scotchy scotchy scotch. then, boiling water. you pour the boiling water in on top of the scotch and the lemon peel and the sugar and you drink it and you fall asleep and you wake up in january and you are much less stressed. the recipe is at maddowblog.com. up with chis hayes is next. good morning from new york. i'm chris hayes. the last american military bases and prisoners in iraq have been handed over to iraqi officials as part of the u.s. withdrawal there. today, the three-month anniversary of both this show and occupy wall street started on the same day, the occupy movement is planning to occupy a square owned by a nearby church that has supported occupy wall street but protesters may not camp on its property. news out of washington. we have asked one of our recurring guests, congressman jerry gnatter to join us for our

discuss. we have sticking around for the entire program, heather boucher, randi weingarten, president of the american federation of teachers and josh barrow, a contributor and fellow at the manhattan institute. congress had a lot to take quar of before their holiday break. on friday, they passed a trillion dollar spending bill that will fund the government through next december. they agreed to a payroll tax extension for 160 million americans and unemployment insurance and funds it the medicare reimbursement known as the doc fix, which we can devote an entire program into. republicans succeeded in jamming the president on the keystone xl pipeline forcing an expedited decision on the trance continental gas line within 60 days as it is set to ex peer. the senate will vote this morning. it is not clear whether it will pass the house of

representatives congressman nather has been involved. he is a returning veteran to the show. welcome back. >> good to be here. >> a fairly busy week which tends to be the case before a deadline. are you happy with what you came out with? >> it is very frustrating. we passed a budget bill that given the constraints voted back in the debt-ceiling days of last summer was not a bad deal. overall, it was a terrible deal. we locked ourselves into it last summer. the worst thing was the detainee bill, which contains, separate from the issue of the president being told to keep somebody in the military as opposed to civilian court. this clearly gives the president the authority to put in jail with no due process, no trial,

nothing, anyone, forever, simply because someone in the executive branch determines based on no process, no knowledge, that this person is associated with al qaeda, taliban. >> this is the national defense authorization act, which we have senators that voted against it on the program today to explain votes for and against. to engage you on this point, with he spent a lot of time on staff this week trying to figure out what this bill said. there was a lot of confusion about what exactly it said. i think actually intentional confusion because of the statutory language is ambiguous. it should be clear, though, that the power that you are saying that this bill puts into law has already been claimed by the white house. it is not any different than what the white house has been saying they have the power to do. >> there is a breathtaking frightening claim of power by presidents bush and obama, the claim that on their say-so, they can take any american or anybody

else for that matter and throw them in jail forever with no trial claiming he is a terrorist or allied with trysts. the supreme court has never upheld that power. in the two cases where it was claimed, the administration got rid of the case by withdrawaling the claim and prosecuting the people in normal criminal court. what this does is to say you have that power that until now only the president claimed. >> even if congress and the president agreed, the court is still going to weigh in. no matter how breath taking the assertion, you take pass a bill the president has the right to confiscate the first child of every family in the united states. >> that would be no more egregious than this bill. >> that's hyper bol lick, isn't it? >> no. the core fundamental principals of liberties tho claim that someone has no right to any hearing on the president's say-so, because he claims that

you are allied with the terrorist or gave material support to the terrorist is breathtaking. i think it is unconstitutional and the courts will determine that. >> if that is the case, why did we see this pass by a 86% to 13%s margin in the house. >> i am glad that at least among the democrats and the press did not cover this at all, the vote was 93-93. on a defense authorization bill, you get an overwhelming vote because they don't want to vote against the troops. >> this is attached to the bill that authorizes the funds for the entirety. >> which itself is wrong. with a bill of this magnitude and importance, it should have been a separate bill and hearings in the judiciary committee instead of being stashed into i amust-pass bill that you can't vote against because if you vote against it, you vote against guns for the troops and the fact that half the democrats, 93-93, voted against it is a testimonial to how many people said we can't do

this. 43 republicans voted against it. >> i want to turn our attention to the deal we heard about a payroll tax extension. we were talking yesterday what's going to happen. we all said, they will probably kick the can down the road. there will be some sort of two-month temporary extension. that looks like what it is. what is your roo he action? >> do you think this bill can get through the house? what do you think about the republicans maneuvering this keystone excel pipeline provision as the cost? >> it is obnoxious to maneuver something that has nothing to do with it. it ought to be decided on its own environmental merits or demerits. the republicans, it is one of their major playings when they organized congress to say, we are not going to put unrelated riders on must-pass bills. they tried a lot on the budget bill. they didn't get defunding planned parenthood, all kinds of things. most of them were taking out. but i assume that there will be

a full year extension of this in two months. i assume we will pass it in two months. i assume the republicans will pass it simply because how do they go home and explain to their constituents why it is essential there be no tax increases on millionaires and that we don't have to pay for tax cuts on millionaires but we can not have a tax cut for 160 million americans. >> am i right, heather, you may know this. i know you follow this closely and you have worked on the hill. am i right, i was trying to decode the "times" story that came out in the middle of the night about the deal that has been struck. it looks like it is not paid for, the two-month extension? that's just deficit spending. this is my sense, that they haven't come up with a pay-for for it. >> yeah. that wasn't clear to me when i read the piece this morning. >> let me ask you the question in principle. one of the things that's been strange, if you are trying to get deficit finance stimulus, it makes no sense to pay for your tax cuts. the whole point is to run a

short-term deficit. isn't this a bizarre conversation we have been having? >> this whole conversation has been bizarre from the perspective of the economy. we just passed a budget bill that will decrease spending. that's the last thing our economy needs but that's the conversation we are stuck in. you shouldn't be doing bay-fors for the stimulus or the more importantly ui extensions, unplou unploit insurance ex stengss. the conservatives have pushed it so far to the right, that's the conversations we are having. >> when you are outside of washington, it feels like there is a total disconnect. the big story is half the country is poor from the census data. that should be the blazing red light, pass ui, do stimulus spending. we have to get people back to work. yet, then, we have all of this.

notwithstanding jerry and some of the folks that are so amazing, the spending bill when i saw it, i thought, oh, my god, this is a sigh of relief. it could have been worse. this is like we have to get people back to work. >> part of the problem is that congress has handcuffed itself in the debt-ceiling deal. >> the reason for the two-month extension is that they have identified pay-fors for two months worth and not the rest. the two months is fairly easy, beyond that, you get into harder things. you should not have pay-fors. remember something else. the whole idea of the payroll tax on social security is a terrible idea to start with. we have to because it endangers the rhetoric that social security is not part of the deficit because it is paid for

by putting money from the general fund into the trust fund. suddenly, you have put social security into the deficit debate, which is a terrible thing. but, at this point, to eliminate it would be to have it in effect the tax increase on 160 million americans which would probably kill about 800,000, 900,000 jobs. we have no choice to continue it until we figure out some other way of stimulus like the making america work pay act which was a better way to do it. it had nothing to do with social security. to substitute that for this. >> i don't think the pay-fors are such a bad thing. because they are sort of a gimmick. >> particularly because they are short-term. >> they are also over a ten-year window it can be stimulating if you have the big tax cut now and it is paid for over a long period. >> not if you start the pay-fors soon. if we had pay-fors for these things that went in when

unemployment was 5%, that would be okay. >> i want to come back and keep talking about this after this break. ♪ ♪ it's nice to be here ♪ ♪ it's nice to see you [ male announcer ] this is your moment. ♪ this is zales, the diamond store. take up to an extra 15 percent off storewide now through sunday. an extra 15 percent off when you're a sports photographer, things can get out of control pretty quickly. so i like control in the rest of my life... especially my finances. that's why i have slate, with blueprint.

