decidedly optimistic about as women see greater integration into armed services, one can hope that the violence against them will change quite radically. >> yes, and within the next seven years by 2020, there will be 20% of the military will be women. and i think what is parent is that these women who are victims, they are the ones who unfortunately are the ones that suffer from ptsd and we need to make sure their disability claims are adjudicated properly. >> thank you for shedding light on the treatment of veterans in this country. thanks for your time. that is all for now. i'm alex wagner. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. >> last week the washington post did a profile on a burly paratrooper who is a personal trainer for two of the justices on the supreme court. in that profile we learned that justice ruth bader ginsburg may have survived serious bouts with cancer already, but you know what, she can do more push-ups than i can. so behold, today, justice ruth bader ginsburg punching well above her weight.

now, the first voice you will hear is the voice of paul now, the first voice you will hear is the voice of paul clement who is the conservative attorney making the case for the anti-gay rights side. but then listen for justice ginsburg. >> no state loses any benefits by recognizing sam sex marriage. things stay the same. what they don't do is open up a class of beneficiaries under their state law that get additional benefits. but things stay the same. >> they're not a question of additional benefits. they touch every aspect of life. your partner is sick. social security.

i mean, it's pervasive. it's not as though there's this little federal sphere and it's only a tax question. it's, as justice kennedy said, 1,100 statutes, and it affects every area of life. and so you're really diminishing what the state has said is marriage. you're saying, no, state, there are two kinds of marriages. the full marriage, and then a sort of skim milk marriage. >> standing five feet tall from brooklyn, new york, appointed by president bill clinton, justice ruth bader ginsburg winning the day today by christening this citizenship has skim milk marriage. and by the way, in so doing, she skillfully was being very political there, when in her admonishment there, roped

justice kennedy into her answer in a way that puts him on her side of the case. she's always doing stuff like that. it's amazing. today was day two on this issue at the supreme court. yesterday's case was about a state law, california voters amending their constitution to say gay people are banned from getting married, when a state court struck that down. which is something the u.s. constitution blocks them from doing. when that happened, a weird thing happened in california politics. a senator said, we think this amendment is unconstitutional, and so we, the government of the state, are not going to appeal the judge's ruling and we are not going to defend this bad law. we want to let it die. so that was a really interesting

about day one of these two big cases of gay rights cases at the supreme court. yesterday they did fight some about the big underlying question of whether states can ban gay marriage or whether the u.s. constitution blocks that. but mostly they fought about that weird way that california handled it and who has the right to defend the law and california's attorney general refuses to defend the law. she was our guest last night. since she and california as a state government would not defend their ban on gay marriage, did the people who did want to defend it have the right to do so instead? and frankly, could addressing that part of the question be a really convenient way for the supreme court court to avoid the whole politically fraught question of whether gay people and straight people should have equal rights in this country. so that was yesterday where it looked like that issue of how the case got to the court might end you have diverting the case. that was yesterday.

today it was two hours' argument and it was about a different case. today it was not about a one state's law. today it was about a federal law. it was about one part of one federal law that starts with this. when edie windsor and thea spire got married in 2007, they had already been together for 42 years and counting. spire by then has advanced ms. she had been told she had less than a year to live. they flew to toronto, they got married. thea died, and because of the defense of marriage act, in death thea spire was not recognized as having a surviving spouse. now, at one level, this case which led to today's arguments, it is an incredibly romantic story of two young women in love who became two old women in love, a romance only ended in death in its fifth decade. but this case arises from not this romantic truth but rather the unromantic truth of the law

treating your spouse as a stranger in death when other romantic couples are deferred to as a family. the 1996 defense of marriage act puts a law that the federal government must discriminate. the federal government of course doesn't perform marriages. federal government doesn't issue marriage licenses. it never has. it's the states who governor who is and who isn't married. but under doma, the federal government has to comb through the marriages that the states do recognize and pick out the ones that are same-sex couples and then it must deny rights that all the other marriages get. at the court today here was the laura for the pro-rights side arguing that point. and you'll hear it in this clip. check this out. >> no one has identified in this

