the table. >> mitch sea czar, good to have you with us. that's "the ed show." "politics nation with reverend al sharpton starts right now. good evening, rev. >> good evening, ed, and thanks to you for tuning in. tonight's lead, obamacare is saving lives. and the republicans are telling lies. we're just ten days away from the deadline to sign up for health insurance but even though the clock's ticking, we can't lose sight of how far we've come. this weekend marks the fourth year anniversary of a law that brings affordable health care to millions of people. today vice president biden said it brought a fundamental change. >> the most incredible thing about the health care bill is this is the first time in american history we have at least legislatively ended the debate. health care is a right not a

privilege. [ applause ] >> health care is a right that millions more people can now enjoy. today the administration announced the law saves s $7.9 million seniors more than $9 billion on prescription drugs. obamacare means $129 million people with pre-existing conditions can no longer be denied coverage. $71 million people gained coverage for free preventive care. and three million young adults have been able to stay on their parents' plan. these are real people seeing very real benefits all across the country? >> carl signed up for health insurance recently through aca web site and said finally it's something he can afford. last week he got his first checkup in years. >> they did a complete physical, ekg, blood work. >> my prescriptions for

out-of-pocket expenses for my son were $500 a month and now we can get it down a more reasonable level. >> reporter: working with a specialist and filling out forms on line, the joneses were able to find a plan that worked for them. as for mohammed jani, hi qualified for government subsidies and he found a plan with a premium that was half of what he used to pay. >> lower premiums, checkups for the first time in years and peace of mind. that's what this law does. but for the last four years it's faced constant attacks and a campaign of misinformation from the right. >> obamacare is a disaster. it is hurting millions of people. >> the government's making the decision who lives and dies. that's what obamacare is. >> obamacare is really, i think, the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery and it is in a way -- it is slavery. >> it allows the federal

government to have all of your medical records. they'll know all of your deepest secrets. >> let's repeal this failure before it literally kills women, kills children, kills senior citizens. >> she's literally got to be kidding. but do republicans want to go back to the old system where women were charged more than men? where people with pre-existing conditions couldn't get insurance? where insurance companies could cut you off once you got sick? is that the republican plan to go back to the way things were? no way! it's time to move forward. joining me now are congressman emmanuel cleaver, democrat of missouri, and former montana governor brian schweitzer, also an msnbc contributor. thank you both for being here. >> good to be with you, reverend. >> great to be back. >> congressman, is that what

republicans want? to go back to the old health care system? >> obviously that is what they want or they don't know what they want. look, you can't condemn one plan if you have no plan and what i don't think the republicans understand subpoena that blowing out another's candle does not make your candle shine brighter. and that's all they're doing is blowing out candles. and unfortunately, the candlelight belongs to men and women who are now in the light in terms of their health care. this is a heavy dose of irrationality being pushed out on the american public at a time when we really need everybody to work together. here in missouri, for example, if we don't expand medicaid, we will deny 300,000 americans, 300000 people from missouri, who are americans, health care. and that's all over the country. >> and that's in missouri alone.

>> missouri alone. >> governor, what amazes me is people like you and i wanted even more. we wanted single payer. here these guys are acting like there's something radical about providing health care for young people, pre-existing conditions. i mean, these are real people in a very mainstream, moderate kind of way doing something that is far from radical. >> well, they negotiated this all in the senate finance committee. this so-called gang of six and they were attempting to get some republican votes for a bill that was designed by the heritage foundation back in the '90s. >> modelled after romney care in massachusetts. >> absolutely. here's what's interesting about the politics of this. you've got republicans running for office that are saying apparently we like the old system where insurance companies could force you go to bankruptcy. where they could call it a pre-existing condition if you were born with something or it was a pre-existing condition if you were a woman because they could charge you higher premiums -- get this -- higher

