the most stable individual. i mean, this is what happens when we have an overly armed society, any society, particularly, where racial bias is so prevalent, all of these things combine to create these disasters. >> criminal defense attorney karen desoto. msnbc contributor james peterson. anti-racism ector tim wise. that is "all in" for this evening. the "rachel maddow show" starts now. tonight, special guest host, ezra klein. good evening, ezra. >> i should have known i would have seen you around these parts. >> i'm looking forward to the spitzer interview. i'm going up to my office to watch it. >> thank you very much. thank you to you at home for sticking around the next hour. just because rachel has the night off and well deserved, it does not mean the news took the night off with her. there is the huge announcement texas governor rick perry made today about his political future. then also in texas, the popular uprising to the abortion bill that fwomgovernor perry is making sure, making certain the texas senate is going to get a chance to actually pass. that battle is heating up again

tonight after the long holiday weekend. and as chris mentioned, for the interview tonight, you might have heard of former new york governor elliot sfipitzer, mayb running for office again. he's not running for governor or senator or even mayor. he's running for local comptroller. we will ask him why. but we begin tonight, we begin tonight with actually something shocking. this is a huge story. and i mean it when i say a story every american needs to know about and be thinking about. it is a story about a secret court. one that is operating inside the united states. it only hears one side of any argument. a secret court that is honestly, it is rewriting our surveillance laws. it is deciding what we meant as a society, as a country, when we said the government can't indiscriminately spy on us. to understand what this court is doing, though, we need to get into a corner of the law making process. a part of how we really do it. that most in the country don't think that much about. the way that most of us think

about the process of lawmaking is kind of simple. congress passes a bill, and then the president signs a bill and maybe he's got a lot of pens when he does it and gives the pens away. when that is done, when that ceremony comes to a close, that bill is is now a low. in president obama's first term, before all the gridlock paralyzed washington, this kind of thing, bills becoming laws, happened a lot. congress passed health reform in 2010 after a big, long, ugly fight. and then president obama signed health reform into law at a big fancy signing ceremony. there were a ton of pens that day. then when it was over, when it was over, we had obama care. congress passed it. the president signed it. it was done. we had ourselves a brand new law. that is how it works. frankly, we even have a cartoon about that. you guys remember lonely little bill from the incredibly awesome "schoolhouse rock" series. lonely bill made mthis process, how a bill becomes law, really

familiar to most americans. there's something "schoolhouse rock" left out. there's something that happens after the pens are given out and the bill becomes a law. this other thing that happens which is people either, they don't like the law or don't understand what it means or maybe the law's now old and people aren't sure if it applies to some new thing that's come along. and so they take the law to the court. and sometimes it goes to the federal courts and sometimes it goes all the way up to the supreme court. and after that, the courts look at the law and they say, well, here's what the law means or what that word means or here's what it applies to or doesn't apply to or here's whether it is constitutional or not. and when they say that, when it reaches a highest court it will reach and they make that decision, that court ruling becomes effectively the law. whatever that court decides, that is what the law actually means now. it is a law we have to follow. take obama care, the original law that passed congress, the one president obama signed with all of those pens. you can see him reaching for them and putting them back down. it said something pretty important. it said states that don't expand

their medicaid programs to accept millions and millions of new low-income individuals, they lose all of the medicaid money they get from the federal government. all the rest of it, too. not just the new medicaid money, the old medicaid money. all of it. no state can afford that. they were all going to take the medicaid money. that provision was challenged in the courts, and the supreme court ultimately decided that while obama care, itself, is constitutional, and while it may say you can't have the medicaid expansion if you reject it, you lose all your money, they decided that part actually is not constitutional. the court said states do not have to expand their medicaid programs in order to take their money. they tweaked the law. now a bunch of them aren't expanding their medicaid programs. congress passed a bill. the president signed it into law thin the court had the ability to redefine the scope of it, to essentially remake the law. here's the thinging. this is really important. this is how democracy works. when judges make or change the law like in the case of obama care, the rulings are open to the public.