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♪ we're talking about this payroll tax cut extension which the news out of washington last night was that the senate has hammered out a two-month extension deal. heather, you felt like you had more to say on this topic. should we be paying for the tax cuts? you say no. what comes up? why is this going to be any different in two months than it is now? >> to, to me, is a big concern. we already lived through this a couple of years ago where we had two, three-month extensions of

the unemployment benefits. all the folks that are sending out the benefits at the state labor department and all those receiving benefits had to wonder, will congress extend them, all of this uncertainty. it looks like we are walking into doing that again when congress has never before when the unemployment rate has this high allowed benefits for the long-term unemployed to expire. it is unbelievable we are going to cut off benefits to those folks. >> the worst long-term unemployment crisis in the history of the data that we have on the topic. we have more long-term unemployed than we have ever had, more people out of work longer than we have ever had since we have been keeping records. >> we have not seen anything like that. some of the writings that they put into the legislation that passed on the house, assumed people are unemployed and it is their fault. you are unemployed because you

don't have a high school degree or because you are a drug user. >> they want to cut the longevity of unemployment insurance. >> there is an argument if you were sitting in econ 101 at the university of chicago in hyde park where your father once taught. >> yes, twice. >> there is this argument, right, that extending unemployment incentivizes people not to find workment i think we have seen some empirical work that disproves that. >> under normal economic circumstances, that is true. it is true to an extent at all times. you have counter veiling effects. so you have to weigh that. i think we are in a situation right now where extended unemployment is a good thing. it will need to be pulled back at some point. >> did you say extended unemployment. >> unemployment benefits. >> the studies range on how much unemployment is induced by

long-term benefits. it is probably something like half a point. it is nontrivial. >> you have the welfare effect too. you are not having people starve. >> you also have stimulating effects to the economy. it is not nonsense to worry about. >> here is the thing that i find so interesting. you saw newt gingrich talking about this recently. when there is this opposition to republicans to extending unemployment, it promotes the theory of our unemployment crisis that just doesn't seem to hang together logically. >> if you just focus on common sense, most people who are unemployed want to work. >> right. >> so you have this notion in america that this polarization about the job crisis, that you don't actually even have in most other crises. take, we were just talking about, military spending. people understand that national security is an issue.

we have to all at one point or another join together in terms of national security. that should be the same in terms of economic security right now. it is shocking to me that we are still having this debate like about unemployment insurance when we have the worst unemployment crisis ever. >> the political culture says it is consensus on funding the department of defense to the fund of $600 million. >> in my memory, until recent years, that was not true. >> exactly right. >> this actually is new. >> this is new. the whole notion -- i'm sorry, jerry. >> there was always a consensus that you had to have unemployment insurance for people. that's why you paid into it when times were good. you didn't have a pay-for. you did it. when unemployment was high, when there was 6.5 applicants for the job openings, then you knew you had to have extended unemployment insurance. now, they do. >> we have never been in a

position like that, as we were discussing earlier. we have never had 99-week unemployment insurance for anywhere as close as this. there is certainly no precedent for having unemployment insurance benefits available for this long of a period. >> we are talking about jobs here. >> we have never had an unemployment. we have never had unemployment numbers at the level that we have them. they mask some long-term unemployment. look at unemployment of black american youth. so if you look for the last 50 years, jerry is right. this is the first time that we have a jobs crisis that is tote little and completely polarized as opposed to being national of concern. >> one of the largest employers in the country, the united states post office, got a reprieve this week. it would have been forced to close about half of the mail processing centers. they have been granted a reprieve until may. i want to talk about that after

this break. first, i want to tharng congressman nadler for coming in. happy holidays. >> happy holidays to all. top v neck 3 piece suit dance wear bolo snakeskin boots sequin costume under things stiletto heels skinny jeans houndstooth snuggie pork pie hat oshkosh socks 5% cash back. right now get 5% cash back at department stores. it pays to discover.

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joining us now, i want to welcome harold lewis, host of new york one's influential news program and co-editor of the anthology deadline artists. congressmanaged to stave off major cutbacks by five months. they delayed to delay closing any local post offices until may of next year. congress failed to address the major structural problems that could drive the post office into some version of bankruptcy. they recorded a net loss of $5.1 billion this year. the volume of first class mail is down by 27% since 2001 as people turned to the internet

for their communication and the post office is groaning beneath the weight of a 2006 law that requires it to have health obligations. six months from now, we will likely find ourselves at a similar point looking at what we could be seeing, as ethic as it sounds is the end of an institution that has been with us since before the founding of the nation. we were talking about this issue. i was sort of amazed at how strong the feelings were about the post office. i put it out into -- on twitter yesterday. folks were really interested in the post office. there is a sense in which at a time in which the nation is extremely polarized. in which our sort of social fabric is extremely stretched. the post office stands out as a kind of loan civic institution that is shared, that is a shared

space that we all participate in. there is something really upsetting about the notion of that going away. >> absolutely. not just that it would go away but that it would be a deliberate, almost callous act of destruction of something that almost works. it is built into the fabric. if you think of all the different websites where if you want to find a movie theater, you put in the zip code. it means something. it is the way so much data is organized. there is a whole other commercial side to this that never gets talked about. home based businesses. your waiting for a package or a check, maybe fedex or ups isn't a available. so much of the economy will go away. it doesn't have to be this way. >> there are three things i want to say about this. number one, we just had the conversation in the last segment about jobs.

there are an awful lot of jobs at the post office. >> over 500,000. >> all throughout the country. it is a good job, a strong job. people love when they see their post alpern. number two, if you actually took away the prefunding retirement benefits, the post office made a profit in the last four or five years. operationally, even with the decline in first class mail, they made a profit. number three is this. there are 60 million people who do not have high-speed internet services, mostly poor, mostly elderly. what are they going to do if the post office goes away? what are they going to do? maybe it is just because i have spent the last few days in mcdowell county, west virginia, ups and fedex. i didn't see one ups and fedex truck in the two hours that it took to get from charleston and

to mcdowell. what's going to happen. there is a huge distinction. the areas in which some alternates, you could take the post office away and there would be a commercial market. new york city, a bunch of enterprises would come together to serve new york city but there are huge swaths of the country in which that is not the case. the post office is the deliverer of last resort. >> i don't know why we are talking as if there might cease to be a post office. if it has to be private advertised or significant cutbacks, it is a shared civic institution the way the dmv is a shared civic institution. it is a business that the model worked for a while. >> it is different than the dmv. in 1970, the postal reorganization act makes it an independent business. it has a mandate to deliver mail

