points to my employees to go on trips with their families. when my employees are happy, my customers are happy. vo: earn points for the things yo already buying. call 1-800-now-open to find out how the gold card can serve your business. good evening, happy friday, thank you for being with us for the next hour. fridays are supposed to be slow, right? fridays are supposed to be nobody is paying attention days, fridays are supposed to be the days you do stuff or release information you don't want anybody to notice. because everybody knows friday is the weekend already. nothing happens on a friday, right? bullpuckey. in politics, at least, today was avalanche of news day. first up a federal judge in virginia today, ruled on the legal challenge brought by texas governor rick perry to force his way on the virginia republican primary ballot. virginia of course one of the

biggest plums, one of the biggest prizes on super tuesday, which is march 6th. the republican party of the commonwealth of virginia controls the rules of the primary including who gets to be on the ballot there. under the virginia republican party rules, the only people who qualify to be on the ballot this year are mitt romney and ron paul. that's it. they are the only ones who qualified. rick perry sued to try to force his way on the ballot, jon huntsman, newt gingrich and rick santorum joined the lawsuit. but today, a federal judge in virginia said to all of them, no. they all knew the rules ahead of time, they should have complained about the rules while there was still time to change them and so, effectively, no dice. so, this is your choice on march 6th, virginia. mitt romney or ron paul. full stop. also happening right now, in the great state of texas, as we speak, some big ranch somewhere they tell us between is houston and austin, kind of a big

somewhere, 125 leaders of the religious right and spouses are gathering for what time magazine called "operation what to do about mitt romney" the sponsor of the event is the former head of the american family association,don wildman financed rick perry's stadium prayer rally, right before he kicked off his presidential campaign this summer. gary bauer, used to be the head of the family research council, who ran for president in 2000. mr. bauer becoming most famous during the campaign for this, well, oh! flipping pancakes in new hampshire and falling off the -- it was all mr. bauer -- oh gary bauer and don wildman hosting this event in the texas tonight, which has been widely reported as a religious right conspiracy to find someone to topple mitt romney as the republican nominee. it sounds like a crazy liberal conspiracy about the religious right. they are not denying that that is what they are trying to do.

they admit it. while some of the people have endorsed some candidates, the invitation asks they all be "willing to compromise and change your choice to one that the body as a whole supports in order not to divide our strength." that meeting in texas starts tonight. then i think there is a sleepover at the ranch, oh to be a fly on the wall, tomorrow they will reportedly try to decide on who they are going to support in the republican primary. meanwhile, one very specific point of light in the religious right pantheon has made his own endorsement, remember tim lahay, the books behind, the obama is the anti-christ guy i got to interview once. he endorsed newt gingrich for president. he sent a letter to south carolina religious leaders urging them to unite behind newt gingrich's candidacy. he describes newt gingrich as having the best chance of beating president obama.

his letter said if we do not change our leaders in the next election, we will end up being like the godless socialist countries of europe that will so destroy our country in four years that many experts believe we will never be able to reclaim it for moral and physical sanity. i don't understand the last part, either and i don't know who the experts are who agree with him. but, i should also note that tim lahaye also says that jerry falwell is endorsing newt gingrich, from beyond the grave. jerry falwell is dead but tim says in this letter that before jerry falwell died, he told him "speaker newt gingrich is the most qualified man in america to run as president of the united states." mr. gingrich for his part said that he was very happy to receive the endorsement, mr. gingrich did not comment on whether or not he was happy to receive the endorsement of dead jerry falwell. in south carolina, newt gingrich is doing well right now. in the three most recent polls,

ppp, leans democratic, rasmussen which tends to lean republican and insider advantage, which i don't think particularly leans, in all three of these polls, the three most recent polls in south carolina, mitt romney is still ahead, but newt gingrich is close and gaining, and the ppp poll, he's up over mr. gingrich by 5. in the rasmussen up by 7. in the insider advantage poll he's only up by 2. the movement in the polls in south carolina broadly speaking is mitt romney is holding steady or dropping. newt gingrich is rising. ron paul is rising. and rick santorum is falling. now there is still another week to go until south carolina votes. they vote next saturday. south carolina does not seem to be a gimme for anybody at this point. south carolina seems to be in play. rick santorum so far is not showing much momentum in south carolina. he had that disappointing fifth place finish in new hampshire.