their reasoning, their reasoning is open to the public. why they did what they did. both sides of the argument get represented in court. we can listen to those arguments. since everything is open to the public, congress can then hear from voters then go back and rewrite the law. to can make it clear, make it inform to the constitution. the public accountable democratic legislative process continues on. that is how law making works. that how the court works. that is how it works usually. what we learned this weekend thanks to extraordinary new reporting is that one section of our court system has been of operating in a completely different way. it's the court that decides how much the federal government is allowed to spy on us. so an important court, the spying court. it meets in complete secret. this one court that meets in secret has been reinterpreting the laws passed by congress in a way that gives government vastly

more power to spy on the american people than it had before, than we thought we were giving it when we passed the laws. today the "wall street journal" reported this court's decision to redefine a single word in the patriot act, the word "relevant," "relevant," is the thing that changed the decision that allowed the government to essentially begin collecting whatever information they wanted on our communications in bulk. just hoovering it up. when congress passed the patriot act, do you remember that? it allowed the government to compel businesses to demand they hand over records and information as long as it could show those records were, "relevant" to an authorized investigation. relevancy was a key. it had to be part of the investigation. the only way the government could get those kinds of personal records was to go to court and prove they needed them. prove they needed them because they related to the case that they were working on. that is what congress wrote into the law. what the american people thought got signed with all those little pens. this court, however, this spying court, decided in secret that

the word "relevant" didn't mean, like, relevant to the thing they were doing, it just meant kind of everything. congress didn't mean relevant in the way we normally understand it. they just men, sure, collect whatever information you want because it could become relevant some day. they redefined a word in a law passed by congress and, thereby, authorize the federal government to just hoover up phone records indiscriminately. and we didn't know about that until now. and, look, it would be one thing if this were a normal court. if this were john roberts and scal scalia, kagan, clarence thomas, and all the other, all the rest of the gang remaking these laws in public where we can hear what they're saying and read their opinion s and congress could react, saying, yes, that's what we meant by relevant or no, it's not, this is what we meant by relevant. that's now how it's happening. this is happenings in secret. laws passed by congress are being rewritten by the secret court without any sort of public comment or public review.

over the weekend "the new york times" reported on more than a dozen, a dozen classified rulings from this court that have created essentially a secret body of law totally removed from public scrutiny. the "times" said this court has "quietly become almost a parallel supreme or the." that, i think, is a scary quote enough. a parallel supreme court out of view. it is unlike any other court in the country. can would give the "schoolhouse rock" guys a run at their money if they were trying to make adorable, explanational videos. the 11 judges for 7-year term, they're chosen, appointed, selected by one person, the chief justice of the supreme court. every single one of these 11 judges serving on this court right now, on the spying court, this very powerful court, every

one of them chosen and appointed by cheap jief justice john robe. john robert, alone, gets to continue making those appointments until he retires or dies. those don't need to be approved by the senate, the majority of the supreme court. it is simply john roberts, who do you think would do a good job here? as you might expect from john roberts, out of the 11 judges currently serving on the court, 10 of them were appointed by republican presidents. only one of them was appointed by a democrat. these 11 judges all chosen by roberts, ten of which are republicans, they meet in secret at this federal courthouse in washington. the presiding judge only hears the government's argument before issuing a decision. there's no representative of the people or the other side. no one even tasked with making the argument of the other side which, by the way, is how it is core to how every other court works. you have to hear both sides. the decision this judge, this john roberts appointed judge who only hears one side, can't be

appealed by the public, seen by the public or criticized by the public because the public doesn't know it happened. they can't read the rulings. they're not informed of them. nothing. no other part of u.s. law works this way. no other part of the court system works this way. after congress passes a law and the president signs it, it is this secret court that has the ability to go back and reinterpret what they meant without the public and without most members of congress even knowing what they're doing. this is big news and thanks to this reporting, we now know, we know that the court is doing something we did not know they were doing before. they're not just telling the federal government, yes, what you want to do is in accordance with the law or no, it is not. it's not just mother may i. this court is reinterpreting the law. making law. none of us can see it. none of us can comment on it. it affects all of us in a really direct way. now that we know this is happening, a sort of odd bedfellow coalition in the senate including democrat jeff merkley and republican mike lee are pushing to declassify the

rulings. according to my colleague, greg sergeant at the "washington post," democratic senator chuck schumer of new york is now also lending his support to the proposal and the top democrat in the house, nancy pelosi, said she supports a similar piece of legislation over in her chamber. so that's something. that would be better. it would at least let us know what this court is doing. but is this really the way it should work? this secret court thing? is this really the way we want to run our democracy? joining us now is eliza, co-director of the liberty and national security program at nyu school. eliza, thank you so much for being here tonight. >> thanks for having me. >> so right now when the government goes before this court, they have an incredible win record. it is the tiniest fraction of the thousands of cases they bring before them that are rejected. that's before you get into rewriting the laws. what do we take from that? because this kind of court structured the way it is is very -- it's possible it's getting captured. only hearing from the government and they're being too soft.