anywhere from the country for 44 cents. it has competitors at the highest end. competitors who are eating at its business, ups and fedex and yet remarkably since from 1970 to now doesn't take a dime of taxpayer money. i figured the whole time it was essentially a government arm and subsidized. that's why it is different. i am going to let you finish your point. the dmv is part of whatever local municipal entity. the salaries are paid out of our collective taxpayer dollars. usps exists in a different category. >> that model worked for a while. people were sending a lot of first class mail and the post office could abide by all the requirements and pay for that with that business. first class mail is declining and isn't going to come back. the post office is urging businesses to continue sending paper statements to their customers. when you talk with executives, there was a great piece in business week where the mentality is about how do we

best deliver mail and how do we make this model continue to work. it is not an innovative organization. you can change the accounting stuff. that's mostly a question of when the post office is going to become insolvent under this model not whether. >> in so many ways, this does seem to be an attack, in my mind, on rural america. these are the folks out there, elderly folks, folks that don't live in cities, that rely on the post office to get their mail, their package, their periodicals. it is one of these places where why are we not trying to connect rural america to the rest of the american fabric. it is so important for america. it is also in many communities, it is the one place where people can go and gather and know that that person, that the post office -- it is a gathering place and a place where community can come together. >> there is 150 million

locations the post office serves. >> we pulled this out of the united states code. this is u.s. code title 39, section 101.1. it describes what the post office is. i thought it was quite poetic for the u.s. code. the united states postal service shall be operated as a basic and fundamental service provided to the people by the government of the united states, authorized by the stons stugs, created by the act of congress and supported by the people. it shall have as its basic function to provide postal services to bind the nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. >> remember what errol said at the very beginning of this conversation about all of us essentially organized through zip codes throughout the country. even if one said, the postal service could work for rural america but not urban america, you would end up fraying that whole process, that business

function that we all kind of rely on and take for granted. ups, fedex, this he do take the top end of the market. the postal service has made a profit even with all of what has gone on in the last four or five years. >> i want to show this commercial which one of the unions, the postal service has four different unions. so we can get into the accounting, because there is a real issue here about just how much of a crisis is there. is the crisis essentially fabricated by an accounting law that was passed in congress in 2006. here is the ad which i think is quite effective that one of the postal carriers union has been running. >> the postal service is critical to our economy, delivering mail, medicine and packages, yet they are closing thousands of offices, slashing service and want to lay off over 100,000 workers. the postal service is recording financial losses but not for reasons you might think. the problem, a burden no other agency or company bears. a 2006 law that drains $5

billion a year from post office rech knew while the postal services forced to overpay billions more into federal accounts. congress created this problem. congress can fix it. >> i am going to have josh barro respond to that after this break. this was the gulf's best tourism season in years. all because so many people came to louisiana... they came to see us in florida... make that alabama... make that mississippi. the best part of the gulf is wherever you choose... and now is a great time to discover it. this year millions of people did. we set all kinds of records. next year we're out to do even better. so come on down to louisiana... florida... alabama... mississippi. we can't wait to see you. brought to you by bp and all of us who call the gulf home.

the post office faces a fairly dire situation. it is far from dead with 500,000 people employed. i want to show the chart of the balance sheet of the post office. you will see since 2006 when congress passed the law that required them to essentially prefund the health benefit obligations, all of the sudden, it dips deeply and steeply into

the read. if you take away that obligation, it had a revenue surplus over the last four years. the last year, it would have lost money even without that. josh, you are someone who spends a lot of time. you write papers from the institute about public pensions and so forth. you send an e-mail to our staff last night about your thoughts on this that i found surprising. is the union right, that ad that we showed in which they say, basically, is this is the problem. are they right? >> partly right and partly wrong. a couple of separate issues. should the post office or somebody be setting aside money? how should that be reflected as to whether the post office is making or losing money? what they are making this fund is not to cover benefits earned in the future or costs applicable in the current year but to cover a huge unfunded liability that the post office ran up by promising health benefits to retirees and not setting aside money for those. it is appropriate it should be

prefunded by somebody. it was required that the post office was required to fund it over 10 years, which was very fast. the payments are not like losses but like paying off debts. >> every business has to deal with this. if you showed up at a fortune 500 company and said, we need to see all the money in your pension fund right now or your health benefit fund, they do not have it as a general rule. >> in their pension fund, they generally do. retiree benefits are rare in the private sector. often, they can be wiped away unlike the post office benefits, which are guaranteed. in my opinion, if you had a correct view of the post office financial system, they are not really lusing $5 million a year but $1 million a year. the problem is the tren. first class mail volumes have declined and they are going to continue to decline. they have this big apparatus built around a reality that isn't true today and less reflective of our needs in the future.

>> you just said that 80% of the cash flow problem by your estimation is the result of the way this law was past. i think it is important to distinguish between the short-term problems they face and the long-term problem. the long-term problem has to do with this chart which shows the dropoff in first class mail. for the first time ever, it has been declining considerably. first class mail or letters with he send to people. it is below what's called standard mail, which we all call junk mail. this comes close to my heart, because i sort of feel like, i don't really -- i sort of dread the notion of a future in which basically all the post office does is send me catalogs and credit card offers. >> stuff you don't want. >> exactly. there is this sort of perverse thing i think that's happened in which because ups and fedex have captured this part of the market. it is like, i have an amazon thing. i get a positive reaction where

as when i open my inbox, it is credit cards and catalogs. >> getting back to the part of the code that you read. there is junk mail but what about like a mailer telling you who to vote for or who wants to reach you for really important civic reasons. that could be your block association, your county organization, president of the united states or somebody running for president. to say we are going to do away with it i think just really misses it. it is no the just a mail delivery service. it is, in fact -- i would argue that the post office helps make a reality. it is not about whether it adjusts to reality. it is part of how we settled the country, right? it is part of how we -- >> it is part of did shall- >> i'm sorry. please, go ahead. >> it is the post office. the post office is now everywhere. the post office was in some ways, the next thing that happened after we settled the frontier. the post office is a way in which we connect with everybody.

now, there are things that the post office should be doing to deal with these new realities. there is a whole bunch of things such as, think about, new markets for the post office. there are still things that actually have to be sent other than mail separate and apart from netflix, like drugs for elderly folk. if you could actually figure out a way that drugs could have a one-day delivery, you could save a huge amount of money in terms of drug costs and things like that. that would be a good push in terms of how does the post office deal with these new realities but yet still have that institution of everybody. >> one of the things we have seen in europe, ones privatization, which i don't personally favor. the other is diversifying the mandate for what the post office does. felix at reuters said that you could have essentially a banking public option at the post office. in europe, you can pay almost

all of your bills at the post office. a whole variety of basic utility functions that the post office carries out. we can imagine an expanded vision of all the things in the u.s. post office with the amazing infrastructure it has in place could do. i do think there has to be some change. 20 years from now, we are not going to have the volume of paper mail. >> those things are related. they have been privatized and much more innovative over the last 20 years than the u.s. post office are the same phenomenal. they have had to compete not only with other private businesses but with each other. the swiss post office will scan all your mail for you and send it to you as electronic files if you pay them to do it. these are things that businesses do when they are faced with the fact that their market is declining an they have to figure out how to operate in a new marketplace. there is a real institutional resistance to that at the post office. >> i think these are both

problems. >> this is the final point we should say about the post office. it has a bizarre mandate in which it is run like a business essentially. every rate increase has to be approved by a board that doesn't like to approve rate increases, particularly when they are for junk mail, a huge amount of money from some sort of corporate interest. they can't clothes a branch without getting congressional approval. they have the worst of both worlds and have managed to thread the needle for a long time. i came away from my week immersed with the post office remarkably impressed with it and what it has been able to accomplish. i am going to talk about what my story of the weeb is right after this break. ♪ ♪

