>> that is all for this evening. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. good evening. >> good evening. thank you. thank you at home for joining us this hour. they held a party today in texas. 5,000 people turning out on their lunch hours in austin. look at this. outside the state capitol in the baking july heat. they had dancing and music including from natalie maines from the dixie chicks and a band called the bright light social hour did a song that went on for at least four minutes and contained a single word, wendy. ♪ wendy, wendy, wendy that would be wendy as in wendy davis. the texas democratic state senator who last week filibustered an antiabortion bill in texas until the clock ran out on the special session. and even though texas' majority republicans are back again this week as of today trying to pass that same bill, the scene outside the texas state capitol in austin today, at least for opponents of that bill, it was kind of a party today. it was kind of a party.

a righteous texas party in the heat. thousands of people on the steps of the state capitol spilling out onto the capitol grounds. inside the capitol, inside the legislature, so everybody could see what they were doing with that bill, the legislature opened a live feed of the house debate. it worked fine. the live feed of the senate did not work fine. you could not really hear what the texas senate was saying. the crazy thing about it was how many people complained about that on youtube because people were online trying to watch the texas state senate. a lot of people were online trying to watch. they got really annoyed when the feed didn't work. so everybody was complaining all over youtube and all the rest. in politics, now, with congress unable to do even the most basic things they say they want to do like keeping the interest rates on student loans from doubling today like they did, our country right now with only a few exceptions, really the political action that counts has shifted over to the states.

there isn't very much action in washington most days. there's a lot of it in the states. and if you live in a blue state like colorado or rhode island, that means right now you're getting gun reform laws and marriage equality laws and all sorts of stuff like that. if you are in a red state, you are getting new restrictions on abortion. there are not bipartisan results in the states. there isn't any consensus governing going on in most places. just a matter of which party is in charge and where you live. and if you are lucky, you still have somebody or some news outfit following your state officials around so you can watch them work and figure out what's going on. >> he said i think even when life begins in the horrible situation of rape, it is something that is god intended. is that something that you would denounce or -- >> i think i'd want to see his comments. is there a video of it? >> it was in a debate last night. >> i'd want to see the video or the debate before commenting on it. >> it's true you don't have an

exception when it comes to abortion. you're pro-life in all cases? >> i think it's important to protect the life of the mother. i'm proud to be pro-life. >> even if the possibility of rape that's true? >> that was ohio state treasurer and ultimately failing u.s. senate county josh mandel trying really, really, really hard during that election to not say what he believes about abortion. that clip was posted online by a longtime mainstream ohio reporter named marc kovac who frankly is doing the lord's work of just flip camming everything he covers in ohio politics. then he posts all of it basically raw on to his website at the ohio capital blog. a lot of what ohio knows and the country knows about what's going on in the politics of that state we know because of marc kovac to flip camming everything in ohio politics.

yesterday he flip cammed ohio governor john kasich signing the state's new budget. see the budget there. that's that great big column of white there. great big bill which budgets tend to be. this particular ohio budget contains a number of measures you would not expect to find in a budget. and this stuff jammed into the budget is not necessarily widely known, because ohio republicans added a lot of it into the budget at the last minute, without debating any of it. and then they passed the whole giant budget on a party line vote. so without debate, without any republican public comment on the matter whatsoever, the great state of ohio, as of about last night, dinnertime, ohio got a ton of new really radical changes in its laws that are all about rape. rape and abortion. ohio republicans stuffed into the budget a gag order for rape counselors. so if you're counseling a rape victim, you will have public funding yanked from your rape crisis center if you let the rape victim know she can have an abortion if the rape made her pregnant.

