cecile richards, leading the charge. thank you for your time. it turns out north dakota isn't quite as crazy as we thought. you have to wear the seat belts in the front seat, but not the back. that is it for us. thanks to you at home for staying with us this hour. first thing you need to know about arguing a case before the united states supreme court, is that the justices of the united states supreme court, really do not care about whatever it is you are planning on saying to them. >> we'll hear argument in this morning in case 12-144, hollingsworth vs. perry. mr. cooper. >> thank you, mr. chief justice and may it please the court. new york's highest court in a case similar to this one, until quite rent recently, it was accepted in any state where --

>> maybe it would best if you could begin with the standing issue. >> ah, humility. first lesson is humility. the lawyer for the anti gay rights side of the case was allowed to basically gesture at his first citation to teeter on the precipice of his first claus when, bam! this is not your house, sir this is the justices' house and they apparently have business to attend to in this case that doesn't afford time for your little essays. the case is was the first of two big gay marriage cases that the court is hearing this term. the next will be heard tomorrow. people lined up overnight in the snow to get into the courtroom to hear these arguments today. people even paid other people to stand in line for them if they did not want to brave the elements themselves had spare cash. when everybody did get in this morning and things got going inside at 10:00 a.m., it was clear whatever you thought of

the caliber of the lawyers arguing the two sides of the case, honestly, the people to listen to were the justices themselves. in part because that tips their hand about how they might vote, but also because they barely let the lawyers get a word in edgewise, on both sides. >> mr. olson. >> thank you before chief justice, and may it please the court. i know that you will want me to spend a moment or two addressing the standing question. but before i do that, i thought that it would be important for this court to have proposition 8 put in context what, it does. it walls off gay and lesbians from marriage, the most important relation in life, according to this court, thus stigmatizing a class of californians based upon their status and labeling their most cherished relationships as second rate, different, unequal, and not okay.

>> mr. olson, i cut off your friend before he could get into the merits, so i think it's only fair -- >> i was trying to avoid that, your honor. >> i know that. i think it's only fair to treat you the same. perhaps you could address your jurisdictional argument? >> the lawyers on both sides today, both trying to start with the big picture, with the implications of today's case, should gay people in america be allowed to get married? is it right or wrong? constitutional or unconstitutional for states to ban them from doing so? they are both trying to start with the big picture, but the justices would basically hear none of it. they did hear some of it, and more on that in a second. but mostly the headline out of the day and the bulk of the time was spent on something else the justices wanted to talk about. they wanted to talk about whether this is the right case. whether this case about california's gay marriage ban is the right type of case, asking

the right type of question by the right questioners, for the court to use this case to make a national decision on same-sex marriage rights. and the predictions from most court watchers that the justices don't think this is the same kind of case. if those predictions are right and nobody knows if they will be. remember when cnn declared health reform was dead? yeah. we'll have a decision in due time. but if -- if -- the predictions are correct that a majority of the court does not want to make this case the basis of a ruling with national implications for banning same-sex marriage, the most likely other outcome could be the lower court ruling in this case would be allowed to stand in effect. that lower court ruling struck down california's bay marriage ban. if that happened, gay marriage would be unbanned in california and couples would have the same rights to marry as couples in iowa, massachusetts, d.c. and the seven other states that have

equal marriage rights. no state that bans gay marriage now would have the ban overturned, it would mean no state that would allow gay marriage would have that overturned. no case that recognizes civil unions would forcibly have the civil unions converted to marriage either. that seems like maybe it could be the most likely outcome of today's case. honestly, who knows. ted olson, the lawyer, was asked after the arguments today what he thinks the court is going to do, having stood there, toe to toe with justices and talking to them an hour. he was asked what he thinks the justices are going to do, and his answer was, and i quote "no idea." we did get to hear the justices at lengths, not just on procedural issues, but also on gay rights. what they said was not only fascinating, but may have bigger implications for the other half of this issue, which will be heard tomorrow. tomorrow, it isn't a single

state's ban up for review like today. tomorrow the arguments are about a federal law, the bill clinton defense of marriage act, doma. it says a marriage in any one state is a marriage everywhere in the u.s., for straight people, gay marriages may not be recognized federally. that's what doma is and knowing the fight coming down the pike tomorrow, that made exchanges like this one i want to play for you between chief justice john roberts and the former republican solicitor general ted olson made this exchange really interesting. >> this is just about the label in this case. >> the label is -- >> same-sex couples have every other right. >> the label marriage means something, even our opponents -- >> sure. if you tell a child that somebody has to be their friend, i suppose you can force the child to say this is my friend,

