captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> sreenivasan: russian president vladimir putin said he'll respect this weekend's presidential balloting in ukraine, but pro-moscow militants were still fighting in the east, against forces loyal to kiev. margaret warner is in the capital. good evening, i'm hari sreenivasan. judy woodruff is away. also ahead, the widening racial gap in survival rates from breast cancer. and what health officials in one city are doing, to make sure more black women fighting the disease get the treatment they need. >> i'm trying to get a person from a, to b, to c, to d. i'm not going to leave you, until we know what has to be done for you. so you need to go in early, and

i need to stay with you. >> sreenivasan: and it's friday, mark shields and michael gerson are here to analyze the week's news. those are just some of the stories we're covering on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. >> i've been around long enough to recognize the people who are out there owning it. the ones getting involved, staying engaged. they are not afraid to question the path they're on.

because the one question they never want to ask is, "how did i end up here?" i started schwab with those people. people who want to take ownership of their investments, like they do in every other aspect of their lives. >> united healthcare, online at uhc.com. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> sreenivasan: the embattled secretary of veterans affairs, eric shinseki, won support today from a fellow cabinet member, amid a growing scandal.

defense secretary chuck hagel said it is premature to talk of firing shinseki over allegations of delayed care at v.a. hospitals. he told "c.b.s. news" the focus should be on how to fix the problem. there have been growing demands from both republicans and democrats for shinseki to resign. secretary hagel also urged the newest crop of navy and marine officers today to lead the fight against sexual abuse in the military. he addressed the u.s. naval academy commencement and noted three navy football players had been accused, at one point, of assaulting a female classmate, who graduated today. >> you've seen what these crimes do to the survivors, their families, institutions and communities. you know how they tear people and units apart. we're all accountable. from new recruits to four-star admirals and generals. from second lieutenants to the secretary of defense. we all have to step up and take action when we see something that hurts our people and our values.

>> sreenivasan: hagel also told the graduates they'll need to lead people suffering from mental health problems from the iran and afghan wars. he said those veterans should be embraced, not stigmatized. thailand's military tightened its grip on the country today. ousted prime minister yingluck shinawatra was summoned by the military chief, and then detained. and, more than 150 political leaders were barred from leaving the country. later, soldiers moved in and broke up a large crowd that gathered in the center of bangkok to protest the coup. the army seized power yesterday after months of political unrest. in response today, the united states suspended $3.5 million in military aid to thailand. china warned japan today to stay out of a growing row in the south china sea. the japanese prime minister, shinzo abe, had criticized china for moving a giant oil rig into waters that vietnam claims. beijing rejected abe's statement, saying it, "neglects reality and confuses the facts." in syria, government t.v. reported 39 people died and 200 were hurt when a mortar shell

hit an election rally for president bashar al-assad. it happened overnight in the southern city of daraa. assad was not there, but scores of people were wounded. meanwhile, opposition activists released this video allegedly showing a chlorine gas attack yesterday, at a village north of damascus. the assad regime denies using chemical weapons. >> sreenivasan: president obama announced a new shuffle in his cabinet today. he nominated housing secretary shaun donovan to head the white house office of management and budget. and he tapped three-term san antonio mayor, julian castro, as donovan's successor at the department of housing and urban development. >> i am absolutely confident that these two individuals are going to do a great job because they've done a great job in everything that they've done in the past. they are proven leaders. they're proven managers. they're going to be effective and, most importantly, they've got huge heart. they're involved in public service for the right reasons. >> sreenivasan: the two nominations are subject to

senate confirmation. the most senior black lawmaker in congress, john conyers, is back on the ballot in michigan. a federal judge ordered today that the veteran democrat's name will appear for the august primary. state elections officials had ruled conyers ineligible because of problems with his nominating petitions. he's been in the house since 1965. wall street had a relatively quiet day, going into the memorial day weekend. the dow jones industrial average gained 63 points to close at 16,606. the nasdaq rose 31 points to close well over 4,185. and the s-and-p 500 added eight, to finish above 1,900 for the first time. for the week, the dow gained just over half a percent. the nasdaq rose more than 2%. the s-and-p was up 1%. still to come on the newshour: more bloodshed in ukraine ahead of a key weekend election; a closer look at america's crumbling mental health system; efforts to close racial gaps in breast cancer survival rates; mark shields and michael gerson on the week's news;

