984. It was back when the Raiders were in Los Angeles and back when
the raiders were actually good.

They crushed the Red Skins in the Super Bowl that year, 38-9. Marcus Allen
was the MVP. Barry Manilow sang the national anthem. So, yes, that was a
long time ago. And if you`re wondering what it`s got to do with today,
well, that was the same month, January 1984, that Massachusetts
congressman, Ed Markey, first started running for the U.S. Senate.

Markey was a young up and comer back then, 37 years old, in his fourth term
in Congress. Base state`s freshman senator, Paul Tsongas, maybe you
remember him, he`d just been diagnosed with lymphoma and he wasn`t running
for election in 1984.

So, Markey saw a chance to move up, be jumped in the race, and so did a lot
of other Democrats, which is why a couple of months later, when Paul showed
him way behind the two frontrunners, one of them was another young
congressman named Jim Shannon, the other, you might have heard of, he was
the ambitious lieutenant governor named John Kerry. Few months after that,
Markey decided it was better to stick to his safe Congressional seat.

So, he dropped out and he waited for another day and waited and waited and
waited a little more until, finally, three decades later, just last
December, Kerry, who`s now almost 70 years old, was picked for secretary of
state and gave up his Senate seat. This time, Markey didn`t have much
trouble with Democratic primary which he won this last Tuesday by 16
points.

And so now, all he has to do, all the standing in the way of Ed Markey and
his three-decade dream is to be his Republican opponent, Gabriel Gomez, in
the June special election. And that`s just special election that`s playing
out in one of the bluest states in America, which is a state where even the
favorite son, Republican, last year couldn`t correct (ph) 40 percent in the
presidential race.

Democrats hope this race will be a slam dunk and it should be. But hey,
when you`re talking about a state where only 13 percent of the Republicans
-- voters are republicans, every election is supposed to be a slam dunk for
Democrats. And yet, every once in a while, we`ll get moments like Bill
Weld, winning the governor`s race in 1990 and again in 1994, Paul Cellucci
winning in 1998, and Mitt Romney in 2002.

And also, there was that guy with a pick-up truck who talked about the
people seat (ph) in 2010. This is the kind of thing that happens in states
where one party runs everything. Every so often, there`s something in the
air or something about a particular candidate that for some reason triggers
a popular revolt against the idea of one party rule.

When weld won, he did it by playing up his Democratic opponents`
connections to Billy Bulger. That was Whitey`s brother. He was the mega
powerful president of the state Senate. Romney did it a decade later by
railing against what he called the Gang of Three, they were insiders,
Democratic insiders, who supposedly ran the state. Now, there`s Ed
Markey`s opponent, Gabriel Gomez, who is running against Markey`s
longevity.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GABRIEL GOMEZ, (R) SENATE CANDIDATE: I want to take you back in time. The
year was 1976, 37 years ago. Gerald Ford was president. Me, I was just
playing little league baseball. And that was when Ed Markey first got
elected to Congress.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KORNACKI: Now, that may seem like a trivial attack and not necessarily a
very well-delivered one. But I wouldn`t be too quit to dismiss its
potency. Thirty-seven years is a long time. As best I can tell, no one
has ever served in the House that long and then gone on to win a Senate
seat. If you follow politics closely, you know Ed Markey is a leading
voice on environmental and consumer (ph) in Washington.

But if you`re a more casual voter in Massachusetts, that may not be what
you think of when you see him. He`s been in Washington since the 1970s.
He has a house in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He bears some of the markers of
entrenchment and insiderdom that can trigger those revolts that, sometimes,
happen in Massachusetts. And there were hints of it in this week`s
primary.

You see all those greens if he`s in towns, those are the ones that Ed
Markey lost this week. Those are blue collar working class areas. The
voters there tend to be Democrats, but they can be more on the
conservative side. Democrats who are willing to turn on their party,
Democrats, in fact, who have turned on their party. They are the Democrats
who helped elect Scott Brown in 2006. Look, the same places that Markey
lost in this week`s primary are the ones that Brown carried when he beat
Martha Coakley.

And look at this, the first new poll since the primary released just
yesterday afternoon by PPP, Markey`s lead is only four points, 44-40. I`m
not saying Democrats should panic. They shouldn`t. There were some
special circumstances in that Brown-Coakley race that aren`t there now.
There`s a candidate, as you know, Gomez just isn`t in Brown`s league, at
least, not yet.

If you made me bet, I`d still put all of my money on Ed Markey, but think
of the Markey candidacy as a by part of one-party rule. When every
officeholder in the state belongs to the same party, that party`s bench
tends to freeze in place. And then, when you finally get an opening, that
party`s best bet ends up being someone who was first elected to Congress
when Barney Miller was still on the air.

Democrats are betting that voters in Massachusetts won`t be too bothered by
that and it`s probably a good bet, but this week`s poll numbers are a stark
reminder, it`s still a gamble.

All right. President Obama said some things this week that may have been a
lot more revealing about his presidency and our politics than most people
realize. We`ll talk about it next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KORNACKI: In two major statements this past week, Barack Obama offered
sweeping statements of the state of his presidency and the political
paralysis that has halted some of his biggest legislative priorities now
100 days into a second term. First, there was last Saturday when the
president spoke at the Annual White House correspondents` dinner.

What grabbed the headlines, of course, were his jokes, which were very
funny (INAUDIBLE) Conan`s probably. But what got much less attention was
the message he closed with a high minded exportation (ph) to the political
class in the media to reach for a (INAUDIBLE) purpose.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Those of us in the room
tonight, we are incredibly lucky. And the fact is, we can do better. All
of us. Those of us in public office, those of us in the press, those who
produce entertainment for our kids, those with power, those with influence,
all of us, including myself, we can strive to value those things that I
suspect led most of us to do the work that we do in the first place,
because we believed in something that was true.

And we believed in service and the idea that we can have a lasting,
positive impact on the lives of the people around us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KORNACKI: So, that part of the speech, which went pretty much unnoticed
caught the attention of "National Journal" editorial director, Ron
Fournier, who wrote on Monday, quote, "It may stand as one of the best
rhetorical moments of Obama`s presidency, a clearheaded indictment of four
national institutions, the media, the entertainment industry, big business,
and the political system coupled by a prescription for revival."

But by Tuesday, Obama was dragged down again into the mire of Washington
politics. The press conference to mark the first hundred days of his
second term, Obama was asked whether he still had the juice to get his
agenda through Congress where Republicans had killed his proposals on such
major issues as gun control and the budget.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: You seem to suggest that somehow these folks over there had no
responsibilities, and that my job is to somehow get them to behave. That`s
their job. They`re elected, members of Congress are elected in order to do
what`s right for their constituencies and for the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KORNACKI: All right. Here at the table, we have Jamelle Bouie of the
"American Prospect," he`s still with us. Joining us are Anna Holmes,
founder of the women`s blog, Jezebel.com, Noreen Malone, staff writer with
the "New Republic, and Monica Potts, she`s a senior writer at the "American
Prospect."