but it changes the definition of what it means to be a friend. and that's it seems to me what supporters of proposition 8 are saying here. all you're interested is the label and you insist on changing the definition of the label. >> it's like saying you can vote, you can travel, but you cannot be a citizen. there are certain labels in this country that are critical. you could have said in the loving case, you can't get married, but you can have an interracial union. everyone would know that was wrong. >> john roberts and ted olson arguing about whether this "marriage" label means something, or if you can have first-class citizenship while the state still bans you from having that label, that one thing. if you wanted to know today if there was any good old fashioned homophobic ignorance in the court, yes, there was, on the wings of a dove named antonin scalia. he was trying to help out the lawyer arguing the anti gay

rights side. he starts out trying to help the lawyer and goes right off the cliff. >> mr. cooper, let me give you one concrete thing. why don't you mention some concrete thing. if you redefine marriage to redefine same-sex couples, you must per adoption of same-sex couples and there is considerable disagreement among sociologists, what is the consequences of raising a child in a single-sex family, whether that is harmful to the child or not. some states do not -- do not permit adoption by same-sex couples for that reason. >> california -- no, california does. >> do you know the answer to that, if it harms or helps the child? >> no, your honor. >> but that's a possible deleterious effect, isn't it?

>> they are arguing for a nationwide rule which applies to states other than california. that every state must allow marriage by same-sex couples. and so even though states that believe it is harmful, and i take no position on whether it's harmful or not. but it is certainly true that -- that there's no scientific answer to that question at this point in time. >> and that, your honor, is the point i'm trying to make. >> that actually was a point that lawyer had not been trying to make at all before justice scalia decided he was going to help him out by handing him that one. that fact-free assertion about the social science on kids with gay parents that, in fact, is not borne out by the actual social science. hearing justice scalia go there is sort of to be expected of him at this point. what is less expected and therefore more interesting is hearing justice anthony kennedy, the swing vote, right after that happened, a few moments later,

interjected himself, going out of his way to kind of smack justice scalia's argument out of the water. >> on the other hand there, is an immediate legal injury or legal -- what could be a legal injury, and that's the voice of these children. there are some 40,000 children in california according to the red brief, that live with same-sex parents. and they want their parents to have full recognition and full status. the voice of those children is important in this case, don't you think? >> everything justice anthony kennedy says in most cases, but also in a case like this, is watched very, very closely, because justice kennedy is often seen as the pivot point, the swing justice between the court's conservatives and court's liberals. we have some experts on deck tonight to help us out with what all of this means. but before we get to them,

because of the importance of justice kennedy, i want to play one more moment of the case today. a moment where justice kennedy, again, jumps in and a time when it seemed like he didn't have to but jumped into the middle of a point in progress between the more progressive justice, elena kagan, obama nominee, between elena kagan and the lawyer for the anti gay rights side. they are having a tet-e-tet. >> what harm do you see happening and and what harm to the institution of marriage or to opposite-sex couples, how does this cause and effect work? >> once again, i would -- i would reiterate that we don't believe that's the correct legal question before the court, and that the correct question is whether or not redefining marriage to include same-sex couples would advance the interests of marriage as a --

>> well, then are you conceding the point that there is no harm or denigration to opposite sex marriage couples? are you conceding that? >> no, your honor being. i'm not conceding that. >> it seems you would have to address justice kagan's question. >> thank you, justice kennedy. >> you should have to answer the question then. reading the justice's intentions is like reading tea leaves. it's fun, but it tells you more about the reader than the readee. from the dominant focus of the arguments today, we know that justices care very much about how this case got to the court. specifically the decision of the california governor and the california state attorney general to not defend prop 8 in court. that is what they were focused on today and joining us right now, live, the attorney general of the state of california, came. >> thank you.

