but what you might not expect, is you can get all this with a prepaid card. spends like cash. feels like membership. right here you are looking at the winning entry in the 2009 kp lock picking competition. kp stands for key picking. which is a particular kind of lock picking. what you're witnessing is a highly skilled human being getting the better of a very strong lock. at least that's sort of what it seems to indicate on the caption of this youtube video. our champion is apparently triumphing over a lock that has a quote, six mushroom driver pin setup of which two are serrated as well. this guy loves both

minnesota hockey and competitive lock picking. you can see from his shirt. he is solving a lock that has five pins. three serrated regular drivers and two serrated spool hybrids. that sort of thing apparently takes a while. this is very skilled work even if the ethic of this particular sport is that you do not show your face while doing it. >> this guy, claims that he just started lock picking. we are witnessing day one of his competitive lock picking career. he doesn't really seem ready for competition yet. certainly not for a pair of serrated spool hybrids. but as you can see, sort of getting there. now behold, there was also a close cousin to competitive lock picking, which is escaping from handcuffs for fun. the escaping from handcuff sport starts kind of like competitive lock picking, but then it gets weird in a hurry. like, you know, a lot of the -- the shirtless thing.

put on a third, man. this is youtube. everybody can see you. we are all impressed by your skills in escaping from these handcuffs. we are impressed by your pecs. but fully clothed people also play this game in public. these guys are on a stage with an emcee, racing each other to spring out of their handcuffs. this is at a college of lock picking event. looks fun, right? something to do on a saturday. ever since harry hudenny, this has been show off if i pseudo magic thing that people do. pick the lock. break the hold. throw me in the water in hand cuffs, go ahead, i'll swim to sure. it is an amazing thing. it is a showman thing that people have done for a very long time. modern innovations in the field of things you are not supposed to get out of have led to other can kinds of escapology skills as well. you can find online a bunch of how-tos for how to get yourself out of new fangled zip tie handcuffs that they use, particularly for crowd control. a bunch of different youtube videos out there, guys showing

off how fast they can get out of their plastic zip ties. this kind of stuff, this is one of my favorite corners of the internet. i don't know how to do these things but i love watching people do it. i love this stuff. one thing that does not happen because there is a college of lock picking, one of the things that does not happen because we know there are humans out there who can do these cool human tricks. even though this stuff exists and we can prove it by watching people do this stuff online, nobody, as a result of that, says, well, we shouldn't use handcuffs anymore in our country. we should not lock doors anymore. we shouldn't have door locks any more, because of a false sense of security. after all there are these people on the internet who clearly know how to defeat these things that we call locks. just because a few guys with a hobby can pick locks does not mean that we live in a post-lock age. that would be ridiculous, right? there's also a new weird thing that i will admit to not totally understanding how it works. but people jump over cars. people jump over moving cars.

this is a thing. and please, please do not try this at home. the fact that this is a thing, this a thing that exists has not led to us as a country saying clearly we shouldn't have cross walks because now people jump over cars. yes. some people jump over cars but not everybody can jump over cars and not everybody does jump over cars. so yes, cross walks are still a bright idea. there is something to be said for respecting the exceptional as exceptional. for refusing to tailor policy for everybody because of the abilities of some people on the margins. or some people's willingness to break the law. i mean, arguing from those margins are fundamental against the case of gun reform always but particularly this year, you have heard it a million times. this argument that we shouldn't have new laws about guns because criminals do not care about our laws. criminals will break those laws and therefore we should not have them. >> most crimes are committed

nearly 90% of crimes are committed with guns that are bought illegally. criminals do crime. they don't pay attention to our laws. >> criminals will never go through a background check. >> no. people committing gun crimes and murdering people with guns are not getting them under the law anyway. >> we want to tell our citizens, oh, no, no. no. we're going to limit your ability to protect yourself and your family. you're law-abiding. and these animals, these wolves at the door, who don't play by the rules, they don't have rules. there are no rules. >> why is this the argument for gun laws when it is not the argument for any other kind of law? nobody says, well, why bother having laws against murder or robbery since murderers or robbers won't respect those laws. no one says that. but the go-to argument against