It`s all "American Prospect," I`m surrounded here. So, the -- I guess,
there`s a disclaimer on the clip we played from the correspondent`s dinner
last week. I know it`s sort of customary, you know, the people who go to
those things and president who speak at them take a lot of, you know,
chiding for being at this really clubby, insider thing. So, there`s always
that moment where they sort of have to step back and speak about, you know,
something grander, something more purposeful.

So, in a way that was kind of an obligatory part of Obama`s speech, but I
guess, when you contrast that with the press conference this week, it
really seemed to me to be the contrast between the Obama who presented
himself to the country in 2004 with the famous convention speech, the Obama
who inspired so many people in 2008, and sort of the realities of modern,
you know, partisan polarized Washington national politics that he`s just
kind of butted up against, you know, for more than four years now where,
you know, he still is this sort of inspiring guy.

He still can be this inspiring guy. And, he`s almost saying at that press
conference, what do you want me to do?

BOUIE: I think -- I think the two things actually fit together quite well,
right? Because part of the problem of the last four years is that the
political press, I think, hasn`t done a great job of quite identifying why
things aren`t happening. Ron Fournier in a column later that week, I
think, even said, you know, what you need to do, Obama, is basically going
to knock some heads together. They got to get those Republicans -- you`ve
got to beat them. And there doesn`t seem to be any real push from many
reporters at all to simply say, Republicans have agency.

They have their own agendas. They have their own reasons for doing things.
And, they should be held responsible, too, for when they don`t act. And I
think Obama, in his own way, at the correspondent`s dinner, was trying to
say, listen, I`m not the only person in government. There are these --
there`s this entire other political party, this entire other institution of
government.

You should cover them more and you should pay more attention -- not pay
more attention but also acknowledge that they, themselves, have agency.

KORNACKI: Yes. I guess what you`re talking about is it`s known -- a lot
of people refer to it as the Green Lantern theory of the presidency. This
is the -- Ron Fournier has managed (ph) this a lot and Maureen Dowd
famously does where basically is the president`s the leader. We`re viewed
the president as the sort of singular all-powerful figure.

And then, if the Washington is not working, it`s automatically the
president`s fault. It did strike me this week the number of people in the
media. Jamelle, you heard about a lot of other people wrote about exactly
what you just said.

And I wonder if maybe we`re seeing a bit of reassessment among media and
opinion-shapers in this country of exactly what the presidency is and maybe
it isn`t and maybe we`re starting to get to a place where there`s more
realistic understanding that, hey, we live in a system where Congress is
pretty powerful. And if Congress is controlled by the other party and the
parties are so polarized right now, how much is really possible?

MONICA POTTS, THE AMERICAN PROSPECT: I think one of the problems that the
press faces is that a lot of what`s happening is actually hard to explain.

The rules of Congress are arcane and uninteresting. And so, when you`re
talking about people on a news cycle every day where they have to have
stories that are actually exciting and interesting to normal people, I
think that`s actually a real challenge. And I think that`s why you see
them slipping into kind of a horse race or leadership kind of story.

NOREEN MALONE, THE NEW REPUBLIC: And it`s a lot easier to just pick one
person, which is why you have the executive office so you can have one
person who is, you know, not a figure head but someone on whom hopes can
rest. And it`s a lot harder to pinpoint which senators are not doing what
they should be doing, which senators are not playing nicely.

ANNA HOLMES, JEZEBEL.COM: Yes. When telling a story, you know, you
usually want to have a couple of lead characters. In this case, Obama is
considered to be the lead character where is Congress is kind of this
nebulous entity. I think it might be more effective for media -- for the
media, for the White House, to explain more of Congress` intransience if
they named names more often, instead of using (ph) the word Congress.

I`m not sure that really means that much to the American people. I mean,
they understand what Congress is, but naming real names, Mitch McConnell,
John Boehner, et cetera.

KORNACKI: But even when you start talking about the leaders, I mean, what
strikes me about John Boehner over the last, you know, couple of years is
he is sort of, to me, uniquely unpowerful speaker. And that he`s got the
title. He`s got everything, you know, they give him a chauffeur, I`m sure,
whatever.

All the perks that come along with the job, but we were talking about this
in the gun segment when it comes to actually doing what the Green Lantern
people ask Obama to do, you know, cracking heads together and saying, you
guys are going to do this. He can`t do that to his own Republican
conference these day,s but he`s led by them much more than he leads them.

So, there`s this whole other wrinkle, too, which is probably difficult to
explain, too. But I want to get into -- I sort of teased the Maureen Dowd
thing, and there was an informal back and forth between the president and
Maureen Dowd. It makes me laugh, so I want to share it with you. That`s
after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Of course, everybody has got plenty of advice. Maureen Dowd said,
I could solve all my problems if I were just more like Michael Douglas in
"The American President." And I know Michael is here tonight. Michael,
what`s your secret, man?

(LAUGHTER)

OBAMA: Could it be that you were an actor in an Aaron Sorkin liberal
fantasy?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KORNACKI: OK. That`s the president at the correspondents` dinner last
week. And I am now going to read what amounted to Maureen Dowd`s response.
I`m going to try to do this with a straight face. "How can the president
star in a White House correspondents` association dinner satirical film
pretending to be Daniel Day-Lewis playing Barack Obama in Steven
Spielberg`s movie "Obama" and not have absorbed the lessons on Lincoln?

So, the lessons of Lincoln, we`re going to invade the south, drive members
of our own party. We`re going to -- the parallel she`s drawing there, you
know, I can`t tell which one I -- annoys me more, there`s the Obama should
learn from Lincoln, Obama should learn from LBJ. Make Lincoln, make LBJ
deal with the partisan polarization that Obama is dealing with now and see
if they can get a grand bargain.

BOUIE: I think the lesson of Lincoln is actually the exact opposite of
what Dowd thinks it is. I mean, look at the scenario presented for
Lincoln. There`s a war. He has claimed tons of executive power. His
party controls both chambers of Congress by huge margins and he still
struggles to pass a bill that`s broadly popular, pretty popular with this
party.

Like, that is a case study in institutional constraints. And Lincoln was
lucky enough, I think, to be able to get past them, but those are the sort
of things that foil presidents all the time. Even LBJ. Everyone forgets
that LBJ, the Democratic Party had huge majorities in both chambers of
Congress.

After Democrats lost seats in the 1964 -- 1966 elections -- eventually, I
was going to hit the right number.

