images of this. 1952 iraq's king, iraq's teenaged king came to visit the united states. he was a teenager. he was only 17 years old. he apparently loved baseball. while he was here he met jackie robinson and the u.s. secretary of state. he met president truman. he had been king since he was a little kid technically speaking but came to the u.s. at the age of 17. he became officially an adult the following year at which point from 1953 on the more or less worldly teenage king of iraq, he assumed his position as the ruler of his country. it didn't last. he was only 23 years old when a coup was launched against him in 1958. in that coup he was murdered along with much of his family.

the monarchy was deposed. nationalists took over. they overthrew the iraqi monarchy. that didn't last, either. about five years after they killed the king and the military took over, the military was overthrown, as well, or at least the faction of them that had been in charge. by then it was 1963, february 1963 and the group that took over iraq then and ruled it for 40 years thereafter, that was the bath party. we think of saddam hussein as the personification of the bath party. he, in fact, took over iraq in 1979. he ruled iraq in the name of the party for more than two decades but the party took over iraq all the way back in 1963 which was basically the exact same time that the party took over next door in syria. the party mounted the coup in baghdad on the 8th of february

1963. by the 8th of march 1963 one month later they mounted their coup in damascus, as well, in syria. the party took over in iraq in february and took over in syria in march and in syria as in iraq thereafter they had a few different stops and starts in terms of what their new governance would look like, in terms of what their new leadership would be like. they had a couple more upheavals but by 1970 in syria they had their leader for life. his name was hafez al assad. he took over in 1970 and never gave up power. in iraq hussein ruled for 24 years. the occupied iraqi government

executed him in 2003. next door in syria hafez al assad held on until he died on his own terms. he had a heart attack in the summer of 2000 and syria technically is not supposed to be a kingdom so they did hold an election to pick a successor to hafez al assad but in the quote election there was only one candidate on the ballot, hafez al assad's son. he got 99.7% of the vote in that year 2000. and that's how he got power. that is how bashar al assad as the not quite king of syria. it's basically a dynastic dictatorship. he inherited the dictatorship from his dad in 2000 after his dad had taken over in a military

coup 30 years before. at the start of bashar al assad's second decade in power in 2011 when demonstrators around the arab world started demonstrating in the streets for relief from corruption, for real democracy, for reform agenda that was different from country to country but at heart it was for a relief from corrupt shrorotic rule by force, when protests started sparking in 2010, in 2011 and 2012 every country handled it differently. in syria bashar al assad decided to deal with it with force, with massive force. and the opposition that started with peaceful street protests in 2011 in syria quickly evolved from not just a protest movement, not just a street movement but into armed resistance and armed opposition

movement. and since then syria has spent two, three, four, five, now six years sliding deeper and deeper and deeper into increasingly impossible, increasingly complex catastrophic civil war. a half million people killed, half million people. five million people flung out of syria fleeing for their lives by taking refuge anywhere else in the world. bashar al assad still in power. russia is propping him up and iranians are propping him up. the majority population of syria is sunni. the majority sunni population of syria is never going to be okay again if they ever were, will never be okay again with being ruled by nonsunni dictator who inherited the gig from his dad and spent the second decade in

power slaughtering syrians by the hundreds of thousands. the solution to this is not rocket science. the solution to this is way more complicated than rocket science. do you think our current administration is going to be the administration that comes up with the genius solution to this? the new administration in our country released as a situation room type photo. what they are going for obviously is i think they want this to be their version of this shot from the situation room at the white house during the bin laden raid. what we got last night from the white house, though, was a little different because the administration last night was not headquartered at the white house in washington. they were, of course, at the president's paid membership resorts in south florida. so their situation room photo

which they released, it sort of looks like a situation room photobut if you look more closely you see it is not really the same thing. for one it was taken at a function room where we are told president and advisers were seated on chairs set aside for wedding receptions. have you seen this today? see how the shares are like wedding reception chairs. this is a function room inside. this is the photo they released. the first obvious caption when you are looking at this photo is lesson one in how jared stays the favorite. look at this. look at what everybody else in the photoso doing. everybody else is staring at the left side of the photo while jared kushner gazes at his father in law. you want there to be a new job in the united states called crown prince?