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>> my story of the week. first branch failed. this week the senate sent the national defense authorization to the accept nat who said he would sign it after threatening a veto. it is funding for our massive

defense apparatus, $662 billion or more than the 2011 budget's proposed spending on medicare, the fda, the national institute for health, the centers for disease prevent and control and the national park service, crop insures, the fbi, the dea, federal prison system, global health, the federal aviation and highway and railroad administration, the environment tam administration and nasa combined for those scoring at home. this year's defense policy bill attracted controversy and scrutiny for provisions it contains for people deemed suspected terrorists. three provisions that have attracted wide attention. the first extends prohibition on the use of department of defense funds to transfer detainees in guantanamo into the united states or other countries. provisions makes it impossible to comply with the executive order president obama issued on

his first day of office calling for guantanamo to be closed. the second principle codifies and enshrines the power of the president to detain without trial any one who was part of or substantially supported al qaeda or the taliban or associated forces engaged in pos tillities against the united states or coalition partners including any person who has committed a belligerent act or supported such hostilities in aid of enemy forces. this while house already asserts they have exactly this power but this law further embeds the legal logic of total executive authority to dub anyone a terrorist and lock them away, u.s. citizens included. because the white house already claimed to have this power, at first, it objected to enshrining it into law fearing the legal repercussions. third, the most controversial portion of the bill requires

that those deemed not subject be maintained by the military. this was the provision the white house objected to. it was changed to give the president the option of issuing a waiver that would allow the fbi to handle detention and interrogation. that said, the act still enshrines the principle that unless explicitly directed otherwise, the u.s. military has detention responsibility and authority for noncitizens accused of being terrorists and apprehended in the u.s. human rights said of the bill, president obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial into u.s. law. that gives demagogues a handy kunlgle to use against this president or any future president who elects to issue the waiver and have the fbi handle an apprehended terrorist.

the inclusion of these provisions has precipitated a new round of justified criticism vekt directed at president obama after threatening a veto and caving. how little ire has been focused on congress whose record has been truly abyss mal. after all, the national defense authorization act passed by 86 drn 13. on the odd occasions the white house has had good progressive instincts on civil liberties, they have been met with an overwhelming backlash. they ran against democrat leaders lie harry reid to vowed never to allow terrorists released into the united states as if that was what was being proposed. the senate passed a bill barring funds for began tan know transfers in 1986. when they took the bold position that khalil shake mohammed should be tried in torque city, they were met with an outcry

from congress chuck schumer averting the white house and getting the trial held by a military commission in guantanamo. whatever you know decade, we ha an entire political culture, and let's be honest, voters complicit in instructing a permanent regime of extreme executive power. ultimately if there was a steep political price to pay for signing onto this bill, the white house would veto it. the fact there isn't says a whole lot about where we are as a society more than a decade after 9/11 and just months after the death of the man responsible for the attacks. instead of taking bin laden's death as an opportunity to book end the war on terror we have, instead, decided to make it permanent. i want to talk to senator jeff merkley about his vote against the bill. i joined the navy when i was nineteen. i spent four years in the military and i served a tour in iraq. all the skills that i learned in the military are very transferable into the corporate and real world.

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joining us is senator

merkley from oregon, who voted against the national defense authorization act. good morning. >> good morning. good to be with you. >> so, voting against the national defense authorization act opens one up to all sorts of criticism. i know you're not up for re-election in 2012 but if you were, you could expect to see ads about vote against the troops, et cetera. why did you choose to vote against this bill? >> this bill has an extraordinary clause. you read some of the language that basically takes away the fifth and sixth amendment for americans. we were founded on this core principle that the government cannot reach out and take you off the streets, that you have rights of due process. you have rights to a public trial. you have rights that confront those who bear witness against you. and section 1021 of this bill says, no, you don't. >> well, but doesn't section 1021, i mean, the people who support the bill say two things in response to that. one, they say there is a provision in the bill that says nothing here should be con trued to change existing law, which is a confusing provision to put

into a bill you're passinging, which is a new bill. number two, they say that this is, you know, this is codifying what has already been asserted. it was asserted by the previous administration and asserted in legal briefs by this administration. >> so, there is a fast difference between an administration, the bush administration, obama administration, asserting executive rights. they always push the boundaries. it's fast difference between that and putting it into law. law that has certainly no support from constitutional decisions of the past. >> i want to talk about the politics of this a little bit because i was struck by the vote being as lopsided as it was. i understand it's attached to the bill that's going to fund the department of defense. is this an issue -- how do you talk about this issue with your constituents? i feel there's a reflexes ive defensiveness, and understandably people ten years after 9/11 remain scared about a terrorist attack, they know al qaeda exists, to the extent it

does after the death of bin laden. how do you have a conversation with the constituents? >> i think constituents are way ahead of congress on this. they have grown up with the understanding that you have rights in america. you can't just be swept off the street and put away in a secret prison or even sent overseas, all of which this language allows. so, when one says, if the administration wants to claim that you're an enemy combatant, they should are to prove it. you should have the ability to have a defense attorney of your choosing. you should have the ability to a public trial. this resonates with americans because this is the way we've always understood our country too bto be. the strong hand of government cannot sweep you away and you have ability to contest the evidence that they say makes the case. >> senator jeff merkley from oregon, one of 13 votes against the national defense authorization act. authorization act. i want to you stcuban

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good morning, i'm chris hayes. josh barrow from nation nationalreview.com and we've been talking with oregon senator jeff merkley who voted against the defense authorization act this week. i want to play you a statement from your colleague, carl levin, senator from michigan, one of the people that shepherded this bill through the senate. here he is speaking about these -- the controversial provisions in the national defense authorization act as they pertain to indefinite detention. >> in terms of constitutional provisions, the element of the constitution on the united states is the supreme court of the united states. and here's the bottom line for the supreme court, if we just take this one line out of this whole debate, it would be

breadth -- it would be a breath of fresh air to cut through some of the words that have been used here this morning. one line. there is no bar to this nation's holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant. okay? that's not me. that's not senator graham. that's not senator mccain. that's the supreme court of the united states. >> senator levin making the case basically that the ability to hold one of the nation's own citizens as enemy combatant has already been stipulated by supreme court in some findings in the line of cases that came through, hamdan, padilla, in holding people in guantanamo that basically the principle people find so panic-inducing, gutting the bill of rights, what you mentioned about the fifth and sixth going away, this has already been stipulated by the supreme court. what's your response to that? >> he's wrong. the first case involved a case in terms of someone helping