(LAUGHTER)

BOUIE: LBJ`s -- just ran into a wall. And, I think, not enough people
want to recognize in which these presidential figures were themselves
achievement a product of the fact that their party controlled Congress.

MALONE: To me what the Dowd column really highlights more is how obsessed
we`re getting with the narrative. Like, she can`t -- you know, this is
maybe a particular Maureen Dowd tick, but she`s more obsessed with finding
the right metaphor than actually figuring out the problem, which is
actually what I think Obama was getting out in the sort of heartfelt end of
his White House correspondents (INAUDIBLE) you know, maybe that`s what he
meant when he was sort of indicting the media and when he was getting out
problems with big business.

He was alluding to the way that our obsession with the narrative can get in
the way of the actual process.

KORNACKI: And it creates this -- I think, as a (INAUDIBLE) this week where
we treat the presidency the way Maureen Dowd did, not to pick on Maureen
Dowd, lots of people treat the presidency, it creates expectations. It
creates unreasonable expectations. And it leads people to sort of invest
so much hope and so much energy in the success of the individual president
they`re electing. You probably saw a lot of that in the movement to elect
Obama in 2008.

And then, when the president sort of comes up against what Obama has come
up against, the result is disappointment and maybe disillusionment with the
system. As recline (ph) to, maybe that`s -- that becomes a permanent cycle
at certain point where, you know, George W. Bush is going to change the
culture of Washington, doesn`t change the culture of Washington.

Barack Obama comes in and that it`s wait a minute, hasn`t -- not nearly as
much as we thought.

Anyway, we`re talking about all of this polarization, though. The
president this week, also, talked a little bit about how he might get
around that polarization and still get something big done. He used a
phrase that got a lot of attention this week. We`re going to talk about
that and dissect it a little bit after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KORNACKI: Hello from New York. I`m Steve Kornacki here with Jamelle Bouie
of "The American Prospect ," Anna Holmes with Jezebel.com,Noreen Malone of
"The New Republic," and Monica Potts, also from "The American Prospect."

So, we were talking last hour about, basically, the reality of the partisan
grid lock is the term in Washington and how that is sort of stalled Obama`s
agenda, being up against a Republican Congress, which basically decided
it`s in our (ph) best interest not to work with him on anything , not to
negotiate with him on anything, not to negotiate with him or anything, and
if we don`t do that, he can`t pass anything. And, therefore, not get any
wins -- anything that will be described as a win.

So, with that in mind, the president this week at his press conference
talked about a little bit about that and described how he thinks he might
be able to get around it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Their base thinks compromise
with me is somehow a betrayal. They`re worried about primaries. And I
understand all that. And we`re going to try to do everything we can to
create a permission structure for them to be able to do what`s going to be
best for the country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KORNACKI: OK. That phrase "a permission structure" -- permission
structure to allow Republicans to do what`s best for the country -- got a
lot of attention this week. I`ve seen a lot of interpretations of it. The
Republicans have had some very cynical ones, this is something about big
government and permission, I don`t know.

But what does it mean? Do we know?

HOLMES: Incentive? I mean, it`s a kind of difficult phrase and doesn`t
mean much to me and I assume the average American. So I find it a bit
confusing. I understand what he means by it but I don`t think it`s
particularly compelling way to get his point across. I think he should
just use the word incentive.

BOUIE: I think what he`s trying to describe is it means a way for
Republicans to be able to vote as they feel or vote as they think would be
best and not worry about a primary. And that doesn`t have to mean they
have to support the president`s agenda in every circumstance or even most
circumstances.

But, you know, come on, right now, the mere act of Barack Obama signing a
piece of legislation means Republicans can`t vote for it, which is -- I
don`t -- I don`t know how you run a government like that. I mean, someone
can explain that. But --

KORNACKI: Well, Brian Boller (ph) from "TMP" wrote about this week. His
read from what permission structure meant was basically it had to do with
grand bargain. You know, Obama is pursuing this balanced deal with
Republicans where, you know, more tax revenue for entitlement cuts, that
sort of thing.

He`s saying basically, that the idea here is to get Republican and
Democratic senators talking. That`s what these dinners are all about that
Obama has been hosting to get reasonable seeming Republicans and Democratic
senators talking and to basically let them do the work, to let them
negotiate it and to keep as far away from it as he himself, Obama, can, so
that they strike a deal. It doesn`t have Obama`s fingerprints over it and
Republicans, I guess, then have permission to side with the Republicans who
negotiated with it, which I guess we`re talking about the Green Lantern
theory and power of presidency. This was sort of be a complete opposite of
that, the less the president does, the more he has a chance of enacting
something.

POTTS: I think that`s right because to the Republican base, Obama is just
so toxic, so just the fact of him supporting anything would really rile
them up. At the same time, I`m a little skeptical of this idea that
Republican and Democratic Congress people just need to get together.

The Tea Party caucus is just so ideological, and they know how Washington
used to work and they know there were back room deals and camaraderie.
They`re not interested in doing that. They`re interested in following what
they believe to be their ideals and what`s best for the country, which is
not allowing government to work. I think that`s really where the problem
going to rest.

MALONE: Well, if you look at the phrase "permission structure," it just
implies you have no power, right? Why would you want -- and there`s an
article in "The Times" today saying that there are 13 senators who aren`t
going to run for re-election. And people aren`t really stepping up to fill
those jobs. Those aren`t attractive jobs anymore. If you just, like, game
it out, why would you want a job where you aren`t able -- not only do you
not have power, you aren`t able to get done what you to want get done for
your constituents.

KORNACKI: I read that article as Republicans are scared if they get in
these races, you know, if it`s the party leadership that`s enticing them
in. Like in Iowa, there`s this race where Tom Harkin is retiring, if they
get in the race and the party leaders entice them, the party leaders can`t
deliver anymore because we now live in the era where Christine O`Donnell
beats a, you know, 20-term congressman, in primary where Sharron Angle wins
in Nevada and all those things.

We have a chart that I think kind of -- I think puts the partisan
polarization in perspective. This is the House. Now, if you take a look
at this. This breaks down the Democratic and Republican members according
to, you know, did their party`s presidential candidate carry the district
they were elected in. You see that 217 of the Republican members of the
House, which is one short of majority, 218 is the magic number, 217 of them
come from districts that Mitt Romney carried.

So that just screams to me, there`s your problem right there, because if
President Obama is pursuing any kind of a deal with Republicans, in 217 of
the 218 districts that make up a majority, that`s not the majority position
of the voters.

BOUIE: Right. There`s no reason for those Congress people to support
President Obama`s agenda, and they don`t. I can`t -- I can`t really blame
them. I keep on coming to the fact that maybe what`s needed to make
Washington work is a full-scale overhaul of the rules.