oddly, this is an observation, who am i to give rick santorum advice, i'm sure he wouldn't take it anyway. i find it out when he went to new hampshire, about every event in new hampshire, he really stressed all of his social conservative positions. so in the least conservative of all the early republican states, rick santorum went hard core and full bore on social conservative, abortion, anti-gay, how you should have sex and with whom, now that rick santorum is in south carolina, which is probably the most socially conservative state of all the early republican states, maybe in contention with iowa, but up there, now that he's in south carolina where the social conservative stuff might play, rick santorum is talking about jobs and the blue collar economic populous side of his appeal, which is not an unattractive part of his message, just kind of seems like the timing is backwards. i'm just saying.

mr. santorum has now reprised a version of mike huckabee's line. from the 2008 campaign. do you remember this? >> people are looking for a presidential candidate who reminds them more of the guy they work with rather than the guy that laid him off. >> mr. santorum's version, he was trying to say he wasn't going to go after mitt romney for his record at bain capital but -- >> it doesn't necessarily mean that you want your boss running for president. right? >> it should be noted as rick santorum reprises that line from 2008, it should be noted that mike huckabee has sort of dropped his whole criticism of mitt romney. now that he's a fox news personality and not a candidate, mike huckabee joined the republican establishment chorus telling our candidates to not criticize mitt romney's record at bain. he sent a message to his own e-mail list saying "it's

surprising to see so many republicans embrace that left wing argument against capitalism." mr. romney's most high profile surrogate and new endorser, john mccain, also said this week, people should leave bain alone. >> these attacks on "bain capital" is really kind of anathema to everything we believe in. >> that is john mccain now. taking what sounds like a principled stand on mitt romney's behalf. here he is now. not so much. >> as the head of his investment quote company, he presided over the acquisition of companies that immediately laid off thousands of workers. >> john mccain, everybody, mr. principles. john mccain has turned out to be a little bit of a mixed blessing for mitt romney. yeah, he was the nominee the last time around, his endorsement sort of represents the ultimate bygones be bygones, stamp of approval in the republican party, of course,

but the bain flip-flop thing is embarrassing and last week, mr. mccain mistakenly endorsed president obama while he was campaigning with mitt romney in south carolina. did you see when that happened? >> i am confident with the leadership and the backing of the american people, president obama will turn this country around. we believe in america. we believe -- >> excuse me. president romney. president romney. president romney. president romney will turn this around. >> obviously an honest mistake and one he wishes he didn't make but it was a high profile mistake with really bad timing. my vote for the most under appreciated political story of the week comes from john mccain's appearance on sean hannity's radio show on tuesday, when mr. mccain, unprompted,

said this about his pick for vice president in 2008, his pick was sarah palin. >> i love sarah, i think she is still the best decision that i have ever made. >> yes. john mccain is an older man. he has made a lot of decisions in his life including joining the navy, made decisions about who to marry, decisions about having children, decisions about wars, decisions about more wars, a whole lifetime of very important decision. he says the single best decision he has ever made in his entire life was -- i realize that mitt romney wants john mccain's endorsement. but this week john mccain's endorsement came with a whiplash inducing reminder about john mccain's judgment. in terms of the other candidates in south carolina, there is, of course, ron paul, whos ai mentioned before is doing well in the most recent polling. he was third in iowa, second in new hampshire, polling third and

rising in south carolina right now. back home in texas, a federal appeals court today cleared the way for immediate enforcement of texas' new rather radical anti-abortion law. this is kind of amazing. think about this for a second. this this is the new law, it says that any woman who wants to have an abortion in the state of texas will now be forced by the government of the state of texas to undergo a medically unnecessary ultrasound, even if she does not want the ultrasound and even if her doctor does not think it's in her interest. doctors can be prosecuted and lose their license s to practice medicine unless they force their patients to undergo medically unnecessary ultrasounds against their own medical judgment in the interests of their patients because the government of the state wants them to do it. ron paul of course is running as the libertarian no-invasive government guy. asked about the new law, about the mandatory forced ultrasound law that has been passed in his home state of texas, ron paul said "it should always have been a texas state position."

you want big, literally physically intrusive government dictating to doctors how to practice medicine? then ron paul is your guy, mr. liberty. wow. that brings us back to the meeting of conservative religious right types in texas. for all of ron paul's radical anti-abortion libertarian heresy, "time" magazine reports that the only three non-mitt romney candidates at the religious right they are considering at the ranch are newt gingrich, rick perry an rick santorum. not only jon huntsman but radical anti-abortion big government interventionist ron paul, they somehow with the religious right they don't cut the mustard, they're not being considered. republican politics are weird. and they are really internally inconsistent and they are therefore, radically unpredictable, which at times like this on fridays like this in political seasons like this, which is why i have the best job in the world.