glad to be here. >> after prop 8 passed, you said if you were elected you would not defend that ban in court. why did you make that decision? and how do you think it's playing out? >> you are exactly right. i did, and we should also note that my opponent said he would defend prop 8 and my opponent was not elected. the reason i say that and has refused to defend proposition 8 is one simple reason. it's unconstitutional and it's found by a court to be unconstitutional and frankly, as the daughter of parents active in the civil rights movement, i refuse to stand in the doorway of the wedding chapel blocking same-sex couple's ability to marry. >> what will be the practical implication of the justices focusing so much on the standing issue. you not defending prop 8, but

instead people who supported the initiative, who weren't necessarily employees of the state taking it up instead of you? how do you think that will play out? >> article iii of the constitution requires if someone goes before the united states supreme court and take a position, they have to have some direct stake in the outcome, and our position all along has been mr. hollingsworth has no direct stake and his life will be impacted in no way by ms. perry able to marry her partner, with whom she has a child. we make the very obvious point, if you have nothing in at stake in the outcome of this, you need to sit down. the other piece, when we look at the impact to so many people, we are talking about an issue that is a fundamental right. the united states supreme court, since the 1880s, rachel, 14 times, has described meaning as a fundamental right.

we can have a conversation about freedom to marry, but we really also must have this conversation about deprivation of fundamental rights and what will we as a society do about that? i'm troubled by the conversation that suggests we should wait. we should not wait when people are being deprived of their fundamental rights. we could not wait when the lovings wanted to get married in virginia. there has to be something about a civil society that says we're not going to wait for the minority to be comfortable by the majority. rights to liberty, freedom and equality. >> when you look back at that vote in 2008 that brought proposition 8, it was such a national surprise on a night when barack obama was elected and so many democrats in the south and senate. california of all states passing that constitutional amendment, two questions. one, should it have been on the

ballot in the first place? if it were again, how would the vote go now? >> i can tell you today, 61% of americans in favor of same-sex marriage, as are the majority of americans and catholics. the former president of the united states, heads of fortune 500 companies, 100 of the top thought leaders in the republican party, athletes, the world has changed and i think that what is clear is that were the vote to be taken today in california, i am sure proposition 8 would not pass, but there is something fundamental also about allowing people to register their vote and to vote as they will, but right now, in california, 61% are in favor of same-sex marriage and for a number of obvious reasons that have everything to do with just very fundamental principles of

liberty, freedom, and equality. >> kamala harris, thank you very much. justices on both sides called you he, as if you were a hypothetical person. >> that's just further example of people needing to see times have changed and the first woman has been elected attorney general of california. >> i felt for you. as somebody who gets mistaken for a boy when people can see me, i felt for you knowing that people were thinking you were a man simply because of your job title. it was an amazing thing. congratulations, thank you very much. >> thank you. a huge news day. much more on the supreme court and same-sex marriage, more, are you kidding me news out of the high plains today and on a totally different story, we've got somebody here for the interview later on tonight, we have been trying to get on this show for months. it's a big story and that's ahead. for those nights when it's more than a bad dream, be ready. for the times you need

to double-check the temperature on the thermometer, be ready. for high fever, nothing works faster or lasts longer. be ready with children's motrin. or lasts longer. ♪

your finances can't manage themselves, but that doesn't mean they won't try. bring all your finances together with the help of the one person who can, a certified financial planner professional. cfp -- let's make a plan.

okay. one of the dependable things that happens when a policy debate works around to pro creation, to the issue of having babies, not having babies, in particular, the question of how babies are made, one of the dependable things about those policy debates, at some point in the debate, somebody will get confused.

we saw this, for example, in the debate over health insurance companies covering prescriptions for contraception. a man on the radio, demanding to know how many of these birth control pills do you girls need? how much sex are you having? an awkward moment for the country when you had to explain, it's not like one pill per date, sir. you just take -- oh, never mind. read a junior high biology textbook and not one from texas. awkward things when things like that happen and they happen all the time. one of those moments happened at the supreme court today. not understanding the biology moment, and the justices discussed the pro creative capacity of dead senator strom thurmond. seriously. watch. >> suppose a state said that because we think that the focus of marriage really should be on pro creation, we are not going to give marriage licenses anymore to any couple where both

people are over the age of 55. would that be constitutional? >> no, your honor. it would not be constitutional. >> because that's the same state interest, i would think, you know. if you are over the age of 55, you don't help us serve the government's interest in regulating pro creation through marriage. so why is that different? >> your honor, even with respect to couples over the age of 55, it is very rare that both couples -- both parties to the couple are infertile. >> no, really, because, if a couple -- i can just assure you, if both the woman and the man are over the age of 55, there are not a lot of children coming out of that marriage. >> your honor, society's -- society's interest in responsible pro creation isn't just with respect to the procreative capacities of the couple itself.