I think I`m like a lot of liberals, I really like the Constitution.

(LAUGHTER)

BOUIE: All right, OK.

(CROSSTALK)

BOUIE: What I mean is there`s often a lot of talk about how there are
parts of the Constitution that are completely antiquated and we need to get
rid of -- and I`m not sure that`s the case. I think it more or less works
OK. But there are particular norms and rules within the institutions that
are extra constitutional that probably need changing and probably need
updating for a more modern era.

And there`s just no -- I mean, there is the conversation about filibuster
forum and that sort of slowed down. It pops up every once in a while but
there probably needs to be more than just filibuster reform to get this --
to get things moving smoothly begin. I do not mean to impugn liberals.

MALONE: Jamelle, can you look at other more recent -- I mean, isn`t the
iNFLux of huge money which comes from, you know, recent Supreme Court
decisions, hasn`t that had just as much of an impact? And, you know, the
Constitution has had the same structure for however many years and that`s
what`s new, you know?

KORNACKI: Right.

MALONE: Maybe that`s a place to look.

BOUIE: I think money plays a part but I think it plays a part in sort of
the permission structure, the incentives of individual lawmakers, but not
all of them. I`m sort of -- I`m also a little skeptical that money is the
driving thing because these trends -- these trends for polarization started
before the era of big money in politics. It`s sort of a long -- a long-
term thing that`s happening that we as a country have not really tried to
deal with or even understand what it`s doing to our politics.

POTTS: Well, we also have other really broad scale changes in society. We
have an increasingly urban society. We have a society that`s becoming
blacker and browner as everyone noted after 2012.

And so, this is really a situation in which the Republican Party is still
the party of a constituency that really isn`t as powerful or as there as it
was. It`s rural, white, older voters. And so, they really have to decide
whether they`re going to continue to be that party or be a party that can
compete on a national level.

KORNACKI: Well, and it seems to me like there`s an even more fundamental
decision that needs to be made by Republicans. Are they interested in
governing? And I think what it means, we were talking about this a little
bit in the break, but I think it`s a good discussion to have.

If you think back to when we had a similar situation working the other way,
when George W. Bush first became president in 2001 and Democrats a few
months later were able to get control of the Senate, with (INAUDIBLE),
Democrats were willing to cooperate. They still opposed George W. Bush.
There were still a lot of heated things said about George W. Bush.

But you got No Child Left Behind. For better or worse, you got No Child
Left Behind. You had Democrats who cooperated with him on the tax cuts.
You had Democrats who -- Democrats had sort of put together an agenda that
they were interested in implementing.

And so, if you have a president of the other party who`s willing to extend
a -- saying, you know, I`m willing to maybe compromise with you on
education issue you care about, Democrats are willing to work with it.

If you look on the other side, Republicans seem to be just operating with a
pure basic political calculation here. If we don`t do anything, he can`t
accomplish anything and then we can blame him for accomplishing nothing.
And there doesn`t seem to be any room there for a policy agenda.

HOLMES: What do you think the difference is between then and now? Is it a
temperament issue? Isn`t it just that Republicans think and feel that much
differently than Democrats?

KORNACKI: To me, it`s like, you can look back to the Clinton presidency
and you can almost find the same thing we have now in terms of Republicans
just dug in their heels. In 1993 and `94, Democrats had overwhelming
majority but Republicans dug in their heels. There were a few issues where
they had incentives to work with Bill Clinton. You had like welfare reform
come about in the same way that I think Republicans today maybe have
immigration reform.

I guess what I`m struggling to see is besides immigration reform, where is
the policy agenda from Republicans?

BOUIE: It`s not just that they don`t to want work with Obama, it`s what do
they want to do? Like what does the Republican Party really want to do
with its power? And it`s not clear what that is. If there`s nothing they
want to do, then it`s hard for the president to able to extend olive
branches.

And if there`s nothing you want to do and they hate the president, it`s
hard to see how anything gets done. This is actually a question I have,
too, and I don`t really have an answer is. I don`t want to psychoanalyze
individual Republicans, but at a certain point, you just have to -- have
you to struggle to figure out what`s going on.

Like why -- why don`t they want to make movement on anything at all? Is it
because of Obama in particular? Is it because, you know, you can make a
lot of money on the right hawking your opposition to things? Again, look
at Ted Cruz who has made himself into a star by doing exactly this. He`s
been there for four months. Yes, I don`t know.

POTTS: Well, I think it`s also a question you can ask of Democrats, too.
It`s like, is there anything they`re willing to sort of put on hold for
political gamesmanship purposes, right? We saw it the air traffic
controllers bill to get rid of the impacts of that, the sequester, I`m
sorry, on that.

So, you know, they could have held out and said, no, we have to deal with
the whole sequester before we deal with this air traffic controller issue
that`s impacting the entire country and that people feel and see, but they
actually do care that people feel and saw that. And they do care that hurt
businesses and hurt people.

So, they cared about governing and maybe lost a political chip.

KORNACKI: All right. I want to thank Jamelle Bouie of "The American
Prospect," Anna Holmes with Jezebel.com, Noreen Malone of "The New
Republic," and Monica Potts from "The American Prospect".

Jason Collins became the first active player in a major sport to come out
of the closet this week. We`ll talk to one of the few people in the world
who knows what that experience is like, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KORNACKI: American culture changed on Monday and it changed with 12 simple
words -- I`m a 34-year-old NBA center. I`m black. And I`m gay. Those
were the first words of a "Sports Illustrated" cover story written by Jason
Collins, a 12-year NBA veteran, most recently with the Washington Wizards.

Now, for the first time ever, there`s an openly gay athlete in one of the
four major pro sports leagues. Not, of course, that Collins is the first
gay man to play a professional team sport. It`s been almost four decades
since the now defunct "Washington Evening Star" ran a story there were
several prominent gay players in the NFL -- in the closet, of course.

And then a retired running back named Dave Kopay came out. And that was in
1975. Two years later, Kopay wrote a book and talked about it with
sportswriter Dick Schaap on the "Today" show.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DICK SCHAAP, SPORTSWRITER: Let`s talk about teammates, generally speaking,
and specifically, how did they react?

DAVID KOPAY, FORMER NFL PLAYER: Well, they don`t react in a public sense.
They have in a private sense. And it`s been a very quiet kind of support.
It`s like, so what? Hopefully, that`s what it should be, like, so what?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KORNACKI: "So what?" was largely the reaction from Kopay`s fellow gay
players in major team sports. For decades after his announcement, not of
them publicly joined him.