premiums because there's a chance you could be a mother. so these republicans are for insurance companies and i can't find anybody who likes their health insurance company, and against motherhood. i like our chances. >> now, talking about women, congressman, president obama this week talked about how the health care law bans insflurns discriminating against women. watch this. >> before we passed obamacare -- [ laughter ] -- it was routine for insurance companies to charge women significantly more than men for health insurance. it's just like the dry cleaners. [ laughter ] you send in a blouse, i send in a shirt, they charge you twice as much. [ laughter ] but what was happening, the same thing was happening in health insurance. and so this is -- we've banned that policy for everybody. >> i mean, is this what they want to go back to? an old system like that,

congressman? >> it appears that we have an effort being put forth by people on the rigid right to take us back and every american who has a mother, who is a mother or has a daughter ought to be just fit to be tied when you think about people trying to send us back to a period when women's health care cost more and women were considered to be a health risk because they could get pregnant and they therefore were either denied health care or charged more. any time you do anything new there is a human part that resists. it's almost instinctive. but when you add the political perjury that is being committed by some on the right, it makes our task much more difficult and that's why given this opportunity we need to encourage everyone to sign up. and if you know anyone who's not

signed up, particularly your daughters and your mothers and grandmothers, get them signed up today. >> march 31 is the deadline. you know, governor, vice president joe biden talked today about the republican governors who refused the medicaid expansion. listen to this. >> imagine if every governor did the right thing and signed up for medicare. [ cheers and applause ] i am convinced as a practitioner the so-called art of politics that they all will over the next several years. they will not be able to sustain the heat. >> now, the states that are refusing the medicaid expansion are denying insurance to nearly five million people. governor, you were governor of montana. i mean, is the vice president right? these governors won't be able to keep up their opposition? >> he's absolutely right and the way that it's designed is that if you are 133% of federal

poverty or above you can join the exchange and a portion of your insurance will be paid for. but in those states that didn't expand medicaid, 133% and below, you have no protection and they're going to end up going the emergency rooms and they're going to get expensive health care which will be shifted on to the backs of other people in their state. this is bad business that these republican governors are doing in each of these states. >> you know, congressman, despite all that they are saying, most americans support the health care -- affordable health care act and want to fix the law or keep it as it is. just 28% want to eliminate it. are republicans in danger of overreaching with this obsession they have on repealing the law? >> they are overreaching and every poll suggests that the american public is interested in repairing the aca as opposed to repealing the aca. and i think that in time people are going to catch on and come

to the conclusion that there are people trying to deny me health care and we have the same thing when medicare was launched, actually, signed right here in kansas city at the truman library, lyndon johnson came to harry truman to sign it and wed that grandfathers, if you will, of today's republicans scaring people about medicare. now people believe that when they were born god gave them medicare. >> congressman cleaver and governor schweitzer, i'm going to leave it right there. thank you both for your time. have a great weekend. >> good to be with you. coming up, the democrats' new plan to fight the koch brothers and their efforts to flood the political system with their money. plus, why is ted cruz wining about the most lawless administration we've ever seen? what might have been going on inside the cockpit minutes before the malaysia plane lost

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. for years you've heard how the sometimes-secretive billionaire koch brothers were going to beat democrats with their millions. the network they support spent more than $420 million on the campaign and they lost. they tried to derail obamacare, even bankrolling ads trying to scare americans from obamacare -- and failed. but today a new plan. the front page of the "new york times" reveals the koch-backed group spending freely and attacking government stepping up its ground game with grass-roots activists knocking on doors

basically taking a page from the obama play book. and their groups of undisclosed donors are throwing millions into this year's midterm elections. they've spent $2 million so far in michigan, more than $3 million in louisiana, $8 million in north carolina. so far they've poured a whopping $30 million into races all across the country. but today democrats are fighting back. we learned a democratic political action committee is planning a $3 million ad campaign to challenge the koch brothers in five key states. the democratic senatorial campaign committee launched a web site dedicated to following the koch money. and senator harry reid recently ramped up his attacks, accusing the kochs of terrible dishonesty and calling them as un-american as anyone he can imagine.