the marital norm, which imposes the obligation of fidelity and monogamy, your honor, advances the interests in responsible procreation, by making more likely, that neither party, including the fertile party -- >> i suppose we could have a questionnaire at the marriage desk when people come in to get the marriage. are you fertile or are you not fertile? i suspect this court would hold that to be an unconstitutional invasion of privacy, don't you think? >> i just asked about age. i didn't ask about anything else. we ask about people's age all the time. >> your honor, and even asking about age, you would have to ask if both parties were both infertile. >> strom thurmond was not the chair of the justice committee when justice kagan was

confirmed. >> very few men outlive their own fertility. >> i just question, a couple where both people are over the age of 55. where both people are over the age of 55. >> your honor, again, the marital norm which imposes upon that couple the obligation of fidelity -- >> i'm sorry. where is that -- >> i'm sorry. maybe you can finish your answer to justice kagan. >> i'm sorry. as female justices are struggling to explain however awesome it may be for a man like strom thurmond to never outlive his fertility, a woman in a heterosexual marriage over the age of 55 is not likely to get pregnant with her husband or anybody else, even if her husband is the picture of aged procreative vigor. you guys do understand that, right?

the whole thing about two, both of them, the man and woman being over 55. it doesn't matter how old strom thurmond was himself here. gah! sorry. joining us now is the chief justice professor of constitutional law at nyu law school. he was in the courtroom today. thank you for being here tonight. >> thank you for having me, rachel. >> that pained squall, where nobody realizes what she is talking about makes me crazy. not the most important thing that happened today. what we learned about how these judges may likely rule on this case or was it learning about how they feel about gay people and gay rights in general in a way that might apply to tomorrow's case? >> i think what we learned today, the extremes have been shaved off, and what we're going to get is not a zero state solution, not a 50 state solution, but something in between, yesterday we were talking about off-ramps, the supreme court signalled it

wanted to take this off-ramp of flipping california and that's what we'll end up with, if i had to read the tea leaves. that's 11% of the country. a really big deal. i don't want to minimize that but it's an incremental solution. we also learned something about what will happen tomorrow. when the justices talk about the clip you played about kennedy, kids, this whole protect your children has been something that the right wing has used over and over again. the protect your children used to be the anita bryant campaign. >> protect our children from gay people. >> from being molested by gay people. and then it turned to the edge educational context. when president obama flipped, he mentioned children of gay couples and said gay couples i know are raising kids and mentioned children over and over.

and i think that was a sign of a real turning point in this debate. the combination of gays and children was no longer toxic and the protect our children meme became an argument for it rather than against it. we have to focus on justice kennedy. i think he will be the swing vote in both cases. they might not be partisan 5-4s, but i think he will be the key vote. tomorrow, it's not only justice kennedy has tipped his hand to being very pro gay, understanding of the lives of gay people as he was in romar in 2003, tomorrow is not just a gay rights pace, it's a state's power case. what are justice kennedy's two favorite things? you might have as well have julie andrews sing the oral argument. he's sold. tomorrow's outcome is very

bullish in the court striking down the defense of marriage act. >> a potentially contentious exchange between ted olson and john roberts. i read most of it rather than listened it to. no. it was justice scalia. at what point did it become unconstitutional to deny marriage rights to same-sex couples and ted olson said when did it become unconstitutional to deny that to interracial couples. and he said don't answer my question with a question. this came up repeatedly, the same logic that caused the country to change its mind to tell interracial couples you can't be married should apply to same-sex couples as well. you saw it referenced by the attorney general of california a moment ago on the show. >> he gave the right answer to it, but i wish he cited precedent for it, a slam dunk for it.

a case of roger vs. lodge. even if a system of election was created with a nondiscriminatory reason, if it's maintained for discriminatory reason in the future, that in itself can render it unconstitutional. here the at-large election way was not created to be prejudicial, but it was maintained for unconstitutional reasons. >> marriage did evolve in a way that was designed to harm gay people, but it's being maintained in a way that does harm gay people, and precedent said it should be seen as unconstitutional. >> exactly right. >> i got it right. excellent. as close as i will get to law school. kenji oshino, you have not slept at all. thank you for being here. >> no problem.