But one who did not remain silent was John Amaechi, who in 2007 became the
first male professional basketball player to reveal he`s gay. Amaechi had
retired four years earlier, but there was still a strong reaction in the
sports world.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN AMAECHI, FORMER NBAPLAYER: I knew that this would happen. I knew
that there will be some fuss. I didn`t quite realize there`d be the
magnitude of fuss, but at the same time, the debate has been for the most
part in life, the one it hasn`t been, it`s been informative.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KORNACKI: Amaechi has a few things in common with Jason Collins. Like
Collins, he was a center, and also a journeyman playing for multiple for
multiple teams, always with the knowledge that this next contract could be
his last. And like Collins, Amaechi spent plenty of time hiding who he
really was from his teammates and from the fans who cheered his team on
every night.

So, joining us now is a man who knows better than anyone on the planet what
life has been like for Jason Collins, and that is John Amaechi.

Welcome and thanks for -- I know you flew over from England for this. We
really appreciate it. We did really have to search the globe to find you.

But -- so, you`ve been quoted all over the place this week. But I guess
one thing that jumped out of me was you actually had been talking to Jason
Collins before this story came out for a few weeks.

AMAECHI: Yes. He contacted me about -- I`ve known about him for some
time. I`ve known his family for some time. I played with his brother in
Utah. But about a month ago, he got in touch. I got a call out of the
blue. I`m still wondering how people get my number, but asking -- not
really for advice. I think people have overblown the idea that I`m some
kind of wise Yoder (ph) on this.

It`s simply reflections from someone who`s been on what to expect, how to
steel himself and make sure that he does the maximum -- this I think is
key, he wanted to do the maximum amount of good right off the bat and make
sure that his impact was positive.

KORNACKI: And so, what was the advice -- or not advice, but to do the
maximum amount of good. What --

AMAECHI: Really, I told him -- I wanted to hear his story. I said, you
tell me what you`re going to tell everybody. And he recounted his story,
what he planned on saying. I said, this is going to have an amazing
impact. Young people especially are going to look at this and be
transformed by your words.

It`s absolutely what happened. I mean, I gave -- I sent him a text the
other day. It can`t have be six hours after he made the announcement,
after the article was online. And I sent him a text because I started
getting e-mails, Facebook messages, Twitter messages from young people from
all over, literally from a young man in Doha, from a group of people from
Eastern Europe, as well as from, obviously, North America saying they felt
safer and more hopeful because of what Jason had done.

And I thought he needed to know that he was already having the kind of
impact that he`d hope.

KORNACKI: And what you make of a reaction. You came out I think six years
ago. Your playing career ended 2003, so basically a decade ago. If you
had revealed this, say, in 2003 versus 2013, do you think it would have
been a radically different reaction?

AMAECHI: I think so. I`m heartened by the changes I`ve seen. So, the
fact that the response from players has been so positive, and not
contrived, either. The tweets that I`ve seen from players don`t look like,
oh, dear, I better check with my PR agent and say something. They actually
look like they`re from the heart. And I believe that to be true.

I spoke to David Stern about three or four days ago before Jason came out
officially about another player. But they were talking about -- he was
talking about his absolute support for this, and not for a warm and fuzzy
reasons. He wants the best league in the world. He wants the best
athletes in the world. He knows the best athletes in the world can only
perform at their peak if they feel safe, secure, supported and if they
don`t have to hide.

So, that`s why he`s interested in this quality issue on the whole.

KORNACKI: And you`ve been quoted this week saying you`ve been aware of
them and you`ve talked to other players who are sort in Jason Collins`
situation. I mean, do you expect now sort of the flood gates are going to
open, or are we going to see more of this soon?

AMAECHI: Yes, the flood gate question is one I struggle with because Jason
is just one part of this equation. The NBA and what I think is their warm
and positive response is just one part of the equation, especially with the
back drop of America. There was a difference for me when I could run away
home to England where we don`t have laws that criminalize gay people, where
we`re about to have marriage equity in total fullness.

The idea that Jason alone is going to lead this is part of it. I think he
sits on the crest of a wave of public opinion. I think when you look at
the pulse, it`s very clear that the kind of inequality, the kind of
prejudice against the LBGT community that`s been happening is seen more and
more as unacceptable.

So, he`s a positive be vanguard but there are legislative hurdles we need
to overcome as well.

KORNACKI: The other piece of this is the reaction has been, like you say,
overwhelmingly positive this week. He`s 34 years old. He`s a journeyman.

His statistics -- he`s not going to be in the Hall of Fame, we can say, at
least not for his stats on the playing floor.

And now the question is, will a team signed him for next year? And you got
the basic basketball consideration, I guess somebody of his profile, if you
take this issue, aside from it, it`s probably iffy whether he`d be signed
again.

How important do you think it is to this being seen as successful that he`d
get signed somewhere (ph)?

AMAECHI: I think -- this is key, I think, exactly your language. To be
seen as successful, I think some of the media require him to be re-signed.
I think he will be resigned, and not for any reasons of his sexuality. The
biggest challenged to him being resigned is not his sexuality being known
now. It`s 20 years of wear and tear on his body. It`s the fact that there
are 18-year-old Croatians who take the NBA minimum and to take his spot.
That`s the real challenge.

But the fact is he does bring other things to the table. Like he`s telling
people that if we were having this conversation a week ago before the news
was known, he has qualities that we surely wish our athletes had. He`s
dedicated and passionate about his sport. He works hard, always. He
brings it every day.

At the same time, he`s a settling influence. If you ask his teammates, a
settling influence in the locker room. These are not inconsiderable
qualities for a basketball player. If you know about how teams are
successful. If you want to look and dissect the Lakers, outside of their
injuries and the reason that team never really came together and stop being
fragmented, people like Jason Collins help with that.

I believe he`ll be re-signed for those reasons.

KORNACKI: I want to ask you about the sort of the culture of sports and
the culture of basketball because a big issue in sports in the last few
months has been the story of this ex-coach now at Rutgers, Mike Rice, who
was fired when these videotapes of practices were shown where he was
throwing basketballs at players, saying all sorts of nasty things.

One of the aspect of the video was he was shouting homophobic slurs at his
players. And if you look at the video, nobody seems to be, you know, taken
aback by that. It seems to be a regular occurrence.

Is that something, in your experience playing, were you exposed to that a
lot? And I wondered how you responded to that. Obviously, no one knew
about your situation.

Was it something that you really felt, or did you just kind of go off your
shoulders because you hear it all the time?

AMAECHI: There is an element -- I don`t think people realize quite how
fully the language of misogyny, the language of homophobia is the language
of sports. If you watch the way sports are portrayed, even when it`s not
the words that we cannot publish, the language around women, the language
around gay people is always derisive.

For me, personally, I always felt it was a death by 1,000 cuts. Each
individual insult in of itself was nothing. But at the end of the day, I
wondered sometimes why I felt so exhausted after practice.

