drink more water. filtered by brita. ♪ and introducing our new advanced filter, now better than ever. this morning my question will conservative velevangelical voters choose the nominee? and the teacher who gave away a million dollar prize. but first, senate majority leader mitch mcconnell apparently just has way too much to do. good morning i'm melissa harris-perry. it is day 140 since president obama nominated loretta lynch to

become the nation's next attorney general. it's been long enough that a new fashion statement has popped up at the justice department. free eric holder bracelets as in let the current attorney general retire already and bring in his successor. we are still waiting. waiting for senate majority leader mitch mcconnell to call for a vote to confirm loretta lynch. he is still insisting that first the senate must pass the justice for victims of trafficking act. >> i continue to hope that we can get past the dilemma that you have all witnessed on the trafficking bill and go forward with that and, in turn to the lynch nomination. both are trying to figure out how to get past the impass. i wish them well. >> it's going to take more than well wishing to get this legislation passed. the act still contains language ta restricts access for funds

for abortions is and they are unwilling to vote for the bill as long as that language is in it. it's not that mitch mcconnell isn't doing anything. he had a busy week. look at some of the things that kept his occupied while not calling for a vote on the president's nominee for attorney general. monday he commend an accomplished woman trying to make a difference for the people she represents. no, it's not loretta lynch. >> on behalf of all the members of the senate, i wanted to congratulate the senator from iowa for a new bill and for her first remarks. >> and on tuesday he helped bestow congress's highest civilian honor on no not loretta lynch, jack nicklaus. >> he gave president bush the following golf advice. quit. >> now if you happened into the senate chamber on wednesday, you might have thought for just a

moment that mcconnell had changed his tune and decided to vote on the nation's top law enforcer after all. >> it's an important moment for our country. i know a lot of americans are excited to see it finally happen. >> but no, the topic was not loretta lynch. it was the balanced budget proposal which passed the senate in the wee hours of friday morning. though keep in mind when the final budget is passed later this year it will likely look nothing like the one voted on this week. also on thursday senator mcconnell avoided a crowd of 20 women led by sheila jackson lee who descended on his office calling for a vote on yes, loretta lynch. those calls may grow hard tore avoid as more lynch supporters pressure him to act. the senate is now on spring break returning april 13th. it's not at all clear that a vote on lynch will be scheduled when they return.

what is becoming increasingly clear, however is that this delay has real consequences. as time passes, more senate republicans are saying they will not support lynch's nomination. the latest to join the fray this week was shelley moore. while she has great personal and professional respect for loretta lynch, her views about president obama's executive actions are concerning. in order to be confirmed, lynch needs yes votes from all 44 senate democrats, both independents and at least 4 republicans. that would then lead vice president joe biden as the tie breaker. so far four republican senators support her. orrin hatch, lindsey graham jeff flake and susan collins of maine. but the math may quickly grow more complicated because this week new jersey democratic senator bob menendez whom the

justice department is getting ready to charge with corruption says he's on the fence. if he's charged before lynch's confirmation vote he may choose to recuse himself, and that would leave lynch scrambling for another yes vote. dick durbin told reporters this week that he's worried lynch may not wind up being attorney general after all. on the other hand lindsey graham says he believes more republicans will step up to support lynch once push comes to shove. joining me now is the president and executive director of the lawyers committee for civil rights under the law. and raul raez. is loretta lynch going to be the attorney general? >> she has to be. the african-american women community, we're not going to sit back and allow her to be

susan riced. we are going to demand that her vote be brought to the senate floor. it is important that we do everything possible. all women, all people who are justice loving in this country, any race any sex, you are to be to be everything you can to talk to your senators about confirming this it highly qualified woman. yes, i was one of the 36 marchers who were all over the senate. we went to his office, we went to the senate majority leader's office and yes, we demanded to see him, and i want to just say one thing to senator mitch mcconnell. there is no hiding place. you refuse to see us but we will be back. we demand that there be a vote. >> so part of what i hear you saying and raul this is the part that for me is most distressing. what you invoke susan rice in

that moment, at least in the context of susan rice there was an attempt to pretend that it was about her. in this case almost no one begins to pretend this this is about whether loretta lynch is capable for this job. it's simply a sort of newfangled form of nullification. >> and the strangest thing is that this is all about ideological differences, but not hers. it's about their ideological differences with the president. if you try to put themselves in their shoes, if she didn't share the same views, she would never be his nominee. so also when you look at the historical context, this is so outrageous. in the post war period there have only been two normalminees rejected. and of those who withdrew those

were the people where there were real instances with hired undocumented workers. there were substantiative questions about their record. they had problems. there's nothing here. it's extremely troubling when you look at it to say like if the republicans are going to be standing in the way of history in this sense with the first african-american woman as attorney general, there should be a good reason. don't do it for an indefensible reason. in this case, why? >> the other thing i think that i find fascinating is i love the free eric holder bracelets. this idea of come on the attorney general said he wants to retire. we have a nominee. this person is qualified. but in the meantime, attorney general holder is not just chilling. so we saw the doj charged the student at the university of mississippi with a federal civil rights crime violation for placing a noose on the neck of

the james meredith statue. it seems to me there are important consequences for not being able to move on. >> every time we turn around, we're looking at another police brutality incident. every time we turn around, we're looking at a new problem with a policing department. these issues are doj issues. when we talk about everything pertaining to national security all of these are doj issues. when we talk about education equality that's what the top law enforcement officer does. it makes zero sense that she has waited the longest of any nominee to the attorney general position. >> i kept thinking about the fact that president obama had this kind of great discussion with the wires this week and they are talking about criminal justice. i'm like, this is great. it's sort of reaching out to people who are thinking about criminal justice even through a pop culture lens. it's fine that he did, but i

want to talk to his new attorney general. >> this is a critical time because one of the areas that doj oversees are terrorism. we are constantly hearing about new threats, cyber security in light of all these hacking scandals. these are all critical issues. i also think just from a broader perspective, this sends a terrible message. loretta lynch is putting her life on hold. this sends a terrible message to people who are interested in public service, interested in government, and i just fail to see how the republicans who say that they believe in the marry tok ra si they are being so obstructionist when it comes to her. it's another missed attempt for them to broaden their appeal with african-americans. >> you just got to figure this congress, why they don't want to let eric holder retire. >> it makes no sense. >> i love the bracelets. let eric holder retire. up next, new detail this is