gun reform is that gun laws should not exist because they might be broken. once they are broken, what good are they? now, though, now that some parts of the country are deciding that that's a dumb argument, now that some parts of the country are deciding you can make that argument but you're not going to win with that argument and we're going to enact new gun laws anyqueue, now the anti-gun reform argument is evolving. it's evolving beyond the criminals will break laws argument and they're getting now into the harry houdini competitive lock picking part of the argument. it started this week on fox news channel, of all places. >> his mother was a legal gun owner. how do you know this person that his mother would not have obeyed the law and limited the magazine clip and then adam ran today would have been limited to ten rounds instead of 30? >> megan you can -- people that know guns, you can change magazine clips in a second. there's no evidence that, you know, that, that, anything would have changed. >> what the nra guy is arguing

there, to a very good question from that host on fox news, is that we should not put any limits on the sizes of magazines. that whole ammunition. because reloading ammunition magazines is not a problem. makes no difference if you have a 10 round magazine or a 30 round magazine, because people have skills to be able to swap in new magazines so fast it only takes a second. it's basically instantaneous. makes no difference. you should see these guys swapping the magazines out. and he's right. there are people who competitively reload firearms. that is a sport kind of in the way that competitive lock picking is a sport. look how fast can i reload my gun. google it. there's a million people who do this. it's a sport. actually it's not a million people. it's a really specific sport that not many people do. but some people do it. should the laws that apply to everybody in the country be decided based on the unusual and special skills of the half dozen guys who do this thing with fast reloading? or should our laws reflect what happens in real life?

the shooter who opened fire in tucson when he tried to kill congressman gabby giffords. he did so with a high capacity magazine. he had a bullet in the chamber and he had 30 bullets in the magazine. he shot 31 rounds. he was stopped only when he tried to reload. the size of his magazine determined how many bullets he could fire before he was stopped. he had 30 plus the one in chamber and that was it for him. the shooter who opened fire in sandy hook elementary school in december did so with high capacity magazines. he fired 154 bullets in less than five minutes. the use of high capacity magazines that allow somebody to fire that many bullets in so short a time has been central to the sandy hook parents' argument for why we ought to change the law. >> we have learned that in the time it took him to reload in one of the classrooms, 11 children were able to escape. we asked ourselves everyday, every minute, if those magazines

had held ten rounds, forcing the shooter to reload at least six more times, would our children be alive today? >> would our children be alive today? parents in newtown have been asking that question, making that argument really. since the massacre at sandy hook elementary school, four states have passed new regulations on guns. new york state, connecticut, and maryland. each passed a ban on assault weapons and a limit on the size of ammunition magazines. colorado did not ban assault weapons but even colorado went there in the size of magazines. colorado set a magazine size limit of 15 bullets. and as a policy matter, you can see what aim is here. i mean, in colorado, in the aurora massacre, the gunman there used a huge 100 bullet capacity drum magazine. a magazine he bought legally. the tucson shooter, again in the gabby giffords assassination attempt, used a 30-round clip that he bought legally. the newtown shooter used 30-round magazines that his mother bought legally.

had the assault weapons ban not been allowed to expire in 2004, none of those magazines could have been purchased easily and legally. and yes, maybe they could still be found illegally, or on the gray market of in-the-know gun enthusiasts. and maybe for some the size of the magazine doesn't matter at all because they're competitive magazine quick change artists who show off on the youtube. but likely not. banning expanded clips make it harder to get. which makes it less likely that your tucson, aurora, newtown mass shooter has one when the next mass shooting starts. so maybe that ends sooner than it otherwise would have. when they actually find that they cannot reload fast enough to stop someone from stopping them. so four states now have taken action to go back to the kinds of limits on extended magazines that used to be in place for a decade until 2004 when george w. bush and the republican-led congress let the assault weapons ban expire.