german soldiers who were in uniform. very, very narrow case. the second was an american who was on the battlefield in afghanistan, so those two very narrow cases are very different than the incredibly broad language that's been put into this bill, which says if you have supported some group associated with some other group. now, let me give you an example. if you make a charitable deduction and that group unknow -- unbeknownst to you continues to support someone in afghanistan who is among the taliban or associated with the taliban, well, you are now technically under this bill an enemy combatant. if you're a contractor who hires a subcontractor, this has been a challenge many of our contractors have you, and you proceed -- the subcontractor has an association with the taliban, you're not aware of it but you're associated with them. if you are protesting in a square in bahrain, the very huge crackdown on human rights in that country, now if you happen to be doing that and you are

among a group that has some association, are you now an enemy combatant even though you're fighting for freedom. this is so sweepingly broad it has never been supported in this form by the u.s. supreme court. >> senator, i have errol lewis here. >> looking at some debate there, was this a matter of your colleagues saying, look, weight is too great, we have to pass a bill to reauthorization general operations of the military? was this just one more thing to get traded away in the course of getting a big bill done? or were these civil liberties concerns really front and center for a lot of people? >> there were a series of amendments trying to change what was in here and roughly the vote was 55-45 against making the changes. almost half the senate was deeply disturbed by this language. but then in the final vote, your point is correct, that many folks said, we've got to fund the troops. this is -- i can't take a stand against the entire bill because of the provision.

from the 13 that took the stand back from conference and wasn't improved, this goes so deeply to who we are as americans and the core protections given to citizens to be able to make your case in public because under this -- under this law as it stands, the government asserts, the president's team asserts you're an enemy combatant and at that point you can be swept away into a secret prison, foreign prison, you don't get a lawyer, don't get a public trial, don't get a chance to prove you're an enemy combatant. >> senator merkley, what's next then? specifically i wonder what you think of the white house, which expressed a lot of -- a lot of objections to the bill in a variety of forms and the head of the department of justice, attorney general eric holder expressed them, jay johnson, general counsel for department of defense expressed them. now it it seems okay with signing the bill. what's your reaction to that and what do you think the next step is, if, in fact, this becomes

law? >> i was heartened by the president's position that he was going to veto this bill if it contained the language but i'm disappointed he changed his position. >> all right. oregon senator jeff merkley, thanks so much for your time this morning. i really appreciate you joining us. >> you're welcome. i now want to bring in chris kuhns, from the judiciary committee and one of 86 senators who voted for the defense authorization act. good morning, senator. >> good morning, chris. >> my first question to you is the same question i asked senator merkley, why did you vote the way you voted? why did you vote for this bill considering the provision that's included that we just enumerated? >> the fight over civil liberties implications is in my view just getting under way. it was the primary focus of much of the debate on the floor, even though the national defense authorization act authorizes a huge part of the federal government and its operations in time of war, even though it is a very large bill, most of us spent most of our time engaged

in the debate over the amendments you were just discussing. at the end of the day, after several efforts voting for several important efforts to try to remove this bad language to amend, modify or narrow this bad language, i felt i could not vote against funding the united states armed forces in a time of war. there are not other good things, changes in policy and oversight in revisions to our defense policy that were done in this bill. but overwhelmingly, the detainee provisions were the ones that gave me real concern and real pause. i made statements on the floor. i voted for amendments to narrow it. i am a co-sponsor of senator feinstein's bill that would repeal, revise and move forward on these specific concerns. at the end of the day, the core issue here is that by statute, the united states congress can't take away the constitutional rights of americans. that's why they are enshrined in our constitution. >> right. >> this was bad policy. it was a bad debate. it was intentionally vague and it was difficult for most folks at home and in congress to

follow this sort of swirling details and competing interpretations. at the end of the day, the current administration leadership, the director of the fbi, director of national intelligence, secretary of defense, the attorney general, all pushed back against this language and said they didn't want it. they didn't need it. and it wouldn't make us more safe. my concern is about having this language in the current or a future supreme court and how they will work together in difficult cases where there are hard facts. to go back to carl levin's point, it is, i think, perfectly clear that where someone has actually demon stratably taken up arms against the united states, gone overseas, trained, built bombs, taken up weapons and attacked americans, they e are -- it is the power of the executive to detain them indefinitely is well established. that's not what we're fighting over. as senator merkley said very well, what i am concerned about, and what he's concerned about, is the process by which you decide whether someone is or is

not clearly an enemy combatant. whether someone is an angry and misunderstood kid who is posting things on the internet and having meetings with people who are shady and who engages in some sort of edgy behavior and is, thus, the subject of investigation by local law enforcement or if someone is carrying around a rocket-propelled grenade in afghanistan and been dlu an al qaeda training camp. very different cases. but the protection of the american constitution should apply to americans unless and it's clear they have taken up arms against the united states. >> i want to talk about your calculations on voting for this in a second because i think it presents the dilemma a legislator is presented with often, which a-s a bill that contains provisions you disagree with and others that you feel must pass. let's play johnson, department of quens, talking about what his concerns were about the original

provisions having to do with mandating military detention for suspected terrorist who is are noncitizens. jay johnson, highlighting his problems. >> there is danger in overmilitaryizing our approach to al qaeda and its affiliates. there is risks in permitting and expecting the u.s. military to extend its powerful reach into traditional areas typically reserved for civilian law enforcement in this country. the military should not and cannot be the only answer. >> senator coons, what ended up having is the provision -- there was a loophole created so that the mandatory use of the military in detaining suspected terrorists could be waived by a presidential waiver, but what it seems to me is that some of your colleagues like lindsey graham and john mccain are attempting to stack the deck politically and create a situation whereby

if the president actually exercises that waiver, they can rush to the microphones and accuse that president of essentially being soft on terror and not understanding we're on war footing. does this back the president, this president or future presidents, into a defensive crouch politically? >> well, the handling of terrorism, investigation of accused or potential terrorists and the conduct of the war on terror has, unfortunately, been deeply political siized and contentious issue. i do think the language in this bill, much of which is vague, has put the president in a more difficult situation going forward. on the specific point that we were just discussing, there was language added that clarified that the role of state and local law enforcement and agencies of like the fbi in initiating and conducting investigations and questioning suspected either people who are suspected of being terrorists or being involved in supporting terrorism shouldn't be compromised by the rest of this bill. there was a lot of debate and discussion about exactly the

point that was raised in that clip, which is that it -- it doesn't help the investigation of alleged terrorism to have the military in the united states conducting a lot of these investigations. and it's, frankly, not appropriate. that was one of the most heated areas of debate in the conduct of the last few hours of debate over this bill. as someone who was active in supervising a local law enforcement agency, my view of the facts here is that we are more likely than not going to face threats and situations in the future that emerge from folks in the united states, who on their own choose to do things that are unwise, that are criminal, that are dangerous, but that are not clearly terrorists and where those investigations need to be conducted by state and local law enforcement folks who are qualified and capable to do that. our record in the last ten years of using our national civilian law enforcement and our american court systems is very strong. actually, the record of the military tribunals in achieving