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low of 21 degrees. tomorrow a high of 29, tomorrow night a low of 4 degrees, and first glance i looked at the weather forecast and got excited i thought i could go fishing on sunday, i noticed yes, it will be sunny, but a high of 19 degrees. i did catch a rainbow trout in the snow last sunday which was very exciting, but i'm not sure i could do 19 degrees standing in the river. i'm not even sure the river would let me in at that temperature, after it was 4 the night before. maybe it would be iced over. the reason i know all that data, it has gotten me excited for the weekend because of my beloved noaa. it is embarrassing, i've long had a crush on noaa. it provides a great, well used service in our country. even if the only thing you care about is hurricanes, we need them. the national weather service is great, i love it as much as i

love the post office, i love it as much as i love amtrak and the new york city subway. the weird thing about noaa is that noaa is part of the commerce department. the commerce department says the mission is to help make american companies more innovative at home and more competitive abroad so they can create jobs. now i'm sure accurate forecasting of the weather may be can help with that, but it is kind of weird, right? it's a weird match. president obama admitted today it is weird. >> the interior department is in charge of salmon in fresh water but the commerce department handles them in salt water. if you're wondering what the genesis of this was, apparently it had something to do with president nixon being unhappy with his interior secretary for criticizing him about the vietnam war. and so he decided not to put noaa in what would have been a

more sensible place. >> president obama while he was announcing not only does he want to take noaa out of commerce department, and put it somewhere more normal, like the interior department, which is sort of in charge of our country's physical plant. not only does he want to move noaa somewhere that makes more sense, maybe he wants to get rid of the commerce department altogether. he wants to take six departments or agencies that deal with business or trade, the commerce department, small business administration, u.s. trade representatives office, export-import bank, overseas private investment corporation, trade and development agency, he wants to take all these agencies that have overlapping responsibilities for different parts of business and trade, wants to take all of these six agencies and consolidate them. the white house says that consolidation would not only simplify and streamline government would save $3 billion and cut 1,000 jobs off of the federal payroll over a period of ten years, they don't plan on firing people in the jobs, they plan to lose the jobs through

attrition. at the end of the game, a leaner federal government. i don't know how the people at noaa feel about potentially moving, i don't know how all those offices and their public servants feel about being re-organized like this, but from the outside looking in, this sort of re-organization does seem rational. shrinking and streamlining government to make it make more sense to the people who need to use to it get stuff done. republicans naturally have no idea what to do with this development. republicans have been so busy screaming that president obama must shrink government, so busy alleging that he's devoted to growing government whenever he can, but now that he is trying to shrink government, they reacted by being sort of suspicious and not happy but not sure why they're not happy. house speaker john boehner's spokesman released a statement "given the president's record of growing government," not sure what he

means there, "we're interested to learn whether this proposal represents actual relief for american businesses or just the appearance of it." mitch mcconnell's spokesman called it interesting, but still accusing president obama of growing government. while he's proposing shrinking it. what the white house is doing here is a political move called the flabbergast. because of the effect it has on the other side or it ought to if they had shame. a default talking point to accuse all democrats of wanting to grow government and say instead government should be shrunk. despite that republican talking point, government did grow more than at any time since world war ii under george w. bush and a republican congress. this democratic president is proposing shrinking government but that will not interrupt the talking point which alleges the opposite of what is happening. it's the same thing on taxes and regulations. it's a default epithet that democrats want to increase taxes

and they want to increase regulations. >> our taxes are too high, our democrats friends want us to keep raising taxes just a little more. >> we need to lower the regulations and the taxes. >> this president has enacted job killing regulations. >> it's a government issue. it's high taxes, it's high regulation. >> so not only does president obama want to increase taxes and regulations but he already has. and while that talking point is a tried and true talking point, an applause line, what the obama administration has actually done bears no resemblance to the talking point and is, therefore, a bit of a flabbergast for the republicans on this. in january of last year it's gone down the memory hole for republicans but president obama issued an executive order and wrote an op-ed calling for government wide pruning of unnecessary or overly burdensome regulations. in february 2009 president obama