limits on magazines, are happening. limits are magazines are becoming real. four states already. and that apparently is freaking out the nra. if they have to rely on harry houdini argument now about this guy being the kind of guy we should think of as a typical gun user in america. if they have to rely on these harry houdini arguments now to try to get themselves out of this bind of their own making, you can tell they know they're running out of arguments. joining me now is elizabeth esty. she is the congresswoman representing newtown, connecticut. thank you so much for being here tonight. i really appreciate your time. >> thanks, rachel. glad to be here. >> we spoke on this show before the connecticut state legislature had moved to pass new gun laws in your state. now your governor has signed those new laws into effect. are you satisfied with what your state has done? do you think this is the right package of reforms? >> i do think it is a great package of reforms and one of the things that is so heartening about it is that here in connecticut, which is quite frankly, and you've talked about it, it's a big gun state.

the home of arms manufacturing in the united states. it's part of our history. my district in particular is full of gun owners, of hunters, of sportsmen. and in this state, we got bipartisan cooperation to pass a very strong gun safety law that has the elements i would like to see in washington. banning of assault weapons, banning of high capacity magazines, vigorous mental health program and really looking at what we can do across the board with universal criminal background checks. really the foundation of what we must have the at national level. >> on that issue of extended magazines, because i highlighted that in the introduction and because we are seeing the nra's arguments on the issue sort of devolve i think as more states act to limit high capacity magazines, how do you think connecticut was able to get bipartisan agreement on that? i mean, obviously connecticut democrats could have moved forward without republicans at all. they have the numerical

advantage in both houses of the state legislature and there's a democratic governor. but they were able to get republicans on board for a bipartisan measure, bipartisan support, for that in particular. is that due plikable in other states? or maybe even federally? >> well, i hope so. and i think some of it comes from really knowing these people. they understand the cost of political inaction. and a number of the republicans who voted for this bill knew some of the families in newtown and how can they look these people in the eye? as you mentioned in your introduction, 11 children escaped out of that classroom when adam lanza was changing magazines. 11 lives were saved by the real life example of what happens when you run out of bullets in a magazine and in a chamber. it has real-life consequences. and so how could those legislators, who knew those families, look them in the eye and say, i'm not doing

everything i possibly can to save another family, another community, from this sort of heartache. >> the clip i played of the one newtown mom in the introduction there, one of the things she said yesterday at the bill signing is that she feels like the families who have chosen to be advocates on this, and not all of them have, but families that have chosen to ask for public policy reform in response to what happened to them, they feel they have been treated with respect. they feel like they have been heard. they feel like they have been listened to. it's very heartening to hear that for a country that is very emotionally tied up in those families and what they've gone through. when you have been working with them, when you've been working with the newtown survivors and people in that town, which you represent, do you feel like that's broadly held? like people feel they are being heard and respected, in connecticut and nationally? >> i think, again, when you get people to focus back on core principles, how can we better care for our children? how can we reduce the number of

gun deaths in this country? when you look at the fact of 30,000 people lost every year, over half of them suicides, there's almost no one in this country who doesn't know someone who was killed by a gun. and when you get people into a problem-solving mode, think, what can you do? what can we do? what can we, as americans do together to protect our children? to protect our communities? then we stop the demonizing. i've been able to engage gun owners in my district who are highly supportive, particularly around universal criminal background checks for all sales and around federal felonies, stiff federal felonies for trafficking and purchasing. they know they are essential tools for law enforcement. and face it, rachel, if we are going to keep guns out of hands of the criminals, we have to ask who these people are when they're buying guns. it's just common sense. >> congresswoman elizabeth esty, democrat of connecticut when you were elected did not know this

would be such a focus of your time in congress, i'm sure. but you've taken this up with as much alacrity as i think anybody could have ever expected. thank you very much for keeping us apprised of what you're doing. >> thank you. and thank you for your commitment to continuing to bring this issue in front of the american people. it really helps. thank you so much. >> thank you. all right. good news tonight for all of you separation of church and state fans out there in cable tv land. less good news for family planning sex ed crowd. but if you like the establishment clause, we have a story for you. please, stay tuned. they're like a clean team. did you see mr. clean disinfecting bath cleaner killing that bacteria yesterday, just flaunting it? and did you see the magic eraser clean up that crazy kitchen mess? it was like super dirty, super clean. how? wish i hadn't. [ sniffs ] what's that amazing smell? it's mr. clean with the amazing scent of gain. wow! you know, if i had a team, you'd be on it. [ gasps ] our mascot could be a cleanosarus rex. you're off the team. [ male announcer ] dirt and grime have nowhere to hide with the mr. clean clean team on your side.