not only are they rigging the system, he says, but the gop is addicted to koch. and recently president obama himself has gone on the offense about the kochs' efforts to convince young people not to sign up for health care. >> some of the tea party's biggest donors, some of the healthiest men in america, are funding a cynical ad campaign trying to convince young people not to buy health care at all. i mean, think about it. these billionaires several times over, you know they've got good health care. do you think if you get sick or you get hurt and you get stuck with a massive bill these same folks are going to help you out? >> this is all part of the effort to bring the koch brothers and their dark money out of the shadows. big money is trying to buy elections and the democrats are fighting back.

joining me now, e.j. deion, eej, thanks for being here. you write about how president obama needs to fight back. i want to read this to the audience. "going on offense means first building on what senate majority leader reid is taking on against the koch brothers and other right wing millionaires trying to buy themselves a congress. it is also about drawing a sharp line between the interests and policy goals of those fronting that money and the rest of us. the koch brothers dark money machine is powerful. can the democrats fight back, e.j.? >> well, they can't beat it if they don't which which is why i think they did need to go at it. and going at them serves a number of purposes as once. first of all, it gets people

over time asking why am i seeing all these ads on television attacking this particular candidate? what's in it for her opponent? what do these guys want that she or he doesn't want? and so you can begin to get voters themselves kind of asking questions about the ads, and the ads can start turning into a boomerang if they run them too often. they become the issue. but brian boitler in a piece in "salon" made another powerful point that the kochs in various states are not popular because of their company. he points to michigan where there was a controversy over dumping petroleum koch. in alaska where they shut down a subsidiary, people are unemployed, there were cleanup costs to their enterprise and so you can begin to bring -- if they want to be in the dialogue, which they do, then the other side is going to bring them into the dialogue as well. >> well let me show some of

that, because we're seeing more and more ads associating republican candidates with the koch brothers money. watch this. >> the koch brothers. >> the billionaire koch brothers. >> i do not believe it. >> they come into our town, buy our refinery. >> just ran it into the ground. >> a lot of alaskans are losing jobs and i'm concerned about the drinking water. >> i don't tell them what to do, i don't expect them to come up to alaska and tell us what to do. >> out-of-state billionaires spending millions to rig the system and elect bill cassidy. their goal? another politician bought and paid for. their agenda -- protect tax cuts for companies that ship our jobs overseas, cut social security and end medicare as we know it. they even tried to kill relief for hurricane victims. cassidy's billion-dollar backers. they've got a plan for him. it's not good for louisiana. >> those are ads that are running in alaska and louisiana where democrats are in very tough races and are dealing with opponents who are getting help

from the koch brothers kinds of money, e.j. >> right. i mean, it's got to be to create a cost for something because otherwise it's all gain for the republican candidate and all loss for the democratic candidate. and i think there's a bigger argument here, which is in that very good "new york times" piece they pointed out that the americans for prosperity, the koch group, is not just going after obamacare because they want to win elections, they're going after the affordable care act because they want to discredit the idea of using government to solve problems and to make us more just. they're trying to discredit all kinds of programs through their attacks on the affordable care act. >> that's the big fight that the "new york times" piece really breaks down. it's a fight against big government that they're after and saying that government is the enemy and clearly

question've got to keep monitoring this because this is a real fight. e.j. dionne, thank you very much and have a great weekend. >> have a great weekend, rev, thanks. >> coming up, was a mystery phone call placed from the pilot minutes before the malaysia airlines plane took off? plus, it's a trend on the right, calling for president obama's impeachment. what the leader of the party says it won't happen. >> i'm not so sure that the people of this country would ever support removing the first black president. i just think -- it's never gonna happen. and it's march madness, the annual tradition of republicans losing their minds over the presidential basketball picks. next.

