wikileaks released 400,000 pages of military documents and has brought up concerns that iraqi security forces may have tortured and killed people. details show the united states may have also transferred thousands of detainees to iraqi custody knowing the risk of torture. human rights watch is now asking for an investigation. president obama led a democratic get out the vote effort today visiting his fifth state in four days. he was at the university of minnesota to stump for mark dayton who's running for governor. former alaska governor sarah palin was stumping for republican candidates in florida. with elections only ten days away, she urged gop activists to work until the last minute. i'm don lemon. it's been six days since the obamas hit the campaign trail to rescue endangered democrats,

four days since a federal appeals panel put "don't ask, don't tell" back in action and one day since tear gas was launched against french protesters. only 12 minutes since i got a damn campaign robo-call on my cell phone. welcome to "what the week". >> the fight for control of congress is heading into the final round. >> the clock is absolutely clicking. >> democrats are on defense everywhere. more than 100 democratic house seats are now up for grabs. >> in the senate, the gop needs to capture ten democratic seats. >> president obama and first lady michelle hitting the campaign trail. >> sarah palin fuels up the tea party express for a cross-country road tour. >> you are winning, joe sestak! >> nancy pelosi in pittsburgh trying to save her own job. >> we will win this election. >> a massive investigation was launched into the nation's biggest banks and their

foreclosure practices. >> the economic crisis has taken a surprising turn in france where the government wants to raise the retirement age of 60 to 62. >> they lit cars on fire and the police responded with tear gas. >> the government wants to bring back "don't ask, don't tell" pending an appeal and really pending a decision by congress to repeal it. and for victims of gay bullying -- a message. >> it gets better. >> that was the hard news this week. but the sound bite everyone is still talking about came from a radio debate between two senate hopefuls in the blandest state in the union, delaware, sorry. democrat chris coons and his opponent squared off tuesday in which should have been an uneventful debate. turned into a viral internet sensation.

the lawyer nerds nearly fell off their seats in fits of laughter after this exchange. >> where in the constitution is the separation of church and state? >> an excellent point. >> hold on, hold on, please. >> you're telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the first amendment? >> government shall make no establishment of religion. >> that's in the first amendment. >> oh! just another kick in the teeth for the o dnl donnell campaign who'd been fighting off "saturday night live" parodies and sxwernt slamfests for weeks now. but was christine o'donnell right? this is the first amendment -- congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government

for a redress of grievances. now the courts have indeed interpreted that to include a separation of church and state. so while o'donnell might be technically right when she says the phrase isn't expressly written into the constitution, for all intents and purposes, the point goes to coons. but listen to what christine o'donnell said in her own defense. >> i'm sorry, i didn't bring my constitution with me. fortunately senators don't have to memorize the constitution. >> that's a good point, i'll be the first to admit i had to look all this stuff up myself. so should senators have the constitution tattooed to their brains? does anybody really know what's in the constitution? i crashed your lunch break to find out. can i crash your lunch? may i crash your lunch, ladies? hello. what's your favorite amendment? >> the one that repeals prohibition. >> the right to bear arms. >> the right to bear arms, which

is what you're doing right now. is there anything you'd like to take from the constitution, take out of it? >> definitely. >> what would you like to take out? >> like to repeal the 16th amendment. >> 16 is congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on income. that's the income tax law. >> that's a crappy law. >> how familiar should congressmen and congresswomen be with the constitution? should they memorize it? >> they should probably be tested every five years just like a driver's license. >> the constitution, when you read it, it's very short, absolutely, it's basic to what they do. >> i think anyone running for a political office should understand what's going on with the constitution and laws and what -- >> continue to talk. i like your opinion. >> i think you like the hair. >> i don't think necessarily to get elected you should have to know because you're supposed to be representative of your constituency and we're all kind of stupid.

but you should learn it. you should be one of the smartest people in your constituency. >> well, if you're going to live in this country and especially if you're going to run for office, you have to know the constitution. at least the bill of rights. so feed your brain by going to archives.gov and click on constitution. thousands of scientists over hundreds of years of research, but apparently most of you believe glenn beck, yeah. we're talking apes and the evolution of man on the other side, folks. ♪ [ male announcer ] sit down. it's ok. you've got preparation h with the only cream that gives you maximum strength pain relief. and relieves swelling, burning, and itching. preparation h. doctor recommended -- by name.

there's this guy glenn beck, a few days ago, he called evolution ridiculous. take a listen -- >> what, half monkey, half person? no one's ever insinuated that's what evolution is. and ridiculous? the national academy of sciences says there's no debate about evolution because it's withstood testing by thousands of scientists for more than a century. my queek weekly question, how d get here to a time when people like glenn beck and these 2008 presidential candidates still don't believe in evolution.