it's a gag order. you can't say that anymore or else you'll lose your funding. also in the budget ohio republicans basically defunded planned parenthood clinics. if you want to get an abortion in ohio, the budget just passed by ohio republicans and signed by john kasich will mandate you get an ultrasound by order of the state which is a fine thing to have if you want one and your doctors want you to have it. it's a whole different idea when you're having one because john kasich says you have to have one, even if you don't want it or your doctors don't want it. it's mandatory now. ohio republicans will make you have it and make you pay for it, too. ohio republicans also wrote into the budget a requirement that ohio doctors give you a speech about that forced ultrasound, regardless of whether the doctor agrees with the speech or thinks it is good information to give you. ohio republicans added all of that to the budget, to the nuts and bolts spending plan for the great state of ohio. now it has a special focus on the human uterus. for one part of the budget, ohio republicans even wrote in a new requirement that any clinic in

the state that provides abortions has to have a transfer agreement with local hospitals. then in the next breath they banned ohio public hospitals from making those transfer agreements with the clinics. so the clinics would get a new thing that they have to have and also they cannot have it. ohio republicans and john kasich also in the budget decided to redefine the word pregnancy in that state. now by decree, from republican governor john kasich and the republicans in the ohio state legislature, your pregnancy begins even before implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterine lining. since several forms of popular birth control work by stopping implantation in the uterine lining, the ohio state budget now essentially says, hey, you want an iud or want to be on birth control pills? that means you want an abortion. now, of course, there's a mandatory ultrasound before you can do that. followed by the speech from your doctor that your doctor doesn't

have a choice about. under this bill, under the letter of this new law, ohio women might conceivably need to get a mandatory ultrasound by order of the state just so you can keep your birth control pills. the birth control, the iud, the birth control pill you've been on forever, now mandatory ultrasound? that's how the law is written. nobody knows for sure if they really freaking mean that or if they have considered that implication of the change in the definition of the word pregnancy that they put in the state budget. nobody knows if that's what they really meant because they never debated it. never came up. there was no debate. nobody got to ask questions. nobody ever had to explain themselves. ohio republicans just passed it silently and sent it to governor john kasich. the governor had until midnight last night, sunday, to x out any of those rape and abortion laws he wanted to x out. he used the line-item veto 22 times yesterday including vetoing part of budget that involves owning spider monkeys. he thought the spider monkeys provision was an outrageous step

backwards for the residents of ohio, but the abortion stuff, all of it including redefining pregnancy in biological terms new to ohio, all of it stayed in the budget. john kasich said yes to all of it. so all the male republican leaders from his administration and from the legislature gathered around john kasich yesterday and he shook all of the guys' hands and then this. >> well, i just have a few comments. is that your son? come on over here. what's your name? come on. i won't bite you. is he a little shy? >> this is felix. >> hey, felix. i've heard a lot about you. how old are you? 4. guess how old i am? can you give me the rock? you know that? huh? yeah. >> he did call the kid over a little later again. see there on his lap. called him over again to help him sign the bill with all the

ceremonial pens. the governor let the kid dot the "i" in kasich. he let him dot the "i" on the new state budget with forced ultrasounds and requirements to shut down the clinics in ohio and the redefinition of pregnancy. so that's what happened in ohio. ohio democrats lost this fight in their state. but at least thanks to the ohio capital blog's video, the whole country can see what it looks like when lawmakers add stuff into a bill that never gets debated. tons of new laws affecting the lives of ohio women specifically and then all the men gather around to sign it and congratulate each other. no debate, no explaining, dot the "i" and call it done. that's ohio. that's governor ultrasound john kasich. and what he did to your rights over the weekend in ohio. meanwhile in north carolina, the new republican majority in that state just passed a bill forcing school health teachers to lie to seventh graders. to lie to seventh graders about abortion. if you're a health teacher, north carolina republicans say the law should direct you to

teach that abortion is a health risk for future pregnancies. they're telling seventh grade teachers to tell seventh graders in north carolina that if you have an abortion, you won't be able to have kids in the future. that abortion keeps women from carrying future pregnancies to term. and that is not true. according to the american college of obstetricians and gynecologists, that isn't true. the script north carolina republicans are writing for the state seventh grade teachers is not science, it's not based in fact. when north carolina republicans brought this bill to the floor, lawmakers lined up at the microphone six deep. they wanted to ask questions about that bill. there was a debate, but when a democrat asked that the debate be transcribed for the record, so people could read later what was said, one of the bill's republican supporters intervened to stop any transcript from being made of the debate. so the debate is not on the record. then north carolina republicans passed this thing with as little explaining as they could manage. north carolina's republican governor pat mccrory pledged