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as crews pain stakingly search the site where the germanwings plane crashed, investigators are pouring over clues sboolt life of the co-pilot who was at the controls. andreas lubitz had a mental illness but kept the diagnosis secret from his employer. they found notes in his home including one excusing him from work on the day of the crash. the focus coming late this week after french investigators listened to the cockpit voice recorders and concluded he locked the captain out of the cockpit and put the plane in rapid descent. joining me is aviation analyst

captain john cox. this is my challenge this week. in the midst of this tragedy and all of us feeling horrible about it but sometimes our reaction to air disasters is to make sweeping policy change and it's not the kind of thing we do if there's a single car accident no matter how upsetting and sad it is. i'm wondering is it an overreaction to make policy change about what in this case is a horrible thing, but a one off thing. >> absolutely a knee jerk reaction in aviation safety is almost always a bad idea. after 30 years of being an aviation safety professional, we have seen time after time after time of these knee jerk reactions and they haven't turned out very well. so in the wake of this tragedy, and you're very correct, the likelihood this is a one off, it's a very very rare event, the likelihood of this being an ongoing problem is extremely remote. we need to take time we need to

be exhaustive in gathering the right group of experts together and doing what we normally do and that is to continue to evaluate update and move forward with the policies and procedures for aviation safety and security. let's let the experts get. together and let them review the balance between protecting the flight deck from a passenger with the intent to hijack it and to make sure that the right people can get into the flight deck at the right time. >> we have heard a lot at this point about the fear and stress that something like this creates for fliers. i fly every week to travel up here to do this show. it certainly always creates anxiety when there's this moment. but i wonder about what kind of stress this may create for pilots and other airline professionals when a moment like this happens, how it makes their job harder in the days and weeks that follow. >> well i think at least for the pilots that i have talked to since this tragedy occurred

it's very hard for a professional aviator to believe that someone would do this. it's a strike against the profession and it's something that we take extremely seriously. aviation safety and particularly the safety of the passengers is a paramount concern for all professional pielots. and to have someone do something like this, it's very very disconcerning. it's been a personal hit, if you will against all of us and that has added stress in and of itself. it's one we'll get over. >> it is a bond of trust every time i get on that plane and i'm so grateful to my pilots and airline professionals who work to keep us safe and get me back and forth to work and to my family. captain john cox in florida, thank you for joining us this morning. up next, the video shows a man pulled over by police and

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this week newly released video shows the january arrest of floyd dent, who after being pulled over in a traffic stop was taken from his car at gunpoint choked beaten and tasered by police in the detroit suburb. a police report says he was pulled over after running a stop sign and after officers saw him in an area known for drug activity. but he and the video of the arrest suggests a very different story from the police account about what exactly happened during the incident. according to police, he tried to flee from the officers when they attempted to make the stop. but the video appears to show his car maintaining a steady speed and pulling over across the street from the police station. the report says police feared that he may have been reaching for a weapon and they heard him

saying i'll kill you. but dent, says he never said those words and there's no audio to substantiate the officer's claim. because none of the six arresting officers had their microphones turned on at the beginning of the encounter. the officer who punched dent a total of 16 times said the punches were to stop himself from being bitten, a claim that dent also disputes. there's no indication on the police report that any officer was injured. the report also says dent appeared to have quote, a blank stair as if on a form of narcotic and they found a bag of crack cocaine. but dent who has no criminal record and tested negative for drugs, says the officers planted the cocaine in his car. police charged him with resisting arrest assaulting an officer and possession of cocaine. but after watching the video, a judge dismissed all the charges

except the drug charge. the police chief says she is waiting on the results of an internal investigation that was launched immediately after the incident occurred. michigan state police are also investigating the arrest and one of the officers involved has been placed on administrative duty. on wednesday protesters gathered outside the police department calling all the officers to be fired. joining me are dent's attorney gregory roll and mr. floyd dent himself, nice to see you this morning. >> good to be here. >> so i want to start with your story. police say they started following you after they saw you at a motel that was known for drug activity. can you tell us in your words, what you were doing there? >> he wasn't there. >> i wasn't there. >> so do you want to tell us a little about the story?

>> it was a complete fabrication. mr. dent was coming home from work and went to deliver a bottle of some beer to a friend who was blind. and as he proceeded there after, he passed by the location where the officers were on patrol and allegedly they saw him through these binoculars from 600 yards away in a, quote, unquote, high narcotic activity area. it amazes me that the fact he took the stand, this officer who goes by the name of robo cop, took the stand and told under oath to the court that he racially profiled my client because he was a black man in a cadillac in a high area of traffic and narcotics, all of a sudden he's guilty and he was going to pull him over guardless of what happened. he said it from the stand and said it proudly. >> there are two important things you brought up that i want to make sure for our audience who may not know the

story. let me do a couple things here. i want to ask you a little about that first interaction. we don't have audio, so since we don't, there are two different stories going about what happened. and we know that what the officer said is that mr. dent said "i'll kill you." what do you remember happening in the moments before they pull pulled you out of the car? >> the moment before they pulled me out of the car, i had opened up my door stuck my arms out and the officer ran to the car with a weapon and said, get out of the car, i'll kill you, just like that. they grabbed me by the arm and threw me on the ground and started beating, kicking on me and i just tried to cover my face from all the beating that

the officer was giving me. >> mr. dent i can hear the stress in your voice as you're talking, so i want to give you a break for a second. i think it's important we've got. en -- sometimes we can forget how painful and stressful and the experience is. so mr. rohl let me go to you for a moment. you all are maintaining, in part, that the public ought to know something about this officer. you just called him or said that he goes by the name of robo cop. for my audience, can you explain what it is about the officer's background that you think the public ought to know. >> sure he was fired from the detroit police department for various acts of violence against citizens which cost the detroit public millions of dollars in

settlements. he was indicted for criminal activity for planting evidence. he was acquitted by a white jury in that case but there were officers that took the stand and swore under oath that he did these things. the chief of police has a history of abuse and payouts over $1 million on claims against her as well when she was with the city of detroit. it seems as though the refuge of detroit, they call themselves the cowboys and it's ridiculous. and i think of great is the fact that inkster is 90% african-american. what gives? >> i very much appreciate you both being here today. mr. dent i know this is difficult to talk about, it's a difficult video to watch. floyd dent and gregory rohl in

detroit, thank you for your time this morning. when we come back i'm going to bring in my panel and we're going to discuss this a bit. we need to talk about what this moment means for all of us in the questions of policing and justice in this country. i have the worst cold with this runny nose. i better take something. dayquill cold and flu doesn't treat your runny nose. seriously? alka-seltzer plus cold and cough fights your worst cold symptoms plus your runny nose. oh, what a relief it is. let me talk to you about retirement.

