construction workers. >> as this plays out in the amendments and the mark-up. thank you so much. that is "all in" for this evening. "rachel maddow show" starts now. >> thank you, chris. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. a lot going on in the news today. the dow jones closed today in the highest closing ever. above 15,000 for the first time in history hoo ray for the stock market. doesn't mean much except the stock market itself is moving well. doing very, very well. in north korea today we learned some of the long-range missiles they had been put up, put up on launch ready status, those long range missiles have been taken down from launch ready status. who knows what's going to happen next in north korea? we never do. these missiles coming down, that seems like a good thing. that comes ahead of president obama hosting the south korea korean president at the white house tomorrow. in mississippi tonight, an execution was called off at the

very last minute. the mississippi support intervening and issuing a stay just hours before the man you see on your screen here just hours before he was scheduled to be killed. his case attracted national attention when the state refused to allow dna testing that mr. manning's lawyer said could exonerate him from which the crimes he was convicted. the fbi says there were analysis errors in handling the evidence in his case. in washington, d.c. today, a big decision involving the clandestined service of the cia. that's the part of the cia you're thinking of when you think about what it might be like to be a spy. that's the part that handles espionage and covert action. one of the leading candidates to run the clandestin service is one of who ran the prisons in thailand where the cia tortured people. she was also reportedly involved in the decision to erase videotapes of those torture sessions.

well, today the cia announced that officer did not get the job of running the clandestine service. somebody else will be in charge of our nation's spies, can't say who. we know it's not her. also, chris christie got secret surgery a to lose weight a couple of months ago. good for you, sir, good luck to you. but if you are a person who closely follows crime stories in the news, stories of criminal mayhem and crime, i have to tell you, this has also been a particularly rich news cycle for you. a handcuffed violent robbery suspect somehow yesterday got away from police officers who had him in custody. the suspect left from their grasp, jumped out of the shoes wearing handcuffs behind his back, fled shoeless into the subway. they shut down four lines, cut all the power for more than two hours in the subway. thousands of passengers stranded, hundreds of people

stuck in a train in a tunnel between stations. hundreds of police officers and police dogs hunting through the tunnels, looking for the handcuffed fugitive. took them five hours but did finally get the guy. in minnesota yesterday, federal authorities say they are confident they foiled a planned terrorist attack. when they arrested a white supremacist self-style militia men who stockpiled more than a dozen bombs including some bombs described as sophisticated pipe bombs, some packed with nails and other kinds of shrapnel like the boston marathon bombs were. local authorities do not believe the general public was at risk from the sky but federal authorities citing the stated plans to attack local police targets in the western part of the state, western part of minnesota where he lived. in case that's not enough for you, in virginia yesterday, this charming mug shot tells at least part of the story of the arrest of the lieutenant colonel who heads up the u.s. air force's sexual assault prevention efforts, arrested for alleged attempted sexual assault.

that earned a response from the president of the united states today which was kind of astonishing. in terms of the sheer narrative drama of the story. the story out of cleveland, ohio, in the last 24 hours, these three women who freed themselves in cleveland after ten years in captivity, this story is almost impossible to believe. another just turned 21 when she went missing from the same part of cleveland. they went missing and stayed missing year after year after year. one managed to break free enough to reach through the door of this cleveland house and wave to the neighbors trying to get somebody's attention calling help me, help me. in part because of what he did but in part because of the way he explained what he did. >> i hear screaming, i'm eating

my mcdonald's, and i come outside and see this girl going nuts trying to get out of the house. i go on the porch and she says help me get out. i've been in here a long time. so, you know, i figured it's a domestic violence dispute. i open the door and we can't get in that way because how the door is, it's so much that my body can't fit, only your hand. so we kicked the bottom and she comes out with a little girl and she says call 911. my name is amanda berry. >> amanda berry had been missing for a decade since the day before she turned 17. she's been missing long enough for her name for many people to be a distant memory in her hometown. once she got out to the street yesterday afternoon, a neighbor gave her a phone and she was the one who called 911 herself. >> help me, i'm amanda berry. >> you need police, fire or ambulance? >> i need police. >> okay. and what's going on there? >> i've been kidnapped and i've