implemented one of the largest tax cuts in american history, part of the stimulus you would never know it from the way the republicans talk about it. the administration brags on 17 tax cuts for small businesses. so naturally republicans keep denouncing him as raising taxes and piling on the regulations. and growing the government. >> government is already too big. we have to rein in the scale of the federal government. >> government is too big in washington d.c. it's run away. >> this administration has blown the lid off high cost regulations. >> this is a real theme and challenge for republican politics, concerning democratic administrations. because the talking points, the hurled invectives stay the same. no matter what the administration does. these guys know what republicans like to hear, they know what they think the country likes to hear what is wrong with democrats. when that is not true of the actual democrats who are being criticized, we are faced with the question of whether or not we demand our politics make

sense, whether the talking points start to sound off point. >> when we get people who are more concerned about the -- let me think carefully how i describe this -- more concerned reading the rights to an al qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the united states against people who are absolutely committed to do everything they can to kill americans, then i worry. >> that is the line from the republicans, the obama administration soft on terror. they coddle terrorists. then there is the obama administration. >> u.s. and yemeni officials say it was a u.s. drone strike. >> a top al qaeda leader and potential successor to osama bin laden is reportedly among nine people killed in a u.s. drone strike in northwest pakistan.

>> u.s. drone strikes killed at least seven al qaeda-linked militants in yemen overnight, one of those killed was one of the most dangerous militants in yemen. >> tonight, i can report to the american people and to the world that the united states has conducted an operation that killed osama bin laden, the leader of al qaeda. >> this is almost an existential challenge for our political process right now. politics are supposed to be fighting about governing, about policy, about what the government does. but the epithets people use to make politics have become disconnected from what's actually happening in governing. when the candidates talk about immigration, how the administration is soft on illegal immigration and won't enforce the laws. in any just world the talking point ought to be flabbergasted by the fact that the obama administration has deported a regular number of illegal immigrants three years in a row.

when the president of the nra stood up at cpac last year, the way you can tell that obama was coming for your guns, was that obama had not yet come for your guns. and the whole reason there had been no encroachment on gun rights under the obama administration because they were lulling us in a sense of complacency to come for your guns some other time. when that happened, i felt we're all on the same page. i felt we had the ultimate flabbergast. the moon had been shot on whether or not the rights case about obama was connected at all to how obama has governed as president. but now, today, with obama saying he wants to get rid of the commerce department, and the response on the right being we'll see government grower, now i feel there is no moon to shoot, there is no shark to jump. this is the way it goes and the way it's going to keep going. joining us is ezra klein, msnbc policy analyst, ezra, thanks for being here on friday night. >> good evening.

>> if president obama were a republican president, would republicans be super psyched about what he announced about consolidating these agencies? >> they would be quite psyched about it. to be fair, democrats probably would be more suspicious of it. this is a tinier examples. a policy that bob dole supported, heritage foundation, that newt gingrich supported, that mitt romney passed in law and began to implement. that was a conservative idea, barack obama opposed it in his 2008 primary, embraced it as part of a way to get a deal. republicans said it was unconstitutional assault on power. cap and trade, for carbon, nowadays, cap and trade was proposed and passed in law george h.w. bush, then john mccain had it in his 2008 platform. it's a huge problem. we let political parties decide

what is left and right and don't hold their feet to the fire when completely on the fly and for clearly partisan reasons they decide to take the thing they were supporting yesterday and say today it's a horrible idea that nobody should ever be allowed to support. >> there is the sort of dynamic that is not an exact mirror image, it's not to say one side is better than the other, on some of those issues i pointed out where obama actually does something that republicans criticize him for not doing, on the issue, for example, of enforcing immigration laws and deporting people or the drone strikes and some of the national security stuff and his approach to fighting terrorism around the world, liberals are not happy about those issues. but republicans never say they are happy about those issues, so we end up in this situation where the left is criticizing, the right is not criticizing and we're never able to sense even on an issue where he comes down on the middle or right that he's doing something that is actually a partisan-style compromise. >> right, this is not only true i think it ends up being