when he was elected in november that he would not sign any new antiabortion bills into law in that state. but now he says he's going to sign this one. with the fake science and the no transcript debate. because after all, it's about abortion. i know he said he wouldn't. can't resist. and there's texas where the weather has been hot and the politics are on fire these days. right red texas where now you can turn out several thousand outraged blue voters without much effort at all. and where an obscure state lawmaker gets this kind of reaction on a monday afternoon in july. >> women will not be bullied! women will not be bullied! women will not be bullied! women will not be bullied! women will not be bullied! women will not be bullied! >> texas republicans had spent the regular session this year saying they were done with legislating against abortion. when governor perry called a special session, the only item

on the agenda was supposedly an interim redistricting plan, but then republicans decided they would unload all their antiabortion legislation, so it's a new ban in texas. a new ban on abortions past 20 weeks and a new ban that would shrink the number of clinics that provide abortions in the state from 42 to 5. restriction on access to abortion that will affect millions of american women. texas democrats and their supporters blocked this bill the first time around. that was the wendy davis filibuster. and all the associated protests. democrats were outnumbered in the legislature, but they won in the first round and lit up the politics of texas in so doing. now texas republicans are back with a new special session that started this afternoon. they're going for it again. if you just look at the numbers, just on the votes in each chamber, republicans clearly have the votes to pass the new antiabortion bill. and the democrats will do everything they can to try to stop them. again, already in austin, there's talk of regular

citizens, again, lining up by the hundreds to testify the way they did last month in the citizens filibuster. democrats are also hinting that they might even go back to their playbook from a decade ago when they fled the state to deny the republicans a quorum. but if you look at the votes, alone, the best-case scenario for the democrats in texas is really just to slow this thing down. the point of fighting is not to defy the fact that republicans have the majority in the legislature. it is rather to make it clear that republicans are going to have a fight on their hands nevertheless. if they want to pull this off. the texas republicans, if they want laws like this, are going to be forced to explain themselves. repeatedly. and when republicans are forced to explain themselves on these bills, sometimes everything goes nuts. like last week when the democrats were slowing everything down in texas and the sponsor of the texas bill was asked to explain why her bill contained no exception for rape or incest victims and she explained she thought that rape kits which are used to collect forensic samples from a rape victim's body to be used in

potential prosecution of the rapist, she explained she thought rape kits somehow solved the problem of rape-causing pregnancy. >> we have hospital emergency rooms. we have funded what's called rape kits that will help a woman, it's basically cleaning her out. and, again, hopefully that will alleviate that. >> their belief in a magic cleaner out kit is why republicans did not include an exception for rape victims in their abortion ban. that is a terrible argument and not based in fact at all. but at least the democrats forced the republicans to make that argument out loud so now we all know that's what they think and we all know that's why there's no rape exception in the bill. that's what's happening in texas right now inside the legislature

and outside on the statehouse steps. that process was not happening in ohio because republicans there were able to pass these radical new antiabortion laws without having to explain themselves. in ohio, they did these new laws in such a way that they essentially prevented them from being debated. they did not get explained. governor kasich did not refer to them at all when he signed them into law. after he signed them into law, he just got up and walked away, taking no questions on the most restrictive new antiabortion measures in the country. just another quiet sunday in ohio. ohio, you will know, does not tend to be a very quiet state when it comes to politics. voters in ohio, remember, rolled back the union stripping thing. they scared republicans off a bill to limit voter rights. they know how to make noise in ohio. so what happens now in ohio? is to too late for texas-style magic in ohio? i see how you win on the way to losing sometimes, but how do you win after you have already lost?

what happens next here? joining us is connie pillich, ohio state representative. she's a democrat. she's running for ohio state treasurer. thank you so much for being with us tonight. >> i really appreciate joining you and letting the world know about the right-wing attacks on women's health in ohio. >> you know, governor kasich, he could have vetoed the abortion amendments in the budget if he had chosen to. he still could have signed the overall budget, but not used the budget to advance all this antiabortion legislation. did you expect that he would veto any of them, or do you think he was in on this from the beginning? >> i think he has very little control of his caucus, frankly, but i never expected him to veto any of the antiabortion language. he signed bills in the previous general assembly to restrict access for women. of course, the things in this budget are so much worse. as you mentioned earlier, they limit women's access to birth control. they make it harder to get