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this is sort of, especially for viewers in arkansas. if you live in arkansas, this is for you. if you know anyone who lives in arkansas, give you a second, give them a call, tell them to tune in. this might be helpful if you live in arkansas. okay, ready? all right. the fifth most profitable corporation in the entire country right now, the fifth most profitable, number five, is the ford motor company. ford is back and they are back in a big way. number five. number four, on the most profitable companies in the country list is microsoft. seriously. this is not a list from 1998, i promise. this is the most recent fortune 500 list. microsoft cracked the top five. they are number four. number three on the list is apple. that sort of makes sense, right? apple is just an absolute juggernaut right now. number two, second most profitable corporation in the country. a little mom and pop operation called chevron.

giant oil company pulled in $26 billion in profit last year alone. not bad, right? as you can see, the top four most profitable corporations in the country are all within a few billion dollars of each other. all sort of clustered together. but none of those companies, none of them comes anywhere close to matching the undisputed king of corporate america. top dog. single most profitable corporation in the entire country is -- boeing? wow. exxon. exxon mobil leaves everybody else in the dust. all of those companies when they go to sleep at night they dream about becoming exxon mobil when they grow up. big numbers are hard to get your head around but just to get some idea how rich exxon mobil is, consider this. wal-mart, google, mcdonald's, american express and goldman sachs, all fabulously profitable companies, right? you have to put them all together to equal one exxon mobil in terms of profit.

combined. yeah. exxon is doing just fine these days, thank you very much. who is not doing fine are the people who live above exxon's pegasus oil pipeline which ruptured in mayflower arkansas a week ago today. that cleanup is still going on tonight. residents are still evacuated from their homes. one of the rather incredible things we learned about this when it happened is many of the residents who live right over this pipe loin did not even know the pipeline was there until it burst. >> supposed to be a 20-inch pipeline run from illinois to texas. >> knowing nothing of the pipeline. >> i had no idea. and i'm the fourth or fifth house from it. >> now they know. it's a bad way to find out it's there, right? we also know about previous safety violations as it relates to that specific exxon pipeline. in 2010 the federal government fined exxon for failing to inspect a different portion of that same pipeline as frequently as is required by law. sounds bad, right? not only did they not do it

but they got caught and the federal government nailed them for it. you want to know what fine was for that? the fine was, $26,000. okay just for some perspective, so exxon made $44 billion in profit last year. that breaks down to per day profit of $122 million a day. that's what they make in profit in one day. that's $26,000 fine on that pipeline that eventually burst in arkansas, the day that fine was assessed by the federal government, that represented this much of their profit that day. look at ratio of the two dots there. barely a blip. that's just for one day's profit. you think that kind of robust oversight and punishment motivates a company like this to do the right thing? after the deep water horizon disaster in the gulf of mexico in 2010, president obama signed a law that strengthened the sorts of fines that can be levied against oil companies when they do stuff wrong. the law doubled the maximum civilian penalty that the government can issue for a

single pipeline safety violation. doubled it. it had been $100,000. now it is $200,000. oh, because that will scare them. exxon's last big oil spill before this one in arkansas, was when one of their pipelines burst under the yellow stone river in montana in 2011. a year before that disaster, federal officials told exxon that that particular pipeline was subject to a number of probable violations of the law. among the regulations that exxon was in apparent violation of were emergency response training and rules governing the potential corrosion of pipes and having out-of-date maps and records for that specific pipeline. and then of course that pipeline burst, flooding the yellowstone river with oil, and exxon was hit with a proposed fine for those violations and a few others. the proposed fine was, $1.7 million. again, just for context sake in terms of the day that fine was levied. here is how that fine relates to the profits that exxon made in that single day.