plus: one author's take on "why philosophy won't go away" in our digital society. >> sreenivasan: it was another deadly day in eastern ukraine ahead of sunday's elections. meanwhile, russian president vladimir putin questioned why his country is being blamed for ukraine's unrest but added that he would respect the outcome of the neighboring nation's vote. chief foreign affairs margaret warner is in kiev and filed this report. >> warner: in the eastern city of slaviansk, morning dawned with the sound of artillery fire echoing in the hills. >> ( translated ): how it is possible not to be afraid? it is scary, during world war ii was it not the same? >> warner: elsewhere, pro- russian separatists ambushed a pro-government militia convoy, about five hours east of kiev, killing at least two people. today's new violence came on the

heels of yesterday's rebel attack on a ukrainian army checkpoint in volnovakha which killed 16 troops, and another clash in rubizhne left 20 rebels dead. today, speaking in st. petersburg, russian president vladimir putin labeled the situation in ukraine a civil war. >> ( translated ): why did it originate? it originated because president yanukovich postponed the signing of the association agreement with the european union. what followed? a state coup supported by our american and european partners. what more? chaos, and now we see a full- scale civil war. >> warner: meanwhile, russian troops continued drills near the ukrainian border. the russian defense ministry said they will all be pulled back within a few days. andriy parubiy has been leading the ukrainian government response. the longtime activist rose to prominence during the winter uprising in kiev's independence square. he emerged as commander of the

self defense forces for the protest camps. now, he's secretary of the national security and defense council, overseeing operations against the separatists. i spoke with him earlier today. secretary, thank you for having us. president putin said today speaking to global corporate leaders that ukraine was in the midst of a full-blown civil war. what do you say to that? >> all announcements by putin about ukraine were and remain complete lies. i've ritime he's announced russian troops were retreating, in fact, more active operations were begun by the terrorists. i would like to say that the key to the problem in ukraine is not in ukraine but hidden in the kremlin and with putin. there is evidence at the special forces of russia are acting on the territory overukraine and russian money is acting here and the full coordination of the terrorists is coming from the kremlin and putin. when we talk about fighting the terrorists, we have to understand the most important

thing is not just to localize certain terrorists, the most important is to localize the center where the coordination and finance comes from. that's why i want to say our crisis is in the kremlin. we have to understand the crisis of ukraine is a global crisis and the whole world has to unit in an anti-putin coalition to stop him because if we don't stop him today, it's unknown where his aggressive plans will be directed tomorrow. >> reporter: yesterday three days before the election you had 16 ukrainian soldiers killed in eastern ukraine. today one of your battalions got caught in a terrible firefighting, lots of wounded. are you losing control in the east? >> no, in this situation, it is the opposite, we are closing a ring of containment around these groups of terrorists who acted today in some regions. yesterday, they tried to break through the rink but had to retreat. now before the elections, they

are trying to intensify their actions but in fact putin's overall plan regarding ukraine is failing. >> reporter: now, we were just in that region, in donetsk and, just yesterday, we filmed the takeover by armed men of one of these election commission officers. thankfu-- half of them in the we region have been somehow disrupted. do you think you're winning this? >> we understand that there are regions where the situation today is not stabilized. in donetsk and in lugansk and slaviansk, we understand elections are under risk there. nevertheless, we guarantee fair and free elections in all the other reasons even in donetsk and lugansk. >> reporter: you have pro russian separatists who have taken over government buildings in those towns. why can't you take them back?

>> because the tactic used was declared by putin on tv some time ago and in ukraine that is using civilians, women and children during the operations of insurgence. when they seize buildings, civilians are among them, recommend and children, making the work more complicated of the special forces and the army. >> reporter: so you're prevented from acting because civilians will be killed? >> the restraint on our anti-terrorist units are not letting citizens die. all people are citizens of ukraine and fours the death of any people who just happened to be on the terrorist of the military operations unacceptable. so in localizing hot spots, we think people who come in with weapons are punished under yiewrnlgian laws but avoid civilians as much as possible. >> reporter: civilians in the east say when you have come in and people have been caught in the crossfire, it's inflamed anti-kiev feeling in the east. is that a serious problem?