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it's march madness! or should i say the right wing's march madness. for the last six years president obama has made it a custom to make his college basketball bracket picks on espn. and each time a different kind of madness comes from the right. >> barack obama is filling out on espn his march madness brackets while all of this is going on. and over here in crimea and ukraine vladimir putin is openly laughing at the president. >> president obama was picking brackets when vladimir putin was in red square being very, very russian. >> he's doing his ncaa brackets and i see michelle's flying off for an all expense paid vacation to china without any reporters. >> the first lady going to a major nation -- >> and in the a middle of a crisis this man seems so out of touch. >> hold on. hold on. i'm calling timeout. so it's about russia shah this

year? but i thought it was about the budget! >> the misplaced priorities of our celebrity president were on full display yet again. >> tonight, presidential priorities -- basketball or budget. >> president obama took time out of his busy schedule to fill out his march madness brackets. he continues to break the law, he has yet to submit his budget. >> we want to know what you think about president obama getting his brackets done but not his budget for us. are you outraged or this just not a big deal. >> oh! i'm going to take "not a big deal" on that one. and three years ago it was about japan and the middle east. >> well as japan's crisis grows there is a new round of questions about president obama's response. critics are now challenging the president for yesterday focussing on his picks for the college basketball championships. >> we were busy playing golf! we had to fill out our ncaa brackets! >> so he's filling out brackets, he's going to fund-raisers,

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just in time for the basketball tournament, right wingers have dreamed up their own obama derangement brackets. one gop group put out the lawless not so sweet 16 with all the ways the president is supposedly breaking the law. another bracket which says which is president obama's worst constitutional violation? make your picks. it's the gop's favorite new talking point, that president obama is somehow shredding the constitution. and you don't have to be picky about which particular right

he's supposedly violating. ted cruz says it's all of them. >> it seems almost as if this president is going down the bill of rights violating each one of them one at a time. this administration is the most lawless administration we've ever seen. there has never been a president before this one who has taken the view if he doesn't agree with a federal law he'll just refuse to enforce it. >> the most lawless administration ever? violating the entire bill of rights one by one? why stop there? what's next on the president's hit list? uncle sam? bald eagles? what about mom and apple pie? it's ridiculous. republicans have no credibility left when it comes to this president. they've accused him of anything and everything. but voters know they should

believe nothing the republicans say about it. joining me now are joe madison and goldie taylor. thank you for being here. >> thank you reverend. >> thank you, reverend. >> joe, don't republicans have a credibility problem when it comes to all these over-the-top claims about the president? >> of course they do and all of us sitting here, the three of us and i think most of the nation knows that the president has more attorneys, the white house and the administration has enough attorneys to prevent him from violating any constitutional right that exists. now, let's also add something else quickly. we have something called the united states supreme court and if the president of the united states is violating every single bill of right, you would think that the supreme court would have stopped him a long time ago. >> you know, goldie, the extremism has really seemed to

hurt their brand more than it has the president. when you look at the fact that just 25% of voters identify as republicans, that's an all-time low. >> i think you're right about that reverend sharpton and that's the grand irony here, that this kind of talk, this kind of baiting really works well when you're talking to a group of, say, a people at your saturday morning gop breakfast, when you're talking about -- talking to base voters, those activist voters. but when the rubber meets the road you can't bring the charges. you don't have a single place where this president has violated this constitution, this president has risen to the level of an impeachable offense, you don't charges. what sufficient political fodder,ed toer that you can get activists out working on your behalf with. fodder that you can get $5, $10, $25 kinds of contribution, the kind of contribution that it takes today to fund national

campaigns that kind of grass-roots effort and so this is the kind of bait that these gop candidates are using. and i just find it a little bit distasteful -- actually very distasteful -- to do this thing and infect the electorate and keep us off of the real issues at hand. unemployment, environmental concerns for heaven's sake. we've got bigger fish to pry than someone's individual political career and whether or not they can return to congress because they were unable to assail the president in the way they wanted to. >> but it's not just political, joe. senator cruz, for example, he seems to think president obama has launched a war on christians. listen to this. >> >> he's -- we've never seen an administration with such hostility towards religious faith. the federal government is now trying to force private citizens to violate their religious believes.