exxon made that day about $122 million in profit and here is that giant $1.7 million fine they were slapped with. not even a nat bite into their profits for that one day. in terms of this latest spill in arkansas, arkansas's attorney general has been so far pretty much all over this. we had him on the show earlier this week. he has been touring the affected area. in recent days. he said today that his head hurt all the way through yesterday just from being exposed to the fumes in mayflower for a couple of hours. he's now demanding a trove of documents from exxon, including the company's inspection reports for this pipeline. there is news today a number of residents of mayflower, arkansas who were affected by the spill, they have now filed the first class action lawsuit against exxon for what happened there. again, to our viewers in arkansas, to anybody affected by this spill, here is the thing to know about fighting exxon. here'sed thing to know about fighting exxon over this thing that they just did to you and your state.

there is nothing that exxon fears from the federal government. they have so captured the parts of the government that are supposed to punish them when this sort of thing happens that the pain that that sort of punishment could cause them redounds to them essentially not at all. if exxon or any other oil company is deterred from this sort of bad behavior it will not be because the federal government holds them to it. it'll be because the individuals or maybe the state who have they have been wronged -- who have been wronged, they will be the ones who make exxon know that they've done wrong. they will be the ones that force them to make it right. and yes, exxon can afford it. for tapping into a wealth of experience. for access to one of the top wealth management firms in the country. for a team of financial professionals who provide customized solutions. for all of your wealth management and retirement goals,

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okay, the great ezra klein is still to come on the thing that has liberals and republicans kind of on the same side today. kind of. plus, how the issue of sodomy is making all the difference in the world in the virginia governor's race this year. sodomy. straight ahead. i told you this would be a friday kind of show. carfirmation.

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businesses more than two billion dollars to grow jobs, cut middle class income taxes to the lowest rate in sixty years, and we're creating tax free zones for business startups. the new new york is working creating tens of thousands of new businesses, and we're just getting started. to grow or start your business visit thenewny.com today after causing a few hours of rather widespread panic, the federal aviation administration relented and announced it would not be shutting down air traffic control towers in 38 states. even though the sequester is forcing the faa to cut more than $600 million out of its budget the faa announced after a few hours of upset today they will not find that money by taking away air traffic control towers from small and medium-sized airports in 38 states. because that would be crazy, right? so we are not going to do that. we're not going to do that until

june. and then we are going to do that. it's amazing, when you cut hundreds of billions of dollars out of what federal government spends on stuff, you find the stuff the federal government spends on is not just all waste and stuff that's ease ski to make fun of. so the cuts forced by the sequester which republicans insisted were just a good start, just a drop in the bucket, just the first of many more rounds of cuts that must be much deeper than these because of all the waste that is federal spending, these cuts are turning out to force things like cancer clinics turning away medicare patients because they can't afford to treat them. about two-thirds of cancer patients get their oncology drugs at clinics instead of hospitals and now thanks to the sequester the clinics can't get reimbursed for the cost of these very expensive drugs so they cannot administer them. so elderly cancer patients are going without chemo. which must be a shock if all you have been told the government spends money on is stuff that's easy to make fun of, like shrimp treadmills or whatever, right?

the cancer drug story was first reported by sarah cliff who writes for ezra klein's blog over at "the washington post." whether it is local news covering the impacts state by state of the sequester or it is wonkier than your usual blog blogs spelling out how cuts that weren't supposed to hurt medicare patients ended up hurting them anyway. whether it is the slow national sinking in of the realization that if you cut head start by this much, that means that some places, like indiana, are going to start deciding whether or not american children can go to preschool by lottery. that's their only chance at preschool in their whole lives forever, decided by lottery. whether it is micro level news or today's macro level news that seemed to show the squeeze that this self-inflicted nonsense is starting to put on the overall jobs picture in our economy. whatever it takes to sink in it kind of feels like it's sinking in. so why did the president just

float a budget plan with more austerity in it? with even cuts to social security, for pete's sake? all of the headline level coverage of this today was about its political reception. how the republicans won't even say yes to these republican ideas that the president is putting forward. about how the left is disgusted and says they will not stand for a democratic president attacking social security any more than they would stand for a republican president doing the same, only with a republican at least you would have seen it coming. my question is less a political question than it is a policy question. at a time when the austerity we are going through is kicking us in the teeth economically and the president is among those railing against the bad impact of the austerity we are experiencing already, why is he proposing more? joining us now is the amazing ezra klein. "washington post" columnist, msnbc policy analyst. ezra, always great to see you. thanks for being with us tonight. >> thank you for having me. >> so the president's new, sort of, to my mind, shockingly

