. but if it's for the iraq war that's disaster. vow with eliot"viewpoint" with eliot spitzer is next. [ ♪ theme music ♪ ] >> good evening, this is eliot spitzer and this is "viewpoint." 16 days after the movie massacre in colorado, we're witnessing another horrendous incident by a man who purchased a handgun. the shooter moved through the sikh temple shooting as he went. when it was over, six people were dead, three more wounded including a police officer in critical condition. the suspect, wade michael page,

also dead. page was 40-year-old old an army veteran who served between 1992 and 1998. first as a hawk missile repairman. page had been demoted for getting drunk on duty and going absent without leave before getting a general discharge that maid him ineligible for re-enlistment. he was also a member of a white supremacist white core band called apathy. wade's victims including temple president whose niece said he tried to fight back. >> witnesses said that he took him in a grip to kind of wrestle him hoping that the gun would fall. but in the end he got wounded. he got shot.

>> eliot: both local police and the fbi were at page's home last night, five miles from the shooting. >> this remains an active% investigation. we're investigating it as a possible act of domestic terrorism. however, motive is still being assessed at this time. we had no reason to believe and as far as i know no law enforcement had any reason to believe that he was planning plotting or capable of such violence. >> eliot: first lady michelle obama said, the people of oak creek must know that the american people have them in their hearts and prayers. and mitt romney reached out saying a senseless act of violence. we join americans everywhere in mourning those who lost their lives and in prayer for their families in the difficult days add. but there we wanted more. >> just two weeks from the tragedy in aurora, we have seen

normas shooting. one therecy pierce there was warning signs about the shooter still the presidential candidates have not given the american public a plan on keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people. >> eliot: with more on wade michael page. tracking right wing groups. page, fill us in on what you know about him and the file that you have on this guy. >> basically we began to in the him when he began to play white supremacist rock-n-roll groups. that began in 2000. we have seen interferes he has given in white supremest website when he talks about leaving his native state of colorado to embark on the tour of the white supremacist world. from that point forward he got

involved in a lot of different bands, bands with names like intimidation one, the blue-eyed devils. these are well-known neo-nazi bands on the white supremacist music scene. ultimately this guy began his own band called end apathy. i think that's an interesting part of his history because it is quite clear from an interview he gave a couple of years ago. when he talked about the name end apathy it related to his attitude towards the white supremacist movement. he basically looked around and looked at the bands and the organizations on the radical right and felt these people were doing nothing. that people needed to stand up and do something to make the movement get up and go. he didn't talk about what that something might be. he didn't talk about violence or hatred of muslims or sikhs, but he did give that name to the

band and said it's because we need to get this moving along. >> eliot: beyond "o" beyond the horrendous political views, was there anything criminal that popped up that should have drawn law enforcement to him. his first amendment rights, as horrific as his views may be, protect what he used to talk about. is there anything that would lead you to go to law enforcement and say be careful of this guy. >> no, honestly the truthful answer is no. as you well know, virtually everything he said, the kinds of music these bands put out their calls to murder justs black people, brown people, gay people on and on, all that have is utterly protected by the first amendment. the fact is this guy was like literally hundreds if not thousands or even tens of thousands of other people are fairly noticeable character on

the white supremacist scene. a guy who was active on the music scene who hobnobbed with scary people who i wouldn't say was distinguishable in any other way. i would be telling a fib if i said there were things that we saw that really should have gotten law enforcement's notice. the sad reality is this guy appears to have been a lone wolf. those are the hardest kind of people to stop. i don't know what law enforcement would have done to prevent this tragedy. >> eliot: having followed him, tracked him, accumulating information about him for about a decade, as you look back, was there anything that you can now see that perhaps was a trigger to indicate that he was going to take a turn from playing music and speaking venomous speech. >> if you look back for some indication of what he was up to