are you aware of that? >> we understand that sometimes our actions can cause resistance among certain parts of the population, but there are a lot of people in lugansk and donetsk regions who greet the ukrainian's army arrival and consider it their protection from terrorists who could appear any day in their city. >> reporter: finally, let's pitch forward to after the election. military and political commanders of the donetsk people's republic, the separatists told us they don't care what happens in tomorrow's election, they're not going anywhere. the donetsk government said it's time to move out, the people are ready to give up the weapons. are you going to clear them am? >> i'm sure that the ukrainian government after the presidential elections will continue actions to protect our citizens because any research shows that the "leaders" of the

donetsk republic, so-called, do not have the support of society. more people are supporters of a united ukrainian state. of course there were problems in ukraine and exacerbated b by yanukovych who tried to split ukraine. after the election of a new president, i'm certain psych psychological changes will take place. the main purpose of putin to not let the elections happen will fail and i am sure after the election faster and more effectively we can eliminate the problems that exist in parts of our country today. >> reporter: thank you, mr. secretary. >> thank you. >> sreenivasan: jeffrey brown spoke to margaret a short time ago. >> brown: how do officials explain what's going on with vladimir putin and seemingly contradictory statements?

>> reporter: they believe he's playing a double game. he wants to keep ukraine destabilized and torn between east and west. on the other hand, he doesn't want to be blamed entirely for messing up the election because the u.s. and europeans have made it really clear to him there will be tougher economic sanctions and you notice his remarks today came in an economic form of global c.e.o. in st. petersburg. so the intimidation campaign continues. he would like to make it look like the results are of dubious legitimacy, but i'm told people close to him are privately talking to the man considered to be the likely winner if not outright on sunday then in a runoff and that is the so-called chocolate king, multi-billionaire petro cherchgo. >> brown: what would be the impact on the donetsk people's

republic? >> reporter: when we told them putin was going to move troops off the border, they look dismayed. this does not compare to crimea where i was, and when you saw the russians trained and advised locals really taking control down there, it doesn't feel that way here. there are a lot of internal spats, they're having trouble either governing the areas that they hold. so the belief among ukrainian officials here is without russia's backing that it will be easier to clear them out. now, they may be wrong but that is the belief. >> brown: i know that you are back in kiev. what's the atmosphere like ahead of sunday's election? >> reporter: kind of odd, jeff. there's no pre-election frenzy. you see billboards and so on, but today schenko refused to

debate but met with danish officials. you get the idea everyone is looking ahead. one of the people we talked to said we have to get a government everyone recognizes so we can move forward. so the stakes are high but this does not feel like an american style last minute, last evening rally such as we would have in the states. >> brown: margaret warner in ukraine. thanks so much. >> reporter: thank you, jeff. >> sreenivasan: next, a pair of healthcare stories that focus on disturbing gaps in the u.s. system. first, a major problem with mental health care that's drawing little attention day to day, yet is having a profound impact on costs, treatment and the way americans live. judy woodruff recorded this conversation earlier this week.

>> woodruff: from 1995 to 2012, the number of americans diagnosed with a si severe mental illness road by 8% from 7.2 up to 9.6 million. at the same time the number of psychiatric hospital beds available decreased by 32%. this has left hundreds of thousands of the mentally ill on the streets, in emergency rooms or behind bars. mental illness accounts for 6% of total healthcare costs and, yet, the the cost of treatment, disability benefits and lost productivity add up to a loss of almost $450 billion for the u.s. economy. these numbers frame a year-long investigation by u.s.a. today into the toll this crisis is taking on families, the economy and the healthcare system. they're calling it the cost of not caring. liz szabo is a health reporter for "usa today" and is the main author of the series.

liz szabo, welcome to the program. >> thank you. >> woodruff: the sheer magnitude of this problem is staggering, isn't it? >> yeah, it's really something that touches everyone, and we wanted to call the series "the cost of not caring" to show how we all pay the cost both in dollars and in human suffering. >> woodruff: what drew your attention to it in particular? you cover health regularly, but what about mental health in particular? >> i think the story grew out of some of the mass tragedies we've suffered in the past few years, but we also wanted to go beyond those shootings. i learned a lot about the healthcare system and what's going wrong, that we really wanted to look at the tragedies that happen every day, privately in people's homes and the losses that people are suffering from mental illness that don't make headlines. >> woodruff: how did you find out how widespread this is?