austere budget rejected outright by the republicans, by speaker john boehner, is that sort of a good thing for liberals that john boehner scoffed at it and said he wouldn't consider it? >> rejected we should say before it even comes out. it doesn't come out until next week. all we have are previews in the press right now. two things, one, it is not that new of a budget. the part that everybody is talking about. the compromise part. the part where he will chain cpi, a big cut to social security in exchange for tax increases, that part has been on the president's website for months now. under the heading sequester plan. and it is something that has got him really not much pick up but it has been there and the white house's view is why not just put that out if we have endorsed it, why not show we are really willing to do it. there is another part to the budget, another module, which will have a bunch of new investments and stimulus spending and things like pre-k and all these things that are pretty worthwhile. it doesn't seem to me that anybody expects to have a chance in congress. so it is not clear why they have put that in a separate oddly

enough as they call it a module. but there is going to be that part of try to help the economy stuff in the budget. now it is a case of boehner over and over and again beginning in the 2011 debt ceiling negotiations and continuing on until now, where he rejects 9 budget before any real negotiations again, he keeps saving liberals from president obama's desire to reach a bipartisan budget deal that would, in fact, cut medicare and social security. in that way they have kind of been united. >> we end up getting nothing because the republicans say no to anything the president puts forward. if the republicans are willing to say yes, liberals would be really mad because what the president is willing it say yes to is stuff that would actually be way more either austere or difficult for populations for people with social security than liberals are willing to see happen, right? >> there is a bit of that. the white house's argument would go this way, they would say, what they want to do is replace the sequester. which the big problem with it is it frontloads all these cuts instead of having them grow over

the next ten years, they happen as much this year as next year, as much next year as the year after and that's the opposite of what you would want to do. they want to replace it with a larger total amount of deficit reduction. it would be back loaded. a lot less in year one, and then in year two and less in year three than year four. overall they think that would be a better glide path for the recovery. in that, they are right. i have argued before, i don't mind the way the sequester cuts are organized in terms of having half in defense and half else. if you could give the president or somebody who had some smarts here, discretion over not just how to arrange them within the big buckets but how to glide them in over the time dimension of sequester, i would actually be fine with sequester. i think defense should be cut and i don't understand why liberals and the white house think it would be so much better to raise taxes on say rich people giving money to charity than to cut defense spending. but big thing for them is time dimension. the big problem with sequester is not necessarily the total amount of cuts over ten years but the amount of them to come

in this next year and in the next two years. >> when you saw the job numbers come out today, did you feel that reflected what happened already with the sequester. would we see that this soon or is that likely explained by other things? >> i think if we're going to blame them on any government policy, i'm not sure we should yet, it would be the payroll tax hike that came a couple months ago. you saw retail jobs tank. i think we lost 24,000 of them last month. that's what we expect to see from payroll tax hike. sequester didn't hit that hard in march. it will hit much harder in april. but for the folks who are coming out seeing it wasn't the sequester, i put it this way, we don't know, maybe those numbers will prove out to be better than we think in a couple months when they get revised when we get better data. but if it was 88,000, which is not a good number, imagine if we had the sequester on top of that. maybe it would be 20,000 or zero. sequester is expected to kill off 750,000 jobs in this year alone. a half percentage point of gdp in an economy where we're only creating 88,000 some months. that is a brain-dead, idiotic,

terrible thing for us to do. >> which is why it was designed that way in the first place, to be as brain dead and idiotic as possible so we wouldn't do it. then we did it. >> right. >> ezra klein of "the washington post," msnbc policy analyst ezra, thanks a lot. appreciate you being here tonight. >> thank you. all right, great state of north carolina, cruising along, nicely, being a state, doing state stuff, reasonably well within the realm of normal state stuff. ladies and gentlemen, the great state of north carolina has changed its mind about how to behave. that's coming up. is george. the day building a play set begins with a surprise twinge of back pain... and a choice. take up to 4 advil in a day or 2 aleve for all day relief. [ male announcer ] that's handy. ♪