cervical cancer screenings. they insert the legislature in between the conversation of a rape victim and her counselor. and they mandate expensive and unnecessary medical tests on women. it's just atrocious. >> was there an advantage for the republicans in putting this stuff into the budget instead of moving it as normal legislation? they've moved a lot of other antiabortion measures as standalone legislation, but this ended up in the giant budget bill. why strategically did they do that? >> well, if they had gone through the normal committee process, they, of course, would have been subject to the outrage of women across ohio, as we saw happen last year when women flooded the statehouse to protest these egregious measures. but to put something as extreme and outrageous as eliminating birth control and cervical cancer screenings, i don't see how that could have survived public scrutiny in any kind of open process, so they had to slip it in. basically they used the budget

as a dumping ground for all these assaults on women's health. look, i have been having public meetings in my district ever since i took office, every month since five years ago. no one has ever once come to me and said, we want you to eliminate birth control, we don't need cancer screenings. we want you to interfere with rape counselors and doctors. no one has ever said this. and i think this is why people are so frustrated with government because they send me to columbus to work on jobs and education, and what they get is this bizarre right wing extreme fringe agenda to assault women's health. >> as far as i understand ohio law, these specific measures can't be put up for recall the way the union stripping bill was put up for recall a couple years ago because they are part of the budget. because of that, because of the way they pass these, they not only avoided scrutiny in getting them into law in the first place, but as far as i understand it, they also have avoided the threat of recall here.

if that is the case, what happens next? what sort of political consequence did you and other democrats hope to mete out in response to this? >> well, you're very correct in saying we cannot exercise our right to referendum because they're in the bill. going forward the best bet is for democrats to take over all the statewide offices, that's why i'm running for state treasurer. >> connie pillich, candidate for ohio state treasurer. thank you for helping us understand this. it's nice to have you here. >> thank you. lots to come tonight including a people's revolution that may be morphing into a military coup. plus we have "new york" magazine's frank rich here for "the interview" tonight. stay with us. [ male announcer ] this is kevin. to prove to you that aleve is the better choice for him, he's agreed to give it up. that's today? [ male announcer ] we'll be with him all day as he goes back to taking tylenol. i was okay, but after lunch my knee started to hurt again. and now i've got to take more pills. ♪

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left cairo. >> this is the statement they have been waiting for. not that he is in egypt, not that he's in sharm el sheikh, but that he's stepping down. >> this, again, one of the cheers that has been iconic throughout all this. the army and the people hand in hand, and today the army is stepping in to join with the people and now will be taking charge to hand over this. >> there are very few news days in this business where the breaking news banner is not only in all caps but in all caps and italics. big deal, right? mubarak gone after 30 years. what richard was talking about there is the chant, the army and the people hand in hand. when mubarak gave up power in egypt after 30 years, the military in that country was an ultimately decisive factor. thousands of people camped in tahrir square and protested against mubarak night after night and day after day. the army by in large stayed on the sidelines. the army was visible but did not interview in the demonstrations

or attack the protesters. they tried to stay on basically friendly terms of the people on the streets but mostly they stayed out of it. until this moment. this game-changing moment. the high council of the armed forces in egypt, convened without president mubarak on february 10th, 2011. they announced they would support the legitimate demands of the people. since the demands of the people were really just one demand that mubarak step down, the military meeting that day without him and announcing they would support that demand, that was the end. that meeting of the high council of the armed forces, that was on february 10th, and on february 11th, one day later, mubarak was gone. the military is a very powerful and independent institution in egypt. when they decided to weigh in and say mubarak had to go, mubarak had to go. after 30 years in power he was gone. it was a remarkable moment. it paved the way for new

presidential elections in egypt. egyptians picked this guy, mohamed morsi. he was inaugurated a year ago yesterday. and yesterday this year, egyptians marked that one-year anniversary with the largest protests the country has seen since the revolution that toppled mubarak in the first place. over the past two days in half a dozen cities, there have been massive protests in egypt again. 16 people have died. hundreds of people have been injured. a young american who was in egypt to teach english for the summer was killed in the protests in alexandria. he was a 21-year-old college student from maryland named andrew pochter. the protests this weekend, protesters swarmed the headquarters of president morsi's political party. they destroyed the headquarters. they lit the place on fire. they looted it. the people inside the headquarters were reportedly evacuated but not before somebody fired actual live rounds into the crowd, reportedly killing eight people. a year after he took office, protesters are demanding that egyptian president mohamed morsi step down.