>> we made a lot of phone calls and heard from many families who are trying to get help and just not managing. >> woodruff: as you were saying, you talked to a lot of people in the country. i want to show our viewers a short excerpt of one of the people you spent time with. her name is karen kelly. she lives in vermont. here's part of what she has to say. >> the near i turned 40, i was really sad. i couldn't get happy or excited about anything. my husband gave me a wonderful weekend in montreal and i had an absolutely miserable time. i came back and told him that i thought that i was depressed. i went through screening, the psychologist said, you absolutely have depression. most of the timeth nothing you can -- it's nothing you can explain. for a lot of people, they can look really good on the outside and on the inside be a total

mess, yet they have to still live with it, and it's a struggle. >> woodruff: what happened to her? she got into a pretty dire set of circumstances, didn't she? >> she's a wife with and mom like many of your viewers. she reek rec niced she needed help. she was thinking about death and her psychiatrist couldn't find her a hospital bed. she couldn't get help. she knew she would have to be on the verge of death to get help so she swallowed an entire bottle of pills. went to an emergency room. the closest bed they could find three days later was in the next state. she had to go 200 miles. >> woodruff: to be treated. that's right. the ambulance took her to massachusetts at a cost of $3,600, paid for largely by medicare. >> woodruff: how typical is her situation? >> it's pretty typical. we hear horror stories from every emergency room in the country we talk to.

there is something going oven called boarding. when somebody comes to an emergency room and can't get a psychiatric bed, they just live in the e.r. we've talked to someone who said he had psychotic patients waiting in the e.r. for two weeks for a bed. >> woodruff: why do you believe it's gotten to this epidemic state that snts. >> there are a lot of complicated reasons, but the recession really hit the mental health field hard. states cut nearly $5 billion from mental health care services just from 2009 to 2012. so they cut 10% of all the healthcare psychiatric beds in the country. so it's really gotten to be a crisis. >> woodruff: before that, was the country doing pretty well by people who are mentally ill? >> i don't think there is ever been a sense that the mental health system has done particularly well. there was a move in the '60s

to get people out of hospital beds and institutions into the community. unfortunately, the community resources never materialized. people really were left with nowhere to go. >> woodruff: i remember you and i were talk just before the year here. i covered the jimmy carter presidency. roseline carter, the first laidy, made this her focus, the attention to the mentally ill. it takes a constant effort. >> it gets pushed to the back burner. people say when there are budget cuts, mental health is the first to be cut. maybe it's because people who are profoundly disabled can't always advocate for themselves and i think there seems to be a false idea that we don't have to pay for mental health, that we can get by on skimping. we find when mental health care gets cut, states do pay. they pay for the emergency room,

they pay to build homeless shelters and prisons. i think something like 16% of people in prison and jails are acutely psychotic. >> reporter: so if these folks are not able to get some kind of treatment early on, then they end up in a much worse place? >> often, yeah. i think we tall idea up 5 -- tallied up 590,000. half a million americans are in these new institutions, in prisons, homeless shelters or the morgue. before 38,000 suicides a year, more than from homicide, prostate cancer or car accidents. >> reporter: you mentioned "usa today" is making this a year-long series. you're focusing on the cost. there's also the stigma associated with being mentally ill or having an emotional illness. >> we're looking into the issue of stigma because stigma can

prevent people from getting help if they're afraid of being lined. it also keeps from supporting your neighbors. if you have a child with cancer, your neighbors offer support. if you have a child with schizophrenia, the neighbors turn away. we can't put $5 billion back into state coffers by ourselves, but we're hoping to inspire a little compassion and understanding for the families and people who are suffering. >> woodruff: liz szabo, reporter with "usa today." the series they're doing is the cost of not caring about the mentally ill. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> sreenivasan: our second health care story is about breast cancer, a cancer that attracts more attention and, frequently, public support than mental illness. but even so, there are wide racial disparities that are less discussed, particularly the gap between african american women and white women. gwen ifill has the story of