convictions of folks who were suspected of being terrorist is relatively weak. there have been hundreds of successful investigations, arrests and convictions of individuals for terrorism through our domestic courts and law enforcement system. so, if it's not broken and part of the fundemental guarantees of civil liberties of americans, i didn't see why this was necessary. that raised for me some concerns. as you suggest. that there might be politic as foot in term of how this bill moved and why some of this language was added. it was a very troubling and dissatisfying debate for me. and it was a moment where lots of us had to cast tough votes and make hard choices. as i said at the outset, the fight everen suring americans' civil liberties has only just begun on this particular issue, this bill. i'm hopeful folks who are watching, many whom have been sharply critical of those who voted for the bill, but count ourselves as real advocates for civil liberties in the united states, will continue to be engaged. this is going to be played out

in 2012 elections, future elections and future annual defense authorization bills. >> senator, we'll be revisiting the topic here on "up" and i hope we can have you back to talk about this. thanks for your time this morning. >> thank you. is the end of newtmen tuchlt m at hand? that's impossible to know. ds cad gives you a 50 percent annual bonus. so you earn 50 percent more cash. if you're not satisfied with 50% more cash, send it back! i'll be right here, waiting for it. who wouldn't want more cash? [ insects chirping ] i'll take it. i'll make it rain up in here. [ male announcer ] the new capital one cash rewards card. the card for people who want 50% more cash. what's in your wallet? sorry i'll clean this up. shouldn't have made it rain.

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tea party began within the republican party, a rump movement by base to take control of the party from entrenched establishment. in a little more than two weeks, annual republican voters will start to weigh in with their choice for presidential candidate. when they do, we'll find out if that is succeeding. one of the striking things about

2010 was the amount of uprisings in primaries that defeated candidates who were selected by the republican establishment as being the go-to figures. senator bennet in utah was overthrown in a statewide convention in favor of mike lee, who now serves as senator for that state and famously in delaware, mike cassel, a moderate republican who everyone thought would coast to victory was upset in the primary by christine o'donnell. the question -- or is that same dynamic in play two years later? if the republican base trusts newt gingrich or mitt romney to continue to lead the party. we saw this in the debate thursday night on fox. here is bachmann, i think, very effectively pressing the case against newt gingrich. essentially making the case that like tea party insurgents made against senator bennet and senator cassel, he's imbedded in the corrupt culture of

washington they want to dismantle. >> we know that he cashed paychecks from freddie mac. that's the best evidence that you can have. over $1.6 million. frankly, i am shocked listening to the former speaker of the house because he's defending the continuing practice of freddie mac and fannie mae. >> the easy answer is, that's just not true. what she said is factually not true. i never lobbied under any circumstance. i think sometimes people ought to have facts before they make wild allegations. >> what did you think of that exchange? i thought bachmann -- mitt romney was tipping his cap to bachmann for effectively pressing the case. i thought she was very effective. >> you made a cameo in a web video that ron paul put out about a week ago going after newt gingrich auon exactly thes issues. newt gingrich is extremely vulnerable because he did real bad things in this area. the great thing about these harsh attacks is that they are accurate.

and he tries to sell this idea that he took $1.6 million from freddie mac to be an rift yan. my view had previously been that this was, you know, just a line he thought he could sell. i think he actually is such an ego maniac that they think he was paying him for that and not his influence. >> i love the part he says i never did any lobbying, which was in all the contracts. you know how this works. an entire industry are influencing but don't lobby. >> they have views, they express them, they educate and they discuss. i mean, no, it seems completely ridiculous. but i do like the fact that michele bachmann focused on freddie mac, indicting leadership from fannie and freddie for things that happened in the lead up to the financial crisis. so, it was kind of a -- you know, a nice sort of connection there that, you know, perhaps -- the kind of advice newt gave or may not have been the best. >> right. obviously, we've talked about the program, freddie mac and

fannie mae are in the conservative imagination the main culprits for the financial crisis. >> which is not necessarily true. >> which is not true. which is not true. >> do you guys have -- what was your sense of newt's performance in the debate? >> in that exchange, parsing words is bad, made him look like a washington insider. something about the way he said it, and i couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was, came off as incredibly sexist and interpreted by such as a lot of people. she even came back and sort of pressed him on that. you know, without coming out and really using those words but sort of saying, i'm a serious candidate for president. don't keep saying i'm inaccurate, especially when i'm not inaccurate. >> she said my facts are accurate, which is my favorite -- my favorite -- that's my favorite declaration since not intented as a factual statement. >> my facts are my facts. >> but, you know, i thought what was interesting is like afterwards, when newt said, well, you know, we're also

collegial, except for michele bachmann. but i think she pressed -- and i would say that i probably disagree with michele bachmann on much more than we disagree on. i thought she came off -- she pressed her point, pressed on him and i thought he came off as he is. the good news is it was the last debate until iowa. newt was the target of everyone in that debate. particularly ron paul and perry and bachmann. and let's show the polls because the polling on iowa, which is this is the sort of poll of polls, the averages we have from the last bunch, from our friend nate silver at "new york times," gingrich in lead, followed by paul and romney. obviously, the other candidates who were in that kind of second tier, fighting to get into the contentious need to go after gingrich. what we're seeing, which is fascinating, is as beginning

rich sort of codified support as front-runner this massive backlash from the conservative establishment, here's the national review cover of their editorial against gingrich. subheadline, republicans should have good sense to reject a hasty marriage. i'm sure that's chosen to newt gingrich, which risks dissolving in acrimony. josh, you're more plugged in. you right for the national review. why -- why is -- why all the beef against newt gingrich? >> because these people remember the '90s and they remember the -- i think the best line from that editorial was basically that newt gingrich as speaker was the worst of both worlds. he caved into bill clinton on things important to conservatives and at same time he was so nasty that he got all the downciteds of picking the big fights without actually winning the things you wanted. i think they view him as being a bad standard bearer. i think also there's -- he has this fascination with sort of cooky ideas. the cover of the print magazine

shows him as marvin the martian because of his proposal we should establish a lunar colony for the purpose of extracting minerals from the moon -- >> which mitt romney specifically said he was against in the previous debate. >> yes. and i think the attacks on gingrich are natural because he's -- you know, there's a lot of stuff voters don't know about so it's easy to take a piece out of him. i also think this discussion has been good for mitt romney because there was this line from gingrich in his work for mem freddie mac he says i was in a business like any other business. it sounds like something a mobster says. obviously, gingrich isn't a mob center but i think when you look at gingrich's private sector experience i think it reflects well on romney who is really a businessman, who ran businesses and we can debate the nature of the corporate record, but he has a story to tell about, you know, working to establish staples and bright horizons and other businesses like that that contrast with newt gingrich working as a nonlobbyist. >> i mean, can i -- look, when

i -- if you're around in the '90s and you watch what happened, that's when the polarization of washington really started. in terms of it became about an attack on who as opposed to really trying to figure out the issues. so, it was interesting last week when a lot of his colleagues came out and said, not so fast. but on newt, i just -- you know, i keep going back to the point he made about kids replacing janitors. and about poor kids replacing janitors. poor kids replacing people who are actually working in jobs that they have. and constantly think, how could anybody actually vote for someone who would say that about poor kids? i mean, and it's like -- and so that instead of when we push back on it, and he defended himself, i'm like, why would you actually think that kids shouldn't have tremendous

opportunities, whether poor -- >> but it's like reagan's welfare, he wanted to -- >> but it's children. it's children. >> children. >> and replacing other people who have good jobs. and i think he went for the easy -- he thought he was going for the easy push. i thought -- he thought he was saying, oh, we'll replace these union workers. so, basically, replace kids' parents with kids in these jobs. and i kept on thinking, would he have said the same thing about kids who were going to dalton, going other places? i think people are starting to see the recklessness of this -- >> what was interesting to me about the janitor comment is that mitt romney himself attacked him for it which made me think there's demand in the republican base to push back. let's talk more about newt gingrich after this break.