the name of his band, end apathy. often you will hear people in this universe scoffing about the meat eat, and retreat crowd as they call them. that's very often where we see real terrorists come from. there will be people in the general milieu who start to get impatient. who look at the leaders and say, all these guys do is talk a big line. they don't do anything but collect our dues and that sort of thing. i think that was something of a hint of what might come down the line. the other piece of it that is probably worth noting is, you know, some of the people who played with in these bands and in fact, at one point reported music with were the hammer skin nation and various subdivisions of that very scary group. the hammer skins are basically about the scariest group of skin heads out there. these are the kinds of people

who if you leave the group and have their patch tattooed on your arm they might send someone after you with a razor blade to cut that patch off your arm. they're very serious-type people. it tells me that page was mixing in a very serious world. he was not in the fringe but right in the middle of this world. >> eliot: can you give us a sense of magnitude, how many people fall into this crazed universe, a thousand people, multiples of that? you're keeping information about them. how many people do you think encompass this universe? >> it's really hard to differentiate between the people who are most extreme and those who just have a foot in the world. i think we're talking about $200,000 who are fairly hard oh hardcore. that's a big number but we're 300 plus million people, so when you look at that sense, it's a small sliver of society. >> eliot: was there anything that would indicate that he was

going to target sikhs or any group in particular? was this a random targeting that was completely unpredictable? >> absolutely nothing that we saw suggested any particular targets. i have to say that i assume--i could be wrong--but i assume he was targeting muslims and simply made the same stupid error that other white supremacists have made. three sikhs were murdered in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 by people who mistook them for muslims simply saying that their turbans and their beards is an indication of foreignness. in the white supremacists it's the evilness evilness,. >> eliot: many thanks on sharing your insight on this troubling story. while this attack was targeted at sikh worshipers, many believe it was intended to kill

american-muslims. i have with us, thank you for join us this evening. >> it's a pressure to pleasure to be here, thank you eliot. >> eliot: clearly muslims were the targets and sikhs are sometimes the victims. how does your community react? >> it's a mixture of shock and sadness. it's a numbing feeling to see what was happening with the sikh community. we ourselves have experienced this in our community in pakistan where our militants came into our mosques in 2010 in may and indiscriminately open fired. at that time 86 members were murdered, including members of my family as well. when i heard about this, an armed militant is working through the halls of a worship center at a sikh community we

immediately had flashbacks of that incident. we were frozen to think that is happening in our own backyard of the united states of america. you wouldn't expect that. such an open blatant disregard for human life and taking lives at a house of worship was very rare. so we were just shocked and really really saddened to see what happened. >> eliot: can you give us a sense. we've seen numbers from law enforcement agencies. give us a sense from your experience on the ground, living it every day has there been an up tick in anti-muslim sentiment? has there been an up tick of threats you've received? >> after 9/11 we were most united as a country. something has happened within the past several years maybe the past five to six years where there is a greater divide, i do feel there is more an taggism to the muslim community and

i think there is a rise in anti-government groups. in the last four years anti-government groups have risen from 149 to over 1200. that's just in four years. in the past decade there have been double amount of hate crimes that previously that had occurred. there definitely is a heightened antagonism or hatred across the board. what you see is when you look at the political speck rum and religious spectrum the leaders have a responsibility here. we can talk about graham robertson, jones who actively and regularly perpetuate this thought that muslims or others are evil entirely evil. their religion is evil. they are against our beliefs. when you keep saying that over and over again, it's going to create this divide. whereas we muslims who believe

in the messiah. we've been advocateing for pluralism, tolerance. you can disagree with someone without hating them. our work is cut out for us when these people get on the pulpit and preach hatred. >> eliot: you focused on a few of the religious leaders whose language, i couldn't agree with you more, has been been divisive and wrong. and peter king has had language improper and in some cases despicable. has there been push back against the use of language that supports the anger that lurks too close to the surface for many people? >> there has been good push back but clearly it's not enough, because it keeps happening. the republican parties were ridden with such incident where santorum king, michelle