I was in great shape. It wasn`t the fact that practice had been that
onerous. It was just listening to those words again and again and again
weighed on you. It meant that you constantly had to reserve bits of energy
that should have been available for last-second layups, boxing out, the
minutia of basketball, but that energy itself had to be passed off to
protect your ego against these constant assaults. And that`s another
reason why it`s important to create these atmospheres.

It`s not for politically correct reasons. It`s because if you have players
on your team, you`re going to be impacted by those words and have to pass
off resources. That`s not available for going to the playoffs, and you
need that.

KORNACKI: All right. I want to bring in some other folks, including a
black state legislature who just came out on the floor of the state Senate,
right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KORNACKI: We`re talking about the Jason Collins story this week, with Mary
Curtis. She`s a contributor to "The Washington Post" "She the People"
blog. Democratic State Senator Kelvin Atkinson of Nevada, who just came
out last month on the state Senate floor during a debate on gay marriage.
Former NBA player John Amaechi, and Mike Pesca, sports reporter at NPR.

And Kelvin, by the way, I said Nevada, I also get flack from people from
saying Nevada. So, I`m going to say Nevada from here on in.

I guess I want to lead it off by playing some sound from President Obama
this week who was asked about Jason Collins and had this to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: I`ll say something about Jason Collin. I had a chance to talk to
him yesterday. He seems like a terrific young man. And I told him I
couldn`t be prouder.

You know, one of the extraordinary measures of progress that we`ve seen in
this country has been the recognition that the LGBT community deserves full
equality. Not just partial equality. Not just tolerance, but a
recognition that they`re fully a part of the American family.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KORNACKI: So, obviously, it`s great to see the president, you know, being
supportive of him like that. But a couple things struck me about that.
One, you know, he went out of his way to answer that question. He was
leaving the room, wanted to answer it, came back.

He had personally called Jason Collin. And, of course, this came on the
heels in President Obama`s inaugural address back in January, he
specifically invoked Stonewall rights, sort of the iconic moment for gay
rights in America.

It strikes me that in politics how much has changed so quickly really in
the last year, because if we were having this conversation a year ago, if
Jason Collins came out a year ago, that`s when President Obama didn`t
support gay marriage, when he was still evolving on the question. When I
think the calculus of the president and a lot of other politicians on this
party and everywhere was we have to keep a certain amount of distance in
this issue.

And what I really though I`ve seen this week was that distance is just
completely melting away.

MIKE PESCA, NPR: Yes. Or when he said he didn`t support it, right?
Because it seems apparent now, if you look at the reaction, I think a lot
of us thought -- well, this shouldn`t be a huge issue but I`m sure we`ll
see a lot of negativity. There wasn`t a lot, at least officially phrased
negativity.

It got to the point we were so, as a culture, the NBA establishment or
people who wanted to defend Jason Collins were so eager to jump on anyone
who said anything wrong, that they were pulling out people from pretty
obscure places who said boo about Jason Collins` reaction and condemning
them.

I think what we saw out of the president shows not just how much we`ve
changed in the last year -- remember in 2004 the Bush administration put a
lot of gay ballot measures on the ballots in Ohio. I don`t see that stuff
plays.

I began this week to question the entire idea of the culture war. I don`t
know if it`s over or just overblown.

KORNACKI: It`s certainly evolved in a big way.

Kelvin, you just lived it in Nevada.

STATE SEN. KELVIN ATKINSON (D), NEVADA: Absolutely. You know, going back
we did that too. I mean, in 2002 and 2002 there were a lot of measures to
ban marriage equality in Nevada. And now, here we are, 2013, and actually
reversing it or down the road to reversing it. The Senate passed it in
Nevada. Now it`s in the House.

So, we are looking at a huge shift as well.

MARY C. CURTIS, THE WASHINGTON POST: The political calculation really has
changed. You see, I`m based in North Carolina and just last year, they had
the amendment to the state constitution which reaffirmed the only domestic
legal union being between a man and a woman, and then just this year,
Senator Kay Hagan, a Democrat who`s going to be having a pretty tough re-
election race next year, come out for same-sex marriage, I think that
realizing the political calculation has changed and it will probably her in
the state, particularly among grassroots.

KORNACKI: Well, you know, Mike, you talk about how maybe the culture wars
are over a little bit. One thing that struck me this week, within the
sports world, was there was a comment I kept hearing repeated over and over
again. It wasn`t hostile to Jason Collins, it wasn`t overtly hostile to
Jason Collins, but I noticed a number of prominent commentators going out
of their way to say, I don`t know why we`re talking about this, I don`t
care at all.

I think there are a couple of different readings on this. I want to play
an example of this. This is Mike Francesa who is a sports talk radio host
here in New York, used to work for CBS. He`s a big-timer in the sports
world. Let`s play him.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

MIKE FRANCESA, SPORTS TALK SHOW HOST: Now, we have a player in Jason
Collins who has been a -- you know, a journeyman player in the NBA, now
admitting, as he looks to stay in the league, and now, if he doesn`t stay
in the league, it will be considered he`s been run out of the league. But
admitting now that -- or at least now coming forward with the fact that he
is homosexual.

Why? I have no idea. I guess I`ll have to read the story. I guess I will
when I get a chance. I mean, I have the story here. I have no -- I`m not
compelled to run and talk about it or read it. I really don`t care.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

KORNACKI: I have something to say about this and I want my guests`
reaction, and I want time to do it. So, we`ll do it right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KORNACKI: All right. We just heard from Mike Francesa, on radio here on
New York, sports radio host. He`s basically he`s making -- I don`t want to
talk about this. You know, there were a couple of different readings on
that.

You know, the charitable on is, this is where it should be, right? This
shouldn`t be an issue. This shouldn`t be something that anybody has to
talk about. The other issue, though, I mean, I can`t remember who wrote
this, but a good column on this, this week, somebody who basically said,
this is the new way for people who used to say, I don`t like this, I don`t
want this around me, now to say sort of -- where political correctness is,
it`s kind of move to this is what you have to say to not be excoriated by
the public.

PESCA: That column was written by John Lavigne (ph) of "Slate" who I co-
host a podcast, a friend of mine.

And, yes, and that`s the new thing. And why do you put it in my face? And
it`s a total -- it might be ignorant, maybe if you said a few things to
people who said that. They would say, oh, yes, I never thought that.
There`s a huge difference between the de facto assumption of the
heterosexual world and what it means to be homosexual.

But what I heard Mike Francesa saying there just speaks to demographics.
He`s in his 60s. He`s uncomfortable with it. I don`t think we should
necessarily jump down the throats of people who express honestly being
uncomfortable with it.

The average age of the NBA is 26.7. I think that`s why we see a lot of NBA
players saying, not only I don`t care about homosexuality but I would
support a teammate who are homosexual.