been missing for ten years and i'm here i'm free now. i'm across the street i'm using the phone. >> okay. stay there -- >> okay. talk to the police when they get there. >> okay. hello? >> yeah, talk to the police when they get there. >> okay. are they on their way right now? >> we'll send them as soon as we get a car open. >> no, i need them now before he gets back. >> all right. we're sending them. >> amanda berry knew that people were looking for her. told the emergency dispatcher she'd been on the news for the past ten years. but the neighbors of the house say they never saw the women or the child, as well. one window boarded up, they do remember seeing sometimes a porch light on. another time they saw a naked woman crawling in the backyard. now cleveland police have

arrested three brothers in the case. the man on the left the first woman broke through to freedom. police caught him at the local mcdonald's. what happened in cleveland in the last day and a half is amazing. we almost do not have words for it on tv. part of the reason the story is so transfixing is because this kind of thing so rarely happens. kidnappings by force, kidnappings by force, by strangers were exceedingly rare in this country. and when they happen, if they are not quickly solved, then they are seldom solved. the three young women in this case, all disappeared from the west side of cleveland all within a three-year span. and yet one of the women found yesterday appears not to have been treated as a potential kidnap victim while she was missing. her mother tells the cleveland plain dealer that police thought the young woman just left home on her own terms after being upset because she lost custody of a child she conceived while

she was in high school. according to the girl's mother, police did not conduct much of an investigation, she ended up posting flyers asking about her daughter doing what she could do to search for her on her own. turns out also strangely that a fourth girl went missing from the same part of west cleveland a few years ago when she was 14. this girl clearly was viewed as missing and potentially kidnapped according to the way the fbi described her case, but she was not found in that house yesterday. even as the young woman who hadn't been considered a potential kidnapping victim was found there. at first police thought that the fourth young woman had too run away, but when investigators began to think she was kidnapped instead, she ended up getting featured with the other missing girls, for example, in a segment on oprah. investigators are wondering if this fourth disappeared girl might be connected to this other case now. one instructor suggested that fourth girl still unaccounted for might be part of a pattern in this case.

they're all attractive, between the ages of 14 and 17 and all gone. >> one of their friends told a reporter today, quote, they don't find people who go missing, you know. i am at a loss of words. detective, thank you very much for talking with us tonight. appreciate you being here. >> thank you for having me. >> are there new developments in the circumstances of these young women's captivity or the men who have been arrested in this case. >> we will no at a later time. they're actually onscene now with their evidence response team for this area. the fbi has full control of the scene both the outside and the inside of the house and they will be maintaining the gathering and collection of

evidence. >> we know that these reports are that cleveland police supposedly visited the house in the past several years on a number of different types of calls. they never went inside. can you tell us anything more about those visits from cleveland police officers? what precipitated those visits? and what the outcome was? >> yes, i can tell you that in 2000 and 2004, the division of police received calls to respond to the home on seymour. the first call in 2000 was for the suspect mr. castro to report a fight in the street. and the second call in 2004 was in relation to an incident he had concerning him leaving possibly leaving a child unattended on a school bus. he was not charged in that crime, however, after a thorough investigation and search of our call-ins, those are the only two

calls we show to this home. any other information people may have if you feel that needs to be reported to police, we ask you come forward. our strongest partnership is with the community. so if you see something, say something, we need to know it. if you have information to provide, we'd love to hear from you. contact the cleveland division of police or the fbi in this case. >> two of the young women found in this house -- their cases as missing persons as potential kidnap victims had been publicized along with another young missing woman from cleveland who went missing in roughly the same part of the city roughly the same time in the mid 2000s. she has not been found. is that case being looked into in conjunction with this crime. or there might be still more to discover about that scene? >> at this time, we believe that the only victims in this case were the three women found and,

of course, then the young daughter of amanda berry. we don't believe the fourth girl is connected to this case, however, the leads will be investigated and if something leads us down the path that investigation could correlate with this one that will be followed up on, as well. >> the cleveland police department, thank you for taking the time to talk with us. >> the fourth missing girl. the interesting thing about that is not just this case, this whole the difference between kidnapped and missing, right, and what that means for how these cases are handled, the universe of kidnappings is relatively speaking a pretty small universe. obviously it's a huge deal for