bachmann repeatedly spread this fear of muslim sharia law now with ms. bachmann's witch-hunt as it seems declaring how evil the muslim brotherhood or other muslim organizations in the united states, it's a perpetuation of muslims that we're not american enough. no matter how many generations we've been here we're not american enough. there is a thought that you have to be christian to be leader of the nation. look at how much president barack obama has had to deflect this accusation that he's a muslim. yes, he has to say no, i'm christian. but what is so bad about being muslim and leader of the united states after all. there is not enough push back. i don't think people are calling them out enough to say that this does not belong in the political

arena. the only reason you should judge someone for political office are their own actions. are they leading this country down a path of prosperity economic stability and creating jobs and security, how they worship their god does that matter in the grand scheme of things. >> eliot: the only words that emerged from michelle bachmann's heinous statement there was push back from the senate and the house her comments were so far beyond the line to be frankly guys despicable, and hopefully that will show some sensitivity to what you speak to right now. thank you so much for your time this evening. >> thank you so much, it was a pleasure. >> eliot: president obama is ahead in the polls but behind on the money. more "viewpoint" coming up. >> this court has proven to be the knowing, delighted accomplice

in the billionaires' purchase of our nation. >> and you think it doesn't affect you? think again.

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>> eliot: if government can't pass a jobs bill, it can barely pass a jar budget, and it has done a for a job prosecuting wrong doors. well, this weekend it did, which brings us to our number of the day day. nasa land rover traveled 325 million miles through space before touching down on the surface of mars sunday night. landing in the martian atmosphere was called the most complicated achievement in robotic space flight going from 13,000 mph to zero. everything had to go exactly right, and it did.

>> touchdown confirmed. on mars. [ cheering ] >> eliot: mars now has a fully mobile science lab which even includes a laser gun worthy of "star trek." it seemed for a while america had given up the space race. when you get outside of politics and rhetoric it's amazing what a bunch of government workers can do. hats off to nasa. >>join the debate now. start you morning with a daily dose of politics from a fresh perspective. >>i'm a slutty bob hope. the troops love me. >>only on current tv.

>> eliot: i've got some good news and some bad news for the obama campaign. the good news the campaign is on pace to match it's record-setting fund fundraising from 2008. the bad news, that puts the president well behind mitt romney. he brought in $51 million nearly twice the amount of his opponent, john mccain. when last month it raised $75 million, is sounded like something to celebrate, but it puts him behind the mitt romney campaign which raised $101 million. meanwhile harry rei to stand by his claim that romney paid zero taxes for ten years when the romney campaign pushed back saying to put up or shut up. >> as far as harry reid is concerned, i know you might want to go down that road. i'm not going to respond to a dirty liar who hasn't filed a single page of tax returns

himself, complains about people with money but lives in the ritz carton. >> i actually like harry, but what he did on the floor of the senate is so out of bounds. i think he's lying. >> this is a reckless and slanderous charge by harry reid. >> there is no triple down in blackjack, but i'm triple down on my comments from yesterday. he's a dirty liar. we're moving on defeating this country and saving this country. >> joining me now ben smith. this is a food fight, a mud fest. who is winning this battle? is reid getting what he wants because we're still talking about romney's taxes or is he looking circlous and unsavory. >> he may or may not up for re-election, but he can take any amount of bad publicity. he has been making people talk about mitt romney's tax returns whether they like it or not. >> eliot: he's keeping an ugly

story alive from the romney perspective. is there any concern that it makes romney look like a victim, the innocent guy being piled on by the dirty establishment. harry reid does not look like a reformer in this. >> it's dirty politics. there is something a little new if you care about decorum in the senate. this is unusual for a charge like this to be leveled from the floor of the senate. but politics is full of stuff like this. donald trump was out yelling about barack obama's birth certificate. it's not that pathetic of a position that you're right not to reveal your tax returns. it's something that rich guys like the donors that romney is working with will seem as the victim. it's a funny kind of victimization for most people. >> eliot: that's right. you point out an important distinction. this is harry reid on the floor of the senate saying things without being willing to define his sources. merely saying someone called my office. >> some guy. >> eliot: as a journalist. and you're a journalist.