here is how you will that job into existence. it is also a notable photo. the situation room photo. who is in on that decision in the real situation room photo in the bin laden situation room photo there is secretary of state, the national security adviser, vice president, defense secretary, director of national intelligence, cia chief, chairman of joint chiefs. you recognize these people. in this photo some of those people are there but there is jared, the president's son-in-law and the top economic adviser to the president. there is the white house spokesman back there and some other people we don't know at all. sort of right next to the president there is the treasury secretary and secretary of commerce. >> this is a critical military

briefing. why is the commerce secretary there? i don't know why wilber ross is there. he appears to have no idea what is going on around him at that moment. i have a little bit of tape to play for you. this is just audio. a reporter asked commerce secretary what it was like to be right there with the president and to be in that make shift mar-a-lago situation room. we know from the photo that wilber ross was there in the middle of it. it's not clear to us as observers why he would have been there and he is making clear that he -- he seems to have misunderstood some key details about what was going on around him in that moment. listen. >> in terms of the strikes themselves, it's my understanding that they took out something like 20% of the entire

syrian air force. so it was huge not just in terms of number of planes but relative to the scale of their air force. >> commerce secretary wilber ross under the impression that 20% of the entire syrian air force was destroyed last night on this one u.s. strike. i don't think that is what happened. secretary of state rex tillerson later tried to clarify that it wasn't 20% of the air force. maybe it was 20% of one wing of the syrian air force that was destroyed maybe. maybe it was 20 planes that were destroyed. maybe it was 20% of some economic figure that was relevant to this military strike which would explain why the commerce secretary and treasury secretary were there in the first place. at least wilber ross was right there at the president's side to help make this call even if he doesn't know what the call was even afterwards.

what has changed in terms of u.s. military involvement in the terrible syrian civil war as of last night is a pretty specific thing. last night was not the first time tht u.s. military has shot tomahawk missiles into syria from u.s. navy ships. this footage is from 2014 when president obama ordered that 47 tomahawk missiles should be fired at fighters inside syria that were thought to be alive with al qaeda. these are 2014 tomahawk strikes. the united states led coalition of arabimations in manned arab. the united states alone and along with other countries has continued bombing raids in syria for years now both with drones and with manned planes. those air strikes have been targeting isis. those u.s. attacks inside syria

continued right through the end of the obama administration and into the start of the new administration, too. none of that is new in terms of our u.s. military involvement in the syrian civil war. what is new as of last night is that now we are bombing both sides in that war. previous u.s. air strikes and even occasional commando raid targeted isis or al qaeda affiliated fighters. now the new administration has made sort of momentous decision to target the syrian government, as well. the syrian military, the forces of bashar al assad. and whether you like this turn of events or not it's truly not clear why the u.s. government has made this change. bashar al assad undoubtedly is a butcher with the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on his hands as well as the ultimate responsibility for what has been the wholesale destruction of his own country. bashar al assad has been a butcher all this time.

there are hundreds of thousands of people who have died in that war. the syrian government under bashar al assad, they're operating a prison system that appears to be an industrialized human atrocity on the scale of the death camps we thought had been left behind. that has been true all along. that has been true for years. and it does appear that bashar al assad may have used chemical weapons against his own civilian population again this week. but, you know, this president was emphatic after a much larger chemical weapons attack on syrian civilians. he was emphatic that that was no reason for the united states to get military involved in the syrian civil war. if you didn't want to get involved, if you screamed and yelled and occasionally went to all caps emphasis, if you screamed and yelled about how stupid it would be for u.s. military to get involved in syria after bashar al assad

killed 1,400 people with chemical weapons not that long ago, why would bashar al assad killing 70 people with gas this week result in the new administration instantaneously reversing its position on this war and getting it? and not just reversing its position from what the president had said when he was a private citizen in 2013, they have reversed their position, they are taking the exact opposite position from their own public foreign policy position on this subject just last week. >> i think the status and longer term status of president assad will be decided by the syrian people. >> assad's role in the future is uncertain and with the acts he has taken it would seem that there would be no role for him to govern the syrian people. >> first clip was rex tillerson.