it's wrong and it's unconstitutional. >> so it's just like anti-president obama at different levels, any shot they can take. >> i'm sorry, i lost you. >> i said it seems as though they're taking any shot they can take whether it's political, religious, whatever as long as it's anti-president obama. >> right. and i think what they're doing, and we better be very careful with this, they're priming the pump. even rush limbaugh is saying oh, you can't impeach this president because he's the first black president. let me tell you, that's a little reverse psychology. remember, now, the first thing they started with in the first administration -- the first term was birtherism. that didn't work. now what they're doing is priming the pump for impeachment and what they're saying is they'll get us looking at 2016 when in reality they're focused

on 2014 because they know the only thing standing in their way is quite honestly the control of the united states senate and so be very careful. this is priming the pump, getting the american people to start thinking impeachment and then that's it. >> and even if it never happens, if they can get the midterm elections operating under an impeachment cloud it can affect some very close senate races. >> that's right. that's right. >> you know, goldie, though, there's something that i think really has sunk to a new low in this obama derangement that's going on. over at fox news they are actually using the malaysia airplane tragedy to bring up benghazi. i mean, this is a new low. listen to this. watch this. >> the malaysian government was obviously blindsided, they didn't know what to do, sort of their benghazi scandal. >> leading the nightly newscast in america for the last 11 days,

these newscasts don't know cus on things like benghazi, fast and furious and irs. >> america could close this investigation fast if it wanted to. well, as long as the plane's not hidden in benghazi or the irs building. >> i mean, we are talking about 239 human beings that are missing. we don't know what happened. we're praying that the worst that everyday that seems closer and closer to these families that they don't know where their loved ones are and you're going to use this to say that it is being talked about so that they can avoid talki ing about benghazi? >> i have to agree with you, reverend al, we're talking about people people's lives. real people lost their live at benghazi, we don't know what happened to those people on that plane as of today so to point the finger at this administration or even at the administration in malaysia to say that they did something that

cost the lives of their citizens of human beings i think is very unfortunate. and to mishmash it all together and play politics with it, to look for votes with it, to look to raise your cable audience with it, to look to get more people to tune into your radio show by raising these kind of very fake scandals i think is really an unfortunate thing. we've reached a new low in our politics unfortunately where we don't even look at the sanctity of human life as something that ought to be off limits. >> i thought that was low. every time i think right wingers has gone as low as they can go they show me i overestimated their ability in terms of staying on a higher plane. joe madison, goldie taylor, thank you both. have a great weekend. >> you, too, reverend. coming up, we might be learning more about the final 54 minutes of communication from missing malaysian airlines

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for the first time, we're learning about the final 54 minutes of communications from missing malaysian airlines

flight 370. london's telegraph newspaper has reportedly obtained communications between the cockpit and air traffic controllers before the plane vanished. nbc news has not independently confirmed this information. it's believed that the sole communicator to ground control was the 27-year-old co-pilot. much of the banter sounds perfectly routine except for this. at 1:07 a.m., according to t telegraph's tripanscript the ple delivered a message from the cockpit saying that the plane was flying at a cruising altitude. this message was unnecessary as it repeated a call that had already been delivered six minutes earlier. 1:07 happens to be the same time that one of the plane's communications systems sent out its last transmission.

does that mean anything? or is it simply a striking coincidence? joining me now is jay rollins, retired american airlines captain and a former u.s. navy pilot and jim cavanaugh, an nbc law enforcement analyst. thank you both for coming on the show tonight. >> thanks, reverend. >> you bet. >> jay, let me start with you again. we haven't confirmed this news report, but if it is true, it certainly lends the impression that everything was pretty much normal right up until the transponder shuts off. what's your reaction? >> i read over the transcript that they put out and i don't see anything that odd in it, reverend. all i saw was pretty much normal communications with regard to the repeating the flight level the second time. sometimes a pilot will do that.