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stress, the distress and at this point i'm reporting on these every week. i'm thinking this has to make the world actually harder for police officers, worse for police officers, more dangerous for police officers if every time i see a blue light i'm thinking this is the kind of interaction i'm going to have. yet it feels like only the internal policing of police on their fellow policemen can really make this it stop. >> let's not look at this as a moral. when you look at the data maybe 2008 was the last survey, 45 million e interaction between the police and the public. the media doesn't see the incidents that don't happen. and when they are portrayed in this fashion when you have a slant this way and don't have the other side and all the details, it make s it seem as though it's potentially worse than it is.

i'm not suggesting that those officers don't have something to explain, they clearly do, and that's the basis of accountability. but accountability does not translate into punishment. it's we expect police to defend themselves but not to do so in a manner that is grossly disproportionate to what they are facing. we don't know exactly what they were facing. we hear about what the attorney said. we haven't heard all the details and read the reports that the police have submitted yet. so a rush to judgment on that is not appropriate. >> the professor brings up a good point about data. the problem is that we actually don't collect data in this country. we don't collect data. there's no national database on when people are killed by police. local law enforcement are not held accountable for having to report that. so any type of surveys are the surveys that law enforcement are sort of volunteering into. we know what happens when law enforcement have to police themselves. we actually don't get the type

of real data the real accountability that our communities need and deserve. so we don't have a real picture. what we do is have these stories that we continue to see over and over again and continue to hear the stories from folks like my members over and over again. and we have a national epidemic of police violence in our communities. we have to be honest about that. >> so as much as we don't know everything that happens in this one moment and that's fair we don't know everything that happened in this moment. but a couple things we do know, we do know there are vast disproportionate stops in stop and frisk in every city where there's a stop and frisk policy there's vast overpolicing of black and brown bodies and we know that those stop and frisk aren't turning into crime prevention. we also know they don't turn up a disporroportionate amount.

as much as we don't have some data, we have other data that tells us there's something going on here. >> the data that we have is limited. we have data that shows when you look at the cdc statistics on arrest-related deaths if you're an african-american, you're more than four times as likely to die in an encounter with police. for la tea knees, it's twice as high. remember, these are the things that are reported. there's so much that's unreported not just by the police department, but also by individuals because they don't want to come forward. even in these instances where we have video, we don't know all the full circumstances of this case, but you have a man being dragged out of a car, ten officers were on the scene. i know there's an investigation going on, but this happened january 28th so what does it take? do we need audio and video before we decide this is not okay? it's very frustrating in communities of color that we

continue to have this problem. >> the other thing we know is we know something about this officer. 12 federal lawsuits were filed dating back to 1996. he was cleared of those things, but they allege that he planted evidence, assaulted people in their homes, fabricated police reports, some of the suits were dropped, some settled out of court. so part of my pushback here is also we know in the rice shooting, it was also a police officer who did not think was fit to serve, goes to the jurisdiction and we see the death of a 12-year-old at his hands. ought there be accountability so you don't just get hired if you have this record. >> the screening of police officers needs to be a lot different than it is now. also it doesn't matter who you screen what you do if you don't hold your officers accountable. every story of an officer who

gets away with it inspires others to also feel that they have no accountability and can do it too. the civil rights policing reform coalition that i helped to facilitate facilitate, we are really into. the fact that there has to be absolute radical restructuring in this country. there has to be radical reforms of policing to make police more accountable. a young black woman shot for no reason in chicago is getting ready to start. i just want to be very clear that this monday on the 30th is what we call her dream day and we're going to be talking about black women and police violence all over this country because all of these stories have to be lifted up because police are

working from a racial stereotype and they are abusing black people. we have only seen the tip of the iceberg. >> there's one more set of stories i want to lift up when we come back from the break. an unarmed man fired upon 17 times by police. taxi. vo: after years of being treated like she was invisible it occurred to mindy she might actually be invisible. ♪♪ but mindy was actually not invisible. ooh, what are you doing? can you see me? she had just always been treated that way. yeah. you don't have to look at me like that. there are worst things than an attractive woman touching your body. i'll go. join the nation that sees you as a priority. ♪ nationwide is on your side ♪

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drink more water. filtered by brita. ♪ and introducing our new advanced filter, now better than ever. next week a federal mediator will travel to washington to start talks between the city's police department and community leaders following the police shooting of an unarmed, undocumented immigrant last month. the 35-year-old was shot after he threw rox at cars and police. the officer said he threatened them and failed to respond to their orders. the mediator will be responding to community group's claims that the shooting was unjustified and officers are out of touch with the city's people and that in a predominantly latino city,

officers aren't in touch with the community. it's those similarities that prompted one of my guests to ask this week why is pasco not the latino ferguson? >> actually, that's a term that "the new york times" used to describe this incident. it's also been referenced in "the daily beast." between pasco and ferguson, we see structural similarities. ferguson we saw the racial imbalance in the power structure. same thing in pasco. the school system there, 70% latino but there are no latinos on the school board. officers are less than a quarter on the force. i think they do have on their city council one latino. we see the imbalance there. what has been also been troubling to people is we have these instances of excessive use of force and brutality by police. unlike ferguson pasco has not

resinated with the national community as with much. the media will not respond to an incident until they feel it has generated widespread outrage. yet you can't have the widespread outrage until the media covers it. for a lot of people in the media when they hear the victim was spanish speaking or undocumented immigrant, they assume it's a telemundo story. so he becomes a type of inviz invisible person. when i spoke to some of the people who have been protesting in pasco and having these protest, they also say they feel frus ratsed because they have really made a conscious effort to have peaceful orderly demonstrations and protests and feel in a sense it's almost backfired that they said not that they want this but it does not bring cameras, generate the national coverage like we're

seeing in other instances. >> all of that seems right to me. it seems like the way you build a coalition. but i want to draw attention to the specificity as well around the policing issues especially for those who are undocumented or wlo are in communities where their loved ones are there because it is not just about being shot unarmed. it's about a violence that occurs as a result of the relationship between federal policing immigration agents local agents the kind of financial incentives that come from incarcerating undocument eded people. i want to talk about the daily violence. it's a its own thing that is about the ways in which these police relationships are about, again, policing these bodies these identities. not just the idea that people have done something, but who they are. >> absolutely. it's why in new york and around the country, folks are calling for independent prosecutors when