AMAECHI: I actually think it`s more damming to suggest that he talks like
this because he`s old. Than it is the truth -- than to say the truth which
is, this is a translation -- a passing off of the language of, I don`t like
this, into a different thing.

You know, the idea that somehow old people -- older people don`t keep up
with the times, can`t accept their grandchildren, et cetera, is just
nonsense. He`s simply refusing. He`s a dinosaur who refuses to evolve.
Fair enough.

KORNACKI: We do like the polling. I`ve never seen polling so
generationally stark, when you ask like about gay marriage. I mean, like,
70 percent, 80 percent for young people but there is still widespread
opposition -- not to say the whole generation is bigoted or something.
There does seem to be a real generation problem.

AMAECHI: I wouldn`t dispute the difference in the polling. I would say we
have to really question, is it -- it`s simply the fact that people are
digging their heels in as opposed to just learning, because right now,
there are older people using iPads and iPods and all kinds of technology.
The idea these people cannot come up with the times is not the truth. The
idea they may be resistant to that, I get that. His language is
transparent.

KORNACKI: The other issue Jason Collins raised, we had the 12 issues, you
know, "I am gay" get all the attention. I am black was also part of this.

And he talked about, you know, first being raised in a religious family as
well.

But, you know, Kelvin, maybe you can speak to this a little bit. There`s a
sort of a particular struggle there within the black community being gay.

ATKINSON: It`s a huge struggle. I think that the black community is one
of the last communities to embrace it. And I use those same terms, but I
used them before Jason Collins, but it is.

It wasn`t necessarily calling attention to I`m black. I think it was just
dealing with the fact that we have dealt with so much, and now this is
something else. And now this is something else the black community is one
of the last to embrace while every other community has already begun to
embrace it. We`re kind of late at the table.

And, you know, as John said earlier, well, I`ll have to go back and say
that I do find more of age differences with accepting it because older
African-Americans are really, really not as accepting.

CURTIS: I do think there`s a nuanced view about that. I think that many
African-Americans look at the civil rights struggle. In his own column in
"Sports Illustrated," he talks about his grandmother being afraid that he`s
going to have people attack him because of that, because she has seen that.

And also I think to give the black community credit, you can`t say the
black community, but many people felt that Obama`s support of same-sex
marriage would hurt him in the vote. And you saw a lot of folks said, no,
not really. We may have disagreements with him on some issues.

Even places where there have been referendums on same-sex marriages, there
have been a nuanced view. Even some black ministers saying, you know what,
maybe I wouldn`t marry a man to a man in my church, but this is an issue
about discrimination and I cannot be for something that would be
discriminating against any group.

So, I think -- and many black homosexuals are forced to live in the black
community, so they`re dealing with things everyday and I don`t think they
feel shunned in certain ways.

So, I think it`s simplistic to say black folks are homophobic.

KORNACKI: No. And it should be noted like last year, after President
Obama, you know, completed his evolution on gay marriage, there was a
ballot issue in Maryland, which has a large black population. It`s almost
like 30 percent in the state, and public opinion among black voters in
Maryland swung dramatically in the wake of that.

It seemed to almost like it was a moment not just necessarily following
President Obama`s lead but to say that the issue is really -- we were
forced to confront the issue more directly maybe than they had been before.

PESCA: I think people want to be decent and I think people want to believe
history bends towards justice. And I think maybe someone of an older
generation or maybe the black community, there`s more baggage to overcome.
How much of the messaging that people who grew up with in the `50s or `60s
about homosexuality being deviant doesn`t exist with the millenials, where,
you know, people under 32, 74 percent accept homosexuality.

So, that`s a huge general difference, and probably difference within the
culture, too. People, when -- if you`ve never been told that this was bad
or if you have a lot of messages that people are people, you`re very
willing to accept a gay teammate, a gay person, a gay politician.

KORNACKI: There`s one other issue I do want to here as well, because Jason
Collins talks about being a Christian. And I know in the sports world,
Christianity plays a very large role. I want to ask a little about how
Christianity and the religion of many of his teammates will mix with his
revelation this week.

We`ll talk about that after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KORNACKI: So, I did want to get into Christianity a little bit here,
because, I mean, anybody who`s ever watched the scene at the end of a
football game, an NFL football player, where you`ll have dozens of players
gather midfield, get down on a knee and pray together. You know,
Christianity is a big part of the sports culture. It`s got to be, I
assume, represented in every locker room that Jason Collin has ever been
in. I sort of wonder how those two things are going to mix.

AMAECHI: I think it`s difficult because a lot of Christians don`t
recognize the kind of hyperbolic Christianity that happens in sports. They
don`t see that as real, because it`s inconsistent.

You look at some of the Jason Collins` teammates and just in sports in
general, he`s not the distraction. They are. I sat in locker rooms with
people talking to me about how homosexuality is disgusting while telling me
the two women they slept with last night who weren`t their wife.

So, for me, I`m interested in consistency of conviction. So, for people
like Chris Broussard and others who have made a statement, it`s not that I
don`t think they should be allowed to have an, it`s the idea that where was
your outrage at the gambling, at the man who beat up his partner, at all
these other events we could rattle off and run a line below us, where is
the outrage there and why now at this time?

It`s consistency of conviction. And surely if you`re a Christian, that`s
what it should be all about. Not cherry-picking bits from the Old
Testament to sort your particular quibbles.

ATKINSON: That`s a great point and I`ve heard that a lot over the last two
weeks as well. Why do we choose one, you know, as some folk`s sin to focus
or hone in on when there`s so many other things going on. And so, why do
we choose one to demonize folks over? Let people live their lives.

And so, it is this whole Christianity thing but also Christianity teaches
we shouldn`t judge. And so, it`s kind of a mixed pot but one that will
continue even after this discussion.

CURTIS: And also, anyone with an ounce of Christian or whatever feeling,
you could look at that article in "Sports Illustrated" and see the toll it
took for him to hide and to keep his true self from the people he loved,
from his twin brother, he was engaged. And you see when he can talk about
the person he is, how he`s free, how he`s relaxed. He is his true self.
He can be honest.

How can you not be moved by that if you say you have an ounce of Christian
feeling?

ATKINSON: And people have said -- real quick, people have said that even
to me the last two weeks, gosh, you seem so much happier. I didn`t notice
there was a huge difference in me but other people have.

You know, again, if you`re Christian, how do you not embrace that?

KORNACKI: Well, it does -- you know, there was a poll, now it`s probably
two years old but I remember, it jumped out at me, surveyed attitudes, the
generational thing we were talking about earlier, you could see it there,
too. When you talk to evangelicals over 50, there may have been one
person in the country (INAUDIBLE), but when you talk to evangelicals age 18
to 29, the stats stuck with me, 44 percent say they support gay marriage.
So, you`re seeing generational movement there, so maybe that will be
reflected in sports.