what can we take from this incredible win record? >> absolutely. i think this is a flawed institution by design. by concept. because it operates in secret, because it only hears from one party, as you said, always the same party. because all the judges are appointed by one person, it's very difficult to see how a court like that could avoid capture, and if you look at the win record that you were talking about, we're talking about somewhere about 34,000 applications since 1978 of which only 11 were denied, and that's one of those numbers where if you type it into your computer to get the percentage, you get your decimals is way out -- it's something like .03% were denied. it really is an incredible win record. i think it's very important to understand that the adversarial process in our court system is not a matter of giving some sort of procedural handicap to whichever party happens not to be the government. it is the best way that any

legal system has found for getting to the truth. and when you only have one party showing up, you're just more likely to get the wrong answer. >> right. and now one thing that i want to separate out here is we knew, we knew beforehand, we knew a week ago, two weeks ago, three weeks ago that these courts were getting these 20,000, 30,000 applications and accepting almost all of them. sometimes they modify the application a bit, but accepting almost all of them. but i'm not sure we knew -- at least we weren't sure about -- was that they were in interpreting, reinterpreting the patriot act in very important ways. that they had come up with new classifications like deciding that your metadata, who you were calling and how long you were calling and who you were e-mailing wasn't the same thing as your communications. how new is this actually? how much did we kind of sort of know this was going on and how much is this something of a shock to the system to learn this court is engaging in sort of high-level reinterpretation like that? >> sure. we certainly knew metadata is not generally thought of in the same way communications are thought of legally, they don't

have the same protections under the fourth amendment. but there was still a statute. section 215 of the patriot act that said the government couldn't get that metadata unless it came in and showed it was relevant to intelligence or a terrorism investigation. i don't think anyone would have predicted that the court would look at all americans' metadata for all telephone calls that american makes and would somehow come to the conclusion that all of this data could be relevant to a specific authorized investigation. i think, you know, you can predict that the court is going to lean in the government's direction for all the factors we discussed before. this is an extreme interpretation i think has taken a lot of people by surprise. >> eliza goitein, thank few your being here today. it is honestly a shocking issue. >> thank you. i guess this is big announcements by governors day here on the show. first we've got the epic battle

for rights in texas. it got even more complicated today after governor rick perry shared his future plans. we will have the very latest from austin, next. and later, on the interview, my guest will be former new york governor elliot spitzer who is making some very memorable headlines of his own. stick around. hey linda!

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the astonishing battle for reproductive rights in texas is about to go to the next level. the president of plan the parenthood, cecile richards, she will join me for that next. ♪ ♪

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the largest caterpillar dealership in the united states. we're not talking caterpillar the bug. we're talking the heavy machinery caterpillar. the oechber, he also owns the san antonio spurs basketball game and is one of the most generous donors to republican donor rick perry's campaigns over the years. we are talking hundreds of thousands of dollars generous. you do not have any friends this good, and if you do, i'd like to also be their friend. it was no surprise when governor rick perry wanted to stage a big event launching his campaign in 2009, he chose as a backdrop his campaign donor's dealership. but things did not go well at the holt cat dealership that day. the whole event was supposed to stream live on the internet to millions of texans. instead of millions seeing it, only thousands did. the live stream was compromised. instead of seeing rick perry in front of a local business launching his re-election campaign, people saw an error

message. the campaign accused kay bailey hutchison of hacking. her campaign said, we did not hack you, you just are very bad with the computers on the internets. the fbi investigated and nothing really came of it. that was the last time rick perry was at the holt cat dealership in san antonio for a big event, that was four years ago. today, today he was back with a slightly different announcement. >> i remain excited about the future and the challenges ahead, but the time has come to pass on the mantle of leadership. today i'm announcing i will not seek re-election as governor of texas. >> it was like the decision, texas governor edition. rick perry is not running for governor again which is a very big deal. he's the longest serving governor currently in office.