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he made a grand total of $10,000. by the time he was speaker he made $675,000. by the time he left congress, he brought his net worth up to $7.5 million. >> he is the absolute symbol of that corrupt system. >> newt gingrich, this guy hasn't got skeletons in his closet, he has a whole grave yard in there. >> that's a curious but ponytail voter getting the lowdown on newt gingrich's history via minority report style computer interface featured in a new ron paul ad and featuring a quote from yours which josh mentions 37 that is the wran on newt gingrich and the one that -- the one that resonates most with

primary voters. the rap on mitt romney is flip-flopping, he changes his position. he had to face tough questions from the moderator. here he is talking about having a consistent record on gay rights which upon further scrutiny doesn't look that consistent but here is he defending. >> that's been my position from the beginning. >> mitt romney actually had written a letter when he was running for senate in 1994 saying he would be more in favor of gay rights than even senator ted kennedy. josh, what did you think of romney's answer on that? >> i find it very strange. i actually worked for mitt romney's campaign in 2002 when he was running for governor, and i'm openly gay and was at the time. there was a number of openly gay staff on the campaign, including coalition director for the campaign, which would be unusual for republican campaign in a lot of states. the mass gop has liftically been a relatively gay-friendly

institution, three openly gay candidates for state office in the last three years. so the tenor of the campaign was friendly on gay rights. it was sort of the -- i think dave waggle put it, he was a politician you could trust on gay rights not to go backward was his position. at the time, you know, nobody was for gay marriage in massachusetts at the time except for ves to the end of the campaign, one of the democratic candidates ended up coming out for it. so, it was -- he might be right in that he didn't specifically reverse any position he took because of the goodrich decision came down in the middle of the campaign -- excuse me, in the middle of his governorship and changed up the political situation. >> massachusetts supreme court saying legalizing e ining gay m was required under the constitution. >> it was an extension of the '94 campaign where he was a massachusetts style republican who was not throwing bombs on social issues. he was pro-choice at the time.

there's definitely been a big change in tenor on gay issues from mitt romney. he's never been proponent of gay marriage but the issue moved and he moved in the opposite direction. >> a little biased here, i'm openly gay stwl, bas well but t one of these issues when it's good when politicians do evolve to be more open about civil rights. and the fact that newt -- the fact that romney is evolving the other way so you're in a place like massachusetts, you're more open because that's where electorate is. you're running for president in the republican -- for the republican nomination, people are -- you think people are more closed so you move the other way. that's why people don't trust him, because why would you do that on an issue that people are very open to people who are saying, hey, i'm evolving in the right way. >> well, when you say evolving it reminds me of the president -- >> exactly. >> what mitt romney says in that quote was not that far from where the president is.

it's almost identical. if that's where it ps to be it's like there's a long tradition of democrats and republicans on issues like abortion saying, i'm personally opposed to it but i'm not going to take your rights away. i don't see why that's so controversy. . everyone is calling him a flip-flopper but i don't know if this counts as a flip-flopper. >> what i thought was interesting is that the first sentence was the most pro-gay thing hi heard in a debate. i mean, maybe that's a low bar but the first sentence is, i firmly support people not being discriminated against because of their sexual orientation. >> he didn't get boo squloed. >> rick perry had an ad out that seemed like a vintage 2004 culture war ad basically being like, the gays are taking over the military and you can't celebrate christmas or some nonsense. it doesn't seem like it has a ton of traction. i think there is evolution in the republican party on this. >> well, you can see it in the poll numbers in the entirety of society. i think, you know, gay rights issues are moving in public opinion a very different way

from abortion. the public is moving left on that issue in a way that it isn't on some others. i think mitt romney, he comes out of the business world. i think there's not a lot of interest in corporate executives in expending energy on trying to discriminate against gays. i think large businesses are actually relatively gay-friendly institutions in america. so, i think that -- i don't think it's his instinct to go after the gays. i think whatever he does on that is politically driven. >> mitt romney is among the guests on the sunday talkers. tomorrow we're going to talk about our own pregame for the sunday talkers perform top v neck 3 piece suit dance wear bolo snakeskin boots sequin costume under things stiletto heels skinny jeans houndstooth snuggie pork pie hat oshkosh socks 5% cash back. right now get 5% cash back at department stores. it pays to discover.

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♪ big names on tomorrow's sunday talkers include republican presidential candidate mitt romney, newt gingrich, and jon huntsman who told us he will never appear on our program, as well as house speaker john boehner. we got you a list of others. what would you ask of whom if

you were sitting at one. darin. >> if i were sitting at the desk, i would ask newt gingrich, you're a historian, let's do history. the folks indicted at freddie mac are over here. your time taking from them are over here. let's go month and month see what the interactions are and see what you have to say. it's an obvious question but really needs to get done. >> presumably he would be able to dissem bell a little bit what he did unless there's a long paper trail of what he was recommending then may come out now that there's actually an official complaint. >> oh, yeah. absolutely. nothing like a court discovery process to turn up all kinds of e-mails that people don't want to come to light, and interactions and meetings and ideas, you know, possible culpability but it's important it get done. you dodge a bullet by the fact that the lawsuit was filed the day after the debates but he's got to answer some questions now. >> yeah. you wonder how much that will haunt him. i think that will be killer for him. i think largely with the base as

that continues to get hammered, particularly as that is in the headlines as that trial plays out. heather, what would you ask of whom? >> well, you know, i think this week i would want to ask the speaker of the house how he could be holding the american economy hostage and particularly all of these unimpemployed peop. but i would want to ask him, you know, whether or not he's gone into those -- gone into communities around america and talked to unemployed people and actually asked them why they're not working. and what kinds of, you know, answer he would have to that. >> the house, of course, we don't know if they're going to agree to the bill, which the bill that was struck last night was a bill that was struck between mcconnell/reid in the white house. boehner was not dealt into that deal. so, the question i would have for boehner is, are you going to go along with it? there is a keystone provision against keystone pipeline, which we've been covering on the show,

with a little bit of esoteric pet interest of mine which has ballooned into this big political issue. the question i would have for boehner is are you going to go along with the senate deal? >> are you going to hold the future of the american economy hostage to this? that keystone deal is, you know, certainly not going to be a good thing for our energy future if you care about it, you know, the kind of energy that we'll be extracting. >> randy, what would you ask of who? >> initially i was thinking i'd ask newt gingrich the question about child labor and whether he would say the same thing about, you know, kids who went -- ask kids who went to private schools whether they would preplace janitors. but i think the bigger issue, frankly, as much as i focus on kids, the bigger issue is the economic issues and job crisis. so, i would actually go for the gold here and ask mitt romney, okay, hundred days in, what's your five concrete proposals to

get people back to work? >> that would be a question i think mitt romney would be happy to answer, i have to say. i think he would have about 55 of them. >> five con created proposals to get people back to work. >> josh, what would you ask? >> paul ryan is on "this week" this week and he has a new medicare plan out with democratic senator ron wyden. i'd want him to put meat on the bone, know why the plan waits ten years to be effective. medicare is our largest fiscal challenge. >> making a lot of news this week coming together on medicare premium support. we'll talk about that at some point. not today but on the show. what do we know that we didn't know last week? ♪ i'm burning out this useless telephone ♪ ♪ my hair is gone ♪ cheap cologne ♪ motor home ♪ i'm the rocket man! [ both ] ♪ rocket man ♪ burning out his fuse up here alone ♪ burning out his fuse up here alone? ahh.

