sterling habits, let's play "hardball." good evening, i'm chris matthews back in washington. let me start tonight with this, burgeoning national focus on racial remarks. did yesterday's banishment of donald sterling mark a new zero tolerance in hostile language? are we entering upon a new era where words spoken in private or public that carry negative attitudes or views will face round condemnation? and what about the political side of this? is there a new line that elected officials have to respect? can they no longer place the primary blame, for example, on poverty, on the poor themselves? can they defend cuts and welfare and other support programs by saying people simply don't want

to work? well, finally, are there certain americans out there who remain even today able to say the most disgusting things about blacks, for example, about they were better off as slaves? another ugly nonsense like that. eugene robinson with "the washington post" and howard fineman is editorial director at "the huffington post" media group, both are msnbc political analysts. well, there are certain ways you have to speak in a tolerant society, of course, your words do matter, and one thing the donald sterling incident has shown us, is there isn't much that is truly private anymore. kathleen parker has a great column out today on what she calls the sobering message from the recent sterling fallout. she writes, "if you don't want your words broadcast in the public square, don't say them. such potential exposure forces us to carefully select our words and edit our thoughts. speaking one's mind isn't really all that it's cracked up to be."

i love that line, i am what i am. >> you love that line? i don't know. >> it's a great line, because it's actually -- i was thinking back, talking about the 47% line. >> yeah, right. >> your paper is most famous for what? richard nixon's tape recordings. the days of the private cone of silence with your girlfriend are gone. >> no, there ain't no code of silence. >> let's talk about what we're really focusing and not little he said/she said. racially antagonistic, hostile language, is there a new zero tolerance in the way we're going to cover these stories and the way the public's going to react to them? >> you know, way back in the past, there was a whole lot of tolerance, right, stuff was said in the open. for a while now, it has been socially nonacceptable to say, i think black people are inferior. i don't like black people, i think they smell bad, that sort of -- >> when was that okay? >> ugly racism. well, it was never okay with me.

>> may have been okay where you grew up in south carolina, it may have been okay in the back room somewhere. >> exactly, exactly. but now there is no back room. and so when society is confronted, when we are all confronted with, you know, irrefutable proof that, here, this is what this person thinks because this is what this person said, then it imposes a duty to react to that. >> do you realize what we've been through? we're all roughly the same age here. do you realize we grew up, you had one of the most talented performers ever, he grew up in washington, made his living in black face, al joelson. think about it, on the radio, everybody listened on the radio. the members in philadelphia used to be black face, right? now that was, yes, okay. you couldn't pull any of that stuff today, nor should you. now we're getting to this new level of words and words being recorded and words killing people's public life, really. banishment coming with it.

>> chris, it's paradoxical, because the progress that we've made makes sensitivity that much more important. we've eliminated some of the gross things that gene was talking about. that was simple arithmetic. this is higher math, because we're an even more diverse society than we were. we're talking about multiple sensitivities, not only of african-americans, but hispanics, people from asia, people from all over the world. there are more languages spoken in new york now -- well, more languages spoken there than anywhere in the world, and more than ever before, so i think everybody, you mention the social media component of it, that's important, twitter, facebook, instagram, plus recording devices, et cetera, everybody is going to have to live in this new world, especially political people. anybody presuming to speak in the political public square has to be sensitive. they just do. that's the new reality. >> well, if you want proof of how quickly words do spread of racial hostility and all i said variants, look at this on

monday. the leader of a local chapter of republicans in illinois sent out a newsletter. this is old print stuff, a newsletter. it was out on e-mail, but it was a newsletter which attacked president obama of being mixed race. of all the weird things to go after. media update, saw on the news this week the offspring of a donkey and zebra, rest all donkey. not sure why this is news. now we can teach him to read a teleprompter. we could have two living creatures the media will fawn over that is part white, part black, and all ass. this is what's written in this thing. you know, yesterday that's in a newsletter, caught the attention of the press. the author quickly apologized, of course, and today his comments were denounced in "the washington post" editorial page itself. >> well, yeah, you know, that's what's going to happen, right? >> what's this weird new knock about people who are mixed background? i think a lot of people, we're sort of intrigued by barack obama's background, you know, a