for a while during the 2012 republican presidential primary there, he was actually the front-runner. rick perry is a significant national figure. but that announcement today, that is only one reason all eyes are on texas. this reason. this is the other. republicans in the texas legislature are back this week for the second special session dedicated to accomplishing just one goal. shutting down 80% of the abortion clinics in the state. the number of clinics in this great big state, huge big state, would shrink to just five. five clinics covering 270,000 square miles. during the first special session, texas democrats were able to outmaneuver republicans and block that bill. state senator wendy davis pulled off her 13-hour filibuster with the help of some very dedicated activists and very dedicated protesters. and all of a sudden out of nowhere, wendy davis, she became a household name. that was almost two weeks ago. it was a big win for them. but governor perry then almost

immediately called for a second special session with the abortion bill first up on the docket. the state senate held its second committee hearing today and again just like last week and the week before, thousands of people from all over the state showed up today to testify. they wanted to speak in person to their legislature about the bill. there were so many of them that the committee cut off the line at 11:00 a.m. everyone in line before that got to speak. everyone after that had to submit their testimony in writing. each person was allowed to speak for a couple of minutes. tonight, they are still speaking. they'll be testifying until about midnight local time. and republicans control the texas legislature and so it is highly unlikely they mess this up again. they will not let democrats filibuster and win this time. they are not taking any more chances. they will pass this bill closing down 37 of the 42 clinics in the state and governor perry could conceivably sign it into law by the end of the week. meanwhile in wisconsin over the weekend, republican governor scott walker signed an abortion

bill forcing women to have mandatory medically unnecessary ultrasounds. like in texas, that bill, too, would shut down clinics intentionally. that is the point of these kinds of bills. you inflate regulations above and beyond the capability of the clinics so they have no choice but to shut down. you make it so they can't afford to comply then they have to shut their doors. here i thought republicans hated intrusive government regulations on small business. now, everyone expected governor walker would sign the bill and he did sign it, no surprise there. the surprise was actually how he signed it. usually when governors sign bills they want lots of attention for it. they have lpublic signings with lots of press. make a big speech and talk about all the people in the state who will be helped by the legislation. governor walker did not do that. instead, he signed the bill privately the day after the independence day holiday when no one was paying attention. then he issued a written statement about it. nothing to see here at all, folks, you can move right along. that law was supposed to go into effect today. planned parenthood at the aclu

filed a lawsuit challenging the law's constitutionality within hours of the signing. and today a judge blocked the law temporarily. so one republican governor signs an antiabortion bill in private, and another announces he's not running for re-election just as his antiabortion pet project is about to become a reality. what is going on here? joining us to tell us what is going on here is cecile richards, president of the planned parenthood federation of america. miss richards, thank you so much for being here tonight. >> sure, ezra. good to be with you. >> a few hours ago a judge granted a restraining order against the abortion bill in wisconsin. it was supposed to go into effect today but not it is on hold because of this lawsuit you filed. why do you believe the bill is unlawful, and why did you choose to sue in this case? >> well, look, not just wisconsin, i'm here in texas tonight. what we're seeing across the country is state legislatures trying to restrict women's access to health care, and it's unfortunately these kind of bills are really intended not for the help and safety of

women, but really to shut down women's access to reproductive care and that's really what the judge, federal judge said in wisconsin today. it is incredible to be here in texas, a state where we have the highest rate of uninsured folks in the country, have for five years running, and yet governor perry and the texas legislature are trying to actually shut down even more women's health centers through passing this bill through a special session this week. >> i would think that governor perry's announcement that he's not running for re-election would create something of a problem for your campaign because it obviously becomes harder to pressure a politician who's not expecting to go before the voters, at least that state's voters, again. so what do you do now that you cannot threaten to derail his re-election? >> well, look, governor perry has made his own political agenda, put that ahead of women's health care in texas for pretty much every year he's been in office. i think it's good news, actually, he's decided not to run again.