okay, well let's go back to 1859. charles darwin publishes his book on the origin of species. this one that humans evolved from a lower species over time through the survival of the fittist. the same thing goes for plants and animals. it doesn't take long for the scientific community to embrace the theory. here it is. pretty simple. the teachers in u.s. public schools start adding it to their curriculums. and then, of course, the people who don't believe start getting louder and several states start trying to ban the teaching of evolution. the courts get involved. remember the scopes monkey trial? and eventually a case much like the scopes case makes its way to the supreme court. in 1986, the high court rules that it's unconstitutional for the state of arkansas to ban teaching evolution. so basically the evolution-haters are shot down. but clearly they don't go away.

in fact, recent polling shows that less than half of all americans believe in darwin's theory of evolution. the majority of americans theoretically agree with this guy, yeah. i guess the question is, do you trust guys like me or glenn beck who have tv and radio shows, or do you trust the thousands of scientists i talked about a moment ago? well, another tough topic, racism and bigotry. why is it so damn hard to talk about it? i took my cameras out to ask you. [ male announcer ] you are a business pro.

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so until about 6:00 thursday night, this segment was going to be about america's crazy addiction to cell phones. but then ron williams lost his job. on a news program, williams said this -- >> i'm not a bigot. the kind of books i've written about the civil rights movement in this country. but when i get on a plane, if i see people who are in muslim

garb and i think they're identifying themselves first and foremost as muslims, i get worried, i get nervous. >> public radio canned him. maybe it's an irrational fear to you or maybe it's something you can relate to. i work with unique people. and there's a guy named ed, our producer. but when we started talking about it, we really were arguing. i thought it was going to end up with a horse's head in my bed. i got really heated. we scrapped the smartphones idea and we decided to take this topic out to you. why would you be afraid of someone in muslim garb? you're a brown-skinned guy, right? >> i am. >> tan, i don't know what your pigment is. i'm more of a green. i'm so pale, i look like a goblin. do you think people look at you when you go to the airport? >> i'll be honest with you, people probably do look at me. i look at people, too. >> people are comfortable with other folks that they look like. >> well, i think it falls in the

category of freedom of speech. everyone is entitled to their opinion. >> those stereotypes are out there. >> you walk down the street and you see someone that looks different from you, you have in your head -- there's something that pops in your head immediately but you don't necessarily need to say it. >> the shortcomings of coming to a new culture is that people not necessarily understand where you're coming from. they think if you speak with an accent, then you think with an accent. >> if you ignore your differences, you're going to have greater differences and have no more hostility towards each other. >> tim wise is here to talk about this. he's one of the anti-racist speakers and writers. how do we stop the fear, tim? >> well, number one, we have to recognize that it's irrational. to generalize about 1.5 billion muslims on the basis of what 19 muslims did on 9/11 is ignorance on stilts. it makes no more sense than if we were to generalize about

catholics and christians based on what tim mcveigh did, which is a point that ron williams was trying to make in a latter portion of that interview which nbr apparently ignored. he makes the admission that he has this bias. which i think is a matter of honesty on his part. then he goes on to try to say, we need to be careful not to generalize. so in other words, he was admitting the bias. and then talking about the problem with the bias. to me, that's exactly as an anti-racism, anti-bias expert and educator, what we need to be doing, acknowledging that we have been conditioned to have some of these beliefs and stereotypes but that if we own it, if we put it out there and acknowledge it, we can challenge it. that's what we need to be doing. >> let's be clear. you're against the firing of juan williams. you came out against this? >> absolutely. a lot of what he said, i think, in terms of, yes, we are at war with islam agreeing with o'reilly, that part was a problem. but the idea that we would fire him for acknowledging his own bias to me makes absolutely no sense. all the research on this and any

of us who study the subject know it. all the research says we've all been conditioned to have these biases so the vast majority of us will. if we challenge it, we can acknowledge it and prevent ourselves from acting on the basis of it. so the idea that we're going to in any way help the cause of anti-bias or reduce anti-muslim hysteria but not talking about the fact that this conditioning is real is nonsense. what nbr did was not just a disservice to juan williams. it was a disservice to the conversation we need to be having about racial, religious and other forms of bias. >> that's one of the things we talk about out there on the segment i went out on the street. we talk about knit our homes. when and where can we talk about these issues? if you're going to be afraid that if you say something on television or radio where it's being recorded you're going to lose your job, we'll never have the conversation although we do have the conversation in the privacy of our own homes and sometimes even at work. where and when is it appropriate or is it always appropriate and should we not necessarily be afraid of the repercussions of

her honesty even if it does seem ignorant? >> i think we need to be honest whenever possible. there are moments when you don't want to be sitting across from someone you just moment who happens to be different from you and say, i'm scared of people like now. that's not the best time to do it. but i think it's important for us to admit -- the way i say it is advertising works. if we have been exposed to product placement 10, 15, 20 times so we'll go out and buy a tennis shoe or a type of toothpaste that someone pants us to buy, how much easier sit for us to internalize biases that we have been hit with in media, from parents, from school, from peers, year after year, month after month, day after day? we have to acknowledge our humanity in that regard but then problemetize it. the only way we're going to get ahold of them or challenge them and diminish them is if we own them, admit the problem and try to work together both individually and collectively to make the place better.