case, and i don't think we've heard it in the argument from my friend, any legitimate difference between married gay couples on the one hand and straight married couples on the other, that can possibly explain the sweeping categorization of doma, section three of doma. and no one has identified any legitimate federal interest that is being served by congress's decision for the first time in our nation's history to undermine the determination of the sovereign states with respect to eligibility for marriage. i would respectfully contend that this is because there is none. rather, as the title of the statute makes clear, doma was enacted to defend against the rights of gay people. this was rooted in moral -- >> what do you think is -- the argument that i heard was to put the other side, at least one part of it, as i understand it, look, the federal government

needs a uniform rule. there has been this uniform one man-one woman rule for several hundred years, whatever, and there's a revolution going on in the states. we either adopt the revolution or push is along a little, or we stay out of it. and i think mr. clement was saying, we need to stay out of it. the way to stay out is to go with the traditional thing. that's an argument. so your answer is what? >> i think that's an incorrect argument. >> i understand you do. >> of course, congress did not stay out of it. section three of doma is stopping the recognition by the federal government of couples who are already married solely based on their sexual orientation, and what it's doing is undermining as you can see in the briefs of new york and others, it's undermining the policy decisions by those states that have permitted gay couples to marry. states that have already

resolved the political, moral, whatever other trovers that are resolved in those states. and by fencing those couples off, couples already married and treating them as unmarried for the purposes of federal law, you're not taking it one step at a time, you're not promoting caution. you're putting a stop button on it and you're having discrimination for the first time in our nation's history against a class of married couples. >> discrimination says the side that wants what it sees as discrimination overturned. and of course in that argument she gets an assist sort of from one of the more liberal justices who's probably inclined to agree with her assessment. now, as to the other side, here's what's really interesting. like the california case yesterday, there is a kind of strange situation about the anti-gay side in this, wherein the government doesn't want to defend it. this is a federal law. the president and the solicitor general agree that this is a bad

law and that it's unconstitutional and they are not defending it. so who's defending it then? somebody else had to be brought onboard to defend it, and in this case it was the house republicans. hi, john boehner, who decided that they would defend it with your taxpayer money. they argued laura paul clement to argue to uphold the law. and paul clement's argument today was that this isn't discrimination at all. it's just that the federal government likes to keep things simple. listen. >> i think what that shows and that when the federal government gets involved in the issue of marriage, it has a particularly acute interest in uniform treatment of people across state lines. so miss windsor wants to point to treating couples differently. for the purposes of federal law, it's much more rational for

congress to say, we want to treat the same-sex couple in new york the same way as the committed same-sex couple in oklahoma or treat them the same. >> but that's begging the question, because you're treating the married couples differently. you're saying that new york's married couples are different than nebraska's. >> but the -- >> i picked that out of a hat. the point is, there's a difference. >> the only way there's a difference is because of the way that state law treats them. >> right. the way that state the' laws treat them. >> states' laws treat gay people and straight people differently. and the question here is whether the federal government should be part of that discrimination, whether the federal government should in fact compound that. for an answer to that, we go to the heavy hitter for the day, justice ginsburg. >> the problem is that it would

totally thwart the states' decision that there is a marriage between two people for the federal government then to come in and say, no joint return, no marital deduction, no social security benefits. your spouse is very sick, but you can't get leave. people, if that set of attributes, one might well ask, what kind of marriage is this? >> and i think the answer to that would be that that's a marriage under state law. >> ow. and that's whereupon in the arguments we got to the point where justice ginsburg ended up calling those marriages skim milk marriages, which frankly is a grave offense to skim milk, which is delicious, but otherwise will stick. we have the expert in the country on this case, like the single expert on this case who's

here to talk in just a moment how all this went today and what happens next. but before we do that, there's one other thing from today's case that i think is totally worth hearing. this is not one of those smackdown moments for either side, but it was the very end of the arguments, end of the two hours, and it showed the strange and, i don't know, this unstable political core that's at the heart of these legal fights, because we have fights about the law but those fights do not happen totally independent of the political world in which we live. and the combination of legal and political sometimes gets woolly. and it was chief justice john roberts today who showed that most clearly in him trying to make the case that gay people should not be protected against discrimination because gay people aren't discriminated against. and the way you can tell that gay people aren't discriminated against in this country is that discrimination against gay people in some cases is starting

to be politically embarrassing for the bigot. and also, he points out, gay people have really good lawyers now. he says that to the gay rights laura arguing before him at the supreme court. it's a really strange and unstable moment. this is the last pete of tape i want to play for you. watch this. >> i suppose the seat change has a lot to do with the people supporting your side of the case >> i think the c change has to do with what was discussed in bowers and morns, which the understanding there was no difference that could justify in categorical discrimination. >> you don't doubt that the lobby supporting the enactment of same-sex marriage laws in different states is politically powerful, do you? >> with respect to that categorization of the term for purposes of scrutiny, i would, your honor. >> really?