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in just a second i'm tell you what i didn't know when the week began. right now it's a preview for "weekends with alex witt."

>> the extension lasts just until february 2nd. you know what that is, groundhog day. we may be doing this all over again so we'll talk about that. jessica lynch, an iraq war p.o.w. graduated from college last night. we'll talk with her about that and her thoughts on the end of the war. in this week's "office politics" doris kerns goodwin will talk about why president obama asked her for dinner three times. >> should be fascinating. what do we know now we didn't know last week? we know the u.s. postal service dodged a bullet and will avoi closing any offices until mid-may but we know underlying problems exacerbated and created by congressional management remain. newt gingrich's rivals in the gop field won't let him off the hook for his long and lucrative career as vendor influence inside washington's lobby

industrial complex. the republican establishment is both horrified and terrified by the notion of the former speaker winning the nomination and will exert itself strenuously to forestall such an eventuallity. we know until recently in republican nomination fights the establishment usually gets its way. we now know, thanks to a new poll from pew that populism is popular. we know even a majority of republicans think there is, quote, too much power in the hands of a few rich people in large corporations. 61% of all voters think the country's economic system unfavorably favors the wealthy. we also know half of americans say this congress has accomplished less than others with nearly twice as many blaming republicans for that than democrats. we now know nearly 2 million home care workers will be enjoying fair protections of fair labor standard acts. home care workers, 92% of whom

are women will now be included in federal overtime and minimum wage protections. we know that with an aging population, this sector will likely grow massively in the years to come and we know that making sure those jobs are good jobs should be a priority. we know for the first time in 41 years the principle of indefinite detention of american citizens will be expless italy enshrined in u.s. law. we know our political culture continues to prize projections of toughness over the value of basic liberty. we know one place representatives appear to suspend skepticism of government is when it's time to throw someone in cell. we know how scientists in japan plan to monitor radiation plants around fukushima. they'll be strapping special collars with radiation sensors to monkeys released to frolic amidst them and beam back ridings. humans and monkeys share much of

dna. thanks to a moment of candor from chris dodd, now head of the motion picture association of america, we now know what model those pushing the stop online piracy act have in mind for their efforts to create a host of crippling restrictions on internet activity. dodd positively referenced china's efforts at censorship telling "variety" when the chinese told google they had to block sites or couldn't do business, they managed to block sites. yesterday the bill's opponents were able to convince house judiciary committee to delay vote until 2012. we know there when-r a whole host of social problems to which china has answers which don't merit our own adoption. finally, since it is the holidays, we now know which north american public official has the singest best 2011 christmas card picture. the mayor of san juan, puerto

rico who posed his family, your typical family staring out while a leopard savagely sinks a teeth into the gazelle, you know, like you do. what do my guests know they didn't know when the week began? we'll find out after this.

want to find out who my guests know they didn't know when the week began. i'll begin with you, errol, what do you know that you didn't know when the week began? >> all the hoopla about the iowa caucuses on the republican side, the candidate that has the most offices open and apparently some of the most impressive ground forces is a guy named barack obama. eight offices from davenport, dubuque, des moines, all over the place. it shows they'll do what we're going to do is try to win iowa in the general, get mobilized, take away as much turf as possibly from republicans. gitsing to ab a hard-fought battle but iowa is in play for november.

>> the obama campaign has been using the early republican primaries and caucuses as an opportunity to cultivate the organization on their own side. there's a primary in new hampshire, even though one candidate on the ballot, and all of those states as if they're running in a primary. >> it's central to their strategy. i got around to reading "the e audacity to win" by plouffe. you can see the playbook coming into shape. >> we learned a couple facts this week. census bureau said half of americans are either poor or low income. at the same time, we saw a story coming out that ceo pay has roared back in 2010. where ceos now earn 30% to 40% than in 2009 after flat lining in '08 and '09. i think those two facts together tell a very grim story, quite frankly, for working americans in term of what's going on and a sad story for the middle class.

>> one of the things that's interesting is the crash itself reduced inequality briefly because if massively reduced the gains at the top because when the stock market dies and financial markets dive, a lot of the income derived from 1% is from those places. what we've seen is that the trends resume and exacerbate in the wake of the crash, which has been so disturbing. >> and i think what we've seen is we actually haven't done anything to fundamentally fix -- >> alter that, right. >> -- change the things that got us here in the first place. that hammers home the fact that unless we do something about the massive inequality we see in the united states, we're not going to be able to figure out a stable economic path forward. the most fundamental problem. >> randi? >> what i now know is even with all of the polarization around public education and around all of this income inequality, that you can still create common ground. and we know now that you can actually create an unprecedented public/private partnership in a

place like west virginia, mcdowell county, to address poverty, educational opportunities and intertwine -- or address economics, health care, housing, education, technology. that's what many of us signed for just yesterday with the governor there. and what we're going to do in the next three to five years. >> so, in mcdowell county, a very -- briefly, a very poor county. >> right. >> you have this initiative with private enterprise, local nonprofit, social service agencies, the government to create a wrap-around model for improving the lives of kids. >> exactly. so bottom line is we're trying to improve the lives of kids. we realize have you to improve everything at the same time. in a county that has really -- that really needs a new chapter because of what's happened in terms of the coal market. >> josh? we know there's a lot more of ground for bipartisan agreement on medicare than we thought.

paul ryan had this medicare plan most republicans in the house voted for that i think was overly aggressive and kind of unrealistic on cost savings. he showed a willingness to move in a direction where you throw substantially more money at medicare than he wanted but you actually have enough to make reform plausible and got one democrat to sign it. >> i want to talk about this in dates and weeks to come because i have some thoughts about ryan. my thanks to errol louis, heather, randi, and josh barro. thanks for getting up. coming up next is "weekends with alex witt." join us tomorrow, sunday morning at 8 a.m. when i'll have former obama state department spokesman p.j. crowley and director of policy plans anne-marie slaughter. we'll talk about the end of the iraq war and the death of christopher hitchens. you can get more info about tomorrow's show on up.msnbc.com.

thanks for getting up. ♪ [ male announcer ] how could a luminous protein in jellyfish,

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