it's time we actually put women's health care first and not sort of a political agenda. and, look, in this state, we've seen thousands of people, again, even just today, coming to the legislature to testify saying that women need access to preventative care, they need access to health care, and we rank in one of the highest rates of unintended pregnancy in the country, teenage pregnancpregna. yet this legislature is doing nothing to advance women's access to care. they're trying to push more and more health centers to close in the state of texas at a time in which women's care is at an all-time low in this state. >> you're launching a bus tour this week to publicize the republicans in the legislature are doing with the abortion bill. where are you actually going on the tour? what do you hope to accomplish? >> well, we'll be kicking off tomorrow in austin, and then going to houston and dallas, and we hope that certainly folks will join us and encourage anyone who's watching that wants to join, go to stand with texas women on facebook, to find out where the activities are going

to be. really, again, i think, ezra, it's not just about this bill. what senator davis did in your filibuster, what you're hearing people testify about for hours and hours again today at the texas capitol is we've had dozens of women's health centers already closed in the state as a result of these really attacks on birth control, attacks on women's access to preventative care, access to cancer skroo screening. really this bus tour is to make sure we get this story out of the capitol and talk about the real impact on women's lives. what we've seen at planned parenthood is literally a whole new generation of young women and young men who are saying they want a texas where people are, want to locate their businesses, where they can get access to health care, where they can take care of their families. and unfortunately the legislature, at this point, is putting politics ahead of the health care of women. >> cecile richards, president of the plan tned parenthood of

america. coming up ahead, former new york governor elliot spitzer. you don't want to miss this. this day calls you. to fight chronic osteoarthritis pain. to fight chronic low back pain. to take action. to take the next step. today, you will know you did something for your pain. cymbalta can help. cymbalta is a pain reliever fda-approved to manage chronic musculoskeletal pain. one non-narcotic pill a day, every day, can help reduce this pain.

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♪ this is a very exciting day. if you are a member of the media, this is a very, very exciting day because finally at long last, like water in the desert, we get to talk about sex scandals again. sex scandals.

that is way better. sex scandals. they're way better for ratings than protests in egypt and nsa spying and sequestration. this, though, is not the part of the show where we go for ratings. this is the ezra klein challenge. it's a part where i get to talk about whatever peer review chart heavy research i want as long as i keep it under two minutes. in tonight's challenge, i'm going to do the seemingly impossible. i am going to make sex scandals boring and peer reviewed. in particular, how long does it take to recover from scandal? clock? all right. we are not interested here in sex scandals, per se. we're looking at scandals in general. what do we know about how politicians recover and survive scandals? we actually know quite a lot. a study released in the "social science quarterly" last month, of course, by far my favorite bedtime reading, looked at every house race between 1972 and 2006. it separated the races where the member had a scandal referred to

the house ethics committee. and then the ones where the member had no scandal like that. and you won't be surprised to learn, you win more often when you don't have a huge scandal sitting in your lap. about 87% of just nonscandal normal members of congress win re-election. only 49% of scandally incumbents win. the really interesting part and the part that should make elliot spitzer and his team happy is this graph right here. this graph shows what we might call the political life cycle of a scandal. that blue line. that's members of congress who have these scandals. the black line is members of congress without them. it begins two years before a scandal, this graph, and at that point everybody's kind of the same. scandal guys, nonscandal guys. before they have a scandal, everybody's the same. but then you hit the scandal. that's that big dip in the blue line. if you survive that, though, if you're still around two years later, you're pretty much back to normal, and four years later, four years later pretty much all that damage is gone. you have recovered. elliot spitzer's scandal was

five years ago, so if a life cycle of a scandal is four years, he should be pretty much back to normal by now. that is the good news for him. the bad news for him is he had the worst kind of scandal. another paper found that a scandal about money took 6.7 points off a member of congress' vote chair, but a scandal reduced it by 9.2 points which is, of course, a lot larger. scandals, politicians can survive them. voters eventually forget about them, but they care more about sex scandals than money scandals. and we are done. stop the clock. i see that one second there. we were done. that's what we know. but that's the kind of big empirical research picture. when we come back, though, we're going to get the more human picture. the elliot spitzer, former fwom governor of new york, elliot spitzer, will join to tell us why he is getting back into elected politics. wi drive a ford fusion. who is healthier, you or your car?