i think i talked about off-ramps a lot. driving back and forth. >> glad are you safe and back. a lot of urgent questions about the v.a. backlog, and we've been asking them on this show for months. tonight, we finally get to ask those questions of somebody who can answer back. it's a big deal. that's the interview tonight, that's ahead.

last week we had the largest number of guests ever at one time on this show. and the number of guests in that segment happens to reflect directly the level of the importance of the topic we discussed with those vets. the group of veterans you met on the show last week are among the many veterans and their families demanding a solution from president obama himself if necessary, to fixing the frustrating backlog of claims at the veterans administration. the annual amount of time for claims to be processed is nine months. for some vets, try 642 days, try 1,099 days. tonight, i am pleased to

announce finally somebody from the v.a. has agreed to talk about this. v.a. assistant secretary tommy sowers joins to us talk about how his department plans to fix this mess. [ lane ] do you ever feel like you're growing old waiting for your wrinkle cream to work? clinically proven neutrogena® rapid wrinkle repair. it targets fine lines and wrinkles with the fastest retinol formula available. you'll see younger looking skin in just one week. one week? that's just my speed. rapid wrinkle repair.

and for dark spots rapid tone repair. from neutrogena®.

one of the stranger strategies that the united states took in the long war in vietnam was to wage war on the land itself. by the tens of millions of gallons we sprayed herbicide on the land to defoliate the jungle, to deprive the guerillas of cover to kill crops, to drive the vietnamese people into the city. it's the kind of policy that military think of when they think they are god. the united states had not accounted for all of the consequences of that action. of their massive use of agent orange and other herbicides in vietnam. we didn't even admit to many of the consequences for 40 years, until october 2009 when a new president and his new combat wounded vietnam veteran secretary of veterans affairs announced that agent orange related illnesses in u.s.

service members would be presumed to be related to your time in the service if you served in vietnam. then five months later, v.a. secretary eric shinseki said that illness related to the first war in iraq would be presumed to be related to your time in the service if you served in that war. the idea was to recognize the fact that americans who served in those wars got hurt in those wars in ways that had previously been dismissed as not related to their time at the front. to get those folks the care and disability benefits that they earned, those two decisions brought hundreds of thousands of new claims for disability benefits into the veterans administration. at the same time that was happening, under the new president, the u.s. was starting to wind down one of the longest wars in history, the iraq war. where some of the signature injuries, traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress, those injuries can be less straight forward to diagnose and relate

to service than, say, a bullet wound would be. the same president is now winding down the longest war in history which was fought simultaneously with the iraq war, with many of the same signature injuries, not 1% of our population that has been fighting both of those wars for more than ten years will be coming home and transitioning from soldiering to being veterans. the story of how the backlog at the v.a. piled up so badly in terms of veterans having to wait months or even years on their claims, that story about how it all piled up is not hard to understand. but no one saw this coming? when the agent orange claims were added and the gulf war illness claims were added and other classification groups were added and the wars in iraq and afghanistan ground on for years and started to end, anybody could see all of those things would have paperwork consequences in the form of more disability claims in the v.a. but the management of the paperwork has not kept pace with the changes that cause the

increases in paperwork. the v.a.'s own numbers shows wait times are not getting better, it's getting worse. 161 days, the next year, 165 days, next year 188 days, last year, 262 days. the universe of the problem they are dealing with is getting bigger by design, by policy, by good policy, by their own policy. but the pace at which they are dealing with the existing problem is not getting better, it is getting worse and we keep hearing from the v.a., we got this. really, for a decade now we've been hearing it's all under control. >> we need to bring that backlog of claims down. >> the v.a. has made significant improvements to the claims decision making process, but clearly more must be done. >> we will improve the timeliness and accuracy of claims processing. >> implementing a robust plan. >> we have a fix for this, and we'll end the bag log in 2015.