anybody for anybody it happens to. when you're close to those cases, they feel like the biggest deal in the world, but numerically speaking, statistically speaking, not talking about a large number of people to whom that happens. the idea of missing persons, that is a much broader category than kidnapping. missing persons is a huge category of persons that affects hundreds of thousands of people a year. to be classified as a missing person, person has to fit one or more of the standardized criteria set by the fbi's national crime information centers missing persons file. so among those criteria, it's that the individual has a proven physical or mental disability or the person is missing under circumstances indicating they may be in physical danger. the person is missing after a catastrophe. or the person is missing under circumstances indicating their disappearance may not have been voluntary. persons missing, person missing under the age of 21 and does not meet the above criteria or the person is over the age of 21 and did not meet any of the above criteria, but there's a reasonable concern for their

safety. those are the different categories of missing persons. missing people who fit one of those categories are entered into fbi records. they remain there indefinitely until they are found or until they are otherwise cleared from the list for some other reason. but the numbers here are kind of staggering. last year alone, more than 660,000 people were listed as missing by the fbi. that's approximately 2,000 new names per day. but most of though new cases are cleared within the year. as of may 1st, 45,000 people have been in the missing person file for nearly a year this year. 75% of them are children, people under the age of 18. that's hundreds of thousands of children being reported missing each year. when you hear missing child, you might automatically think kidnapping, but half of those missing kids turn out to be run aways and another 40% of those missing end up not actually being missing. cause for concern.

when you get to the much smaller slice of the pie that are true abductions, about 10% of all kids reported missing. only about 2% of all missing kids are taken by non-family members. which is what seems to have happened in cleveland. this is an exceedingly rare incident. if you are completely transfixed by this story this week from cleveland. if you are glued to your tv on this one. there's no reason to feel guilty about that. there are good reasons for it. this is a genuinely transfixing and dramatic human story. part of the reason, it is objectively so rare. and whether a person's considered missing or kidnapped has huge consequences in terms of what kind of resources are devoted trying to find them. but being specific about the nature of its crime and prevalence can help us get our heads around what this sort of thing means. joining us now is professor from rutgers university. thank you for being here. >> thank you.

>> i am a layman in dealing with these issues. let me ask you if i said anything there that struck you as wrong. >> no, i think you got it right. >> okay. these stories like this one in cleveland and similar ones before it that jaycee dugard story, the elizabeth smart story, we think of these things almost as prevalent because when they happen, they get so much attention. they are objectively exceedingly rare incidents. >> very, very rare. and because they're so rare, they become important stories because they knock us off our chairs. they make us wonder about the way the world works. >> yeah. >> and they should because they're terrible stories. hundreds of thousands of people are reported missing every year as you said. by far, most of those kids get found quickly. the ones not found within days turn up to have mostly taken by

family members or other relatives and people who know them. particularly the fact that these kids were there for a decade that it really just shocks you and it's hard for people to even imagine what it must be like to be a person in that situation. >> there was for two of the women, three young women have been found, oldest of the three, the one missing the longest was not viewed, it seems by law enforcement as a likely kidnap victim. her family, obviously, treated somewhat differently. but the two younger women found and this along with this other woman not yet found disappeared under similar circumstances, their case did get at lot of attention. they were all abducted, went missing as teenagers from the relatively same part of west cleveland. i think part of the reason their cases were publicized was because of the implicit that they had been stolen to be

forced into some sort of forced prostitution environment. how common is that sort of thing? >> well, so there's a debate in criminology about this. for the number of people we don't find evidence of their whereabouts, every one of them theoretically could've disappeared into some form of human trafficking. and so people who are alarmed by this point to those numbers, those large unknown numbers and they say, wow, this problem is immense. others who specialize in this problem who have gone to other countries who can study human trafficking in asian countries who go underground and look at prostitution by underage youth, they find the numbers are not small, but they are really not the size that would alarm us. and many criminologists think that the politicalization of children, happened to adult women and adults who get involved in the prostitution trade around which society imposes lots of penalties.