white mother from the midwest, a kenyan father. pretty unusual background. it was seen as a sort of a plus because it combined the immigrant experience and it seemed with the american experience and the racial experience and everybody said, well, this is fascinating, but this guy is that old thing in the cowboy movies, the half breed. is this the new knock on obama? >> yeah, but who thinks like that? >> this guy. >> what rock has this guy been under? there was a time when we were kids, if you saw, you know, a black man and a white woman or a white man and a black woman walking down the street together, you know, holding hands, well, you wouldn't have seen that where i grew up. >> where i grew up either. >> but if you saw it, you'd turn your head. it would be something you don't see every day, and now you certainly wouldn't notice. it would not occur to you that that was what you were seeing. >> why the knock on obama? >> who are these people? you know, where have they been? >> well, they are working in the

local republican headquarters somewhere out there in the midwest. >> it's -- >> wait, we got this guy in pennsylvania just jumping up and down about how voter suppression was keeping people from voting for obama. >> i think the point is, chris, that these things are now stories everywhere. because they are more unusual. i would argue it's because they are more unusual, because we have such a all-seeing, all-knowing media that turns every little thing from a small newsletter in wisconsin to a national story. we're seeing what's left of this in the country, and it gets pushed to the surface because it's less usual than it was. it's less usual than it was. and i would argue that overall, the acceptance of president obama as the first african-american president has gone over pretty well overall in america society. >> we're missing the big story here. >> i like that story, the fact that michelle obama largely celebrated as a very attractive -- >> she's the most admired woman in america.

>> let's turn to this, how it's rubbing politically. republican paul ryan met with members of the congressional black caucus today to clear up the air about comments he made on a conservative radio show citing the work of charles murray, he actually did this, academic that argued black people face certain social disadvantages because of inferior intelligence. nobody would touch this, but ryan did, and here he is. >> your buddy charles murray or bob putnam over at harvard, those guys have written books on this, which is we have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work. and so there's a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with. >> well, on sunday, "buzz feed" published the interview where congressman ryan basically pleaded ignorance here, saying "it doesn't even occur to me it could come across as a racial statement.

but that's not the case, apparently, what i learned is there's a whole language and history that people are very sensitive to. understandably so. we just have to better understand, you know, we'll be a little clumsy, but it's with the right intentions." that's nonsense. i'm not saying he's an evil man or anything, but he's saying these people are a bunch of bums. that's what he's basically saying. >> he's the intellectual brightest light of the republican party. >> tell the viewers who charles murray is. >> he's the academic whose research, research i put in quotes, essentially says blacks have lower i.q.s and are dumber. why do you quote him? you know, and if you don't know enough not to quote him, then you're not a very bright intellectual. >> why don't we bring him back? >> bring him in, too. you know, there is more recent work that i think murray has been involved in, in which murray got the idea, so

broadened his research to talk about white lower class and working class people, as well, to try to make a point about where the society is heading. so, you know -- >> not genetic arguments. >> some people learn. some people don't. >> this thing, i don't think anybody says paul ryan racist terms are thrown around too much, but policy differences. there he is basically saying the reason we're cutting welfare, whatever we're cutting, school lunch programs, whatever we want to cut, we can pull back and say, well, that isn't the problem. their problem isn't being denied those programs, their problem is basic bad behavior at home. >> couple things. first of all, he doesn't have the rest of the vision culturally to really totally know just how offensive what he's saying it. i'll grant him that. he's from jamesville, wisconsin, he's a guy who loves studying budget numbers. he's now making a tour of america to introduce himself to the bro.

that's what he's doing. >> the problem is, the big problem is, that the numbers don't lie, and if you look at paul ryan's budget proposal, he whacks away at every program, at every funding program, and everything designed to try to help the problems he claims he wants to address. >> the column i wrote about ryan wasn't was he racist, was he not racist, it's that he kept saying, culture, culture, culture, culture of the inner cities. that's a very lazy argument for a bunch of mush, basically, in my opinion, this cultural hypothesis that culture explains everything. what's the number one problem poor people have? they don't have money, and they don't have a job, and they don't have good housing. >> also, culture in america is having a job. >> yes. >> it's a very, very lazy argument.