>> last remark from the current secretary of veterans affairs, eric shinseki, who has not talked much to the national press. maybe that is changing. but i am, for one, delighted to talk to anyone from the v.a. which has been next to impossible for us as a show as we have covered this issue for years now. the agency would not give us anybody to talk to about this, until tonight. joining us tonight for the interview, tommy sowers. prior to being nominated by the president, he served two tours in the war iraq. really nice to see you, not out of politeness, i really am glad you are here. >> thank you for your focus on this issue. i know you are a daughter of a veteran and i appreciate your focus. >> i don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but why has the v.a. kept a lo profile and

explained so little what was going on, as the country has become increasingly worried about this problem? >> it's a great question. the president and secretary shinseki made a historic commitment to veterans. over the last few weeks, there has been a lot of talk about the backlog of disability claims. a number of veterans don't know that they have five years of cost-free health care. i'm one of those patients, and not only do they have it, they've taken it. this generation of vets has utilized v.a. health care at 56%. that's much higher than any other generation. we have to educate about what these claims are and what the takedown is. and you are seeing some of that this week. >> a member of the military just got back from afghanistan. leaving the military next week, becoming a veteran, he believes he has ptsd or maybe he has been diagnosed.

he will file a disability claim with your agency. not i need an appointment to get care, that is i can't work because of my ptsd and i need to be paid disability benefits to compensate for the fact that i cannot work. what will the process be like for that veteran right now? what should that veteran expect in terms of timing for the paperwork? >> first off, again when it comes to actual treatment there, is immediate assistance out there. so we have a veterans crisis line. 1-800-273-talk, and over 700,000 veterans, active duty service members and their families have called this number. and they can walk into any of our 1,300 points of care. here in new york, there is five vet centers, and this is for veterans, their families to help with readjustment. i want to make sure that's clear, they can get the help they need. when it comes to filing disability claims, they can go online and file it electronically.

they can go with a veterans service organization that can help walk them through that claim. the challenges, we're receiving about 97% of our claims like this. these big stacks of paper. and as long as we're receiving this paper it will be a challenge to keep up with it i don't know the last time you looked up something in an encyclopedia, but that's what we have at a lot of the claims offices. this is the key year of action, where we're transitioning from a paper-based system to electronic system. right now, we have about 56 offices, about 25 of them have transitioned to this, and we're seeing a marked decrease in the amount of time it takes to process a claim. and it's simple. imagine looking up and trying to find a key piece of evidence in this, versus typing in back, post traumatic stress, into a web-based service and that's the difference that's happening this year. >> right now, any veteran who is filing for disability claims tonight or tomorrow, are they

filing electronically? or some places still filing paper? >> the vast majority are still filing in paper. that's the chat length. some of the previous segments you asked, v.a. what help do you need? it's a great question. our budgets have increased. the president and secretary fought for that, and fought for increasing conditions. you mentioned that, thank you for doing that in the intro. what we need to do is partner with both the veterans and the veterans service organizations to make sure they know about fully developed claims, which is 95% of the claims we get, we get a few pieces of paper and say, v.a., go find the rest of the evidence, private medical records, d.o.d. records. only 5% are filed with all the paperwork we need. we need to increase that number dramatically and we have about 1 million servicemen and women getting out of the military in the next four years. they will come back, a lot of them will go to school.

the education on the post-9/11 g.i. bill is high. but a lot of people don't understand the disability claims process. we need the junior officers that will sit with the private, the specialist and say what will you do next? part of that conversation needs to be this is how you file your disability claim. >> the frustrating thing, the level of complexity that needs to be filed with the v.a. is determined by the v.a., so if people are turning in stuff that isn't cogent in terms of what you need to file the claim, and that's true 97% of the time, that doesn't apply that there is a problem with the 97% of the people implying. there's a problem with what you're asking? if only 3% are doing it right there, is a problem with what are you asking for. are you asking for something unreasonable? >> we just came online in terms of the ability to file a claim electronically. if somebody is wondering about this, look up e-benefits or fully developed claim and that

says if you are going to file your claim this is how you give us all the information we need to rate it, judge it as quickly as possible. >> as recently as 2010, the undersecretary of the v.a. for benefits told the senate veterans committee that the -- the back of the backlog was being broken and things have gotten worse since then. general shinseki and general hickey insist that this will be done by 2015. i think my increasing urgency in covering this is i have quit believing them. i don't see anything that makes it look better next year or the year after. the transition to electronic records makes it feel like it will wok for you guys, but if it isn't working on the ground, veterans saying it's working for me. it's hard to believe. why isn't there a presidential