Anyway, so what do we know now that we didn`t know last week? My answer is
after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KORNACKI: In just a moment, what we now know we didn`t know last week.
But, first, a quick update on two stories we told you about last weekend.

In North Carolina, where Republicans have taken control of the governorship
and both houses of the legislature for the first time since reconstruction,
the GOP is advancing a number of hard lined proposals, including a
requirement for residents to show photo ID at the polls. Those already
passed the statehouse. It appears likely to become law.

On this program last Sunday, Reverend William Barber (ph), the head of the
North Carolina chapter of the NCAA announced plans to protest the voter ID
bill at the state legislative building. The next day, protesters led by
Barber held a pray in there. After ignoring demands to disperse, 17 of the
demonstrators were arrested and taking away in handcuffs, including
Reverend Barber. They were all released the next morning on $1,000 bond
each and have been charged with second-degree trespassing and other related
infractions.

Last week, we also told you about a hunger strike by detainees in
Guantanamo Bay. More than 100 are now refusing to eat and could soon
starve to death. Some of the detainees have been held at the prison are
so-called enemy combatant without trial for more than a decade.

President Obama was asked about the hunger strike at the White House on
Tuesday and reiterated his call to close the prison.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: It lessens cooperation with the allies on counterterrorism efforts.
It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KORNACKI: So far, Congress has blocked the president`s attempts to do just
that. And there are no signs the congressional leaders have changed their
minds.

So, what do we know now that we didn`t know last week?

We know that President Obama -- excuse me -- screwed this one up. My first
major flub on the air.

One more thing. What do we know now that we didn`t know last week? Let`s
start that over.

We now know that President Obama supports the FDA`s recent decision to make
Plan B One Step commonly known as the morning-after pill available over the
counter to women and girls 15 years older. At a press conference on
Thursday, Obama said, quote, "I`m very comfortable with the decision
they`ve made right now based on solid scientific evidence."

While this decision and the president`s support is a positive step for
reproductive rights, we know that just a day before, the Obama
administration announced they would appeal a federal court`s order that the
FDA provide emergency over the counter contraception to women and girls of
any age. The decision was also based on solid scientific evidence.

The ruling dates back to an unprecedented and politically move by the White
House and the Department of Health and Human Services during the 2012
presidential campaign where they blocked the FDA from allowing women under
17 from getting emergency contraception without a prescription. We know
the morning-after pill is safe for women of all ages, and if the president
is serious about making policy decisions based on science and facts, then
he should not make exceptions for political convenience.

We now know the fight for real filibuster reform is not over. Facing
unprecedented from the GOP, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, champion of
reform, is proposing legislation that would force filibustering senators to
speak on the floor, as Senator Rand Paul did with drones recently. Merkley
has joined with grassroots group Democracy for America and launched an
online petition called Reform the filibuster.

The renewed fight after a January bill championed by Harry Reid and Mitch
McConnell made modest adjustments to filibuster rules which have
unsurprisingly done little to end unnecessary gridlock. We know that a
minority party has the right to oppose legislation, but when it repeatedly
blocks the will of the public in a majority of senators, then at the very
least, they should have to tell the American people why.

And finally, we now know that April was the deadliest month in Iraq in
nearly five years. The U.N. mission to Iraq says that in April 712 people
were killed and 1,633 were wounded, most of whom were civilians. We know
that sectarian violence is increasing across Iraq and igniting fears of
civil war.

We know that as the drum beat for American intervention in Syria gets
louder, we should consider the reality of Iraq today, because wars don`t
just end when our troops come home.

Now I want to find out what my guests know that they didn`t know when the
week began. Survive that had screw up barely.

Mary, we`ll start with you.

CURTIS: What do we know? Well, if we didn`t know it already, North
Carolina is the center of the political universe. On Monday, you had
Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx nominated to be transportation secretary.
Congressman Mel Watt has been nominated to his federal Housing Finance
Agency. You had Governor Pat McCory who was featured in your segment, is
delivering the Republican address this week and there is pushback in the
state.

So just because we have great competition from South Carolina with that
race coming up this week with Mark Sanford and Elizabeth Colbert-Busch,
America -- North Carolina hasn`t given its up -- it`s place in the
spotlight.

KORNACKI: We forgot to say as North Carolina resident, Mary Curtis.

(LAUGHTER)

ATKINSON: What do we know we didn`t know last week in Nevada, is that this
marriage equality issue is going to continue. And that we have a lot of
work to do. That it is going to our Lower House and we have to support it
and it will be coming back in 2015 to the legislation for us to pass again
before it goes to voters. And I think that we learned that our state is
progressing.

KORNACKI: John?

AMAECHI: What we know is that the stereotypes that exist around identity,
it`s something we probably should have known before this, that can be blown
out of the water by an individual. Jason Collins has managed to do that.
His eloquence, his thoughtfulness are the antithesis of what a lot of
people think of black people. And certainly, he isn`t the poster for what
you would think of for gay person. I think it`s really good to have these
people who blow these boxes out of the water.

PESCA: While we`ve been talking about tall people, I`d like for a second -
- I`m sitting next to one. I`d like for a second to talk about tall
buildings, because this week, the number One World Trade Center was topped.
That was used to be called the Freedom Tower, and it`s topped by a spire,
only it`s a spire that functions as an antenna and looks like an antenna.
But it`s sort of this architectural platypus.

Why is it an antenna? And here`s the reason, if it`s an antenna, the
1,776-foot height is not official. If it`s an antenna, the committee on
tall buildings and urban habitats will not consider that an official
height. So, this is why you have to call it a spire and not an antenna.

I watched the people from Chicago trying to call it antenna because they
want the Sears Tower and now the Willis Tower to maintain the status as the
tallest building in the United States. The spire versus antenna issue will
not go away.

KORNACKI: I can hear them working in Chicago right now for the Sears
Tower.

I want to thank Mary Curtis from "The Washington Post," and Democratic
State Senator Kelvin Atkinson, former NBA player John Amaechi, and Mike
Pesca of NPR -- thanks for getting up and thank you for joining us today
for UP.

Join us tomorrow, Sunday morning, at 8:00, when we look at the GOP`s latest
hope for 2016, Senator Ted Cruz.

And coming up next is "MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY." On today`s MHP, presidential
politics, Big Bird and public schools. Is President Obama having the
second-term blues? Is the Pigford settlement with black farmers being
manipulated? And should creationism be taught in Louisiana schools? That
is all on "MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY". She is coming up next.

And we will see you right here tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m. Thanks for
getting UP.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

END

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