180 degree change. and whether you like the new policy or you like the old one, we need to now try to figure out as americans what the cause was of that change. was it an emotional thing? was he secretly inclined to intervene in the syrian civil war all this time and he just campaigned on the opposite position and publically maintained the opposite position until a few days ago? is it possible he was just ignorant about things like the syrian civil war before? now that he is president he is learning about what the syrian civil war is and finding that now that he gets it his instincts are to start shooting missiles at things that seemed bad to him. things that seemed bad to him now but he never really noticed before. in the last few days the new

administration has threatened that the united states will take unilateral action against north korea. secretary of state putting out a strange threatening statement a few days ago that said, quote, the united states has spoken enough about north korea. we have no further comment. before the national security adviser got fired there was his vague strange threat against iran. >> as of today we are officially putting iran on notice. >> it's still not at all clear what that meant, what that was about. is the notice still active now that michael flynn has been fired? could he deliver iran their notice through turkey since he was on the turkish government payroll? but there will be no more speaking when it comes to north korea. iran is on notice. the navy s.e.a.l. raid on yemen was apparently approved after

almost no deliberate process within the administration at all. that raid was a disaster. it resulted in many civilian deaths and in the death of a u.s. navy s.e.a.l. we think about that raid as a disaster but that raid also represented a significant escalation in u.s. military involvement in yemen by the new administration. without a process to deliberate over that really at all, the new president apparently approved that raid and that major escalation in yemen at a dinner meeting that included jared, his son-in-law. this new presidency is where we got what appears to have been a truly disastrous u.s. air raid in iraq, an air raid that made have killed nearly 200 civilians after u.s. and allied forces specifically told civilians that they should not leave and stay in their homes right before u.s. planes bombed those homes. and now the new administration has launched 59 tomahawk

missiles at the other side in the syrian war that we weren't yet fighting, at the syrian military. why were steve mnuchin and wilber ross, why were they in the room while that decision was being made? what military action decision requires the chief of the economic advisers to be there or wilber ross? the u.s. military has been involved in the syrian civil war before. we have never before deliberately taken a combattant role against the syrian military. who knows what will happen in response, if anything? is the united states going to pursue a military strategy that is aimed at regime change in syria now? administration would have said that was nuts a week ago. but today who knows?

next week who wants to bet we don't understand how it is that the policy changed 180 degrees from last week. how will we know whether it is going to change 180 degrees to next week? the founders of our country tried to invest the power to make war in the united states congress instead of in the presidency. they did that for a reason. it is hard to get a legislature full of hundreds of elected officials from all over the country to vote to start a war. congress wouldn't take a vote on president obama's request to authorize u.s. military force in syria in 2014. congress is structurally disinclined towards war and the founders knew they would be. they knew that a deliberative body would be less likely to wage war recklessly as compared to one person who could make that kind of decision alone. over these past couple of generations we have let that

slip. and now we have got in power a person with the war making powers of a modern american president who is also a person that is the subject of a counter intelligence investigation by the fbi because of the possibility that hecluded with a foreign power in order to become president. he appears to have no moring in day to day basics of foreign policy. but he has just gotten the first good press of his young presidency and he got it by turning on a dime, doing something completely contrary to his statedoreign policy and deciding what the heck, let's bomb something. whether or not you think that was a good decision, how do you feel about his decision making process? the incentives here are about to get very, very perverse. more ahead on this tonight. stay with us. e know how to covt anything.

even a coupe soup. [woman] so beautiful. [man] beautiful just like you. [woman] oh, why thank you. [burke] and we covered it, november sixth, two-thousand-nine. talk to farmers. we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪ ito treat your toughy nasal allergies... ...listen up. unlike pills that don't treat congestion, clarispray covers 100 percent of your nasal allergy symptoms. clarispray. from the makers of claritin.