these things happen. we have to start pulling this out of police departments. there's no incentive for police departments to police themselves well. >> it feels like there is. i want to pause on that because it feels like there's an incentive. if you presume that police are professionals who want to do their job well, who want to actually make communities safer, and who are concerned for their own safety it does feel to me like there's an incentive. >> but it doesn't play itself out on a day-to-day basis. with being on the ground in ferguson that's a unique situation because when you read the report, you see this daily abuse over and over again. but it wasn't until a young man's body was left out in the street for four hours and a million tweets had to be sent out until the national media paid any attention. so the daily abuse over and over again and the lack of calls from

national police unions. i testified at the president's commission and sat next to the head of the police union. he said nothing needs to be done. >> how do you speak to that? what could police officers as a professional set of organizations, be doing to intervene? >> there's a couple things. from the executive level, you have to have leadership. you have to have leaders that embrace the community that have a multifaceted panel that come in and talk about policy and how the policeing strategies are going to be formulated. a lot of what was talked about jubs now at this moment was tactical things. when we talk about we have a body on the street, those things remain because you have to have a very very detailed, very systemic investigation. you don't want to disturb the crime scene. the moment you do that, you can't reconvene the crime scene and somebody is going to explain that you contaminated the crime scene and biassed the

investigation. so you leave it, you conduct the investigation, and then you move on from there. >> and you leave the body in the street for four hours and don't even have pictures? comen, this was one of the worst investigations you could ever have. i think the problem is that some policing believe that their role is to control black and brown people. >> let me also just say -- i don't want to lose a particular thread here. i don't want to lose a particular thread here because we moved to quickly to ferguson. it's indicative of what you were talking about. to sit for a moment with part of the problem around the policeing of undocumented bodies is presumably it's a law question. it's a part of what i want to do to a human rights question because part of what happens if we're talking about undocumented immigrants, they are lawbreakers lawbreakers. more to come. we're going to talk about the stop and frisk capital, more

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the american civil liberties union announced the results of a study that found chicago has replaced new york city as the lead leader in the use of stop and frisk. last summer officers stop oed more than 250,000 people without making an arrest. and most of those people were african-american. the report also found that while stops are most common in chicago neighborhoods where large populations of people of color, african-americans are much more likely to be stopped in predominantly white neighborhoods as well. in a separate report this week, justice department experts on community oriented policing criticized philadelphia police based on findings that revealed the use of legal force to be a common practice among officers in the city. according to the report police officers in philadelphia averaged one shooting a week from 2007 to 2013. during that time the percentage of unarmed suspects shot by police increased from 6% to 20%.

is it possible that our lack of national common sense gun control laws leads to a situation where it is more dangerous to be a police officer and so police officers begin acting in ways they expect everyone to be armed. they have the biases that we know from all the research are associated with black and brown bodies. and therefore, their mistake rate gets higher and you end up with shootings as a result of something that's about this big policy. >> guns have always been a part of the landscape in the united states they always will be. they have always been a factor that's trained on in policing tactics. you can't avoid that. it's not necessarily increase, it's the contextual factors. unarmed does not mean not dangerous, but the data that's been put out by philadelphia -- >> i want you to stop right there. that gives me a feeling.

i need to know what it means to assess danger if you are armed and the other person is not. >> isolation, time of day, number of occupants, whether you're outnumbered, physical size all sorts of things an uneven keel, imbalance, did you fall down. >> that makes sense to me. i actually want to walk through that because that makes sense. if i have fallen down and there are four people and none of them are armed but they are all coming out, but part of what i will say is my concern that because of racial stereotyping that creates implicit bias for officers making a judgment call about whether or not they are in fear that an african-american male body can be perceived as more dangerous than it actually

empirically is. >> i don't necessarily buy into that stereotype that police officers are saying to themselves, well, i have pulled this car over and it has a black guy in it so i have to come out with a gun. >> they are not saying it. >> it's happening all the time. >> this is science. this is not like a theory or an idea that people are making up that -- it explanins the data. it helps to explain the data that the police officers are not having some sort of secret racial meetings where they are deciding to hurt black people. in fact, there's some bias at play, there's science at play that's forcing people to make these decisions in these moments. it actually helps to explain some of the things that are happening. it also give. s us if we're willing to look at it, it gives us a path forward to solutions. at the end of the day, we see these numbers happening in cities after cities happening over and over again, and unless

we're willing to look at the fact we do have bias at play, we looked at data in terms of the local news stations and crime reporting. and if you look at arrest records and all four of the stations, all of them had a rate of 20 to 30 to 40% more in terms of black crime they were showing. so nypd arrest records compared to the suspects, pictures so the city is seeing over and over again black crimes. >> i want to do one other thing and lay over that. the bias does tell us a lot about individual interactions. i do not want to miss it was about bias. it was about a decision to -- it's systemic. >> their doj investigation into systemic abuses and excessive force by police in albuquerque, riverside, new orleans washington, d.c., all over the country. so just to be fair when we talk

about about the bias, it's not singling out the police as the only ones who have these biases. every single one of us at this table, everyone in our society, we all carry them. it's just that the police by nature of their job are in these life or death situations. they tend to have a weapon. >> i find it difficult to believe that people are acting unconsciously. humans act consciously. >> i will just say because. we like u to give. people things to read. there are some really great reports on this. we will post it on our site. a researcher has demonstrated a lot of this and is working with police forces. i want to say one thing. eric holder spoke at the bipartisan summit on criminal justice this week. he said, we must reject the notion that old practices are unchangeable. that the pollties that have

governed our institutions cannot be altered and the way they have been done is not the way they need to be done. we can make a decision to police differently. thank you to the panel. coming up next the first official candidate in the 2016 presidential race and what ted cruz's announcement says about the power of the evangelical vote. and students fight inging against loans by refusing to pay them. more nerdland at the top of the hour. dentures with toothpaste or plain water. and even though their dentures look clean, in reality they're not. if a denture were to be put under a microscope we can see all the bacteria that still exists on the denture and that bacteria multiplies very rapidly. that's why dentists recommend cleaning with polident everyday. polident's unique micro clean formula works in just 3 minutes, killing 99.99% of odor causing bacteria. for a cleaner, fresher brighter denture every day. i will take beauty into my own hands...