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update four on something we have been covering intensely on this show and which we have had a ton of feedback from you, our viewers, whenever we cover it. it is the story of the treatment of our veterans right now. specifically the backlog of dealing with veterans' disability claims at the v.a. the update today is that the white house chief of staff, dennis mcdonough and the head of the v.a. did a press event with reporters today. that remarkable in itself. head of the v.a. never did national press events at all in his whole first four years on the job but he's doing them now. and at today's press event they announced two big important things. first they want to boost the v.a. budget by $2.5 billion to

specifically deal with the backlog problem. and second white house chief of staff said that white house is considering forming a presidential commission to deal with this problem. now if that sounds familiar to you it is because iraq and afghanistan veterans of america sent 34,000 signatures to the white house last month asking for such a commission. asking for the president to get personally involved in fixing the backlog problem. and now today we learned that the answer from the white house is at least, maybe. well, that maybe, and the extra funding, neither of them is a bottom line improvement yet for veterans, but both of those things that they announced at that press event and the existence of that press event at all those are signs of life. steps in the right direction. green shoots, as they say. we will sty on this. watch this space. zap technology.

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happy friday particularly to any theocrats watching tonight, because i know you had a bad day. sadly for theo contracts today these north carolina republican state legislators decided to cave. they decided to withdraw their legislation calling on the state of north carolina to establish a state religion. they are house joint resolution 494. would have asserted that north carolina is sovereign from the u.s. federal government, and as such, north carolina, hence forthwill not recognize any federal interference with the state, quote, respecting an establishment of religion. the establishment of a state religion is quite literally the first thing that the bill of rights says you can't do. it's the first thing even before freedom of speech. but north carolina republicans are not buying that stupid constitution stuff. that stupid constitution thing does not apply in north carolina and they will establish a state religion if they want to. the sponsors of this legislation

are not just some random bowl of mixed nuts either. the guy with the circle around him, he's the republican majority leader in the north carolina house. and he was part of this group trying to do this along with 14 republican co-sponsors. until somebody finally backed them into a corner and showed them even though it might be disappointing to face up to it, sadly, north carolina is still part of the mean old united states of america, which does not let you do things like establish an official government religion. maybe you were thinking of saudi arabia? the north carolina legislature has been putting on a real show this year. now that they've gone completely republican controlled with a republican controlled governorship, as well. in addition to the establishing a state religion thing, they're also cracking down on divorce. even if the reason you want to get divorced is, say, domestic violence, your spouse abusing you, the republicans in the state legislature of north

carolina want the state government to intervene in your marriage to block you from getting divorced. for two years. during which time they will mandate you attend state government classes and workshops that are designed to make you not get divorced from your abusive spouse for two years. because, you know, small government. speaking of small government, we are also waiting action now from alabama's republican governor robert bentley who says he will sign legislation that will use targeted medically unnecessary overregulation as a tool to shut down the state's abortion clinics. that policy has been passed by the republicans in the alabama state legislature and the republican governor of alabama is expected to sign it. republicans have already put the exact same law into effect and are using to try and shut down the last clinic in mississippi. republicans are also doing the same thing in north dakota. the republican governor signed it there too. to shut down the last clinic in north dakota. republicans are working on the

same approach to try to shut down all the clinics in texas now, as well. and they are halfway there in the state of virginia. virginia isn't even a red state. but it is governed at the state level by republicans. so they are using state government regulations to try to shut down all the abortion clinics in virginia, as well. that is what republicans do whenever they are in power now. that is republican governance. 2013 style. in arkansas, and in north dakota this year, republicans are also just flat-out passing unconstitutional bans on abortion. as if roe versus wade didn't exist. they're just banning abortion at the state level. just try and stop them. arkansas republicans are essentially in a frenzy this year. because in arkansas, republicans took control of both houses of the state legislature in this past election for the first time since '74. and i don't mean 1974. i mean 1874. since the reconstruction era after the end of the civil war. and when you have not had