efforts in tennessee to tackle that problem. ♪ >> ifill: in memphis where ties to religion run strong, health officials have turned to a higher authority for help. >> because i believe that god is on my side. i'm on a mission with the gospel. >> ifill: here at missionary baptist church on the city's south side, pastor james kendrick has held sunday worship service with the same families for a generation. >> i know how to pray. >> ifill: kendrick invited health specialist carol dickens to talk about alarming new findings that african-american women in memphis die from breast cancer at a rate twice that of white women. >> you at risk and this is information that you can save a life. >> ifill: according to research in the journal of cancer epidemiology, the rate of breast cancer deaths for black women nationally is 40% greater

than that of white women, and the city with the worst racial disparity is memphis. >> is everybody getting some knowledge here this morning? >> ifill: it was part of a public awareness campaign sponsored by methodist healthcare, the city's largest provider. the hope is to connect with african-american women who often reach advanced stages of breast cancer before the disease is detected. >> i want as many women as possible, particularly in these kinds of communities, to have a screening mammogram. early detection. >> ifill: oak grove missionary baptist is one of 500 in the country that came together to tackle breast cancer. >> one thing i learned to appreciate is the power of faith. faith plays a big role in the culture, the dynamics in the

communities, and it's a convener. faith convenes people, and it's a place where you can talk and have safe conversation. >> ifill: oncologist dr. tower says the problem is this: while overall death rates for breast cancer have improved nationally, gains for black women have lagged. >> in the early '60s, white women and black women really had the same survival rate. as we've improved the treatment of breast cancer, white women have done better and african-american women have not. >> ifill: while a small percentage of african-american women hav have a more aggressive breast cancer called triple negative, he thinks the main problem is cultural. >> we think it's cultural and socioeconomic and true in memphis where socioeconomic

strata and race seem to mirror each other. >> ifill: memphis is the nation's fourth biggest city and for the last three years the gulf between the races has widened. african-americans suffer a poverty rate here of 33.6% while poverty for whites declined to 8%. >> hey, kid. how you doing? >> hanging in. ow you been feeling? >> ifill: mary singleton, a patient of interest towers, said concerns from money delayed her from seeking help. >> i discovered a lunch and kept thinking because i don't have health insurance, i have to figure out how to pay. >> we didn't see lymph nodes on the scan. >> ifill: uninsured single mother, she ignored the lunch till she felt pain. by the tame she made it to the clinic, she had stage 4 breast cancer. >> you work long hours and hard, you don't really think about your own health. you're almost embarrassed to

say, you know, before this, i have never had a mammogram because the cost and the priority weren't there. it was always something else that you've got to do that you've got to take care of and, even though my children are grown, you know, you still -- you're still in that mode. >> healthcare in impoverished areas on the list of priorities is probably number 11 or 12, in 1 through 13. because we're talking about where we're going to live and eat. >> ifill: health officials say health navigators like carol dickens could be key to closing the racial gap. dickens whose position is funded by the susan g. komen foundation work hard to help people who get lost in the healthcare system. >> i'm trying to get a person from a to b to c to d.

i'm not going to leave you till we know what has to be done for you. so you need to go in early and i need to stay with you. >> we need to replicate five, ten, twenty times. we need more navigators in the community, if only to provide another hand to hold, a trusted advisor through the process to build up that confidence in the patient's mind that this is something they can do. >> doctors say it's still unclear what impact the affordable care act will have on improving cancer survival rates for black women. in the meantime, methodist healthcare and the west clinic say they are committed to finding ways to cover all costs. >> there's no medical jargon, no biopsy required. we bring them in and get them screened. if they have an abnormal screening, we get them biopsied. if they have a positive bopsy, we get them operated on and get them chemotherapy or hormonal therapy or what they want, all

at no cost to them. >> ifill: dr. tower's eventual goal that improved breast cancer survival rate served as a model for other disparities. >> we picked breast cancer first and trying to make a model of dealing with breast cancer to show us how to deal with prostate cancer, lung cancer screening, diabetes, stroke, blood pressure. >> i know i'm all right! >> ifill: church leaders at oak grove baptist missionary hope in this case faith will triumph over fear and the disease. >> sreenivasan: and to the analysis of shields and gerson. that's syndicated columnist mark shields and washington post columnist michael gerson. david brooks is away today. >> sreenivasan: let's talk elections. kentucky, georgia had elections.