you've worked in highly respected journalist organizations. now you run buzzfeed. if some anonymous person called and said, somebody over there didn't pay their taxes. would you accept that as a basis of a story. >> if harry reid--there is a level of government figure when they say something when they make a charge, that's news. should i suppress harry reid. >> eliot: not that you would print that harry reid said it, but if you were in harry reid's position as a journalist. >> it would depend on the source. harry reid claims he has a good source. he's not a journalist. he's not a neutral observer. he's trying to do damage, cause trouble. >> eliot: mitt romney rakes in the money $101 million to president obama's $75 million. does that matter? is it going to matter at the end of the day or are there larger

macro-issues that lurk beneath this. >> it matters. money matters. the 801st million dollar. at some point there is going to be diminishing returns. there is going to be enough money that people know who barack obama is or who mitt romney. >> eliot: the last marginal of the last million dollars is not that significant but we're 90 days away so there is argumentation of the general public. the cash on hand, is the differential as big as it would appear an it is. >> oh, yes. mitt romney has more money on the outside coming in to play for him. it looks like obama will be outspend. i don't think he'll be so badly outspent that he'll have to bail out from certain states very early to make these risky bets. >> eliot: the burn rate, to use

a phrase in politics and in your world, how much money you're burning through, president obama burning through a lot of money these days and still ahead in the polls. i found a very good article for this today. it's a substantive list of campaign. his statement on tax policies you don't even know what loopholes he's going to close. he's managingvive without scrutiny on policies. and then when attacked he says, you don't know what i'm going to do. can he get get away with that for 90 days. >> i think he's keeping the record of what obama is going to do. i don't know if he'll get away with it or not. what he's going philosophical clarity he wants to repeal obama-care. he obviously is a conservative-republican at this point in his career who opposes tax increases. he has embraced paul ryan's budget, which is extremely detailed. he has very thin white papers

that will be shelfed on election day as opposed to the thick ones that obama shelfed on election day. >> eliot: you're right most of these get involved shelved on selection election day, but saying wait a minute, you're raising taxes on the bottom 95% that has come back to haunt him bite him and it will until election day. >> ruling out detail policy the way john mccain did last year and gave barack obama an opportunity to run ads target senior citizens saying he's going to take their healthcare away. these campaigns, there are intersections of policies in the campaign is a complicat complicated. >> eliot: no policy is the best policy when it comes to campaigning. ben smith from buzzfeed. thank you for joining us tonight tonight. >> eliot: we have view founder coming up.

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>> eliot: the libor scandal has devolved into a blame game where everyone is at fault. first hillary clinton canses michelle bachmann picks up a key endorsement and liz sets back women 50 years. when it doesn't fit anywhere else we put it in the viewfinder. >> what's wrong with showing pride? what we're seeing this kind of soft anti-american feeling that americans can't show our exceptionalism. you know, red white and blue, wear it. >> i mean-- >> waive it. be proud of being an american. [ ♪ music ♪ ] >> who do you think he's going to pick and why? >> well, i just want to go on record i'm for michelle bachmann for vice president. i want everyone to be clear about that. >> the ladies of the press

believe they're acting on principle expect that the principle is driven by envy. and envy of a woman who managed to do exactly what they are mothers told them, although they would never admit it. marry a good preferably rich man. raise your children full time, and dress like a lady. >> the rnc let go some of the names who will be speaking. do you think that you at the rnc at the end of the month, do you think you're going to have a role there in some way shape or form? >> i know they want me to. [ ♪ music ♪ ] >> this is our protest of general mills abdicating same section marriages. we're going to torch some cereals.