they may have forgot than they just did it with the previous call in and they just wanted to make sure. that doesn't particularly bother me, either. the fact that they haven't found anything in that debris field -- >> well, before you go into the debris field because i want to talk about that. jim, what stands out to you about this latest report? >> reverend, just like jay said, it seems like normal. i read the transcript that the telegraph put out and it seems very normal. and also the second call, i don't think, is that unusual but it felt like to me that he was nudging, nudging maybe air traffic control to release him. he'd already told them his altitude. that doesn't mean he did, just a feeling when i read it i thought well, the pilot says it again and immediately comes back that air traffic control releases them to ho chi minh city. so it was almost like judge a nudge. that doesn't mean it's evil, but

i think what jay said is important. all the communications from the time they were on the deck all the way up there seems very normal and what i read into that was i just diminished in my mind the scenario of a violent, hostile takeover of the cockpit by multiple hijackers. you know, this communication is very -- seems very normal. it's spaced every few minutes apart. where is the time for this violent takeover of the cockpit? >> so, jim, what would you be looking for? if you were investigating this, what would you be looking for? >> well, i'd be looking for, of course, the pilot and co-pilot clearly. i'd also be looking -- s there anybody on that plane that was a close associate or friend to them and might have been in the cockpit, invited as a guest. the co-pilot has done before. was there any passenger on a plane that trained on the flight simulator at the pilot's house. i'd want to look at the videotapes of the airport and

see if the captain and co-pilot were talking to them, associates, did they know anybody on the plane that could have been invited in because the cockpit is the sin i don't know non, the essential element of where this deliberate turn was made. >> jay, you started talking about debris. we don't have debris, but what else should investigators be looking at? is security footage from the airport -- i mean, what else? >> i think that one of the things they definitely are looking at and should continue to look at and take apart is the captain's computer from the flight simulator. that will give us insight into his state of mind with respect to flying. and that coupled with the lack of debris is starting -- assuming that we don't find anything in that flight simulator, it's starting to take me in a direction that there could have been a slow evolving

emergency that the pilots didn't discover until it was too late. back to what i was mentioning yesterday about a smoldering tire or one of these lithium batteries that apparently they had on board in the cargo hold. if any of that is going wrong and putting noxious fumes into the cockpit or smoke and they don't their oxygen masks on it's understandable that they could have passed out. >> now, jim, malaysian authorities are also investigating reports that the captain of the plane made a call from the cockpit prior to takeoff. what can they learn from that? >> well, we certainly can learn who he called and interview that person and find out the conversation. they should also find out if the captain has ever filed or the co-pilot ever filed that flight plan before. it could have been some kind of emergency backup, emergency get out for him. so i'd want to know if it was ever filed before on other flights. >> jay rollins and jim cavanaugh, thank you both for

your time this evening. >> thank you, reverend. >> thank you, reverend. coming up, 49 years after the selma-to-montgomery march how we're still fighting for voting rights today. but first, first lady michelle obama is in china, so what's president obama doing at home? he tells you next. this is for you. ♪ [ male announcer ] bob's heart attack didn't come with a warning. today his doctor has him on a bayer aspirin regimen to help reduce the risk of another one. if you've had a heart attack, be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen.