somewhat brilliant in this following way. the old theory of american politics, the way you got your ideas in law if you weren't in power, you compromised with the other party, right, you said in exchange for my vote, you have to put this into the bill. what mitch mcconnell and republicans have figured out you don't have to. if you simply withhold all of your votes, you move the necessary votes to pass a deal to the right of the democratic party. your health care bill can't be further left than senator ben nelson, the embattled nebraska senator who will not even run for re-election now because he's so unlikely to win it, can't be any further left than you allow it to be. you end up with a health care bill almost what you would have thought you would end up with if the democrats and republicans had come to a compromise but not only do you not have to vote for it but you attack the other side and make them look partisan, make them do all the work of passing into law the unpopular parts of your idea, too.

turns out to be brilliant, not a good thing we have figured out a way to get what they want without compromising given how much the system is reliant on compromise. >> is part of the problem the media tends to find the partisan or left-right contours of a policy based on who from which party is squawking about it? is there a way the media should be covering policy issues like this, that sort of separate from how partisans are fighting about it? >> who us? no. i mean, we do a wonderful job. look, i think we have a problem. we don't want to take a side. so what we do is allow the republicans and democrats to decide at any given time what the sides in american politics are. but the fact of the marte is, they change those sides quite a bit, and when they do that we don't jump in front of them and say wait, two months ago, three years ago, four years ago, wrn you saying this? some could argue it's not the media's job to decide what the republican party believes, what is right in the country, there has to be somewhere in between here and there we could be.

the other side is too that you got to be watching the policy closely to catch on to the shifts. when you're covering politics and this is not political party's faulting with they're just covering a different thing than policy reporters are covering, and you're moving with the politicians, and to some degree we miss the distinction between the place of politics of driving people and the place you would have assumed they would have driven to. >> ezra klein, as always, invaluable insight, thank you. >> thank you. >> if your weekend plans include floating around the indian ocean, i have a recommendation for you, you will need an umbrella but need to be made of teflon or armor. the reason for that warning is on "our moment of geek free-throw, coming up. [ male announcer ] for sore muscles use new bengay cold therapy,

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the president's state of the union address is scheduled a week from tuesday, the 24th of january. we do not yet know who will give the republican response this year. for the president's first official state of the union it was given by republican virginia governor bob mcdonald. someone who the republican party wants to be a rising star, that is why he got the speech gig that night. tomorrow he will be going to south carolina ahead of the south carolina republican primary. bob mcdonald is not going to be running for president, so what is he going to be doing in south carolina? everybody thinks he's there essentially running for vice

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they packed up the new hampshire primary in a hurry, hand mitt romney the trophy, put the teleprompter on the bus and get to south carolina. the last one leaving new hampshire, please turn out the lights. now that the national circus has gone, republicans are left with their own politics, own agenda. they are working on rolling back rights for gay people. new hampshire republicans want to take away the existing right of same-sex couples there to get married. freedom to marry they do not see as the whole live free or die thing, at least not for gay people. republicans to take prioritize those rights had a perfect choice for candidate in the presidential primary, rick santorum. senator, man on dog, suggested that as president he would intervene to annul the marriages of same-sex couples nationwide. rick santorum nearly won in iowa. when he showed up in new hampshire, he talked about gay rights and kept getting booed off the stage. when it came time to vote, the

rank and file of the anti-gay party in new hampshire put mr. santorum in fifth place. the only candidates who got close to him, ron paul and jon huntsman who supports civil unions. new hampshire republican lawmakers in that state are still talking about repealing same-sex marriage. they may vote on that as early as next week. 27% of new hampshire voters say they want that to happen. the republican legislature is offering a bill not just to do away with gay marriage in new hampshire, but allow anybody to just ignore the rights you are entitled to if you're in a civil union. if you have visitation rights to see your partner in the hospital because you are in a civil union with your partner, new hampshire republicans' bill would change the law to make that right optional for anybody who doesn't want to respect it or enforce it. the bill would also for the first time let close family members like brothers and sisters enter into civil unions. why is that? i don't know. next up, men and their dogs. as i say, i don't know. what is happening in new hampshire makes me wonder if