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>> i am so happy about this. i mean it's not like it was a surprise or anything we all knew senator cruz was planning a run, but he's the first major candidate to officially declare his candidacy. and how he did it tells us as much about how we plans to run in a field crowded with colleagues. he didn't announce in his home state the way clinton and president obama did. he didn't announce in an early primary state like new hampshire, as senator john mccain did. cruz made his announcement in virginia, and not at the front of a political landmark but at liberty university. it says a lot about how cruz wants to run. liberty was founded by jerry fallwell which helped elect president reagan in 1980 and led to decades of white christians being a major force in electoral politics. it's not cruz's alma mater.

he went to princeton and harvard, but liberty was among the first parties to sue the obama administration over the affordable care act. it filed suit the same day president obama signed the law, five years to the day before cruz made his presidential announcement. before cruz spoke, stage hands wheeled away the podium and standing mike that other speakers had used. cruz spoke without notes, moving around the stage and. sounding very much like an evangelical pastor. >> i want to talk to you this morning about reigniting the promise of america. for so many americans, the promise of america seems more and more distant. what is the promise of america? the idea that the revolutionary idea that this country was founded upon which is that our

rights, they don't come from man. they come from god almighty. >> even the timing says a lot. cruz got out ahead of the gate and importantly ahead of all the other candidates, who are planning to build support from a conservative base like mike huckabee and rick santorum. christians make up half of primary voters and in early states the numbers are even higher. 56% in iowa and 64% in south carolina identify as evangelical. but they have not voted as a bloc in recent primaries. in 2008 evangelicals were widely split in their choice for republican nominee. in 2012 150 leaders gathered at a texas ranch a week before the south carolina primary hoping to coalesce around a single candidate, who wasn't mitt romney. they chose rick santorum. but he lost to mitt romney and

newt gingrich. . this year they are trying it again. "the new york times" report eded this week that leaders are in talks to aaless behind a socially conservative candidate and bring their voting power to bear. joining me now and author of the book trauma and grace. thank you, ted cruz for announcing your presidency. you make such good tv. what do you make of cruz's choice to announce in this way and in this place? >> obviously, talking to an an evangelical crowd, he's going to have to raise lots of money. you have to build a larger base and you're not going to win with just a conservative base, not a presidential election. barry goldwater had a conservative base back in '64

but lost to johnson. you have to build a base bigger than whatever we had in 2012 and 2008. >> i guess part of what i find interesting when the field starts starts getting crowded, it's not like everybody is running for president. some are running to push the party. some are running for a variety of reasons. it wasn't as though he was trying to appear presidential. it seems he was trying to appear something else. i keep smiling about how enjoyable that performance was in that moment. >> i'm enjoying that we're finally getting the show on the road. we have been waiting and waiting and everybody may be running, what have you. ted cruz got rid of the exploratory phase, he's in. but he did what he does best. his father is an evangelical preacher. he knows how to work the crowd. the walking around thing, he

always does that. he's very good at it. when he's spoken he gets the crowd riled up. >> i appreciate you saying that because when i think ted cruz speaking, there's only one thing i think about. i wonder if we have the sound of the one thing i think about when i think about ted cruz speaking. >> do you like green eggs and ham? i do not like them, i do not like green eggs and ham. >> he was going to announce his presidential run. >> my second favorite ted cruz moment was this week he signed up for obamacare, which he's trying to destroy. rather than paying for it on the private market, he put his whole family on obamacare. . he did, don't look at me like that. that's a fact. >> i was puzzled by this. >> the other thing that was so interesting about that speech is

he said everything like a preacher. everything was biblical term even the story of his father briefly left the family and returned. it was cast as this born again moment of his personal family born again moment that changed the course of their family history and have the potential to change the course of the nation. that's fascinating the way he's working that crowd and that segment of the electorate. >> that idea of working them what i dislike is the idea of mocking people of faith who bring their faith traditions to bear on their political ideas. i bring my understanding of faith to bear on my political world view but i guess part of it is that certain traditions or performances end up feeling more like pandering than authentic connection. george w bush looked and felt

it, so i can't tell. i always hear green eggs and ham. i can't tell if it was a pandering performance. >> it felt like a broadway performance. now we're going to give you a clip of what we think a pastor should look like and act like in the u.s., but it was a completely political performance. it did not have the sense of a religious performance. you're in liberty university and get a standing ovation, but you have a crowd that's going to get fined if they don't stand. that's usually not the case in church. it also says something about the challenge ahead of him. if those kids are the ones they have to convince with the politics behind the positions he was putting out there, he has a big road ahead because they don't agree with him on these issues. >> we talk about reagan as being the moment when the shift happens and becomes moral majority becomes apart of this. reagan ends up disappointing the evangelicals for a moment.

i wanted to read this piece believing that had guaranteed his win in 1980 christian conservatives felt the president owed them for their enthusiastic backing, but the reagan administration claimed it had to address the economy and the social christian conservatives would have to wait. george h.w. bush it wasn't his gompbing style. i wonder if this population ends up a captured population that doesn't get what they want on their agenda. >> at the end of the day, you have to help all americans. that's what ronald reagan did. he talked about the department of education and other departments, but once he got to be the. he couldn't abolish them. at the end of the day, you have to do what's best for americans. >> this idea that government just keeps making more of itself is fascinating. when we come back, what did the

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thought i told you to stay off our turf.

on thursday indiana governor ignored pleas from the business community, lgbt advocates and went ahead and signed the religious freedom restoration act. opponent says the law will allow businesses to discriminate against gay, lesbian and transgender people including refusing them service. the governor signed the bill in a private ceremony but close to members of the press. but that has not protected him from the backlash. the multibillion tech company salesforce.com says it will cancel all programs that require to travel to indiana. online ratings yelp said it

would not have a corporate presence. apple's ceo tweeted that his company is disappointed in the law and said around the world we strive to treat every customer the same regardless of where they come from how they worship or who they love. the ncaa, which is based in indiana and will hold the men's final four there next week suggested it may reconsider holding its tournaments in the state. #boycottindiana became a trending topic on twitter and miley cyrus had words for the governor. culminating with a promise she would donate money she e made performing in indiana to the human rights campaign which supports equal rights for the lgbt community. yep, that's what i'll do get ready for a little money coming your way from indiana via me to you slm have at it!

do you have the biblical quote where the lord said, do not serve your gay neighbor? >> i have looked, i have not found that one. i found a couple about poverty, but that one has never popped up. the one about it's okay to have a wedding cake lunch counter in indiana today. where did jesus said that? if we're going to talk scripture, let's get to the heart of it. love your neighbor. >> the love is supposed to be unconditional. you're supposed to hate nobody. that's what the bible says. that's what the new testament talks about. love nobodyeverybody, hate nobody. you can't say you love god but i hate my neighbor. >> who i see every day. i guess, for me this is a concern. if we are going to make a claim that this is about religious

freedom, is there some basis on which we then have to understand whether or not one says this? in the context of conscientious objection, you can't say i u won't go to war. you have to demonstrate that it says you can't be part of war. so this is framed as religion and as troubling as it is it also troubles me from saying my religion claims. >> it's really not about religion. what it's about is marriage quality has become more accepted and approved by the supreme court likely. this is similar to the '60s where some are trying to find a way around that and reframing as religious liberty. the fact is there are many religious believes. there are people if you are fundamentist mormon you believe in polygamy. that doesn't mean it's legal. >> i will say the church -- that's no longer part of it.