it's not to say this is not a problem and it clearly is. but the debate about how big it is, one would say that mostly evidence is on the side of the people who claim that alarming about it being alarmed about it overblows the numbers. >> and it would seem, i mean, i think what we've seen in the reaction to this case in cleveland is the emotional extrapolation from this extreme and horrible case. the more we learn about it, the more horrible it is, to those numbers, hundreds of thousands of people going missing and we automatically imagine the worst that everybody missing has been put into some sort of circumstances. >> well, anyone who has children, you don't know where that child is, you imagine the worst. and for family members. but it's also important to say in this case this wasn't a human

trafficking case. these -- >> right. >> these girls weren't taken off the streets and forced into sex trade. they were taken off the streets and kept bound. it was more like a slavery kind of an event. but -- and so concern about a widespread human trafficking underground network -- this story is not a story about that. >> there are stories about that. that is not what this story is. it's worth being specific even as we are so horrified by these circumstances. professor todd claire, dean of the school of criminal justice at rutgers university. thank you very much for helping us sort this out. i appreciate it. the amazing story in cleveland has captured a ton of attention for a lot of reasons. but a lot else happening in the news tonight. for example, the polls closed in the country's most recent congressional election and absolutely stunning set of circumstances unfolding around that race. that's next.

watching mark sanford trying to launch a political comeback in south carolina these past few months has been the mr. toad's wild road of american offyear electoral politics. like, for example, this headline. ex-governor asks ex-wife he cheated on to run his campaign. she says no. then there were the 16 different republicans who were running in the primary for the congressional seat he wanted to run for. 16 republicans. had to go to a runoff before mark sanford could capture the nomination. then it was the court filings

that revealed mark sanford's ex-wife was accusing him of trespassing at her home sculking around and trying to sneak out the back door without her knowing he was in her home, using his cell phone as a flashlight in the dark. then there was the point where he put out the full-page ad in the local paper comparing himself and comparing himself to the men who fought and died at the alamo, except he got the date wrong on the alamo, missed it by 27 years. and that was around the time when the national republican party decided that they were done with him. they canceled their fundraiser and said if mark sanford was going to win the special election in south carolina's first congressional district he would have to do it without the help of the national republican party. and that, of course, left mark sanford with only nancy pelosi to lean on. not the real nancy pelosi, of course, but a giant cardboard cutout of nancy pelosi. he held a debate against a flat cardboard cutout of nancy pelosi. he says he won. he also ran a television ad

against nancy pelosi. invoked the name that it seemed that mark sanford's opponent is the former speaker of the house instead of the actual democrat on the ticket against him who is elizabeth colbert busch. mark sanford told reporters after he voted today that if he did not win this race tonight, he would never run for anything else. he said second chances do not become third chances it is a race that has ended tonight. we have the breaking news this hour that mark sanford has won. he has won tonight's special election with 99% of the vote in with nearly all of the vote in and south carolina's first congressional district. mark sanford is leading elizabeth colbert busch by nine points. so, congratulations mark sanford, the once and now future republican congressman from south carolina's first district. you know, the first time he

held that seat when he was then congressman sanford, when he held that seat the first time, he voted that president bill clinton should be impeached and thrown out of office for having an affair and lying about it. now mark sanford is back. that's who they picked. remember, there were 16 different republicans in the primary for this seat, but they picked this guy. congratulations, mark sanford, congratulations, republican party. best wishes for continuing with the whole crusading family values thing.

i tend to not have a great memory. by this time in the show each night, i don't remember how we got to this show at the top of the hour. i know it involves somebody putting eye make-up on me. it's a fog. that said, i distinctly remember this happened early last year. politifact, you are fired, you are a mess, fired. undermining the definition of the word fact in the english language by pretending to it in your name. the english language wants its word back. you are an embarrassment, you sully the reputation of anyone who cites you as an authority on factishness let alone fact. you are fired. i thought that was pretty finite. i thought that was clear. apparently that was not clear enough because disaster has struck again. stay tuned.