commission, external force, brought in to ride herd of the v.a. to make sure it happens? >> when i came into the position, i heard all about the backlog and i filed a claim, i've gone through the process, it took about six months, about the historical average over the last ten years, so i wanted to see it, so i went to one of these offices, back in september. you saw piles like this. you featured some of these, and the cumbersome process, and the electronics process, and it looked like windows 3.1. and then i went to winston-salem, the same office you profiled because of the weight of these claims. claims have not just been moved, they have been scanned. we moved into a web based, online service. i invite you to come see it. come see, this is the key year of transition of old offices still dealing with 19th century

system and new offices that deal with the 21st century. >> i will take you up on that, provided you let me ask questions without a minder. i would make that agreement with anybody in a foreign country. i will make that deal with you. >> deal. >> tommy sowers. you have a hard job. i appreciate you being here. >> thank you. >> we will be right back. [ male announcer ] rocky had no idea why dawn was gone for so long...

...but he'd wait for her forever, for any reason, and would always be there with the biggest welcome home. for a love this strong, dawn only feeds him iams. compared to other leading brands, it has 50% more animal protein. ...to help keep rocky's body as strong as a love that never fades... if he ever lets her leave again. iams. keep love strong.

if he ever lets her leave again. ♪ your finances can't manage themselves, but that doesn't mean they won't try. bring all your finances together with the help of the one person who can, a certified financial planner professional. cfp -- let's make a plan.

so far rob portman is the only republican senator to come out for equal rights for gay people. on the democratic side, check this out. as of today, all but 10 of 55 that caucus with the democrats are on record in favor of equality, ten aren't. these are they. bob casey, joe man chen, bill nelson, tom carper, seriously? tim johnson, joe donnelly, mark prior. those are the ten not in favor. huffington post made up that list. good thing they time stamped it because it is changing fast. in the past few days, claire mccaskill, mark warner, and others came out and said they support equal rights. another one today, the latest, john tester says he supports equal marriage rights for same sex couples.

sometimes things change slow, some change fast. for fast, see montana on gay rights. also see north dakota for change of a different kind. that story is next. [ female announcer ] are you sensitive to dairy? then you'll love lactose-free lactaid® it's 100% real milk that's easy to digest so you can fully enjoy the dairy you love. lactaid®. for 25 years, easy to digest. easy to love. busy in here. yeah. progressive mobile is... [ "everybody have fun tonight" plays ] really catching on! people can do it all! get a quote, buy and manage your policy! -[ music stops ] -it's great! well, what's with the... -[ music resumes ] -music? ♪ have fun tonight

dude. getting a car insurance quote. i'll let it go to voicemail. [ clears throat ] ♪ everybody wang chung tonight ♪ putting it on vibrate. [ cell phone vibrates ] -[ loud vibrating ] -it'll pass. [ vibrating continues ] our giant store and your little phone. that's progressive mobile.

♪ 'cause germs don't stick on me ♪ [ female announcer ] band-aid brand has quiltvent technology with air channels to let boo boos breathe. [ giggles ] [ female announcer ] quiltvent technology, only from band-aid brand. use with neosporin first aid antibiotic. this is not a blue state broadcast you're looking at here. this was yesterday in minot, north dakota. in minot, north dakota, they weren't alone. pro-choice protesters came out all over north dakota, in minot, in bismarck and fargo, urging the governor to veto anti-abortion bills that passed through the legislature and landed on his desk yesterday. the bills included a ban on abortion at six weeks of pregnant which amounts essentially to a total ban, since that is before many women even know they are pregnant. a mississippi trap law that consists of targeted regulations to shut down one remaining abortion clinic in the state.

today when news hit the governor of north dakota jack dell rim pell signed those bills, they say the lone clinic in north dakota got a flood of unsolicited donations. they posted this on the website. in big bold letters. abortion is still legal in the state of north dakota, despite the signing of some bills today by the governor. red river women's clinic is open, available for appointments and legally performing abortions in the state of north dakota. the director of the last clinic spoke with us on last night's show, giving every indication she will fight to stay open. when the governor signed that six week ban today, he saw this fight coming, saying the legislative assembly before it adjourns should appropriate funds for the attorney general. north dakota's abortion ban won't survive a challenge. in this country, you can't ban abortion. in north dakotep