>> that's more fundamentist group. some have concern religious believes. but just because they affirm people's right to freedom of religion but just because there may be certain conduct ariegz doesn't mean it's going to be protected or affirmed. that distinction between religious believes and legal practice, that's an important distinction. >> the politics of this are interesting. mike pence is probably not running for president, we were talking about running for vice president. i could say this is what he's trying to do. he's speaking a language that republicans and conservatives really respond to right now, which is you don't discriminate against a gay and lesbian people, but you give people a right to practice this religion. it is the gay marriage of 2004. anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives popped up all over

the country. this is ten years later the version of it. >> so that's fascinating to me because it doesn't seem like mike pence is running. maybe he is running for vice president. but you have to run with the chamber of commerce, with the ncaa. i guess that's what i find prize surprising. who is the coalition group for this? >> this is a national message about himself and his view of faith. he's willing to give up all this money, all this business that indicated they are going to take their business elsewhere. why? there's only one reason. that's because he's looking at national politics. >> in a basic way, doesn't that make him a bad governor? if you're willing to make choices that harm your economics for your political goals, then isn't that actually making you a bad governor? >> i have known mike f a long time.

i think he's a good human being. i think so far he's been a good governor. my fear is what it might do to people in the lgbt community. they shouldn't be discriminated against. the law needs to work for everybody. it has to protect everybody. so that's my fear. there may be some people who abuse the intent of what is meant to be in the governor's case something good for bad. >> but so let's just take that on the table. he's a good guy. it's a deeply held personal belief. i'm asking a question here about if you're a good guy with a deeply held personal belief but i have elected you to be the governor, part of that is good financial management of our state and you make a choice based on your personal belief or ambitions -- >> that's anti-business. a personal choice that could potentially cost your state millions of dollars. a personal choice that potentially makes a certain

class of people second class citizens. i don't understand what is the game for him. and aside from that, the way this law is written, it's not singling out lgbt people. this law has all types of potential that it could be used to potentially justify or excuse all different types of behavior. the thing that's also troubling about this maybe it seems extreme to some of us but his position because not many people have explored this issue of what religious liberty really is, it's not that different from a mainstream position right now because the public when they are polled on these type of laws, they are split 47/48, but statistically, the same. a lot of people who have not explored the issue, the difference is when you flip the question and said would you be okay with a muslim store owner denying you service because you're wife is not wearing a head scarf, that's when people say, wait a minute this is not

cool. >> i so appreciate the vision of a wedding cake lunch counter. for a moment i just thought that sounded very yummy and i realized we're talking about the question of segregating people of refusing to serve people purely because of their identity. my panel will be back later in the hour. still to come this morning, one group's approach to student loan debt is refusing to pay it back. first, it's time for an installment of this week in voter suppression. that's next.

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in small business you have to work hard, know your numbers, and stay focused. i was determined to create new york city's first self-serve frozen yogurt franchise. and now you have 42 locations. the more i put into my business the more i get out of it. like 5x your rewards when you make select business purchases with your ink plus card from chase. and with ink, i choose how to redeem my points for things like cash or travel. how's the fro-yo? just peachy...literally. ink from chase. so you can. two republican leaders we have been keeping our eye on are back for our latest edition of "this week in voter suppression." this week in voter suppression, scott walker, who hasn't declared he's running for president but sure is acting like it.

nabbed a victory on monday in his state's push to restrict voting access. the supreme court refused to weigh in on the voter i.d. law signed in 2011 clearing the way for it to take effect after the state's april 7th elections. the law requires nearly all voters to present photo identification like a driver's license or passport in order to cast a ballot. he's savoring his victory, e-mailing supporters asking for donations to celebrate the supreme court decision. next, we have ohio secretary of state john houston, who in the voter suppression is legend. as the chief elections official of the state, houston has pushed for a shorter early voting period cuts to sunday and evening voting and slashing same day registration. now he's after the students. on wednesday republicans in the ohio state senate snuck a lst-minute provision into a transportation budget. it requires out of state students who register to vote in

ohio to obtain ohio state driver's licenses and vehicle registrations within 30 days. the cost to obtain an ohio driver's license and register a vehicle is $75 or more, meaning there's a price tag for out of state students in the buckeye state to vote. sure does sound like a poll tax to us. but according to secretary houston, this isn't about voting. it's about, wait for it, residency. >> if you're going to have the privileges of being an ohio resident, you have the responsibilities of being an ohio resident. in our read of this is there's no difference and all it does is set a time frame for that of 30 days. >> still with me the panel is back. what in the world? >> it's a bad week for voting rights in both states. o so wisconsin, we know there

are 300,000 registered voters who don't have this form of i.d. the decision not to take the case paves the way for implementation of that law after april 7th. so at least it's blocked for one more election. there's still ongoing litigation, but it's about the range of i.d. cards that are going to be acceptable. for instance, wisconsin doesn't accept a veterans administration i.d. card, which is really, really remarkable. even secretary of state houston, even he has come out against the notion of excludeing veterans i.d.s from my i.d. law. that's the reason they don't have an i.d. law because he said look i'm all for voter integrity, but let's think about the disabled vets who don't drive and can't get to a motor vehicle office. >> it's interesting, but what about college students who may not drive? this idea that you need 30 days you have to actually basically pay a tax.