control of something since 1874 and you get control of it, i guess you just yee-haw let's ban abortion. who cares? also they've gotten right down to work to make clear that arkansas rejects the equal rights amendment. this is a headline from this week. the equal rights amendment. you know, the equality of rights shall not be denied or abridged because of one's sex. maybe it's because it's got the word sex in it, but arkansas republicans took decisive action this week in 2013 to declare their state to be against that. republicans in arkansas and texas both introduced legislation in the past few weeks to block sex education. and education about preventing hiv and sexually transmitted diseases. yeah. what do we need that for? that's dirty. north dakota republicans this year tried and failed to block sex-ed for kids who are in foster care or homeless. that's nice. in ohio this week the republican attorney general wrote a scathing letter to the federal

government demanding that your boss, your employer, should be the one who decide whether or not you can get contraception through your health insurance. boss, can i talk to you about something? in texas this week, republicans introduced legislation to overtly rescind all funding from anything gay-related, and from all women's centers at all public colleges and universities in the whole state. this is what the republican party is working on around the country right now. the beltway press does not cover republican politics that way, but that is what they're doing. it's not what they're talking about. it's what they're doing. you don't even have to go far outside the beltway to see what they're doing. in richmond, virginia, this past week, which is not very far outside the beltway, in richmond this past week, virginia's republican attorney general petitioned a federal court to let the state of virginia keep its sodomy law. you remember when the supreme court said sodomy laws were unconstitutional and they have to be struck down? virginia decided to keep theirs anyway. a republican state legislator at

the time, young man named ken kuch nellie, he was part of the effort to keep virginia's sodomy law on the books, even after the supreme court ruling because, he still really liked the sodomy law. when he was running for attorney general in 2009 he explained his thinking on the subject and why he was against protecting gay people from discrimination telling a virginia paper in 2009, quote, homosexual acts are wrong. they are intrinsically wrong and i think in a natural law-based country, it is appropriate to have policies that reflect that. they don't comport with the natural law. i happen to think it represents to put it politely, i need my thesaurus to be polite, it represents behavior that is not healthy to an individual and in aggregate is not healthy to society. and so keep the sodomy laws on the books. well, now, that state legislator is attorney general. and he's using virginia's taxpayer dollars right this second to try to keep the state's unconstitutional sodomy law on the books. now, in case sodomy is not a

word in you're everyday parlance, the law says that even between consenting adults, even between straight consenting adults, even between straight consenting married adults, the state government of virginia bans you from putting your faces or genitals together in a way that is not approved by the state government. ken cuciinelli's petition to keep that on the books. since he is also the republican party's nomination to be the next governor of virginia, he would be succeeding governor ultrasound since he's not just some random wingnut republican acting alone and is instead the republican party's choice to lead the state, mother jones magazine has now inquired of his gubernatorial campaign to ask if he personally has ever violated the state sodomy law. have you ever violated the crimes against nature prohibitions in the sodomy law that you are petitioning the

federal court to keep on the books in the commonwealth of virginia. mother jones asked the campaign if he or anyone working for his campaign had engaged in the conduct prohibited by the state's ban on oral sex and anal sex between consenting adults. they also asked whether he would fire any campaign staffer who had done so. so far no answer. i kind of hope mother jones does not get an answer to this. can you imagine if they do get an answer? the beltway version of the republican party is getting all sorts of unearned credit right now for supposedly trying to move the party past this stuff. right? rnc chairman reince priebus gets all sorts of beltway credit for saying that republicans should at least try to sound less old testamenty when they talk about social issues. but i say that the credit for moving the party past this stuff is unearned credit. because he, even reince priebus himself, the republican party chairman, cannot hold himself back from this stuff. it's too alluring. they can't give it up. here's reince priebus two days

ago saying that if you support planned parenthood, you support infanticide. infanticide? seriously? no, not seriously. but this is the national chairman of the republican party's take on it. the beltway line on the republican party right now is social conservatism is over for republicans, right? that the party is modernizing, kicking all those old-school social conservative issues to the curb. that beltway line is total bull pucky. look at what they're doing, not what they're saying. dozens of republicans and republican senators have signed on to demanding more investigations of planned parent. their gubernatorial candidate in virginia is fighting for sodomy laws. they are banning abortion and cracking down on the gay everywhere they are in control of any form of state government. the beltway common wisdom on this is wrong. the social conservatives have triumphed in the republican party. you could tell it not from what they say to the beltway press. you can tell it from how they are using the power that they have in governal