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medical conditions and medications. serious side effects could include increased risk of prostate cancer; worsening prostate symptoms; decreased sperm count; ankle, feet or body swelling; enlarged or painful breasts; problems breathing while sleeping; and blood clots in the legs. common side effects include skin redness or irritation where applied, increased red blood cell count, headache, diarrhea, vomiting, and increase in psa. ask your doctor about the only underarm low t treatment, axiron. all right. pop quiz. which single industry spent the most money on the 2012 elections? wasn't the oil industry, not the pharmaceutical industry. it wasn't lawyers or even

lobbyists, actually. the single industry that fwagav the most money directly to campaigns and superpacs during the 2012 election, there's no drum roll, i'm hearing, wall street. the financial sector spent more last year on politicians than any other single industry. they gave $61 million, $61 million to the romney campaign and about $19 million to the obama campaign, which by the way is like you and me giving a quarter. but wall street was also the biggest single sector donor to superpacs. wall street spends a ton of money on politics and politicians, and that might be why, although there is much main street versus wall street grandstanding in washington. most politicians do not make a habit of trying to actually take on wall street in any real way. that was one of the things that shocked new york and anyone else in the country paying attention. back in 2002, when elliot spitzer was new york's attorney general. that year spitzer's office investigated several wall street firms and found rampant conflicts of interest and ethics

violations in the information they were giving their clients and in the way they were doing business. then they did something even weirder. they actually tried to do something about it. those efforts led to headlines like this at the end of 2002. "wall street firms ready to pay $1 billion in fines." "it is rare for new york's attorney general to wage a battle with wall street, one of the biggest campaign contributors in the state." this was happening, though, during his time as attorney general. it gave eric spitzer the moniker the sheriff of wall street. spitzer, of course, went on to become governor of new york state. he won in a huge landslide. he was sworn into office on january 1st, 2007, with his tough on wall street reputation right there with him. but the only thing most people remember about elliot spitzer's time as governor is how it ended. >> to every new yorker, and to all those who believed in what i tried to stand for, i sincerely apologize. i look at my time as governor

with a sense of what might have been. >> a little more than a year after elliot spitzer assumed the governorship, news broke he had hired prostitutes which led to two cringe worthy press conferences during which he acknowledged the charges then resigned. that was in march of '08 when the sheriffs of wall street was forced to leave office in a prostitution scandal. six months after that in september that same year, wall street and really the whole financial industry and really the entire u.s. economy and pretty much the global economy imploded. the prostitution scandal that ended spitzer's governorship meant he was not around to work on the issue he champ whereoned and built his career on at a time when it came into its own. elliot spitzer announcing in "the new york times" this weekend he is now reentering politics and public life. he'll be running in the new york city comptrollers race seeking the democratic nomination against manhattan borough president scott stringer. so elliot spitzer thinks this is the right time to make his comeback.

the question is, will anyone agree with him? joining me now for the interview is elliot spitzer. governor spitzer, thank you so much for being here tonight. >> thank you, ezra. thank you for the kind words and i cringed when i watched the tough ones, but you gave a fair recitation. >> i want to ask about the what might have been. what was it like watching that unfold given your history on the issue and having taken yourself out of being an active participant in the political process around it? >> it was painful. obviously there was much pain related to other issues. specifically on that issue in february of '08 i testified before congress about subprime debt and told the story of how we had begun to investigate subprime debt. we made the first case in 1999. in '04 i was pilloried. and in february of '08, just a month before i resigned, i explained how the bush administration, the occ, had

forced us to litigate all the way to the united states supreme court to investigate an issue that we believed was fundamentally destroying our financial system. everybody blockaded us. it was not just the analysts. it was the mutual funds. it was insurance. and it was painful to watch, and we have all paid a price for not being diligent in understanding how markets really work and how wall street needs to be policed. >> when you look back, do you think stepping down was the right thing to do? or do you regret it? >> both. obviously i regret it because i was forced to do it. i believe in accountability, and i believe in paying a price when one violates an obligation. i violated that obligation. whether i paid the right price is is the issue, i suppose, the public -- i will ask the public to weigh and decide if i'm on the ballot this september and november. but i believe it was the right thing to do, and as painful as it was and as difficult as it was. >> when you were making the decision to announce to get back into politics, was there a party that looked at anthony weiner