we have a 24th amendment to the u.s. constitution. it says the right of citizens of the united states to vote in any primary or other election for president or vice president, elections, shall not be denied by the united states or any state by a reason to fail to pay tax. isn't that what this is? >> this is also you have to remember there's a supreme court case that is decades old that makes it allows students to vote in the state at which they are en enrolled in college. so this is yet another attack. we saw this in new hampshire. we have seen it in other states where people have tried to introduce these bills to restrict students from voting because they think they are, quote, too liberal in their vote ing ing. this is not about residency, it's not about driving licenses, it's really about, once again, trying to get rid of and suppress a population of voters you don't like. >> so we talk a lot on this it show about the gutting of the

voting rights act, but this is wisconsin and ohio. those are not states that would have been covered under the old formula any way. so what are the tools available for addressing this? >> well, as you mentioned, we have the constitution. >> oh that little thing. >> that prohibits poll taxes. the supreme court said 49 years ago you can't have poll taxes. this is a big deal in ohio. . there are about 60,000 students at osu. one fifth of the freshman class came in from out of state. they have 30 days if they registered to vote in ohio to pay the $75 up to $100 for certain types of cars. it's a big deal. >> that can be the cost of books for the fall. so that idea certainly seems to me as though we have moved in that space to operating as a poll tax. >> absolutely. one of the good things that did

happen around voting this last two weeks is the state of washington passed voter modernization, which means that you're automatically registered to vote if you're over 18 and you are a citizen. and you're automatically registered. this is one of the things that we need to see. >> so that was in oregon where you're asking to opt out. maybe what we need to do is get more people voting. and there was also in alabama there's some question about whether or not that redistricting is now going to be allowed to go forward. that seems like a little bit of good news or no? >> yes, i mean the alabama case in general is good because it reaffirms the principle strongly in modern times that you can't pack racial minorities into districts to dilute their power in one district. and then they have no influence on the surrounding counties and

surrounding areas, so they have less power. so this is important that the court has reaffirmed that principle and has done it in a modern context of looking at the german -- gerrymandering. this practice has really been too prevalent. >> a little bit of good news lots of bad news in voter suppression. still to come this it morning, the group of 15 refusing to payback their student loans. but first the details on the plane crash this week in the french alps, that's next. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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about $54,000 for immediate cost costs. french prosecutors say the co-pilot andreas lubitz locked the captain o out of the cockpit and intentionally put the plane in a rapid descent. the victims came from more than a dozen countries and search crews are working to recover remains and personal belong. ings in efforts to confirm the identities of the dead. joining me now from that village in france is claudia. what do we know about the time line for this search? >> reporter: the investigation and the recovery operation are likely to take weeks, rather than days. this is a very complicated operation. made it even more difficult that because of the high e speed of the impact of the plane against that mountain behind me, the plane pulverized. there are thousands and thousands of small debris of the plane and also the bodies are in a bad condition.

national police here told us they could not find a single body that was intact because of the impact. the violence of that impact and the investigators have to take small samples from body parts to match them with the dna samples that the families have left and are still leaving here with investigators. now what we know is that today and in the next few days, 30 investigators have been lowered from a helicopter down to the crash site. 15 are in charge of collecting dna samples and 15 are in charge of looking for the second black box that hasn't been recovered yet and also to try to find evidence among the debris of that plane. we learned that yesterday 600 dna samples have been taken, but we also learned about emotional details about the 20 national mountain police here that are helping out these investigators. they haven't seen anything like

it. they are in charge of looking for lost hikers in the mountains, so now they are looking at a mass murder site. also some of them are receiving psychological counselling because those are the ones that need to stay there at night and set up campfires to prevent the animals from creeping in. so those are the ones that are really taking the toll on them. >> a very difficult picture there, thank you for bringing us that report. up next taking a stand on student debt by refusing to pay it back.

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or abnormal bleeding. tell your doctor before all planned medical or dental procedures. before starting xarelto® tell your doctor about any conditions such as kidney, liver, or bleeding problems. xarelto® has been prescribed more than 11 million times in the u.s. and that number's growing. like your guys' scores. with xarelto® there is no regular blood monitoring, and no known dietary restrictions. treatment with xarelto® was the right move for us. ask your doctor about xarelto®. you may be able to get up to 12 months at no cost. student loan debt has nearly quadrupled in the last decade with the amount owed topping $1 trillion trillion. among tem are 15 former students who are resolute in that default and refusing to repay their loans as a form of protest. they call themselves the ko rint

yan 15 taking their name from the for profit college chain they attended. it was sold off last year after the consumer financial protection bureau sued ko corinthian college accusing them of credit lending fraud. they required payment while students were still enrolled. in addition, they said they were misled about future job prospects. the predatory empire pushed hundreds of thousands into a debt trap. but even beyond for-profit schools, tens of millions of students are in more debt than they can ever repay. and you are the debt collector, with powers beyond a payday lender's wildest dreams. the company has e denied accusations. . in the meantime this debt strike puts former students at the risk of ruining their credit and losing paychecks or tax

refunds. joining me is one of the members of the group, i'm so happy you're here. talk to me. how much do you owe and what quality of education did you receive for the money you were charged? >> well i currently owe $32,000. i just want to get that correct. and also we are actually ko rint yan 100 now. we are getting stronger and not backing down. the quality of education was horrible. i was promised things like one-on-one tutoring if i needed it. i basically taught myself the whole two years i was in college. >> i don't want people -- there's two pieces here. one piece is about the college and about the loans they were giving. the other piece is about the department of education, the federal government paid for by taxpayers, supported by all of

us as voters and the idea that that part of the debt is also not being forgiven. is that right? >> correct, the thing is that we are not asking for forgiveness because we did not do anything wrong. we are demanding them to discharge this debt because they have the power to do so. we did everything that we were supposed to. we went to college, we graduated, we made good grades and some people didn't even get to go get their diplomas. so it's like where would our future hold us? the department of education is responsible for half of what's going on in this mess. >> so stay with us. don't go away. i want to come out to the table for a second. i want to play a little bit of sound from president obama this week. he was in birmingham, and he was talking about the issue of payday lenders and really trying to kind of push this idea of a justice-based response to payday lending. let's take a listen to that. >> they go to a payday loan,

borrow for the funeral, can't pay back the loan in time, the family's car get.s taken away and the breadwinners in the family lose their jobs because they can't get to work. so what start eded off as a short-term emergency suddenly becomes. a catastrophic financial situation for that family. >> so raul this is the president talk about about payday lenders. e he has that story right, but i'm thinking payday lenders have nothing on $32,000 for college education that's not really a college education. if we're going to take that stance against payday lenders, don't we need to take the same against colleges. >> some of the structural similarities are there. the for-profit colleges target low-income students. they target veterans. they target single mothers. the young lady here has a good