so you can biggest takeaway. >> we who cover politics are frustrated sports writers. we love the ease questions in softball or the unfair charts, a cheap shot, and to use tennis jargon that i never played, is saying republicans this year have committed no unforced errors. they have not -- they've put themselves in a position to compete, if not to win in the competitive senate races. they haven't nominated people that they're going to have to run away from who are seen as losers, that is an accomplishment to them. >> i agree with that. i think the republican establishment is not a myth or paper tiger. i think mitch mcconnell is evidence of that. there's something impressive about his utterly bland ruthlessness when it comes to these races and i think it's true, i think republicans have determined they want the senate, they're not going to make stupid

mistakes and that, given recent elections, is a huge accomplishment for them. so i think they found, in the shutdown, that tea party groups, the leaders of the tea party groups are not appeasable. they're not going to be brought into the coalition, they have to be fought. and we've seen a power reaction in the chamber and others to these groups and they have been largely defeated. >> sreenivasan: should democrats be concerned the republicans are taking the necessary steps to win back the senate? >> sure. they don't have what they had in indiana where joe won, harry reid in nevada. the democrats have five seats in the past two elections that the republicans just gave up essentially by nominating unelectable candidates, tea party people. what the tea party had going for

it was surprise, in the past. that el meant was gone because the incumbents this year were already -- michael mentioned mitch mcconnell. if you want to get an idea of what this year is going to be about, i mean, there was no lift of it between driving dream, inspiring vision or policy statement. it was just he thanked his family, made the obligatory nod to the opponent and immediately launched a die tribe against his opponent brought to you by barack obama and harry reid. i think that will the tenor of the year. >> i think the democrats have good candidates in kentucky and georgia. but the problem is the battleground of roll of the senate is in republicans states and the republicans only need a few. it's in the sixth year of the democratic president that is down in the polls. so there's a swift current here

that i think make it very hard for even very good candidates to get traction in this election. >> georgia is interesting, hari, in the sense that the republicans had five candidates. the true believers, sideliners, tea party finished fourth and fifth and the two who won could be called country club republicans, so let's make the cocktails at 7:00. so they're in a runoff and that will be brutal. >> i think it's more because republicans have opened up routes like oregon. they have a strong candidate in a traditionally blue state, but the eastern part of the state is more like a midwestern state, in many ways and i think the republicans are expanding the fields, not just defending. >> sreenivasan: do we see this in arkansas or alaska where they will be competitive?

>> there's no question the republicans are eyeing, first of all, south dakota which had been held by jim johnson who is retiring and the president lost by 20 votes and states mitt romney carried by 14 points, montana, and in addition to that you have west virginia where the president lost by 27 points. you know, those are the immediate ones the republicans had their eyes on. then you've got battle democrat incumbents. but i would say every one of the democratic incumbents is in a position to win. there's nobody they're writing off at this point, whether kay hagan in north carolina, mary ann drew in louisiana and mark in alaska. they're proven candidates and i think they're going to be competitive races. >> sreenivasan: so is this idea of the tea party versus the

establishment an area the media likes or let's say they've already had an impact in moving the party in a more conservative direction? >> there's a clear difference. the republican party is more monlithicly conservative than in the past, no questions. but most republicans are in a reagan eat category. the tea party leaders of all of modern government, they would regard reagan as a rhino. so i think there is a clear difference in tone and style and why there is a serious fight here. but republicans face a huge challenge in this. they can defeat the tea party and try to get the base out in the mid-term election, which sometimes wins with a message as complex as obamacare bad. but that will not win the 2016 election and, in fact, could lose the senate in 2016, which is the flip side of the demographic advantage republicans have right now.

so they're going to have to make a shift. they can win but will have to rebrand the party to win in 2016. >> sreenivasan: looking forward, june 3, mississippi, a race that got more interesting. we have that di thad cochran, me establishment, and chris daniel. i want to hear your opinions but i think four people have been arrested because supporters of mcdaniel went into the nursing home of thad cochran's wife who is in dementia and posted a video of her. seems like a new low. >> well, the story is still assembling and the person who did it was with somebody who did it on his own and the question is how deeply the mcdaniel campaign either was aware of it, didn't stop it or was even complicit in. i don't understand, and mrs. cochran, sadly, is in dementia, is in hospice care and