♪ all you need ♪ is love ♪ all you need ♪ is love ♪ all you need is ♪ love, love ♪ love is all you need ♪ >> eliot: toasted cheerios could be the next product from general mills. it had to happen, libor scandal coming for the big banks one by one. that's next. >>it's the place where democracy is supposed to be the great equalizer, where your vote is worth just as much as donald trump's. we must save the country.

it starts with you.

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>> eliot: at scrutiny of the libor scandal increases the number of financial institutions found someone to blame. each other. while acknowledging their own wrongdoing several banks are just as quick to point out the actions of other banks have been even worse. in other words, i know what i did is wrong but it's not as bad as what they did. whatever happened to honor among thieves? as the banks attempt to strike deals of authority the $450 million settlement that barclays struck in june seems to be the benchmark of preliminary discussions. banks involved are each making sure to point out because their chief executives were not involved in the scandal even though the banks were according to their internal

investigations, the banks should be treated with more leniency than barclays. you have to feel more sorry for them. it's every bank for themselves. knight capital seems to have raised the funds necessary to continue operations after last week's debacle where 40 minutes the computers took over the world. placing and buying selling orders over $400 million. joining me now dennis kelleher and felix salmon. felix, let me begin with you. are you shocked that the banks are so quickly pointing the finger at each other? what ever happened to loyalty to your co-conspirators. >> i'm not really sure where the concept of honors among thieves came from, but it certainly didn't come from the banking industry. once criminal charges are talked about people get scared quickly. what they do is circle the wagons around the ceo and senior officers. then they start looking down to see who they can start throwing

overboard. it's not surprising that that's happening, and it's not surprising that they're not working with each other. we could enough this scandal move this scandal along if we could find prosecutors. i think that would help focus the minds of those in the executive suites of these banks. >> eliot: it does focus the mind. i had this same thing happen back in '02 when we were prosecuting the analyst cases merrill lynch's lawyers in my office. after ten minutes, they said eliot, you are right. everything you're alleging is what we did, but we're not as bad as gold man and they we know down the list. i looked at them and said, man you're flipping faster than organized crime figures. where is the honor. maybe this is not new but it's amazing how quickly they run turn, cower for cover. do there needs to be handcuffs before they take this seriously. >> right now they're taking it

seriously. they don't even need handcuffs. it just takes diamond being kicked out. and they say i could lose my job over this. >> eliot: when you look back, one of the big dividing lines barclays some of the ceo and executives were kicked out. but none of the senior ranks were forced to leave. i would think that is a fundamental structural flaw in the way the prosecutors handled the case. >> one of the reasons we have so many problems in the financial market some of the same people who were running the banks before the crisis thatting recklessly broke the law and found loopholes are still running the banks by and large and they still have the same motto, make money any way to be. one of the shocking things about the barclays scandal and the libor scandal larger, listen to

the e-mails voice mails and instant messages there isn't even a whiff of these people thinking for a moment that they will be caught and held accountable. the level of brazen lawlessness is a reflection of the fact that law is not applied to them. so i actually disagree a little bit with felix. handcuffs are going to focus them a lot better than bob diamond losing his job. then you may see real changes in the business model and this whole concept of no supervision because we don't have to follow the law. >> eliot: dennis i agree with you on this one. even after the new york fed was given chapter and verse dennis as you pointed out on the show a couple of weeks ago, the feds sent over a meally mouth memo saying you may want to improve this or that. there was no "arrest and stop." it was shocking. let's switch to knight capital.

can you imagine creating a computer system that could take over for 40 minutes. nobody pulled the plug? how did this happen? >> that is the one thing in which no one understands. everyone has algorithms. sometimes they work, sometimes they don't work. when they don't work, you pull the plug and press stop. when the dow crashed in five minutes, everyone saw crazy activity in the markets. and earn pressed stop at the same time and then there was no liquidity in the market and everything just went down. why knight capital could not do this when they were losing $10 million a minute makes no sense. >> eliot: when you see one of your documents on the screen being erased. but dennis, this raised for me even more fundamental question, which is what is the purpose of all of this computer-driven trading? as you pointed out these are algorithms that are trying to figure out how to make decimal