if you enlist in the united states air force, the place you are likely to be sent for basic training is here. it's just outside san antonio, texas, it is lackland air force base. and for the last few years, something has been very wrong at lackland air force base. last year, a sprawling investigation began into widespread sexual assault at that base. it is so far convicted at least five lackland air force base military instructors of sexual assault or unprofessional relationships with their trainees. at least one of the convictions

from that investigation resulted in a 20-year sentence for rape. the investigation has identified almost 50 alleged victims at lackland and nearly two dozen alleged offenders. this is the main basic training center for the united states air force. that investigation came to a head late last year. then early this year in february, a three-star air force general, the commander of the third air force in europe personally intervened to throw out a sexual assault conviction of an air force star fighter pilot. the general who apparently had the authority to do this, the general overruled the findings of a jury, overruled the recommendations of his own legal adviser and stepped in to effectively pardon the fighter pilot after the fighter pilot had been convicted of sexual assault. they reinstated him, overturned the jury's finding. that was in february. now we find out it has happened again. another three-star air force general, now this time up for promotion to become vice commander for space command which is a big promotion.

her nomination to that job is being blocked now by senator claire mccaskill of missouri. senators put a hold on that general's nomination for promotion because this general apparently did the same thing as the other general. this is a previously unpublicized case, but apparently this general, yet another three-star intervened to, again, overturn a jury verdict on sexual assault. to ignore the recommendations of legal advisers to overrule and throw the conviction in this case a captain who was convicted of sexual assault. claire mccaskill announcing a hold on that general's nomination happened on the same day that we were all treated to this mug shot. this mug shot shows the lieutenant colonel who was in charge of sexual assault prevention programs for the whole u.s. air force. he's the guy in charge. on the left, you can see what he looks like in uniform and happier times. on the right, that's what he looks like after himself being arrested for attempted sexual assault. allegedly in a drunken parking lot encounter late saturday

night with a stranger. a stranger who fought back. hard. this is all happening as today the pentagon released its latest annual report showing an almost unfathomably large number of sexual assaults taking place in the united states military. the last year, an estimated 19,000 assaults in the military, this year up to 26,000. but of those estimated sexual assaults, only a tiny fraction are actually being reported at the chain of command. less than 4,000 of the 26,000. this huge difference between sexual assaults being experienced and sexual assault being reported contributed in part to years of -- fears of retaliation. and a lack of trust in the military criminal justice system to deal with these issues seriously. and frankly, if you're in the air force and this is the guy in charge of sexual assault prevention for your branch of the service, you might understand why people are not all that psyched of people reporting this up the chain.

all of this is coming to a head today that drew president obama's attention and his apparent anger. watch this from him. >> the pentagon said today that there may be as many as 70 sexual assaults a day in the military up by 35% during your term in office. and also that many sexual assaults may not be reported, in fact. given what we know about an air force officer in charge of preventing sexual assaults recently being charged with sexual assault, can you speak to the culture in the u.s. military that may be at play here and talk about your response to that and what you can do going forward to improve things? >> well, let's start with the principle that sexual assault is an outrage. it is a crime. that's true for society at large and if it's happening inside our military, then whoever carries it out is betraying the uniform that they're wearing. they may consider themselves

patriots, but when you engage in this kind of behavior, that's not patriotic. it's a crime. and we have to do everything we can to root this out. for those who are in uniform, who have experienced sexual assault, i want them to hear directly from their commander in chief that i've got their backs, i will support them, and we're not going to tolerate this stuff. and there will be accountability. if people have engaged in this behavior, they should be prosecuted. so bottom line is, i i have no tolerance for this. i have communicated this to the secretary of defense, we're going to communicate this, again, to folks up and down the chain in areas of authority. and i expect consequences. >> joining us now for the interview is missouri democratic senator claire mccaskill, a senior member of the armed

services committee. thank you so much for being with us tonight. >> thanks for having me, rachel. >> you have been out front on this issue. i know you questioned a number of military leaders about the problem of sexual assault in the military. what do you think is the biggest challenge for fixing this? why is this not getting better faster? >> well, many of the problems we're seeing in the military, we saw in the civil criminal justice system 20, 30 years ago. i think what the military has done is they've gone about this the wrong way. instead of focusing on prosecuting these people and putting them in prison, there have been efforts to train their way out. well, if we could do more seminars, if we could just teach women how to have a buddy system on base. if we could avoid alcohol encounters, that's not what we need to be doing. we need to be supporting these victims, we need to be changing the code so they have a sense