it was an action-packed day for the first lady, michelle obama, on her first full day of her good will tour of china. she started the day with china's first lady, visiting a high school in beijing where she tried her hand at chinese calligraphy. and look at this. she practiced her own brand of ping-pong diplomacy, volley ago few rounds after getting a crash course of table tennis. and the two first ladies then visited the forbidden city in the heart of beijing where chinese emperors once lived and ended the day with a surprise visit from china's president. quite a day. but while the first lady and the first daughters are in china, the president is home alone and ellen degeneres wanted to make

sure he's okay flying solo. >> mr. president, michelle said she's out of town and she wanted to know, did you make your bed this morning? [ laughter ] >> that would be no. [ laughter ] >> no. >> and, you know, when she's out of town things get a little slow vennly around the house. sox every, shoes. >> have you eat'n today and are you taking care of yourself? did you exercise? >> i did exercise, i did eat and i ate healthy and i had some carrot sticks along with the potato chips. [ laughter ] >> sounds like he's having good day. but according to jimmy fallon, the president's not loving his week of bachelor life. >> you can kind of tell obama's lonely just by the tweets he's been sending out. like last night he tweeted "hey, michelle obama, having eight pancakes you better stop me, hashtag kind of wish you would, hashtag lonely talk." he wrote "just texed putin, you

up? best frenemies." >> don't worry, mr. president, you've only got five more days to be home alone. centrum silver. for the most amazing parts of you. olet's say you pay your tguy around 2 percent to manage your money. that's not much, you think except it's 2 percent every year. does that make a difference? search "cost of financial advisors" ouch! over time it really adds up. then go to e*trade and find out how much our advice costs. spoiler alert. it's low. really? yes, really. e*trade offers investment advice and guidance from dedicated professional financial consultants. it's guidance on your terms not ours that's how our system works. e*trade. less for us, more for you. the way we see it, after a heavy snowfall, you have two options... you can stay inside. or get behind the wheel of the jeep grand cherokee with an available best-in-class 4x4 traction management system to maximize control,

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siemens. answers. finally tonight, advancing the dream. on this very day back in 1965, dr. reverend martin luther king jr. and more than 3,000 marchers left selma, alabama, to begin the long march to montgomery in support of voting rights. it was their third attempt at the march the first attempt was bloody sunday. hundreds of civil rights demonstrators were attacked by police and state troopers as they crossed elma's edmund pettus bridge. the second attempt came two days later. marchers were forced to turn around because of a restraining order by a federal judge. but they didn't give up. they tried again and by the time protesters reached montgomery, the march had swelled to 25,000

people. despite tear gas and billy clubs they didn't back down so we can't give up now. those gains are under attack now. last night gop lawmakers in wisconsin voted to scale back early voting, a clear attempt to suppress the state's minority vote. democrats were outraged. >> you are placing barriers barriers against minority voters from participating. >> we should not be limiting time for voting. we should be encouraging people to vote. we should be solving our problems and not fixing elections. >> you think you're going to cut down the votes in large urban areas, that's your goal, because that's where democratic votes come from. let's be honest about it. >> the democrats want to fix problems and the republicans want to fix elections. >> democrats want to fix problems, republicans want to fix elections. and in wisconsin, the

republicans are being called out by one of their own. >> but the fact is, it ought to be abun didn'tly clear to everybody in this state that there is no massive voter fraud. we should be pitching as political parties our ideas for improving things in the future rather than mucking around in the mechanics and making it more confrontational at our voting sites and trying to suppress the vote. >> just three months into the year republicans are attacking voter rights in state after state after state. it's why i spoke out at a rally last night in ohio to add my support to a voters' bill of rights. we saw the determination of dr. king and that generation in the '60s in the deep south against all odds, 20 years later in the north some of us marched against eggs being thrown because we learned from those in the south.

now 20 years later it's a little more sophisticated, but it will require the same kind of determination, the same resolve that we can't let anyone take from us the rights that was paid so dearly for us to have in the first place. thanks for watching. i'm al sharpton. hardball starts right now. without a trace. let's play hardball. good evening, i'm chris matthews in san francisco. let me start tonight with this -- is it possible for a jetliner, a 777, to take off from an international airport and never be seen or heard from again? can a major airline head off into the skies and disappear from the face of the earth? as of tonight, friday, march