leading in the polls in new york and senator vitter who has done fine in louisiana and sanford making a comeback and said the american vote is more forgiving than people sometimes give them credit for. was that part of the process? >> i think my sense that the public has a capacity to forgive has grown and i've understood that from what i call my walking down the street poll sensitivity. anybody who's in politics interacts with people, and even though i'm not in politics, obviously, i'm well enough known so i talk to people. i enjoy that process. when you talk to people, you understand their emotions. i see that forgiveness and willingness to give folks a second chance and obviously the samples you just gave are evidence of that. whether that will transfer to me is an open question. every case is different. and that is why there's massive uncertainty. risk. and as there should be, and is rightly the case that there's risk. so, yes, certainly i understand that sense of forgiveness. it is a quality that i think we like and respect in human nature. the capacity to forgive. it's sometimes parsimoniously

afforded to people. >> so you're now running for new york city comptroller. one of the duties in that job will be to manage $140 billion in pension assets. that is where a lot of the job's power comes from. you will go from being the sheriff of wall street to one of their largest customers. >> right. >> how do you -- how do you intend to use that? what is your sort of vision for how that will work? >> i've spoken at some length over the years about the capacity of controller, state controllers, municipal controllers. those who control pension funds. those who are the institutional investors to use the rights and obligations i would say of ownership to reform corporate governance. we tried to regulate and prosecute our way to good governance. you can't regulate or prosecute your way to good judgment. ownership brings obligations. ownership trumps regulation in terms of the capacity to put good directors in place. to put good employees, good ceos. rick management. i think we have abdicated that

responsibility. the phrase passive institutional investors has sort of become a cliche but is an apt description of how the major pools of capital fail to use the ownership capacity they have. i could get into gnarly weedy detail that would be good for your two-minute segment on this. i'll spare you and the audience on that. the unfortunate reality is institutional investors have failed. controllers can be a significant and important remedy in this. i'm not talking about political intervention. i'm talking about management. building a better widget. running a better company. ownership requires that participation. >> you've been now writing and broadcasting and speaking and sort of thinki ining about thes questions five years outside the political arena. how do you think your approach to serving in public office has actually changed? how do you think, if you do think, you'll be public as a public servant due to the period outside of actual politics? >> let me put it this way. i don't believe any less or with any less fervor in the things i was fighting for, whether the

wall street issues or the other. i'm not going to go through that litany. i think i appreciate a bit more that sensitivities of others sometimes need to be appreciated. we were tough. we played hard. i'm very glad we did. better to fight and lose than not fight at all is something i generally believe in when you're right on the principles and outcome you're seeking. if i'm fortunate enough to be elected comptroller, i'll build coalitions to move an agenda forward. i think that's an important part of governance. that is necessary to appreciate and, perhaps, i wish as governor i had been able to do that more. it was not possible in albany, but i wish i had done that a bit more. >> eliot spitzer. i sincerely appreciate you being on the show tonight. >> ezra, thank you for the invitation. is it too soon, is it too soon to have internet nostalgia? we bid a fond farewell to a

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if you've been following the events in egypt, you know that last week a wave of genuinely huge protests against egyptian president mohamed morsi toppled his government. in came the egyptian military, they grabbed the reins, they took control of the country, they pushed morsi out. until elections can be held. you might have thought that to

some degree or another these were protests just like the ones we're seeing in brazil and in turkey, that they're expressions of discontent with the government. and to some degree they were. today, however, something changed. today is the day when the protests in egypt became something different and something much more dangerous. today we moved. we moved from something that still looked like protests kind of, even more so, and maybe they can still have an okay ending. today that changed into something that looks more like the beginning of a civil war. early this morning egyptian soldiers reportedly opened fire on a group of supporters of ousted president mohamed morsi because they gathered outside a building where he is believed to be detained. at least 51 people were killed, and more than 300 were wounded. the egyptian military claims the soldiers fired at the crowd in response to shots fired by armed assailants. people at the scene deny the military was provoked in any way. but what happened today was the single deadliest incident since