>> well, thank you. and let me just go back to my simple replica of history. the old neighborhood i lived in in north philly, which was once irish, is now black. when it was irish, my grand pop could get on the subway and go two blocks to a really good industry job. it's the deindustrialization of the big city, the destruction of all blue collar jobs in the inner city area where blacks live now today, they don't have the jobs our crowd had two generations ago. that's the reason these kids, only business model looming in front of them is trouble, and that's the problem. anyway, thank you, gene robinson, and thank you, howard fineman. the "a" students are always going to do well, i'm worried about the "b" and "c" students, like me. senate republicans say no to an increase in minimum wage and democrats smell a campaign issue. and now rick santorum says i would say confess republicans don't care as much as democrats do about the poor. isn't that a statement? i think he meant it. plus, this isn't something

you see every day, a former supreme court justice testifying before the congress. john paul stevens says it's time we all learn who's paying for these candidates campaigns. he wants full disclosure by the kochs, et cetera. plus, a big victory of opponents for voter i.d. laws, the decision in wisconsin followed similar decisions in pennsylvania and arkansas that tie, this is good news for progressives, may be turning against those republican attempts to keep democrats from voting. and let me finish tonight with this brave new world, where even in private, what you say can be used against you. and this is "hardball," the place for politics. koch . female announcer: sleep train's interest free for 3 event

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even tempur-pedic. plus, get free delivery, and sleep train's 100-day low price guarantee. but hurry! sleep train's interest free for 3 event, ends sunday. ♪ sleep train ♪ ♪ your ticket to a better night's sleep ♪ democrats have made raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour a top priority in this tough election year. but late today, a bill that would have raised the minimum wage was blocked by republicans. the vote was 54-42, positively along party lines, save from one republican, but it fell short as we all know now of the magic 60-vote threshold it needed to overcome a republican filibuster, so it got a majority vote, but not a 60 vote. afterwards, democrats vowed to continue the fight, but it's not sure if harry reid will be into reintroducing the bill at all.

here was reid's reaction today to the vote. >> today we saw clear distinction between what we're fighting for, we democrats, and the republicans, what they are fighting for. they are fighting for the billionaires, we're fighting for people who are struggling to make a living. >> well, as senator reid made clear, arguing for an increase in the minimum wage is a key part of the democrats' larger midterm political strategy, to focus on the poor and unemployed, and they hope their message is a fair shot for all. it's going to be a winner, compared to republican party, they say the democrats say favor the very rich. and an unusual confession this week. former republican senator for pennsylvania and failed 2012 presidential candidate rick santorum broke with his party on the treatment of the poor. santorum opposes increasing the minimum wage, but listen to what he said when asked if his party cares as much about the poor as the democrats do. >> people ask me do republicans

care as much about the poor as democrats do, i'm not sure we do. i'm not sure we do. and the reason i'm not sure we do is because i don't hear us talking about them very often, and if you really cared, you'd talk about the problems they had. >> with us now, joe conason of the national memo and michelle bernard, president of the bernard center for women. let's get to this point here. i'm trying to figure what rick's up to. i find it fascinating, he's catholic, old school catholic, very orthodoxed about it. could this be the pope's leadership that's led him, michelle, he's beginning to think we have a conscience issue here, a moral question that the republican party, his party, hasn't been addressing for decades. >> you know, i moderated a debate between rick santorum with rick santorum in the last election cycle, and i think that this is an issue that he's always grappled with. he deeply believes in what he believes in. i think he believed the sentiment that he expressed in