points of value buying and selling. have we created a casino that is driven by computers? >> well, we have created a casino driven by computers. we also have every component that have system is a for-profit component. profit maximummation controls every piece of it. what you have is exchanges desperately trying to make as much money catering to traders particularly to high-speed traders like knight capital. you don't have checks and balances, and this relates to all of these scandals, wall street and it's allies are on a successful campaign to defund the regulators so they can't enforce financial reform. that has another effect. they can't also do just the basic policing and oversight of things like the computer programs being run by traders with access to our exchanges and our capital markets. >> felix, let me ask you this.

every remembers the famous ipo. you want the secondary majorities to have enough trading back and forth for people to buy and sell on demand. have we gone, however to liquid on steroids where we now have computers driving all this, and the fundamental purpose of liquidity has been overridden that makes it impossible for people to participate. >> well, it makes it easier for ordinary people to participate. it give ordinary people better prices. they did that five years ago though. since then they've just been getting orders of magnitude bigger, and at that point the marginal benefit of the liquidity is probably negative. what i'm saying they're not doing any good any more. they're doing harm. >> eliot: what percentage of trades executed on the new york stock exchange is driven by high-speed trade. >> put it this way every single

trade that you do, that i do, everyone who goes on to their stockbroker who says, i want to buy that, 100% of those are cleared by high frequency trader. >> eliot: you would shut the door on these traders. >> there are two different types of traders we're talking about. high-speed trader like knight capital might be able to provide better execution but it's very important not to make the mistake this confuse high-speed trader with increased market liquid. high frequency trading is a liquidity taker not a liquidity provider. it's largely most of these computer programs go after what is commonly referred to as the dumb money. it's not called dumb money as a compliment. they're picking the pockets of anyone whose computer isn't as fast as theirs. that necessarily includes every single retail investor in the high frequency traders have to

be stopped. they won't be stopped because they provide volume to the exchanges which make a fortune off of them. but it's unfair and it's destroying our capital markets. >> eliot: we're going to continue this conversation. you're both experts. we'll have more fun down the road talking about changes. all i know, computers have taken over the world and we can't even turn them off. it's not a pretty picturer. dennis kelleher and felix salmon, thank you for your time. >> thanks, eliot. >> eliot: president obama wants an equal chance for everyone to vote. how can that be called an attack. coming up. >>"if you ever raise taxes on >>the rich, you're going to destroy our economy." not true!

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>> eliot: time to check in why jennifer granholm in the war room. good evening, govern, what have you got for us? >> eliot like you are we're

going to talk to the person in charge of voter protection of the dnc to restore people's voting rights and we're going to ask them if this is a legitimate legal argument. and then the question for us tomorrow especially with the primary starting is the tea party down and/or are they are the to make a comeback. we'll look at the primaries in august and look at political national reporter wanda summers. and we'll look at the drive for the dnc effort to take ban the majority in the house. we have one of the most well watched races, chief val demmings one of the most important races in america. >> eliot: my nightmare scenario is the tea party running the senate. >> i'm just saying, it's a real danger. >> eliot: ted cruz who is going to be the senator from texas went to the same law school than you did.

>> and you too my friend. now he's disowning it. >> eliot: i'll disavow it. we'll be watching your very. >> all right. >>we tackle the big issues here in our nation's capital. >> eliot: mitt romney has an ad airing in ohio with a sympathetic car dealer. romney would be so cold hearted as to require job losses as part of a rescue plan. where to start with the utter hypocrisy of this ad. first, the raw baseline facts. romney opposed the bailout preferring the bailout for gm. the bailout under obama added