that justice can flourish. and we need to be going after these people and putting them away because they are making our great military look bad. >> when you look at that huge disparity between the number of estimated sexual assaults in the military and the comparatively small number that are being reported, what do you attribute that to? i know that you've talked with people who have been victims of sexual assault in the military. why aren't more being reported? and if that has to be the first step toward pursuing the kind of accountability you're describing, how do we up those numbers? >> well, first of all, i want to be fair and point out that the majority of sexual assaults in this country are not reported. >> sure. >> it is hard to come forward. you are exposing yourself in a very vulnerable way to a system that really is very intrusive in your life. and so many women and men don't ever want to talk about what happened to them publicly. so this is a problem across the

board. but it's even worse in the military, rachel, because these victims, many times the people who have assaulted them, they have to salute every day. or they have to work shoulder to shoulder with them in the unit. not only are they having to expose something very private and ugly, they're also jeopardizing their career. because they see this as something that could hold them back in terms of their chances for advancement in a military that many of them love deeply. >> should there be structural changes to address that? should sexual assault and related crimes be treated outside the chain of command in the terms of the way they are adjudicated? should there be changes so that, for example, air force generals cannot wade in and personally decide to overturn jury verdicts in court-martials to reinstate people convicted of sexual assault? should there be changes to policies like that? >> absolutely. there need to be some changes. i don't think we need to wholesale change the uniform coded military justice.

but these cases turn on who do you believe? these are about the triers of fact. and what's really insulting about the cases overturned, these generals have picked the juries. so in the cases, the people who listen to the witnesses and decided who was telling the truth were the hand-picked jurors of the generals and then even in spite of that, the generals went ahead and said, you know, i wasn't in the courtroom and i didn't hear the testimony and i didn't have the advantage as you had in listening to the testimony and deciding the credibility of the witnesses, i'm going to super impose my judgment. so i do not believe a general should ever be able to overturn a court-martial decision by a jury. and i think we need to make that change. there are other changes that need to be made too to help support the victim and make sure that the victim's voice is heard in the process. >> in terms of the kind -- those kind of concrete suggestions that have been made for improving the process for supporting victims better for cracking down harder on people

who commit these kinds of crimes, i have noticed in congressional hearings on these matters, like today, watching senator gillibrand absolutely take apart witnesses on the subject. i've seen you do that, as well. i saw today senator patty murray and ayotte from new hampshire talking about co-introducing legislation to deal with this. i'm noticing a theme that a lot of the women in the senate are really taking point on this. are you all working together closely on this to put women out front? >> we are. i think history was made when we had a hearing on sexual assault in the military for the first time in the history of the united states senate. the majority of the senators asking questions to the top leadership in the legal branches of our armed services were, in fact, women senators. we now have seven women on the armed services committee. elections matter, we have 20 women in the senate, and i think this is one area where we are not going to listen to any

notion that we can continue along with the way it's been done and think things are going to get significantly better and i think we are going to be able to enforce important changes. i think it's important that the convening authority of the generals have some role in this process at some point because that gives it the gravitas it needs within the unit to be taken seriously. but they should never have the ability to overturn a jury verdict. >> thank you for helping us understand this. appreciate it. there's a new problem with politifact people we have to talk about seriously coming up. [ female announcer ] love.

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here are some of the typical reasons that political leaders in the great state of illinois end up having to leave their jobs in politics. there's having to go to prison for trying to sell a seat in the united states senate. there's having to go to prison on racket earring charges, on corruption charges, on sexual assault charges and obstruction of justice. having to go to prison for bank fraud, for bribery. the most recent high profile example of why someone has to leave politics in illinois, former congressman jesse jackson junior, awaiting sentencing after being convicted of fraud. this is by no means an exhaustive list. one reason people in illinois have to abruptly leave their

jobs in politics because they have an appointment with the warden. but not today. today a person with a very high profile political job in the great state of illinois had to leave that job for a whole new reason. his name is pat brady, he was the chairman of the republican party in illinois. he resigned that position today, not because of prison but because of something he said earlier this year. he said, quote, i do not think the government should be in the business of telling people who can and can't get married. this is the most conservative position. pat brady, chair of the republican party in illinois said that back in january. then pretty much right away, illinois republicans started trying to figure out how to force him out of his job. chairman pat brady defended himself, said he was stating his personal opinion. initially refused to step down. today he said he realized he had to go, saying he had, quote, obviously lost the support of

the state central committee because of my position on gay marriage. remember when republicans were supposedly going to evolve and stop doing stuff like this? hold that thought. we'll be right back.