that sound bite that we just heard, but here's the thing that's difficult to deal with, with rick santorum. he's making these eloquent statements about caring about the poor, but this is the rick santorum who has a very simple, two-step solution to getting, you know, alleviating poverty. get married before you have children and finish high school, and this is the rick santorum who said president obama is a snob. he wants everyone to go to college. rick santorum has three degrees. rick santorum who also said during the last election cycle, i don't want to help black people by giving them somebody else's money, i want to give them a chance to earn a job. so there's a conflict there. those statements are very antithetical to somebody who's saying, i care about the poor, and the republican party needs to do more. >> let's talk about this minimum wage thing. i'm always trying to be political. i'm trying to understand. did harry reid and the democrats ever expect to win this vote? >> no. >> okay, why did they bring it to the floor? >> this is theater right now, chris. everybody knows this senate, this congress, is not going to accomplish much of anything.

>> on minimum wage, why would the republicans stand today, except for one person, corker of tennessee, right down the line except for one member, who's an interesting member, corker, by the way, say we don't care what you guys throw at us between now and november or how many times you say people ought to make $10 an hour, to hell with you, we're going to vote against it. what gives them the confidence that's a winner? >> i think there are two things. one is, that is what the donor base expects from them, and the other is, this is the ideological mainstream in the republican party now, chris. you know, it used to be republican senators would vote for an increase in the minimum wage, along with democrats most of the time and that's how we saw the minimum wage increase over the years, but the party has changed, gone much further to the right. the mainstream position now in the republican party is the one that the, you know, leading north carolina senate republican candidate thom tillis has, who by the way, is the leader in their legislature. no minimum wage, no minimum wage, sweatshop economy where you can pay anybody anything

that they will pay. >> squeeze them down to nothing. >> squeeze them down. and by the way, if we raise the minimum wage, it would get a lot of people off of food stamps, right, but these people are like, no, we're not going to raise the minimum wage, and we're also going to cut the food stamps. what is it now, are we going to starve people or have them -- >> i know you're an -- that goes back to my favorite rant here, which i picked up from a british labor guy, and i'm not as far left as him, but he has a good point, why does the republican party say the best way to energize poor people is to cut them and the best way to energize rich is to give them tax breaks. >> doesn't make any sense. my favorite economist says we have to increase the minimum wage. there are more benefits than harm. republicans, a lot of republicans and conservatives will tell you their argument against raising the minimum wage is that if you do so, there will be disemployment, people will lose jobs, and you end up hurting the very people who are the poorest people that need these jobs.

>> but everybody poor wants to put minimum wage up, every group, every congressman wants it. it pushes up everybody. >> absolutely. >> the purse at the bottom is $10, then the guys a little bit above the bottom is $12. >> everybody gets a raise. >> let's talk about the politics. we go into november, is this an issue that will get people to vote? and my question always is, is it a voting issue, abortion's a voting issue on both sides of that issue. there are -- guns an issue on both sides, mostly on the pro-gun side. is the minimum wage going to goose people to show up in the polls in november or not? i'm skeptical, is it going to get people to vote? >> there's a lot of polling data that's contradictory on that. on the one hand, the mainstream american position is, raise the minimum wage. >> everybody's for it. >> everybody. this is why a rick santorum who comes from pennsylvania, where you know -- >> union state, too. >> but on the other hand, is it a salient enough issue that

people vote for a candidate because of that position or vote against a candidate because of that position? and the polling data is not as clear about that, so we don't know. >> older people vote on social security. you start screwing with that, they vote against you. that's always going to be an issue, medicare. will the younger person focus on this minimum wage issue and vote that way? >> single women, people of color, i think, will go out to the polls and will vote on this issue, because it impacts them. we're talking about helping 21 million people. it's only an increase up to $10 an hour over 30 months. >> primary focused and larger issues like this, economic well being. anyway, thank you, joe conason. >> thank you. >> and thank you, michelle. michelle bernard. up next -- of the bernard center. up next, a value of being cheap for the republican who says poor kids ought to sweep the cafeteria to get their lunch. this is "hardball," the place for politics. .