>> yes. >> as far as i can tell, political figures are falling over themselves to endorse your side of the case. >> the fact of the matter is that no other group in history has been subjected to collude those rights as gay people. only two of those referendums have lost. one was in minnesota that already has a statute on the books preventing gay marriage. so i don't think the political power of gay people today could possibly be seen in a framework. i think gay people were weaker than women were. >> you just referred to a c change in people's understanding and values from 1996 when doma was enacted and i'm trying to see where that comes from.

>> to flip the language of the house report, mr. chief justice, i think it comes from a moral understanding today that gay people are no different and that gay married couples' relationships are not significantly different than the relationship of straight married couples. >> i understand that. i'm just trying to see where that moral understanding came from, if not the political effectiveness of a particular group. >> i think it came, again used very similarly to what you saw between bowers and lornes. i don't think that came strictly through political power. i don't think gay people today have political power. >> thank you, ms. kaplan. >> and that's how it ended on that incredibly tense moment that how is it that gay people can be so hated that you can be here arguing right now. doesn't that mean that you have access to me? but at that moment, she sat

down, finished the day. but i have to tell you that that laura there and those plaintiffs and any of those people there in that courtroom today, it's not just a sense of gay peoples' political power that straight people need to be afraid of, the fact that there are same-sex marriages in the united states against which discrimination is now under debate, that's the product of a significant legal path. and it's attributable to our next guest tonight. 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.

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okay. i said i was done playing clips, but i wanted you to hear this too. today from the supreme court, you hear the audience gasping at something justice elena kagan says.

>> when you look at congress doing something that is unusual, that deviates from how they've proceeded in the past, you have to ask, was there a good reason. and in 1996, something's happening that is in a sense forcing grease to choose between its historic practice of deferring to the states and its historic practice performing uniformity. >> well, what is what happened in 1996, and i'm going to quote from the house report here, is that congress decided to reflect an honor of collective moral judgment and to express moral disapproval of homosexuality in 1996? >> is that what the report says? of course it's what the report says. >> you could hear the audience react, gasping incredulous at

the way congress thought way back when in the '90s. amazing stuff. joining us is mary bonauto, whose legal work revolutionized gay capital rights. in massachusetts she won the case that caused the state to legalize same-sex marriage and last year she helped persuade a federal appeals court that doma was unconstitutional. mary, congratulations on your big day. thanks for being here. >> thank you. >> i know that you are at the courtroom today. you saw the oral arguments. how do you feel about how everything went today? >> it was an excellent day because we finally had our day in court. we have, as you've heard, a uniform rule in this country of taking. the issues today were very clear, why are we treating only married straight couples

different from all other couples. and there wasn't much of an answer. >> you have been such an important strategist in this case. when you look at all the work done over the last decade toward today, what do you think was the most important preparations toward the case today? >> the answer is on two levels, because i think when couples started legally marrying in massachusetts, it changed everything, when people could see with their own eyes what it looked like when same-sex couples committed in happy. and it was happy, and people understand it's about commitment and about being there for each other in the long haul and we share a lot of values. and that's changed the conversation. and as more states have decided through legislation or even the

ballot that it's a good policy and it's the right constitutional thing for same-sex couples to marry. and then with doma, working so hard for same-sex couples to marry and defending that victory in massachusetts, it was important for people to have their marriages be marriages, but they found out immediately they were in second class marriages. they were wiped all, for all federal purposes. and this is a day about how being treated unequally scars your soul and makes a difference in people's lives in the protections they do or don't have. so this was a day about how people need their government to treat them fairly and equally. >> a lot of people have made predictions.