more than a quarter million jobs. those facts are pretty he's den reputable. for romney to assert that he was some how the more sympathetic understanding voice is simply a distortion of fact and history. second the requirement that auto makers reorganized at many levels work rules pensions, dealership structure was accepted by everybody who examined the business and it would have been irresponsible to throw money at car companies without demanding these painful sacrifices. these changes successfully eliminated much of the waste and left a leaner, more efficient industry. mr. romney those this. that's precisely what bain claimed it did. pretending that anyone would could, or should have invested huge sums in the auto industry caught demanding this restructuring is simply irresponsible. which brings me to my third point. i wish the obama administration

would add another element of its discussion of bain. simply put the white house claims we do it better. a paradigm of success. rather than letting an industry fail or move it overseas as bain often had done, they should restructure, sacrifice and remr.. don't attack the motion of private equity investment. claim the mantle that we know how to do it better. the argument puts us on the right side of economic growth, as a virtue of truth and denies romney what he has pretended his calling card, the ability and know how to rebuild the economy. that's my view.

>> eliot: now it's ohio where allegations of gamesmanship have emerged at the ballot box. a lawsuit filed that challenges

the republican-dominateed legislature eliminating early vote to go only active military personnel. before these laws had been passed all citizens have been able to vote within that three--day window. as many as 913,000 military veterans since they're no longer active personnel would lose their voting privileges. ignoring this fact romney called the lawsuit an outrage in a statement this weekend also adding, i quote if i'm entrusted to be the commander in chief i'll work to protect the voting rights of our military, not undermine them. had the obama effort expand the voting right of the million of veterans romney did not say. here to make sense out of these conflicting allegations patrick murphy. congressman, thank you for your time tonight. >> governor, great to be on with you. >> eliot: all right, explain this insane logic of the romney campaign. it seems to me that the obama campaign is expanding rights,

not diminishing them. am i missing something here. >> i feel like i'm in bizarre-o world. here you're going to suppress millions of voters led by mitt romney, including in my state of pennsylvania, and then turns around and says that the president is going to suppress military vote. the fact could not be further from the truth. in ohio, there are 913,000 veterans that now have less rights because mitt romney doesn't want them to exercise their right the three-day early voting to happen in ohio. barack obama wants everyone, including military families and veterans to vote. >> eliot: what, and i hate--sometimes it's hard to impute motive, but what was the underlying logic, rationale the republicans passage that have bill that shrunk the time or window during the time you could vote early? >> it's simple. when your ideas suck, you don't want people to vote. that's what happened here,

governor. it is happening in pennsylvania, ohio, all over the country. the problem is this. in states like pennsylvania, this are veterans who served in iraq. they come back. some are injured. they have an i.d. card from the v.a. so they die it doesn't have an expiration date. what the government issueed v.a. indication cardidentification card, that is not enough to prove who you are when you go in to vote in a few short months. that is wrong. that is unamerican. >> eliot: you talked about these the statutes that are designed to eliminate fraud. there is no fraud. they're trying to cut back on the right to vote. you're saying that the veteran v.a. card is insufficient for a veteran to go in and vote. >> that's right. our veterans made sure that every american had the freedoms,

including the fundamental right to vote. when i served in iraq, 19 of my colleagues never made it home. but the point that have effort led 12 million iraqis to vote for the first time. governor you remember the purple finger. and here at home they're chipping away at our democracy? what the hell is going on. >> eliot: you're in congress, you're an iraq veteran. you're also an professor. my hat goes off to you for all these things. you've seen these being passed. do you think it's constitutional. >> i really don't. it's a violation of our voting rights act but also of our constitution. the fact is this, we need to do everything we can these next 93 days to let people know that they have to write letters to the editor, they have to make sure where they're having their

rights taken away, we cannot let it go unnoticed or unchallenged. >> eliot: what has the response been. the vast number of voters disenfranchised, enough to be dispositive, as lawyers like you would say, do you think there has been a sufficient response in mobilizing those voters and getting them the i.d. cards that they need or repeal this law. >> we're doing the best we can. there is a petition drive encouraging people to understand what is at stake here. there is a petition at www. www.votedotslash.ohio i know this past weekend, i was with supporters who were going door knocking in 90-degree weather we have to talk about it.