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effective immediately, i am banning mr. sterling for life from any association with the clippers organization or the nba. >> banned for life. who knows how many months that might be. >> welcome back to "hardball." time for the side show. anyway, the news of donald sterling's lifetime ban from the nba was the source of several laughs, as we just saw, on comedy central, but leave it to jon stewart of the daily show to link sterling's comments with the crazy things that politicians like sarah palin have to say. >> it's good to see the distinction here between free speech and consequence-free speech. my guess is, this is not the death knell for this country's long and proud tradition of

crazy talk. >> if i were in charge -- [ laughter ] >> all i can say there is, thank god that is a hypothetical. >> thank god is right. palin was speaking at an nra convention, that was last week, and like several of the speakers there, she linked social issues that have nothing to do with guns, to owning a gun. >> perfectly acceptable support for sane gun ownership got mixed up in the whole natural culture war mess. why would you be talking about those kinds of issues at a gun convention unless you think somehow guns are part of the solution to these cultural disagreements? >> i think government should pick your soft drink, fast food, vices, home security system, school, as well. >> and that's why you need a

gun! >> solyndra, benghazi, fast and furious, obamacare. >> and that is why you need a gun. >> well, benghazi and obamacare, are they why we need guns? well, give me a break here. anyway, finally, the political ads this year just keep getting more and more amusing. here's one for republican congressman jack kingston down in georgia, who's running for the united states senate. >> our dad is jack kingston. he really is cheap, and it's not just the car he dries. >> he'll drive five miles on empty to save on a gallon. >> we thought hand-me-downs was the name of a store. >> you know for dad, it's about personal responsibility and respecting the value of a dollar. >> he'll be the same way in the senate. >> i'm jack kingston, and i approved this message, once i saw it was under budget. >> here's the best part, kingston is the same congressman

who said underprivileged kids need to sweep floors for their school lunches. now we see his penny pinching extends to his own family. the ex-supreme court justice who wants us all to know who's paying for these campaigns. you're watching "hardball." the place for politics. .

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that's one nasty ben franklin there on the 50. welcome back to "hardball." after more than three decades of the supreme court listening to arguments, former justice john paul stevens made his own today before the u.s. senate. stevens, who was appointed by republican president gerald ford, what about one of the most vocal opponents of recent supreme court decisions to loosen restrictions on anonymous political contributions, which are known as "dark money." well, here he is today, former justice stevens. >> unlimited campaign expenditures impair the process of democratic self government. they create a risk that successful candidates will pay more attention to the interests

of nonvoters who provide them with money than to the interests of the voters who elected them. that risk is unacceptable. >> one possible legal remedy to dark money or unlimited contributions would be disclosure. should we know if the koch brothers are spending millions to bring down a certain candidate? angus king is trying to shed more light on dark money by introducing a bill to force the disclosure of contributions to candidates of over $1,000 in more than 48 hours. senator king, an independent from maine, he caucuses with democrats right now. senator, i love what you're doing. talk about how you think this would be better for the country when a big shot group of people like the koch brothers or anybody else comes roaming into a state race, a congressional district, dumping money in the last month or two to return the result their way, how is this going to affect the voters? >> well, what the real problem for me is, nobody knows who's behind the money.

you can trace it back and might say it's the koch brothers or somebody else, but right now there are all these elaborate schemes to hide who's doing the donations. you know, chris, you can't go to a maine town meeting with a bag over your head. if you're going to stand up and make a speech, people want to know who's saying it, and the supreme court in those recent opinions have struck down the limits on the premise that there's disclosure. they've said, we don't have to worry about these limits because the public is going to know who's contributing the money. they can judge the message. that's not true today. we've got all these funny structures, 501-c4s, social welfare organizations, but really what they are is identity laundering, covering up who's actually giving the money. i think people ought to have a chance to know who it is that's trying to influence their vote. simple as that. >> but when you hear arguments like in "the wall street journal" editorial pages that this is just the progressives way of hurting people with wealth who want to use their free speech.