has been there 13 years. what possible advantage -- just ask what sort of perverted thinking leads to let's get a video of this disabled woman, invade her privacy and put it on -- and anybody should be disqualified from the vote. if the campaign is involved, they will pay dealer. >> the campaign was doing well in the last few weeks. >> cochran is weak in many ways as a candidate, this is the last best hope of the tea party, but i think mcdermott was in serious trouble here. it was reported today mctanl as a radio talk show host had occasionally co-hosted the show with one of the people that was arrested, one of the four people that was arrested. this is not a distant

relationship. there's no evidence that the campaign was involved yet but you think have an investigation, a criminal investigation that's going to be e-mails, you're going to review e-mails and have subpoenas and other things. i can't imagine now that mississippi republicans would want to send a candidate into a general election that's in the middle of this controversy. >> sreenivasan: shifting gears to the v.a. scandal. support for eric shi shinseki ss to be slipping from democrats and republicans. was the president too slow in doing something about this as bob dole said today? >> the president and shinseki suffer from the same political disability. neither one is able to emote upon demand. eric shi shinseki is something t doesn't beat the table with his shoe and doesn't beat his chest. he's remarkable american with a

record of serviceo this country basically unmatched, and the fact that he hasn't been angry as john stewart and other observers -- is the president slow? yes, it shouldn't have been there three weeks and the response itself seemed to be almost an emergency response, but i think it's classic president. he will wait for the report to come in, expanded the investigation in 26 hospitals. >> the president said in multiple years over and over again, i'll fix this problem. >> and i would argue that the v.a. has had a much larger mandate under the this administration and this secretary. it extended to all the victims of agent orange from vietnam, expanded it to ptsd. the presumption is if you're in combat, you don't have to come in and prove it anymore, and

obviously expanded the number of people being covered. and i'm not in any way minimizing. 40 people died and heads should roll and people should be more accountable, make no mistake about it. the record of achievement and his record in particular will stand the test of time. >> you said this is the scandal that will stick with the obama presidency. is this a leadership crisis, a management crisis, a systemic problem at the v.a., is there somebody else that could clean this up? >> i think it's a good question, how much is leadership. there's a temptation to have scape ghost in this kind -- scapegoats in this kind of matter. you could be given too many responsibilities to the republican institution. the system could be poorly designed. this one hasn't been fundamentally reformed in a long time. but i think you've identified the problem for obama is there have been many problems over decades in this system, but he

came to office identifying this as a problem, putting presidential credibility on the line saying i'm going to fix this, and then he appears, like at the press conference that he had, and positions himself as an outraged bystander. that is more of a self-indictment than it is a defense in a case like this. you're the president. you've had five and a half years to make a decision like this. i think that's a risk. you can't just say i'm angry. they put him out there in the press conference to say i'm angry, but you have to have anger plus action in order to be credible on these issues and it hasn't happened yesterday. >> the report is coming in the middle of next week. we'll see what the president does. i think this is his strength as well as his shortcoming. >> mark shields, michael gerson, thanks so much. >> thank you.

>> sreenivasan: finally tonight, a book that argues for the place of ancient philosophy in the modern world. jeff is back with a conversation he recorded recently. >> brown: our next guest tonight, plato, the greek philosopher. well, not really, but what if he was able to join us, or to visit google to discuss brain engines or discuss brain scans with the leading euro scientists, what insights would he have for us. such questions are tackled in the new book, "plato at the googleplex: why philosophy won't go away," author rebecca goldstein is a philosophyest and winner of the mccarthy award. good to have you. >> thank you. is this to understand philosophy or make a case for philosophy itself? >> to make a case fo for philosy

and get close to plato. he's elusive. we know very little about the man himself. to make a case for philosophy, i wanted to go back to the beginning, so to the greeks, why did they do it, why did plato do it? who is he, who are they and how similar are we to them. >> brown: that's what you did. you put him into our world. >> yes, i think there are great similarities between our society and the athennian society. the beginning of philosophy and science and history and abstract mathematics. it's an achievement-oriented society. they had a polytheistic religion and their society was saturated with religious rituals, but when it came to the question of what is life all about, do we matter,

do we have to do something in order to matter, they attacked it in very secular terms, and we are increasingly post-monotheistic when we think about our lives and what is it to live the good life, what is it to live a life that's fulfilling, most of us think of it in most-theo logic concerns. >> brown: you put plato into creating conversations, dialogs as plato did for his original character. socrates. >> socrates. >> brown: was that fun for you to do? >> it was a lot of work. first of all, i really wanted to soak up the culture, so i didn't just read and memorize the 26th dialogue, but all of the cultural artifacts, you know, the poetry of "the tragedy "to try to get a sense of what it was like.