republican leaders in general are maybe outstripping their own voters when it comes to being anti-gay. this presents a quandry for politicians like new jersey governor chris christie, one of the choices for the vice presidential nominee. he is facing a push in his own state legislature to legalize same-sex marriage in new jersey. democrats with some republican support say they want to pass a marriage equality bill for new jersey, if they do so they will put it on his desk. what is chris christie going to do with that? he wants to be known as somewhat moderate on social issues, at least somebody who's not a crusader on those issues, he doesn't want to be seen as a dinosaur. but chris christie is also ambitious, what will republican party politics this year make chris christie veto that marriage bill. what will doe to his standing in new jersey in exchange for

raising his standing in national politics. bob mcdonnell worked so hard to reinvent himself as a milk toast pro business guy. worked so hard to get away from his days as a religious right anti-gay activist when he wrote a thesis, saying public policy should be used to punish co-hab ta co-habitaters, homosexuals and fornicators. look what he has done as virginia governor. republicans have passed new rules for adoptions, that say it's acceptable to block you from adopting a child in virginia on the basis of your sexual orientation. but and the status of age, gender, religion or political belief.

seriously. under bob mcdonnell, virginia changed its rules to say you can be blocked from adopting a child in virginia if you are a registered democrat. or a registered republican. or if you're gay. or if you're a jew. who wants bob mcdonnell to be on their ticket as vice president? anyone? while all of this percolates in the states, at the national level mitt romney has been calmly consolidating his support for his republican party nomination. while he's been consolidating support, his own uncomfortably gay friendly past keeps rearing its head. buzzfeed.c buzzfeed.com, posting pro gay romney from his past. smiling on the cover of boston's gay newspaper, bay windows from 1994. mitt romney was running for senate, promising he'd be a better advocate for gay rights than liberal u.s. senator, ted kennedy. that same year, mr. romney told the log cabin republicans, "if we are to achieve the goals we share, we must make equality for gays and lesbians a main stream

concern." this was also posted by buzz feed. along with this. a gay pride flyer from 2002, mitt and kerry wish you a great pride weekend. all citizens deserves equal rights. right there in the corner, it says paid for by the romney for governor committee. the current romney campaign denies knowing anything about the flyer, but a former intern said he was told to hand out they were campaign literature. now of course mitt romney says that equal rights for same-sex couples are a threat to the nation, that must be stopped. mitt romney's gay friendly past puts an exclamation point after this question mark, in republican politics today. the question mark about how anti-gay national republicans want to be. how anti-gay do national republicans want to be or need to be. how anti-gay can they be right now? the conservative movement made

being anti-gay a litmus test for politicians. has that become a liability in general election campaigns? are republican politicians now more anti-gay than voters at large? or even than republican voters? joining us now is frank phillips, state house bureau chief for "the boston globe," mr. phillips, thank you for joining us. >> good evening. >> we've seen discomfort in the mitt romney for president campaign when confronted with the statements of mitt romney the massachusetts candidate in the past. how would you characterize mitt romney's legacy on gay rights in massachusetts? >> well, i was there in 1994, and he was out there on the edge. he was pushing ted kennedy, saying he was going to be as you just said, he would be better than ted on gay rights. he thought that don't ask don't tell, that was going to -- he

wanted to go beyond that. and that was just put in place by the clinton administration. he was out there, and when he came back and ran for governor, he continued to be for domestic partnerships, and there was in massachusetts he was a moderate socially progressive person in a lot of social issues, one of them was gay rights. >> of course when the massachusetts supreme court legalized same-sex marriage in the state, in 2005 was it? no, earlier. >> 2003. november of 2003. he had been in office for about a year. >> his reaction was he was against it and he got involved with the republicans in the legislature to try to block it. was that -- was that a characteristic move for him, was he acting the way he had previously acted or did the gay marriage issue seem to change him as governor?

>> i think it did change him and made me for the first time think that he had national ambitions. and confirmed a lot of what we were suspecting. he went into overdrive on that and he never really interacted much with the legislature, but even with the republicans in the legislature, who are the small minority, but he was actually going down to their offices, and trying to rally votes to vote for a constitutional amendment to put before the voters to ban same-sex marriages. so he was in overdrive, and it was clear to us that something was going on here, he was playing to the more national audience, and from then on i think we saw a different mitt romney. >> do you think that the gay marriage issue in massachusetts had anything to do with his decision not to run for re-election or by the time that happened do you think he already knew he wasn't going to try to