a lot of people in cable news in. but if the court strikes down doma in a way this case was presented to them, what would happen next? >> the clearest practical consequences that same-sex couples who are legally married will now be treated like other married couples in their state, whether it means they pay more in taxes or less, but they are married and they come to the federal government as married people and plug into that social safety net and all those protections and all the responsibilities that come along with it. that's the clearest consequence. no effect on the laws of other states. >> so states where you can't currently get married if you're a same-sex couple, this ruling wouldn't have any impact. >> yes, this is about the

unusual rule that congress made in fact 1996 to say we're not going to follow our usual pattern of adopting whatever the states say. we're collude from federal protections. >> mary bonauto, this has been your fight and your strategy for more than a decade. and everybody who knows stuff about this legally, knows you have been at the helm of it. we really appreciate you being here with us. thank you so much. >> thank you so much. >> lots still ahead, including a story that has nothing to do with the supreme court or politics, but about which i'm obsessed.

december 22, 2010, a wednesday morning in washington

when this happened. >> this is done. [ applause ] when president obama did that in december 2010, he set up an ostensibly unlikely player in the case presented to the supreme court today. unexpected allies, next. [ male announcer ] this one goes out to all the allergy muddlers. you know who you are. you can part a crowd, without saying a word... if you have yet to master the quiet sneeze... you stash tissues like a squirrel stashes nuts... well muddlers, muddle no more.

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when it came time at the supreme court today for the government solicitor general to start his argument about why the president and the administration are refusing to defend the federal marriage ban, the solicitor started right off the bat in kind of a surprising place. >> mr. chief justice, and may it please the court, the equal protection analysis in this case should focus on two fundamental points. first, what does section three do, and second, to whom does section three do it. what section 3 does is exclude from an array of federal benefits lawfully married couples. that means that the spouse of a soldier killed in duty cannot receive the dignity and solace of an official notification of

next of kin. >> it's given pride of place at the top of the government's arguments today. when the government repealed don't ask-don't tell so gay people can serve openly in the military, it was against the operations of the military to discriminate, that the armed forces need to treat its members equally. the defense of marriage act creates a real problem specifically for the military because that act, says the federal government, the whole thing, is banned from recognizing a marriage if the people in the marriage are a same-sex couple. so the military, part of the federal government, is recognizing people in its ranks, it's treating them equally to all of their service members now, and wants to, except other

services' members and families aren't recognized. did you doma blocks that. gay soldiers' spouses and families can't be recognized at all because of doma. doma bans equal treatment even if it was what the military wants. and so one of the briefs filed today urging the supreme court to overturn the gay marriage ban was signed by 30 high ranks officers and defense officials. quote, the defense of marriage about prohibits the military from providing service members and families with support. doma discriminates against service members by denying them numerous benefits including healthcare, equal pay, and survivor benefits. the question is whether the military should be permitted to provide equal treatment to all legally married service members and their families or if it must discriminate against certain

service members and their families in a manner that is harmful to the military collectively. for those experienced in military leadership and familiar with military values, the answer is easy. fights over issues like these used to be predictable. you'd have gay people and liberals who like gay people on one side and everybody else either on the other side of the fight or trying to stay out of it. the chief justice talking about a see change. part of that is seeing the -- joining us now is nicole wallace, former senior advisory. nicole was more than 130 republican party big wigs to

sign this brief in yesterday's case urging the court to strike down california's prop 8. >> it sort of scrambles my circuits. you know what i thought when i read this, was if the supreme court doesn't strike down doma, i wonder if this very, very issue would lead to a congressional repeal of doma, because this is such an urgent matter, and this is -- to me, i went straight to the logistics of this. if you were on a base and you're married and you have kids, are they denied access? because everything is provided by the federal government. so if you live on a base with your spouse and children, are you denied access to child care? >> you're denied on-base privileges. >> so do you even live on base -- i mean, this is shocking, if heaven forbid your spouse is injured, are you not flown?

i mean, this to me seems like one of the most urgent examples of how this affects people's lives. this is no longer especially for my party, just a question of i believe marriage is just a man and woman, which understandably a lot of people in my party hang on which they believe something different than i do. but this example of military families and the real, i think, damage it can do to military families. and forget about the spouse and children for an instant. think about the soldier on the battlefield worried about their families. the whole reason we have this promise to the families is because your soldiers are doing what they have to do to protect all of us. so this to me provides such an urgent need to be addressed in a way that really, i hope, can bring some progress.