for the country to hold early new presidential elections. the people are back in tahrir square in an apparent re-enactment of the demonstrations that brought down the last guy. and just like it was in 2011, everybody this time around has been waiting for a sign from the military. what side will the military take? well today the military spoke. it was an audio statement from the head of the egyptian military that played on state tv today. and the message seemed to be clear. the military said it was giving president morsi 48 hours to meet the demands of the people. whatever that means. or else the military will implement its own roadmap to resolve the political crisis. whatever that means. the terms are vague, but the timeline is not. they're demanding a political response to resolve the crisis in 48 hours, or the military says it will step in. this is an ultimatum. as if to mark the occasion, the military flew helicopters over tahrir square. see there's something underneath the helicopters there?

they're towing egyptian flags. the crowd cheered and cheered and cheered. so the same institution that ended the last guy's decades-long hold on power is now giving the new democratically elected president 48 hours as a deadline. fix what is causing the people to be upset with you, and to pour into the streets by the millions. or the military will fix it for you. how does the president meet the military's demands? what would that look like? what does the military do if the protests continue? is the most populist country in the middle east, one of the most strategically important countries on earth, about to get a new regime in the next 48 hours? don't know, but this is happening very quickly and it's really important. watch this space. vo: i've always thought the best part about this country is that we get to create our future. you get to take ownership of the choices you make. the person you become. i've been around long enough to recognize the people who are out there owning it.

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if you're curious about how to get a job at the supersecretive national security agency, the nsa, it's not that hard. this charming young businesswoman will lead you in the direction of careers at nsa. wonder how she got the job there. maybe because it was of her wide ranging experience as the stock photo model. maybe that's all the nsa needed to know before they hired her. after all, she is businesswoman with folders. she's also well-dressed and looking at camera. she is everything the nsa needs and more. literally, there is too much of her. the nsa decided not to use her legs. i'm not saying the nsa stole this stock photograph, but they did noticeably crop it just

above the getty water mark on her legs and the water mark is generally how you know this is a photo of a model that is for sale. i'm just saying. aside from the nsa possibly stealing stock photos, there's something else newsworthy going on at the nsa's website right now. this page used to hold the nsa's latest fact sheet, responding to the reporting on that agency that has stem med from the edward snowden leak. now, error notice. it seems you have experienced an error. this agency is answering its critics but then erasing its answers. and there's more to that. hold on. ♪ [ male announcer ] fight pepperoni heartburn and pepperoni breath fast with tums freshers.

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[ slap! ] [ male announcer ] your favorite foods fighting you? fight back fast with tums. calcium-rich tums starts working so fast you'll forget you had heartburn. ♪ tum tum tum tum tums back in 2003, the much beloved singer and actress barbra streisand filed a lawsuit. she decided to sue a group called the california coastal records project. the california coastal records project documents erosion on the california coast by taking pictures and posting them online. it's not super controversial activity, but barbra streisand's home happened to be on the california coast in an area they were documenting erosion and she really did not want people to see pictures of her house on this group's website. so she filed a lawsuit to force the group to take down the

picture of her house. she sued them initially for $50 million. the group fought the lawsuit and not only did they win the lawsuit, and not only was barbra streisand ordered to pay the group's legal fees, but her attempt to make this one picture of her house disappear from the internet totally backfired. instead of making the photo disappear, she drew a ton of attention to it. before she filed her lawsuit, this image had been downloaded six times and two of those six times were by her own lawyers. after the lawsuit, and all the publicity, more than 400,000 people had visited the site and seen the picture. that is why when somebody tries to erase a piece of information online, something they don't want anybody to see, and that effort backfires and more people see it than ever, that backfire effect is called the streisand effect. so keeping in mind the streisand effect, that it is hard to erase things from the internet and that by trying to erase things