if you ever invested money in the myriad rainbow flag photography available at i stock photo, this last week has been payoff time for you. seriously, your investment in this crime against aesthetic judgment was rewarded by news agencies' need for pictorial accompaniment to a slew of stories. the great and tiny state of delaware recognizing the right to get married for same sex couples. they passed that bill on party lines largely and the governor signed it.

starting july 1st, gay couples can legally get married in delaware. they only introduced civil unions a year ago. now having experienced the sky not falling, they're moving ahead with real, actual marriage. just a few days ago, the same in rhode island. tiny state marriage equality palooza. same sex couples can get married there as of august 1st. there are 11 states and the district of columbia where gay couples can get married like straight couples, minus the benefits. almost half the states that have marriage equality made the decision to legalize gay marriage in the last six months alone. these 11 states could now be joined soon by minnesota, where the democratic leader of the statehouse said he would only schedule a vote on marriage equality when he knew he had the votes to pass it. now he has scheduled that vote for thursday. democrats in the state senate in

minnesota say they, too, think they have the votes to pass. watch that minnesota might be next. illinois is also considering a gay marriage bill, although the outcome there is less certain than in minnesota. as i reported a moment ago, that proposed bill cost the chair of the illinois republican party his job, cost him his job that he supported that bill. beyond marriage there's more going on in the news to drive up the price of your rainbow flag i stock photo art. last week, jason collins, the nba center that came out of the closet and announced he was gay. the news was met with a resounding oh, how nice from most people. sunday, the previous openly gay in sports pioneer march tina and a half ter loaf a appeared on face the nation to talk about him coming out in the nba. in the course of that interview on cbs, she said this. >> we still don't have equal rights. i have been getting on twitter,

why does this matter, i don't care, which is code for i really don't want to know, but it does matter. in 29 states, you can be fired not just for being gay but if the employer thinks you're gay, you could still get fired. >> upon hearing her explain it on a sunday morning tv show, a group called politifact decided to check it out, this thing this person on television is saying about policy in the american states, could this thing be true? we are on the case. here is the fact that they decided to test in its own special way. >> in 29 states in this country you can still get fired for not just being gay but if your employer thinks you're gay, you could still get fired. >> that's the game. in 29 states you can be fired for being gay or even if the boss just thinks you're gay. here is how they decided to evaluate. 21 states and d.c. prohibit

unemployment discrimination based on sexual orientation. you can see them doing the math. that means, yes, it is true, the remaining 29 states do not ban unemployment discrimination based on sexual orientation. so it is true, like she said. 29 states don't have anti-discrimination laws that include sexual orientation. it is true. if you live in one of the 29 states, there's nothing in state law that stops a business from putting up a sign that says gays need not apply. it is true, politifact looked into it. employers can fire you if you're gay or they think you're gay. state law in 29 states. that's true. they published a map of the 29 states, proving when march tina said 29 states have those laws, that was a true statement. the retired tennis lady says that's true of 29 states, they fact check that statement.

it finds what she said was true about the 29 states, and so then politifact with the name fact in its name revealed that statement to be true. they rated it half true because they checked what they said and found it was true, then rated her half true, because they are politifact. this is why the fact checking is pointless when we need it to mean something. it exists and branded themselves arbitrator of fact and they're terrible at fact checking. fact checked a statement about state law, found it to be true, decided it didn't seem to be true, searched other unrelated information about how there are other things, like some companies don't want to discriminate, doesn't that count for something? no! because that's not the statement you were fact checking. the statement you were fact checking is true. until somebody figures out how

to sue you to retrieve the meaning of the word fact from the dark and airless hole you stuffed it into, then it is not okay to make this stuff up. you are truly terrible. fact checking has to count for something and politifact, you are ruining it for everyone.>> . first on "first look," how did neighbors realize something strange was going on inside that find where three women were held captive. that story has cap cured the nation. i am happy they found their daughters and they're alive and safe. >> tensions will be running high in washington today as we examine the death of four u.s. diplomats in benghazi begin. plus a political comeback for disgraced senator mark sanford, stocks soared to an all