>> but you know, the concerns of gay service members and their families were not enough to move most republicans to supporting the repeal of don't ask, don't tell. the difference here i think is that, a, there's a lot more to be known, the politics are changing, but the military as an institution is saying, it is greatly disruptive to us as an institution where people need to follow orders if our orders and privileges are delivered unequally. we can't function as an discriminatory organization. >> i think it's difficult. people think of the military as this gigantic institution, which it is, but think about just life on a base. it is so stark, i think it brings into such shopper focus the problem with doma. >> there's been not a peep out of the elected republicans this week. not a peep. >> i said let me defend my fellow republicans. you have to start somewhere. >> it's true.

the laura the republicans hired to defend doma, paul clement, walked right past the media. >> he's a very respected laura on the right. >> but do you think him not wanting to talk to the press and no elected republicans wanting to talk about this, do thank you it's in part because of your brief, because you came out and said we're not taking the party line? >> i think there's a tremendous amount of respect for ted olson and what he's done. he has a deep well of respect and if not respect for the case he's arguing, the case he's arguing for republicans. and i think republicans are, as i always say, there's just some that simply disagree with us, but i think that people open to it really are doing a little bit of soul searching. >> why aren't the ones disagreeing with you, who are on

the anti-gay side, why aren't they talking? >> i don't know. the political sands have shifted so dramatically where being against marriage equality, even if it's something where, i know a minority of catholics or evangelicals, i think it may be something that is where they are quiet and maybe embarrassed about it. i think it will accelerate the politics very quickly. obviously our brief was to support overturning prop 8, but i think, someone said something this week that the movement has so much strength it could withstand any outcome of the court. now, i hope that doesn't happen because i think people's lives are hanging in the balance, but i think the movement has seized

the opportunity to speak to the american people about the families behind these discriminatory laws. >> it was really good to have you here. >> thanks for having me.

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okay, fair warning. i am obsessed with this story. this is the uss guardian stuck off the coast of the philippines. a giant ship being stuck on something is never a good thing. but this one happened to get stuck specifically on a unesco world heritage site, embedding its rudders in the middle of a national park in the philippines. early on once we got stuck on it, the plan was to tow the reef off at high tide. that did not work. in fact, the mine sweeper only got more stuck. ultimately the navy had to give up the ship. navy agreed for the first time in 40 years to scrap the ship. this $277 million mine sweeper.

they hired giant crane ships to lift the pieces off the reef and dump them onto a barge. the first crane ship to arrive was this one, and could do it. plan b was to wait for a ship that uses gps to stay in place. but once the succeed ship arrived, the weather got rough so they still couldn't get started. the salvage operation finally began at the end of february, more than a month after the uss guardian got stuck on the reef. they started with stuff like the mast. then early in march, the whole bridge, look, that whole deck of the ship, was lifted off the

ship by crane. and then the truly amazing part. preparing this 224-foot-long ship to be cut into four pieces, through the hull. to make the cuts, the supervisor of sal individual said this week, we have had to painstakingly clear about a two-foot path in the ship, removing everything in our way. they had divers using chain saws and underwater cutting tools to just cut a two-foot-wide straight line through the ship, leading ultimately to this. yes, that is a cross-section of a u.s. navy mine sweeper, the first piece of the ship being craned into the area yesterday, weighing 250 tons. they hoisted it up using one of the crane ships. they dumped it on the barge, and then went back for more. that piece was followed today by another section. an approximately 200-ton piece of the ship containing the

auxiliary motor room. so that leaves two pieces of the ship still left on the reef but ready to go. it's expected to be completed by the end of next week, and the remaining 990 tons of steel should be lifted out of there the week after that. meanwhile, on land, as you might imagine, this has sparked anti-american anger in the philippines. shortly after it happened, protesters threw paint at those guarding it in manila. look, they've got guys in scuba suits out there with tape measures recording the exact amount of reef we have damaged. we are going to have to pay a by the inch fine. there is still no word on why it got stuck in the first place, but once it is taken out of the way, authorities will concentrate on finding the

answer. we will keep you posted because i am uncontrollably obsessed with this story. oh this is soft. this is so so soft. hey hun, remember you only need a few sheets. hmph! [ female announcer ] charmin ultra soft is so soft you'll have to remind your family they can use less. ♪ charmin ultra soft is made with extra cushions that are soft and more absorbent. plus you can use four times less. hope you saved some for me. mhmm! you and the kids. we all go. why not enjoy the go with charmin ultra soft. ♪ '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.