may not always be clear. but at t. rowe price, we can help guide your retirement savings. so wherever your retirement journey takes you, we can help you reach your goals. call us or your advisor t. rowe price. invest with confidence.

so this is the time in the show when i thought we were about to be joined live by nbc

chief correspondent richard engel. richard is live on the turkish side of the border. just right now we have just been told that turkish authorities have told richard to take down his live shot. so even though he is there as far as i know we cannot put him on camera. i believe that we have been able to get you by phone. are we with you? >> reporter: you are. i'm very sorry about this. we were up and ready to go and the lights were on and the police or intelligence services came and chased us away not because i was going to talk to you about syria, it was because the situation here is a little bit tense. there is a referendum coming up that is important and politically sensitive here. they are very nervous about journalists setting up shop and talking about almost anything these days. it is an important subject that you are discussing. i was listening to your intro

and crying to myself if they were going to take me away and couldn't contribute to the conversation. it is so important that people realize you were suggesting do we have a policy on syria? can this team in power be trusted to guide us through these treacherous waters? i want to discuss that with you. >> richard, in terms of what is different here, i think it is important to be specific about the fact that there has been, there have been various types of u.s. military engagement in syria over the last few years. there have been tomahawk strikes before. >> reporter: bombing both sides. how does that end well? we have been bombing the extremist groups there. first we were arming groups that became extremist groups and then started bombing those groups. now we are bombing the government that is bombing those groups because that group did an

atrocity and did it on television. i think that was the key thing here. did it on television and president trump saw it and decided to act either for emotional reasons or if you are a cynical person, for political reasons. i was told that the optics of it were also part of it. he did want to send a message to the chinese president who he is having dinner with that he is a tough guy and that times have changed and he can be trusted to use the military at his discretion when he wants to. >> do you think particularly in light of that disturbing reporting that this may have been essentially something done not for strategic reasons but for political effect, do you think that the united states government and the u.s. military should be expecting that there will be a different kind of response to this strike targeting the syrian military than there has been to other kinds of involvement on the other sides of this war? >> reporter: so far there hasn't been any kind of catastrophic

reaction to this because it was small, because there is a meeting coming up next weektill in moscow. i don't think the russians are going to forget about this. i don't think the syrians have forgotten about this. the syrian government while they are running what has been described as a concentration camp system said what side is the u.s. on? we had an interview with someone close to assad's office who was saying are you helping the terrorists? that is what they call extremist groups. whose side are you on? to a point, to a degree they have a point because it's not clear whose side we are on. >> richard engel joins us from turkey. i'm sorry i can't show you his face because he has been asked to shut down his live shot. glad to get you in by phone.

>> reporter: there will be more. what is coming next week? this time there was this strike, maybe there is not going to be great consequences because it was limited. who knows where this is going. this is really delicate stuff. >> thank you my friend. stay safe tonight in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. i want to bring in courtney who is the nbc news national security producer who joins us from the pentagon. you have been doing absolutely yeoman's work and really good reporting. you have been way ahead of the curve in terms of anticipating these things and describing them. i want to congratulate you and thank you for helping us report this over the last 24 hours. >> one of the things we have had conflicting reports about is how much damage was done. we got some sort of hard to read, hard to assess reports from the ground in syria saying not too much damage was done to

this base, certainly it is still functioning as an air base. we got counter veiling information from u.s. sources saying no. the amount of damage and type of damage done was exactly what we intended. can you thread that for us at all in terms of giving us an assessment? >> the base itself, the majority of the damage to the base itself was infrastructure. they did not -- these strikes were very targeted. they didn't take out the syrian air force as some were calling for early yesterday. what they were trying to do was send a very clear message, a very clear signal that the specific assets that were used for this chemical attack earlier this week on civilians, those were what were targeted. they went after about 20 syrian aircraft and several hardened aircraft hangars and fuel depots, they went after the air

defenses. they took out and believe they disabled air defenses at that base which was relatively minor. it was a russian made syrian radar. so they weren't intending to stop the syrian air force's capability throughout the country and didn't stop the capability at that base. they still have the ability to fly jets and helicopters in and out of that base today. >> one other specific thing to ask about is we got this dramatic photo showing the make shift situation room that they set up at the president's resort in south florida. it was a dramatic picture but unusual cast of character, the president's top economic adviser is there, the commerce secretary, the treasury secretary is there not to mention the white house spokesman, the president's son-in-law. is it clear that in terms of the white house decision making part that all of these people were involved in this process? do we know what the chain of decision making was here?