from the internet, you only draw attention to them, this is what you see today if you try to track down a pdf document from the national security agency website. it was a fact sheet that was supposed to explain the rules the government follows when it comes to spying on americans. as you can see here, though, it has been removed from the internet. seems you have experienced an error. though the nsa tried to remove this document from the internet, it still lives. it lives because everything online is archived one way or the other. the nsa of all people ought to know that. and, of course, it is when you try to erase stuff that everybody notices what it is. so now we know that this is the information that the nsa made available for a minute that was supposed to explain what is and is not allowed under section 702 of the foreign intelligence surveillance act. according to this fact sheet that the nsa made available for a hot second before they tried to erase it, the government does not target americans for intelligence purposes. and if it does target a u.s. person by accident, "any inadvertently acquired communication of or concerning a

u.s. person must be promptly destroyed if it is neither relevant to the authorized purpose nor evidence of a crime." shortly after the nsa put up that fact sheet on their website, senators ron wyden and mark udall wrote a letter to the head of the nsa saying the fact sheet was bunk. they said they had a problem with some of the information on that fact sheet. they said they couldn't explain the exact nature of the problem in this letter without revealing classified information, but you know what, that part about how information on american citizens is destroyed promptly? that's not true. senators udall and wyden wrote that letter on june 24th. the next day the head of the nsa wrote back to them saying that the nsa, yes, possibly could have been more precise in its language. in the fact sheet. and then right after that, poof. the fact sheet disappeared. the nsa tried to take the document off the internet. which you cannot do because really it's the internet. and when you try to take things off the internet, boom, it's the

streisand effect. here's the story of the missing nsa fact sheet on national tv which never would have happened had they left it up there. and just fixed it. strikethrough. it's okay. hold on. more ahead. i think farmers care more about the land

than probably anyone else. we've had this farm for 30 years. we raise black and red angus cattle. we also produce natural gas. that's how we make our living and that's how we can pass the land and water back to future generations. people should make up their own mind what's best for them. all i can say is it has worked well for us. ♪ and i'll never desert you ♪ ♪ i'll stand by you yeaaaah! yeah. so that's our loyalty program. you're automatically enrolled, and the longer you stay, the more rewards you get. great! oh! ♪ i'll stand by you

♪ won't let nobody hurt you ♪ isn't there a simpler way to explain the loyalty program? yes. standing by you from day one. now, that's progressive. frank rich is here for "the interview" next. yay. dry, and i do the cleaning. there's only two of us... how much dirt can we manufacture? more than you think. very little. [ doorbell rings ] [ lee ] let's have a look, morty. it's a sweeper. what's this? what's that? well we'll find out. we'll find out. [ lee ] it goes under all the way to the back wall. i came in under the assumption that it was clean. i've been living in a fool's paradise! oh boy... there you go... morty just summed it up. the next 44 years we'll be fine.

meet james clapper. he already knows you. he's the director of national intelligence. the head guy in charge of the

nation's 16 intelligence agencies including the nsa and cia. the "washington post" revealed this weekend that james clapper apologized to the senate intelligence committee for lying, for not telling them the truth when he answered this question from senator ron wyden a couple of months ago. >> so what i wanted to see if you can give me a yes or no answer to the question, does the nsa collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of americans? >> no, sir. >> no, sir. march of this year, the nsa does not collect any type of data on millions of americans. a few months later, of course, edward snowden revealed that the government sure does collect and keep data about millions of americans. and once that information was made public by edward snowden, the director of national intelligence james clapper tried to explain his way out of what he had said at that senate hearing. >> could you explain what you

meant when you said there was not data collection on millions of americans? >> i thought, though, in retrospect, i was asked when are you going to stop beating your wife kind of question, meaning not answerable by a simple yes or no. so i responded in what i thought was the most truthful or least untruthful manner by saying no. >> the most truthful or least untruthful manner. following that ridiculous explanation which made it seem like maybe james clapper had been taken off guard by the question, he just did the best he could? after that explanation, senator wyden released this revealing actually mr. clapper had the question in advance. senator wyden warned him specifically he was going to be asking that question. when mr. clapper gave him that no, sir, response, wyden gave him a chance afterwards to amend his question and he refused.