>> let's get into that for a second. if i don't live in a very diverse place, if everybody look like me and acts like me, worships like me and then i travel or go to a place that has more diversity and all i know about the person that i meet that's different from me is what i've learned in the media, on cable news and movies and tv, what am i supposed to think? how do i condition myself to be open to think otherwise? >> well, i think the way we have to do it is to think about all the experiences we've had that were bad with people like ourselves. i hear these stories a lot. people who try to rationalize their racism against black folks or latinos by saying, i was in third grade and a black kid beat me up. how many of us who have gotten in fights or arguments or had bad experiences with someone of a different race or ethicty has dozens of those experiences with other folks who were white? how many times have we been ripped off by white landlords or treated badly by a white store clerk or a white boss? for every time we've had a bad experience with the so-called

other, we've had several with people who were just like us. if we'll keep that in mind and realize what we're doing is generalizing when it's someone different but we're not generalizing when it's someone like ourselves, we can catch ourselves in the act of doing that and we can prevent acting on the basis of that bias which is to say, we can prevent ourselves from actually discriminating. >> to be fair, i have had equal opportunity beatings in high school. i had my head put in a toilet by every race and gender. what can we learn from this? is this a teaching moment? are we making too big a deal of these firings? shouldn't we be talking about them? that's why i wanted you to come on the show to discuss this. i feel like this can be a teaching moment. >> it can be. we have to talk about anti-islamic bias. anti-muslim bias and prejudice is a real problem. but we're not going to make it go away by acting as if people don't have that. and we won't make it go away by getting rid of juan williams as if to say, it's okay for those people over at fox to express

their biases but god forbid our nice, white liberal organization that we would have that. the reality is all the data says whether you're liberal or conservative, right or left, the vast majority of us in the united states -- probably true around the world -- have internalized biases against all types of so-called out group, minority groups whether it's racial, ethnic, religious, sexual, et cetera. if we want to deal with that, let's deal with it. if we don't, fine. but let's not act as if by excluding the juan williamss of the world from the conversation that we're going to actually further the cause of equity and justice because we're not. >> but it should be okay, though, right, tim, to have these feelings and not be labeled a racist, the "r" word or even a bigot. if you're having these feelings, it doesn't mean that you are actually a racist or a bigot as long as you acknowledge them, right? >> i try to separate the act or the thought from the individual. think about it. most of us have told a lie in our lives or cheated on a test in school.

that doesn't mean that we are liars and cheaters at our core. there's a difference between having this sort of core character flaw and doing something that's messed up. most of us are good people but good people can do messed-up things. good people who weren't racist or sexist at their core can say and do things that are racist or sexist or homophobic. that's what we need to focus on, the behavior instead of this idea that we've got a bunch of horrible, awful people. most racism is perpetrated by people who are not horrible, awful people. they're good people who don't even realize the way they perpetuate the kinds of biases, the kinds of stereotypes and the kinds of injustice that is they do. >> as always, tim, thanks for the lesson i appreciate it. >> you bet. >> always great talking to you. timwise.org. forget the expression "man up." how about woman up. there's a 20-year-old student leaving the dudes in the dust this week. is she just plain awesome or is she crazy? 3q did you know vitamin d helps our bones absorb calcium

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each week, people do great things. sometimes it makes the news, sometimes it doesn't. i'd like to give a shoutout to the people this week that do things that make them way better than me. this young lady is a 20-year-old

college student and she's also the new chief of police in a mexican drug-ridden town in the border state of chihuahua. amid threats of violence, she was the only person to accept the job. she says she's tired of everyone being afraid. i'm actually afraid of chihuahuas. you are way better than me. now, this man's name is george. he was awarded the bronze star for his mission 66 years ago to rescue more than 500 soldiers shot down over serbia. george, you are way better than me. look at this man. what a canvas. this young man is 5 years old. this week he donated all the money collected at his birthday party to help families in need. when i was 5 years old, the only thing i think i donated to was the sandbox in hi kindergarten class. you heard it. you are way better than me. lastly, clark howard, you know

this guy. this week, he donated $30,000 to help soldier michael walker rebuild his home after it was burnt down. clark howard, you are way better than me this week. our time is almost done here but we'd be remiss if we didn't look ahead to the week before us. perhaps nothing will be more talked about than -- drum roll, please -- jon stewart and steven colbert venture into our nation's capital. >> tonight, i announce the rally to restore sanity. >> well, i actually did used to warm up the audience for "the daily show." next saturday, he and steven colbert have paired up to rally to restore sanity and their march to keep fear alive into one massive event on the mall. i'll be there for cnn covering the whole entire thing. also next week,