>> it was a relatively quick decision making process. so earlier in the week on april 5 president trump asked secretary mattis for specific plans for options to strike back at the syrian regime specifically against because of the chemical attack that they installed upon their people on april 4. by that day there were plans at the white house and then it goes back and forth. the military and the administration likes to call it an interagency process. basically what it is members of the military they go back and forth and talk through their options. by the next day on april 6, yesterday, a proposal was sent forwa forward by secretary mattis to president trump down at mar-a-lago. we don't know if there was a var variation but he did make the call president trump said go

forward with the strikes. i want it to be targeted and specifically against any of the assets that were involved in this chemical weapons attack earlier this week. that is what the military did. 4:30 eastern time president trump gave the order. there was a tank meeting at the exact same time. i watched the chiefs walk into the office yesterday afternoon and about three hours later those tomahawks started firing off the coast. >> nbc news national security producer courtney kube. really appreciate it. we have much more ahead tonight. do stay with us. stay with me, mr. parker. when a critical patient is far from the hospital, the hospital must come to the patient. stay with me, mr. parker. the at&t network is helping first responders connect with medical teams in near real time... stay with me, mr. parker. ...saving time when it matters most. stay with me, mrs. parker.

that's the power of and. (healthy weight becausel the first ingredient is chicken. (riley) man, this chicken is spectacular! (jessica) i feel like when he eats beneful, he turns into a puppy again. you love it, don't you? you love it so much! (vo) and now try new beneful grain free, simply made with wholesome ingredients, and no grain.

i'm going to the bank, to discuss a mortgage. ugh, see, you need a loan, you put on a suit, you go crawling to the bank. this is how i dress to get a mortgage. i just go to lendingtree. i calculate how much home i can afford. i get multiple offers to compare side by side. and the best part is... the banks come crawling to me. everything you need to get a better mortgage. clothing optional. lendingtree. when banks compete, you win. okay! ...awkward.

♪ seriously, what is this place? it's heaven. yeah, muscle heaven. you want to take one for a test drive? (tires squealing, engine revs) the challenger and charger have the most affordable v8 engines in their classes. check them out now during the fast and furious sales event. the fate of the furious. in theaters april 14th. in dealerships now. now get 20% off msrp cash allowance

on select 2017 dodge charger models in dealer stock. there is a twitter account for badlands national park but there is a bad hombre lands. it is not a national park. the national parks service has a twitter account but there is also nasty women of national park service. here is another one. since president trump took office one of the things that has happened online is that dozens of parody accounts popped up that are critical of what is

being done under the trump administration. they are usually pretty open about fact that they are alternative accounts. alt department of labor, alt library of congress and one called alt immigration, the alternative account for the agency called u.s. citizenship and immigration service. this account has been critical of muslim ban. apparently that criticism was not well received by the actual trump administration. on march 14 the u.s. customs and border patrol sent a summons to twitter, to the company, asking for all records regarding this twitter account including user names, account log in, phone numbers, mailing addresses and ypaddresses. real border patrol faxed that summons to twitter on march 14. unfortunately, they asked

twitter to comply by march 13, the day before they sent it which itself is mind bending. yesterday twitter sued pretty much everybody involved in issuing this strange summons and filed a case against the department of homeland security, homeland security secretary, acting commissioner of customs and border patrol agency. and the lawsuit said that customs and border patrol didn't have grounds to issue a summons like this. i know that sounds like weird legal ease until you see that, in fact, the u.s. code that customs and border patrol cited when they issued this summons and demanded this information what they cited is a part of the u.s. code that relates to, quote, inquiries relating to the importation of merchandise. tweets are not merchandise nor are they imported.