supposedly the least untruthful answer thing was the planned response all along. now james clapper is admitting it was just a lie, it's not true, and he's saying he's sorry. that's kind of a big deal. officials at the highest and most secretive levels of government are being held accountable for things they have said to mislead americans and that is something that does not happen very often. senators who were tasked with overseeing these high ranking government officials and these programs are publicly and privately questioning their efforts to mislead people and proving that they lied when they lied and making them admit it. you may like or dislike the idea of edward snowden as a character in the middle of this nsa drama, but the fact remains no matter how you feel about him, he's a consequential cat. he's changing a lot about what we know about our government and the way it has to explain itself. today we learned that mr. snowden, the nsa leaker who's reportedly seeking asylum in russia after being stuck in the transit area of moscow's airport for more than a week. the state department has not confirmed his asylum request,

but russian authorities say that he has made it. russian president vladimir putin said today that he will only consider mr. snowden's request for asylum if mr. snowden ceases, quote, his work aimed at damaging our american partners. no matter how strange that sound coming from me. tonight mr. snowden released his first statement since leaving hong kong. it says "in the end the obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me. we are stateless or imprisoned or powerless. no, the obama administration is afraid of you. it is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised. and it should be." it should be afraid. edward snowden's leaks have forced a difficult debate about things that the government does not like to talk about. it is a debate that now includes the director of national intelligence apologizing for lying to congress.

would that apology have happened? would that correction of the record have ever happened without him? but is the on the lam leaker who started all this right? that an informed public on this subject is an angry public? is he right that the government should be afraid of public backlash here? joining us now for "the interview" is frank rich, "new york" magazine's writer at large. his new column is called "when privacy jumped the shark." it has a dirty picture in it which is at least the lowest common denominator to check it out. it's tastefully done. >> very tastefully. try for that. don't always succeed. >> so you contend that americans have no expectation of privacy, so even bombshell revelations about violations of our privacy on a grand scale basically elicit yawns. >> yeah, i mean, look, there are people who care very much including me and you and also people on the right like libertarians like rand paul who's outraged by this. but the vast middle seems to be indifferent. in part i think because we're so used to surrendering our privacy, whether it be to social

networking or commerce sites or, you know, anything we do. i read in this new book "big data" that when a 140-character twitter message, a tweet, there are 33 different pieces of information that you're surrendering in addition to the actual content of -- >> so the tweet's only 144 characters -- 140 characters, but there's 33 pieces of metadata associated with it? >> yes, and so we're used to it. we're enured to it. particularly people under 50. under 50, people don't tend to follow the snowden story. doesn't mean it's not a real issue, it is. i think you see it reflected in the political environment in washington. who is -- take james clapper who lied and really should be out, in my view. also he's such an incompetent liar you think, why is this guy running national intelligence? at least a spy should be able to do his lie effectively.

but anyway, who's calling, who in washington is calling for him to be out? not the democratic leadership or the republican leadership. and indeed, i think whether it's nancy pelosi and harry reid or mitch mcconnell and john boehner, they're all sort of on the same page. snowden's sort of the villain. he should be apprehended. and the big issues are being lost. indeed, they're being lost under the shadow of snowden, who's a fascinating character. >> the reaction in washington i think actually is fascinating because it's not -- it doesn't break down on partisan terms. but we have seen -- i mean, steve bennan writing at the blog for the show this morning was talking about how calls for resignation, calls for the heads of administration officials are basically as regular as having a cup of coffee when you wake up in the morning. like they'll call for the resignation of anybody for anything because they hope it will hurt the president. >> right. >> but with clapper, even with him not just lying to congress

but admitting that he lied to congress after having previously told a different story, that was itself actually untrue about the lie in the first place, beep, beep, beep -- >> nothing. the only people who seem concerned are, as you mentioned, udall and wyden, paul on the republican side. you'd think the republican party which is so angry about intrusive government and obama care and the supposed irs scandal even if it's sort of a non-scandal, you'd think that they would care. but no, there's just absolute dead silence. and i think that reflects the public to some extent. i don't think the public is terribly engaged by this issue. obviously, some people are. civil libertarians are. there's a base in the democratic party that is. and there's a libertarian part of the republican party. but i think that's it. >> do you think that the drama of mr. snowden's flight from american prosecution makes people more or less focused on the privacy concerns at the heart of what he has disclosed? if he were a boring guy or a guy who had turned himself in or a

guy who we never knew who he was, would we be more focused on the substance of what he leaked rather than on him? >> i think we might. we don't know that. but look, he's become now like clyde barrow in bonnie & clyde. he's thumbed his nose at the establishment. he's defied -- the press couldn't find him. the government couldn't find him. so he's become this kind of interesting where's waldo figure. but i bet many people who are watching it with some amusement can't quite remember what the substance was of the leaks that he gave up to the press. >> frank rich, "new york" magazine writer at large. thank you for your time tonight. i occasionally feel like this is our job, that you and i talk about stuff that gets us all fired up but doesn't feel reflected in the world at large. but i take comfort from talking to you about it. >> same here. thank you. >> we'll be right back. ready?