in other words, they are against disclosure and they say so, that somehow it's predatory. why don't people want their names known? >> well, you know, you're supposed to be, you know, talk about the rough and tumble of democracy. again, if you're willing to try to take a shot at somebody, to talk about them, to put an ad on television to tell their voters why they are such bad people, why are you so shy about knowing who you are? i think it's a fundamental part of this whole system. and by the way, the supreme court does, too. they made it very clear. scalia, very conservative judge said, you know, this is disclosure and taking the consequences of your own actions is part of democracy. it's part of the rough and tumble marketplace of ideas. so this idea that, you know, you're going to hurt the feelings of somebody who's making a contribution, give me a break. >> how are you going to get 60 votes? >> well, you know, we're talking to some republicans. until a couple of years ago, chris, disclosure was a nonpartisan issue, was a bipartisan issue. republicans were for it, too.

here's what's going to happen, we released some data today that just came in yesterday, in the past it's been all republican money, 80%, 90% of these groups were conservative. this year, interestingly, it's now 60-40. in other words, it's closing up. once the republicans see that this isn't necessarily always going to be to their advantage, i think that's when you're going to see some political movement. the truth is, it's a threat to the whole system, chris, and we shouldn't be making these kinds of decisions based on who thinks it's an advantage this year versus next year. >> thank you so much, senator angus king of maine. another witness on the committee's panel attacked the notion that money is speech. >> i also want to thank senator roberts for putting up the text of the first amendment, which i read and reread, as i have done so many times, and i'm still looking for the word "money" in the first amendment. >> norm's a wise guy. anyway, senator chuck schumer

also weighed in for opposing disclosure and contribution limits by hiding behind the first amendment. >> i respect my colleague's fidelity to the first amendment, but no amendment is absolute. most of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle support antipornography legislation. that's a limitation on the first amendment. most everyone here believes you can't falsely scream "fire" in a crowded theater. that's a limitation on the first amendment. so if you impose a view that just when it comes to allowing one person to put the 7,112th ad on television, that the first amendment's absolute, but in so many other areas it's not, you have to ask why? >> it's a partisan answer, i'm afraid. david corn from mother jones and

msnbc political analyst. david, i think it's pretty clear now republicans still think people on the right benefit from sneaky money. >> well, they do, but we don't know how much. and we won't know unless something changes, because as senator king mentioned, you know, there are sort of two paths for money. there's what goes through the fec disclosed donations where you make a direct donation to a campaign or political party. we can all look that up. other groups, dark money, the coalition for better health in america, and they can be against obamacare and they can get millions of dollars from any billionaire who's angry and they don't have to disclose. these are supposed to be social welfare groups, but they really are acting like their political campaigns in getting around the disclosure and the limits on both. and it's real interesting to me that republicans now are opposing greater disclosure, which they used to support. i think that's like a military creating a forward position, you know, we're fighting off disclosure, we're not fighting

about the actual money itself. >> let's talk turkey here. if you're voting down about jimmy carter's grants from running in georgia, kay hagan, do you think those elections will turn on pacs going on television saying a week or two on television were all paid for by the koch brothers, will that effect a turnout on the democrats side? >> i think it's really hard. i think it's hard for each side, particularly the democratic side, to make money in politics a voting issue, as you talked about earlier on the show, to make it a voting issue. the thing is, if you can connect the koch brothers as senator begich is trying to do, if you can connect their entry in his race to what they do in alaska, they have a factory that pollutes, they've laid off people, then maybe you can get a local angle on it and it might work, but it's hard with people worrying at wages, foreign policy, cultural issues, to say

the real problem here are the guys you've never heard of, who are flooding money with these campaign ads that you don't know what to make of. >> the only thing i can see changing this, and it's so political an assessment, for example, hillary clinton gets elected for eight years of democratic rule, followed by two and a half years more of president obama, at some point during the course of that decade, they might be able to shift the supreme court back to something reasonable about the money and speech. but remember, it seems to be as long as you got discord, even with kennedy on it, you're not going to get a good result. >> that's true, but the history of reform as a political matter, you know this, is there's no impetus in congress for change unless there's -- >> of course not. >> unless there's a scandal. watergate, all led to reform, but we got to -- you wait for that, then you -- >> could that be because politicians think it must be a good system, i'm here? >> that's right. >> thank you, david corn.