point if you look at a legal contract. this is what the school promised to do and in exchange they would pay back this debt. the school did not live up to their promise and provide them with the type of education. they admit in several cases where they are being sued that they engaged in deceptive advertising. i look at it as a breach of contract there. i think the students have a case. >> we have congresswomen talking about this. what do you think? >> i think these young people are so courageous to stand up for their rights and say this isn't fair. my wife worked on just this kind of thing so we have heard this before. this is not brand new. i think at the end of the day, i stand with these young students. what they are doing is the right thing. they are standing up and saying no more it's got to stop. you have to reform the way in

which these kinds of predatory businesses do business so people aren't hurt. >> let me come back to you. you're risk ing aing a lot in this. to make a decision not to pay back a debt sitting on your credit is a risk for you. >> yes it is. it's a really big risk but it's worth taking that risk for other students to not have to go through this and for my children and your children it's all worth the fight. >> hold on for a second. is there an ethical question here? it feels to me in part like education is a human resource development issue in which the state has a fundamental interest, and that this is one part of it but maybe all student loans should be zero interest. we expect people to pay back, but maybe they should be zero interest. >> this is the tip of the iceberg of the real problem. it could be the higher end $15 million in terms of the massive amount of debt that students are

incurring. even to get excellent education, but they are leaving with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt that will forever cripple them. what kind of world are we creating when we do that to students who we want to get educated for the greater social good. just to add to this congress is trying to cut the perkins loans which is the only loan in place right now that will cover that gap for a very low hf-income student to be able to go to college, period. >> let me ask you this as we go. what is next for you? >> the next step is to dispute these debts. we're going to continue to fight. we're not backing down. we're fighting for everyone. not just for-profit colleges traditional colleges and everything. we have a lot of more actions coming up this spring. it's about to get real juicy.

>> thank you and thank you to my guests here in new york. after the break, she won a million dollars and her response, give it all away. our foot soldier of the week is next. lent of the sugar in one regular can of soda. and this is a soda a day for a year. over an average adult lifetime that's 221,314 cubes of sugar. but you can help change that with a simple choice. drink more water. filtered by brita. ♪ and introducing our new advanced filter, now better than ever.

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have you ever dreamed of winning a million dollars? what would you do? buy a house, pay off student loans? take all your friends and family on an amazing vacation? how about giving it all away? that's what our foot soldier of the week just did. nancy atwell is a language arts teacher. she is the founder of the independent school the center for teaching and learning fl maine. and this month, she was awarded the first annual global teacher prize. the prize for the foundation's website is awarded to quote, one superspecial innovative and

caring teacher who's made an inspirational impact on their students and community. the award has been called the nobel prize of teaching. and it comes with a $1 million prize. nancy's plan for the money is to pour it right back into her school. to fund tuition assistance purchase books and renovate the grounds. i'm so pleased to be joined now by our foot soldier of the week nancy atwell in brunswick, maine. >> good morning. >> how did you make this decision? did you think about going on vacation? >> it was automatic. there was never a question. i have everything i need. but my students don't. and my school doesn't. so it was a no-brainer. >> this idea of awarding a prize of this size to a teacher feels like such an important way to say that teaching is important and what teachers do is valuable. but i also wonder if there are policy changes we ought to be making that give that message to

more teachers more consistently. >> i think right now the climate is not a very good one for teachers who want to be autonomous who want to be creative, who want to have a big influence on kids' lives. i know at my school because it's a demonstration school we work really hard to develop methods and then disseminate them to teachers around the country. so our older kids read at least 40 books a year. they write 20 or 30 pieces of publishable writing. they choose what they're going to write and read. they have all this time and practice. and those aren't options that are available under the standardized methods and standardized tests that are controlling right now what's happening in public education. >> what you're saying there about the value of these experiences of learning and of being producers of knowledge,

not just consumers of it i want to take a listen to something you said about the relevance of being global citizens. let's take a listen. >> it's not possible for children any longer to just understand their own communities. they need to understand the world. and they need to have viecarious experiences of it and they need to have empathy for the range of experience that extends beyond our own borders. >> how do we do that? create that empathy? >> in my school in rural maine, it's about as isolated culturally and ethnically as it can get. it's very white. we've worked on so many different fronts. melissa, we celebrate every ethnic and religious holiday at the school. our students are active in the model u.n. they were the first middle school kids in maine to learn about other countries and represent them as diplomats on issues like girls education and animal rights.

we have the most fantastic classroom library of books that represent children from all kinds of cultures and tell their stories. and we engage in lots of fund-raising activities for organizations that are doing work around the world that the children and i are concerned about, like doctors without borders. so in every way, i'm trying to help the kids understand that they need to know about the world out there because they can't empathize unless they have knowledge. that's really the job, i think, of every school in the u.s. to open its doors to every kind of experience so our kids -- if we really want them to be global citizens, have had their lives touched and have touched others' wives in sincere, profound ways. >> i want to say two things. i so appreciate that world view that perspective. at wake forest university where i teach, we sum that up by

calling it that spirit of being for humanity. i also want to thank you very personally as the mom of a seventh-grader because your text was extremely helpful to me in thinking about what middle of middle-schoolers can do. nancy atwell in brunswick, maine, our foot soldier of the week giving back her million dollars to her students and to her community. 245u7k so much. >> it's my pleasure. >> thank you. and that is our show for today. thanks for watching. see you tomorrow morning, 10:00 a.m. eastern. we'll be talking about race on college campuses. angelina jolie and her experiences with her own body and why tv now in color is causing such a fuss. see you then. right now, time for a preview with "weekends with alex witt." >> thank you so much. we'll have the latest on the search for a motive in the germanwings plane crash. also the outrage in indiana over a new law some say is an invitation to discriminate against gays and lesbians. new headaches this tax

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until every kid has built those life-long eating habits, we'll keep working. a german tabloid is reporting a rather shocking claim from one of andreas lubitz's apparent former girlfriends that may give insight into the germanwings tragedy. i just wanted to say that i'm incredibly grateful for what has happened for the justice i've received. >> the amanda knox saga it appears the final chapter has been written in an italian courtroom. more of her reaction. on the west coast, the puzzling new turn in the case of apparent kidnapping. police say it's a hoax. the alleged victim says it's all true. turmoil in the middle east. why saudi arabia's bombing runs matter to the u