what you're looking at here is a video recorded by mark kelly, the husband of gabby giffords, the arizona congresswoman shot and nearly killed at a political event she was hosting in tucson, arizona two years ago. mark kelly just released this video from the pro-reform gun group that he and gabby giffords formed. it looks disjointed with odd camera angled. it was recorded in secret from mark kelly's pocket. he recorded this video to demystify the issue of background checks being debated in state legs tours across the country. in this video, he shows getting a background check doesn't take long, in his case, five minutes, 36 seconds, not very intrusive, and absolutely doesn't stop you

from getting a gun if you legally should be allowed to get a gun. >> today we're going to demonstrate what the whole process is and how relatively simple it is. this will not be my only gun. i've got a 9 millimeter ruger, a hunting rifle, a shotgun, a .25 semi automatic pistol. >> you don't have that colt 45 any more, do you? i wanted to buy that colt 45 that was here. >> two important things. >> are you under indictment for a felony, no. have you ever been convicted of a felony, no. are you a fugitive, no. are you an unlawful user addicted to marijuana, no. have you ever been adjudicated mentally defective, no. ever had a restraining order, no. been in any court for domestic

violence, no. appreciate it. thank you. >> you too, take care. >> five minutes, 36 seconds later. the point is, background checks are not a pain. background checks do not infringe on lawful gun owners in any meaningful way. we reached a mark after newtown. we have hit that point, things are supposed to slow down, get quieter now. that is not happening. look at the last few days. thursday, joe biden in new york city with mayor mike bloomberg, press conference calling on congress to act on the gun bill, included parents whose kids among those murdered at newtown, including neil who was front and center after his son jessie. a mom led a march in harlem to protect the gun safety bill that already passed in new york state. the same day, in boca raton tone, florida, local activists reacting to news that that won't include an assault weapons ban.

they weren't pleased. in protest, hung on the trees names of people killed by gun violence. saturday, there was a gun buy back. people turned in more than 2,000 guns, the fifth gun buy back in atlantic city since newtown. same day mayors against illegal guns announces a $12 million ad buy, advocating gun safety legislation in 13 states. they support universal background checks, which is supported by nine of ten americans, but people on the beltway but they say can't pass congress. president obama was pushing for gun safety legislation saturday. and saturday, wilmington, north carolina, they have a rally in support of gun safety reform outside a best western. you can see it is a crowd that's small, but inside the best western was an nra fundraiser. the group was pretty deeply focused getting local media

attention to what they were doing outside that fund-raiser which is the point of these things. monday, hundreds of clergy and parishioners from episcopal die a sees marched from the white house to the capital for gun reform. monday in atlanta, georgia, more religious leaders gathering to protest a state bill to force churches to allow concealed weapons on their premises, even if they don't want them. clergy think it is a bad idea. hartford, connecticut, same day, the two senators hold a press conference with connecticut against gun violence and newtown action alliance. see the familiar green ribbons symbolizing support for sandy hook. senators in the group insist connecticut should lead on gun safety legislation and not wait for the federal government to act. and now vote vets, the nonpartisan veterans group produces this ad aimed at arizona senator, jeff flake. >> i had to pass a background check to join the marine corps before i could carry a weapon

similar to this in iraq. here at home, anyone can purchase this weapon, no questions asked. i support the second amendment, but we have seen what can happen when these fall in the wrong hands. i needed a background check to carry similar weapons in combat. we should rear the same at home. call senator flake, tell him to support universal background checks. >> we are more than 100 days out from newtown, the beltway script says we're all supposed to be over newtown now, the issue should return to the quiet stays is of the nra getting everything it wants, even though it represents only a rump, minority view. the beltway in washington is trying to follow that same script but the politics are not necessarily following along. you can say because you expected it to happen that the momentum is stopping, but if you look at the news, the day by day, here, there, everywhere, unrelenting, unpredictable pressure for gun reform is off script.

within the last 24 hours, a conservative democratic senator with a rating from the nra came out in favor of universal background checks, senator joe donnelly, saying he is now supportive of universal background checks. not only are people not for getting but things are moving. now factor in a new round of action by the white house. we're told in the next few weeks, president obama will hit the road to pressure specific senators to vote for gun reform. and not exactly separately, you have the organization formerly known as the president's re-election campaign, organizing for action, they're announcing tomorrow they and mayors against illegal guns are holding 100 events across the country to support efforts against gun violence. the beltway is saying they're losing steam. it is now a low simmer and heat is dropping every day. that's how it works, right?