i'm very despondent about this decision and its constant use of big money to tell us what to think. anyway, up next, big victory for opponents of voter i.d. laws, and it is a big victory, and the reason some believe it could lead to more victories. this is "hardball," the place for politics. . i procrastinated... on buying a car for... because i knew... it would be a scary process. when i was introduced to truecar, i didn't have to second guess myself. i felt more confident... in what i was doing. truecar made it very easy for me... to negotiate what i wanted, because i didn't really need to do any negotiating at all. i just knew from the get-go that i was... flat out getting a good deal. when you're ready to buy a car, save time, save money, and never overpay. visit truecar.com

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they are working on an ambitious goal, the eradication of hiv transmissions from mother to child, something they hope to accomplish by the end of next year. believe it or not, it was a goal once unthinkable, but scientists say it can be done. imagine that, the end of that kind of transmission from mother to child by the end of next year. if you want to help this very important mission, you can find more information on our website, hardball.msnbc.com, and we'll be right back after this. .

welcome back to "hardball." opponents of voter i.d. laws are hoping that yesterday's big win in wisconsin has opened the door for similar victories in other states.

here's the background. a federal judge ruled yesterday that wisconsin's law requiring a government-issued photo i.d. to vote is unconstitutional because it places an undue burden on poor and minority voters, something we've been saying here a long time. and this big win follows pro voting rights ruling in pennsylvania, where a state judge reaffirmed a ruling that the state's voter i.d. law there is also unconstitutional. and down in arkansas where a judge struck down the state's voter i.d. law, saying it violates the state's constitution. at least 32 states have passed laws requiring voters to show some form of identification at the polls, and 16 states have laws in effect similar to the one just struck down in wisconsin, requiring a photo i.d. photo i.d. opponents in these states could use the wisconsin state now, starting today, as a road map to ensure the right to vote is protected, their right. it's a road map that uses section 2 of the voting rights act, the part that remains after the supreme courts removing section 5 last year.

it proves these i.d. requirements are unduly burden on poor and minorities. again, what we've been saying here. director of the aclu voting rights project, codirector of the advancement project, both these groups represented plaintiffs in the wisconsin case. by the way, this excerpt from the federal judge's decision shows how section 2 of the voting rights act was applied. "section two protects against a voting practice that creates a barrier to voting welcome quote, section 2 protects against a voting practice that creates a barrier to voting that is more likely to appear in the path of a voter if that voter is a member of a minority group than if he or she is not. the presence of a barrier that has this kind of disproportionate impact prevents the political process from being equally open to all and results in members of the minority group having less opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice. judith, thank you for joining us, again. i'll get to dale in a second. are you happy that we now have

some evidence that the federal judges are willing to say, our constitution protects us from these undue burdens of having to vote. >> well, i think what's really important about this, because this is a huge win for wisconsin, for voters, but also for the voting rights act, because, in fact, we see that while the supreme court took a dagger to the heart of the voting rights act, that, in fact, the other part of the voting rights act is alive and well. and that it can be used in cases like on voter i.d., for example, to show that, in fact, there's a disproportionate impact on voters of color. so this is a huge win, the aclu and advancement project were counsel in this case. and i think now what we're going to be able to do is to use this decision, and in fact, next week, advancement project has a brief due in our case north carolina and we'll be able to rely on this decision. >> are you hopeful? >> i'm very hopeful. i think this judge set out a road map for other courts and actually said, in fact, if they went back and tried to alter

that law in wisconsin, he can't imagine a situation in which, in fact, they could get around the voting rights act. >> do you agree with that? are you hopeful or optimistic that there's a pattern of judicial decision make welcome a precedent here that the federal government and protecting constitutional rights say they'll have a right to vote and you can't use extraordinary means to demand that they show things that they may not have in their possession like a driver's license? >> we're really optimistic, chris. there are pending voter i.d. challenges in other federal courts right now, in texas and north carolina, as judith mentioned. and this decision, i think, really buoys our hopes that the courts will really understand what kind of effects these laws have. what was so great about the court's opinion in this case, chris, was that he said that you can't, as a state, just make, you know, unsupported assertions that there's fraud going on or that this is important for public confidence.