but a sense of who plato was because as you say he creates this character h hipocrates, but who is plato? >> brown: you have him visit a neuroscientist and get a brain scan. what are you exploring in a scene like that? >> the first place i bring them is google. >> brown: yes. and he gets a chrome book and is addicted to the internet. so he gets brought up to speed very fast into our world. >> brown: i love when he visits the cable television because i would love to have him at the table. >> one of the great philosophical questions of our day is, you know, science is finding out what if the material substrates of our minds is not answering the questions. the question of will, personal

responsibility, personal identity. iin our brain that consists of synapses -- >> brown: in neuroscience, the brain tells us all. >> exactly. things like am i responsible for my actions, that's all going on. so the advances in science has made philosophy inevitable. you know, we have to -- >> brown: wait a minute, inevitable, or some people would say it would become irrelevant in another way because if that's all answered materially, what's left? you're making a case philosophy still has this deep reel vanities. >> absolutely. plato gets into a conversation with this neuroscientist, two of them, actually, and he is turning to the instant results

we have so far, is it answering all the questions i asked about personal responsibility, personal identity, about who well wie really are? are people jumping the gun, making too much of these scientific results, as important as they are. and i think and plato thinks the role of philosophy is often to mediate between our scientific im-- you know, what we're getting of ourselves as it's reflected in our sign terrific studies, and the kinds of other ideas we need in order to live coherent lives, like this is my life and i'm responsible for this life. can we reconcile that with what we're learning from science? and that's, i think, very much the role of philosophy and that is what plato is trying to do when he goes to the neuroscientific lab. >> brown: let me ask you, finally, are you making an argument tore the continued valueo deep thought and

philosophy and the humanities more generally, are you afraid that's being lost, that something important is being lost today? >> yes, i think the humanities are floundering to a certain extent, and many who are saying they stall themselves on the sciences. i think that's a mistake. i think the humanities have to take science, the great knowledge we get from science into account, but then try to answer the human questions and try to make sense out of our lives, taking into account all of the scientific knowledge. so i'm afraid that that big picture and that picture of sort of reconciliation between these different images that we have is being lost. >> brown: "plato at the googleplex: why philosophy won't go away." rebecca, thank you so much. >> thank you.

>> sreenivasan: again, the major developments of the day. new fighting erupted in eastern ukraine, two days before a presidential election. russian leader vladimir putin branded the conflict a "civil war." syrian t.v. reported 39 people killed and 200 wounded in a mortar attack on a rally for president assad. and, a correction to a story we aired last night about living on the minimum wage. airport ramp worker josh vina does not move baggage for alaska airlines; he earns $9.50 an hour doing that work for other clients of his employer, menzies aviation. on the newshour online right now, we continue our look at "capital," the best-selling, and controversial, book about inequality. author and french economist thomas piketty responds to his critics in an interview with paul solman. you can read their conversation on "making sense." all that and more is on our web site, newshour.pbs.org. and a reminder about some upcoming programs from our pbs colleagues. gwen ifill is preparing for "washington week," which airs later this evening. here's a preview:

>> ifill: much to discuss this week. the politics and the policy behind the unspooling drama at the v.a., cyber attacks, primary election results and the great society at 50. all later tonight on washington week. >> sreenivasan: tomorrow on "pbs newshour weekend," a special feature called "flying coach." john larson reports that sometimes the most powerful stories are sitting right next to you, as was the case when he met a young man named normandy, and wondered how he got the name. here's an excerpt from that report. ♪ >> to understand what's going on, you should know two things. first, even though this family comes from columbia, normandy is named after one of the most important moments in history. >> 1941 was the beginning of the liberation of europe and my grandfather saw that as such a

powerful moment in history that he wanted to have his family carry a name that referred to a new dawn and, so, the firstborn in the family received the name normandy. >> sreenivasan: and again, to our honor roll of american service personnel killed in the afghanistan conflict. we add them as their deaths are made official and photographs become available. here, in silence, are two more. that's the newshour for tonight. i'm hari sreenivasan, have a nice memorial day weekend. thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by:

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