the ouster of hosni mubarak in 2011. and what happened today, it's a game changer for the future of egypt and not a good one. in response to the shootout president morsi's muslim brotherhood, which is powerful and is big, is now calling for an uprising across the country. the group's political arm is demanding "an uprising by the great people of egypt against those trying to steal their revolution with tanks." well aware of what all this might mean for egypt, the interim president, who is a guy appointed by the military, quickly ordered an investigation into the deaths and is urging restraint and calm throughout the country. also today the hard-line ultra conservative islamist party al noor, the only party that had initially supported the ouster of president morsi, has withdrawn from talks to choose an interim president. a spokesman for the al nour party said its decision was a reaction to the massacre of hours earlier. the party did withdraw from talks today. just this past weekend they were able to throw their weight around relating to the

appointment of the interim prime minister. reports this surfaced that officials had named pro-reform leader mohamed elbaradei interim prime minister. but then later in the day those reports were retracted. the former u.n. guy it turned out was too secular for al-nour's taste. but they did give their stamp of approval to the former head of egypt's investment authority in a radio interview. so between the ultra conservative nour party, the ousted muslim brotherhood, the pro-reform movement and the many other groups, there are now a lot of players who all have a long list of grievances. and now there is no political process, no safe way to resolve them. the military opened fire. they opened fire on a crowd of muslim brotherhood morsi supporters. the muslim brotherhood now says it has 51 martyrs. not just dead supporters but martyrs. and so now how does the muslim brotherhood cut a deal? how do they come in? how do they back down? now they have to play this out so their people didn't die in vain. so in todaytion events there is a rift developing between what the public wanted to do, which

is to overthrow the president, to change the system, and what is happening now, which is what looks like the prelude to a possible civil war. today is the day this became not just a complicated and unhappy transition in egypt but the possible descent of the country into sustained violence and instability. it is not a happy day. peoi go to angie's listt for all kinds of reasons. to gauge whether or not the projects will be done in a timely fashion and within budget. angie's list members can tell you which provider is the best in town. you'll find reviews on everything from home repair to healthcare. now that we're expecting, i like the fact i can go onto angie's list and look for pediatricians. the service providers that i've found on angie's list actually have blown me away. find out why more than two million members count on angie's list. angie's list -- reviews you can trust.

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tonight we mark the passing of an old friend. a friend who died today after many years of neglect. alta-vista. born during the heady days of silicon valley in 1995 back when it was anything goes in the worldwide web, altavista was the hot new search site on the internet superhighway. it was able to scan more web pages than any other search engine. with 250 million websites indexed and 2.5 million search requests a day, altavista was

the digital flashlight that helped guide the way when the net was at a third of today's volume. if you were surfing the internet then, you were probably on altavista. if you were really old school you used it back when it looked like this, back when it was praised for its minimalist interface. or maybe you came a bit later when it was slick and yellow and stuff. slick for the internet of the '90s. in its heyday by '99 halta vista had more than 80 million hits a day. it even had a tv campaign. ♪ >> ahhhh! ♪ ♪ >> hulk search!

but along came google and the good times ended for altavista, even when internet giant yahoo bought it in 2003, never quite were able to turn it around. people liked it when it was the only game in town, but no one ever said, ah, let me altavista that. but now google, google's a verb. last week yahoo announced they would be retiring the veteran search engine, which was a surprise to most who figured altavista had already died years ago. so everyone apparently except the people of pawnee, indiana. >> so i looked you up on altavista and i found out the last seven towns you've gone to ended up bankrupt. >> okay. first of all, why does everyone in this town use altavista? is it 1997? >> so is if you fired up your computer ready to search something today on altavista, this is what you got. a redirect to yahoo's search page because today altavista went the way of netscape and geo cities and prodigy and the beloved but mostly dead friendster. all dead and buried in that internet graveyard in the cloud. a new upgrade to download every

day, better designed improved features and when an old website dies unclicked for years nobody mourns. nobody produces an episode of vh1 "behind the browser." no cyber wall or cell phone light vigil. but there's been too much internet death lately. first the untimely demise of google reader last week and now this. attention must be paid. altavista, laid to rest today at the age of 18. that that does it for us tonight. rachel will be back tomorrow. now it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." have a great night. george zimmerman's defense still hasn't used george zimmerman as a witness. they have the only witness who knows exactly what happened that night, and they haven't used him yet. but today they tried to use trayvon martin's father. >> we begin in the courtroom on day 10 of testimony. >> new developments at the trial of george zimmerman. now in its third week. >> any moment now george zimmerman's lawyers will start calling witnesses. >> the defense is