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this is the fleetville fire company. station 63 of the fleetville fire company, which is located in northeast pennsylvania. it's a 45-member team that protects about 1,800 residents there. the fleetville fire company has been around for 65 years, and it is very proudly a 100% volunteer fire company. what you're seeing here is a part-time gig for all the men and women who make up this company. there are thousands of all-volunteer firefighter companies all across our country, standing at the ready just like they do in fleetville. when you put together all of the firefighters across the nation, 70% of them are volunteers. 70%. and these volunteers generally make up the fire units in small towns and counties. in bigger cities, of course, you have standing fire departments. you have professional firefighters who work fires, who also work emergency calls full-time. these firefighters like the fdny here in new york city, they're deployed not just to put out fires but also to be our nation's first responders for

disasters of any kind. so you have volunteer firefighters in small towns and counties. you have standing fire departments in big cities. but then you have the hot shot crews. hot shot crews are sort of like the special ops commandos of firefighting. in the 1940s specially trained crews were put together not to battle house fires in small towns and in the big cities but instead to battle giant wildfires, to battle wildfires that were breaking out on national forest land. these 25-man squads were called hot shots because the hottest part of the fire is where these elite firefighters did their work. they went to the center of the blaze. there are now over 100 hot shot crews at the ready to fight wildfires 24/7 during fire season. being a hot shot firefighter means staying in peak physical condition all year round because the job itself requires it. when a wildfire breaks out, these hot shot crews, they're the ones who hike into the wilderness toward the fire.

they're armed with chainsaws and rakes and shovels and they do the backbreaking work to create a break line that's essentially meant to starve the fire of fuel. they starve it of the brush and vegetation that these fires feed off of. they make a line that the fire can't cross. hot shots carry 40-pound packs on their backs with their equipment as well as the food and water that they need to survive. they are self-contained. they also carry something else that is really important. they carry specially designed fire shelters that serve as, god forbid, their last line of defense against a wildfire that gets out of control that they cannot get away from. these are fire shelters made of aluminum foil essentially. they're reflective. they sort of look like fireproof sleeping bags. and hot shots are trained to get into these fortified bags in under two minutes if it looks like the situation is getting beyond their control. these shelters are considered to be their last resort. well, yesterday afternoon 19 of these fire shelters were discovered in the hills of arizona in the midst of a blaze

that is raging across thousands of acres in arizona. 19 members of an elite 20-person hotshot crew out of prescott, arizona were found dead battling that fire. many of them were found inside their last resort fire shelters. last month the granite mountain hotshots were fighting fires in nearby new mexico before they were called back to arizona, their home state, to fight a wildfire that was raging less than an hour from their home fire department. it was that fire that ultimately took the lives of 19 of these firefighters. tonight the city of prescott, arizona is mourning the loss of their hotshot team. the governor of arizona said it was as dark a day as i can remember in the state. 14 of the hot shots who died yesterday were only in their 20s. this tragedy yesterday marked the single deadliest day for u.s. firefighters since the 9/11 attacks. it was this country's biggest loss of firefighters to a wildfire in 80 years. today president obama called those 19 hotshots american heroes. the fire that they were battling

in arizona remains tonight 0% contained. now it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." thanks for being with us tonight. the battle over women's reproductive freedom continues today in texas. and wendy davis is not backing down. >> women will not be bullied! >> they're bullying women and their liberties. >> it became a national rallying cry. >> this movement, though, is kind of spreading across the country. >> davis's filibuster as a rallying cry for democrats. >> filibustered an anti-abortion bill for 11 hours. >> the intent of the rules is to restrict access to abortion. really plainly and, again, without disguise.