get re-elected? >> i don't think it had anything to do with that. even early on, although it's very popular now, it was 40-40 in favor and against, the rest undecided, i think there were other factors. i don't think he ever intended to run for re-election. his whole idea was to get on the national stage, run in '08, a lot depended what happened with john kerry in '04, once kerry lost, he was off and running. his unfavorability was in the 50s, 50% or so above. but he could have come back. i think he could have gotten re-elected, not a certainty, but he's a strong candidate, he did a decent job in a lot of ways as governor, nothing overwhelming, but he was very competent governor here in massachusetts. >> frank phillips, state house bureau chief for "the boston globe." i always enjoy the chance to

talk to you, sir. thanks very much for being with us. >> it's a pleasure, thank you, rachel. so russian space debris might fall on your head this weekend, i'm sorry. also sorry to say if russian space debris falls on your head, russia thinks it's your fault. "a moment of geek" with a blame game inside of it. just ahead. for 80 years, we've been inspired by you. and we've been honored to walk with you to help you get where you want to be. ♪ because your moment is now. let nothing stand in your way. learn more at keller.edu. kids make stains i use tide boost to super charge our detergent. boom. clothes look amazing, and daddy's a hero. daddy, can we play ponies? right after we do foldies. tide boost is my tide. what's yours?

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good news/bad news on the "moment of geek" tonight. ready? a bad news, a russian spacecraft that has been falling to the earth since november is about to crash back down to earth. that's the bad news. the good news, pieces of the 30,000 pond stays craft loaded with toxic rocket fuel are not all that likely to fall on you specifically, depending on where you consider. the spacecraft was supposed to fly to the martian moon. it's called fobos greunt. it was supposed to take a soil sample from that moon and fly it back home. but although the first stage of its life went pretty smoothly and made it into earth's orbit, the second stage of the launch never happened. the engines that were supposed to send it out of earth's orbit never fired and all that fuel that was supposed to be burnt up

never burnt up because they never fired and all that fuel has been slowly circling over our heads ever since. two months after it failed to get out of earth's orbit, the laws of physics started to do their job. the steadily decaying orbit is bringing this piece of scary space junk and all of its fuel back into our atmosphere. re-entry experts are expecting it to hit sometime this weekend, probably sunday, maybe early monday. mostly it going to burn up upon reentry into the atmosphere. that includes the fuel, which should kaboom once its tanks heat up during the re-entry fall. they estimate 430 pounds from the solid junk will make it all the way down to where we humans are to, you know, where we are but also where the oceans are and there's more of the surface area of the earth covered by oceans than by land. they will not know exactly where this is coming down until right before it happens. the whole world cursing the lousy russian space program and

worrying about getting hit by their defective space junk is not a prideful thing for russia. so the head of the russian space program has done what comes naturalry to people who are embarrassed. he's turned it into an excuse to kick someone else. the head of the russian program said it might not be russia's fault. heap said some other country might have sabotaged it he said, we don't want to accuse anybody about there are very powerful devices that can influence spacecraft now. he did not name names of course, america, but he spoke about the frequent failure of our space launches which occurred at a time they are flying over a part of the earth not visible from rushy, where we do not see the spacecraft and do not receive telemetric information is not clear to us. sarah palin's view of russia

from her house has assumed that is not a reference to us. so the guy who heads the russian space agency that we now pay to transport our astronauts to the international space station is alleging somebody, possibly us, might be sabotaging russian rockets from space when we've got them over on our side of the earth so russia can't see us doing it. you know,fy were them, i would want to blame somebody else, too. but remember that if space junk does hit somebody this weekend, russia's going to blame america. [ todd ] hello? hello todd. just calling to let you know i'm giving you the silent treatment. so you're calling to tell me you're giving me the silent treatment? ummm, yeah. jen, this is like the eighth time you've called... no, it's fine, my family has free unlimited mobile-to-any-mobile minutes. i can call all i want. i don't think you understand how the silent treatment works. hello?

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♪ imagine zero pollutants in our environment. or zero dependency on foreign oil. ♪ this is why we at nissan built a car inspired by zero. because zero is worth everything. the zero gas, 100% electric nissan leaf. innovation for the planet. innovation for all. so "sports illustrated" put tom brady on the cover ahead of tomorrow's playoff game between the patriots and the broncos, which of course is a curse in american sports. so a group of self-proclaimed witches in massachusetts responded by putting a curse on "sports illustrated" to even out the juju or something.