if you're going to make it harder for people to vote, and there are hundreds of thousands of people in wisconsin, registered voters, who don't have one of these forms of i.d. if you're going to do that, you need to present actual evidence that this kind of fraud, that you claim to be preventing, is actually happening. and what was amazing was that the state of wisconsin couldn't identify a single case of fraud that this voter i.d. law would have prevented and the judge called them out on that. >> is this -- can you say in your position, that this has, partisan? that this effort to come up with new ways of -- with new requirements was a republican effort to deal with the demographic time bomb they faced? that there are going to be fewer -- >> oh, definitely. i mean, this is about the demographic shift. and their desire to continue to hold control in the state legislators. even when you look at a state like north carolina, you know, what happened in north carolina wasn't until they actually were able to get a republican governor, that they were able to shove through not only a voter

i.d. law, that's restrictive, but also a kind of monster bill of voter suppression. >> let's accept the argument, which i do, from both of you, it seems to me that there's no rampant corruption out the there. there's no rampant fraud. but to the person watching right now, that wants to know, how do we avoid, are there any ways -- what do you think should be the standard, when you go to vote. suppose you're working behind a desk, you're a volunteer, and somebody comes in you don't recognize, you're not from the neighborhood. you're kidding me, you're not from around here, i've never seen you. how do they deal with that? >> one of the things we should know, the federal law, the help america vote act, already has a set of i.d.s in it you can use and use it for your first-time voting. so your phone bill. as long as we know who you are, you come in and prove that's who you are and this is your address, that's enough. what we don't have is -- >> do you believe it's enough? >> yes, i believe that's enough. we don't have in-person voter i.d. you know, the president's election commission actually, which was ben ginsburg, showed there was no fraud.

>> got to go. we'll talk about this a lot, because i care about it. i think everybody should vote. thank you, dale ho, thank you judith brown hyannis. we'll be right back after this. stall them. [ imitates monkey ] stop stalling. cascade platinum fights cloudy residue 3x better than the competing gel and helps keep your dishwasher sparkling. cascade platinum.

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i would email the phone company to inquire as to why they have shortchanged these customers. but that would require wifi. switch to comcast business internet and get two wifi networks included. comcast business built for business. let me finish tonight with this. this banishment of donald sterling offers new solid proof there's no longer such a thing as a private conversation. for all practical purposes, we are talking, all of us in this country, in the same room. this richard nixon in that voice-activated white house

recording system, that archived his attempt at covering up his henchman's role in the watergate break-in. think about the 47%, that one could argue, cost mitt romney the election. think about how that sweet little number of his swirled around the country. had he never said it, had it never been recorded, just imagine how that campaign might have gone differently in its final months. think about how romney's strong first debate performance might then have proven decisive. well, today, thanks to the recording by a former girlfriend, we see how a powerful man, donald sterling, has been brought low. sterling had no idea that his words in that one-on-one conversation would become a topic of national conversation. multiple attacks on him, and finally his being shunned left to right by practically every public voice in the country. the big question is whether this decline in privacy, escalating with each new technological advance, is a good price to pay for cleaning up this country's dialogue. well, the answer to that depends on how much denying people's ability, to speak ill of others,

even in private, will lead to them treating them better in public. will the banning of bad racial speech promote better behavior, better attitudes? well, it's an important question. as for what's happened so far, from nixon to romney to sterling, most would say it's better that we know what these people were saying, better for america. and that's "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us. "all in with chris hayes" starts right now. good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. something's wrong. those chilling words were uttered last night by a medical technician present at the execution of clayton lockett, when it dawned on officials that their experimental new drug cocktail, designed to put lockett to death, was not working. ten minutes after the execution began, a doctor declared clayton lockett was unconscious. bu