but nice try. did you try to get them for parking, too? i don't know who the trump administration has working at the legal office at customs and border patrol but we can tell two things. one, they don't have a a sense of humor and they are not that awesome when it comes to the legal stuff. after twitter sued them yesterday, today customs and border patrol tried to make the whole thing go away and rescinded the summons and dropped the request for information related to this mean parody twitter account. they want it all to go away so twitter has dropped their lawsuit in response. but under the trump administration that's your tax dollars at work. g every dollart my business was built with passion...

that's why i have the spark cash card from capital one. but i keep it growing by making every dollar count with it, i earn unlimited 2% cash back on all of my purchasing. and that unlimited 2% cash back from spark means thousands of dollars each year going back into my business... which adds fuel to my bottom line. what's in your wallet?

it's time for you and your boys to get out of town. (laughing) left foot. right foot. left foot. stop. twitch your eyes so they think you're crazy. if you walk the walk you talk the talk. it's what you do. if you want to save fifteen percent or more on car insurance you switch to geico. hide the eyes. it's what you do. show 'em real slow. if you have moderate to severe ulcerative colitis or crohn's, and your symptoms have left you with the same view, it may be time for a different perspective. if other treatments haven't worked well enough, ask your doctor about entyvio, the only biologic developed and approved just for uc and crohn's. entyvio works by focusing right in the gi-tract to help control damaging inflammation and is clinically proven to begin helping many patients achieve both symptom relief as well as remission. infusion and serious allergic reactions

can happen during or after treatment. entyvio may increase risk of infection, which can be serious. while not reported with entyvio, pml, a rare, serious brain infection caused by a virus may be possible. tell your doctor if you have an infection, experience frequent infections, or have flu-like symptoms, or sores. liver problems can occur with entyvio. if your uc or crohn's medication isn't working for you, ask your gastroenterologist about entyvio. entyvio. relief and remission within reach. is to always keep track of your employees.r micromanage them. make sure they're producing. woo! employee of the month! you really shouldn't leave their side. vita coco coconut water, hydration comes naturally.

when supreme court justice antonin scalia died on a ranch in western texas last year only a few hours passed before mitch mcconnell said president obama wouldn't be allowed to put a justice on the court to replace justice scalia saying this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president. that was february 2016. that was the very start of the presidential primary season. president obama still had almost a full year left in office. the republicans in the senate declared as far as he was concerned he wasn't really president at all. president obama had no right to make a supreme court nomination. and then they tried to persuade

everybody else that this was somehow true. >> justice scalia served for 30 years so this extends far beyond president obama's term of office. it's that important. >> justice scalia served for 30 years so what gives this president the right to go ahead and try to replace him? after president obama, nevertheless nominated someone to fill the seat even republicans who had whole heartedly praised judge garland a few years earlier, those republicans refused to meet with him and refused to schedule a hearing for him. they pretended like the nomination didn't exist. it was an unprecedented thing on the republicans part what they did to merrick garland and started arguing if hillary clinton won presidency they would never fill the seat and hold it open for the entire time she was president. judge garland waited for 293 days for senate hearing, the

longest any supreme court nominee has ever had to wait. he waited until his nomination ended without him getting a hearing. supreme court seat stayed open for 14 months so republicans could wait until a republican was in place and they could get a republican candidate in that seat. we have never ever gone through a process like that before in this country. we have never filled a supreme court seat like this in this way. ever since justice scalia died, since the day he passed away the process of filling the seat has never been normal. today we found out who will fill the seat. republicans got rid of senate rules that had been there forever in order to get neil gorsuch confirmed. he will be sworn in on monday. the way it happened was so radical, was so completely historicical that in some ways it is like a occluded any reasonable view of what neil gorsuch should be expected to

be. if somehow democrats manage to win back the senate next year would this, then, be the new normal? is this now the way we are going to do it from here on out where the president from an opposing party no longer gets to put anybody on the supreme court and seats just get held open? if another supreme court justice retired or died on the bench and there was another opening on the supreme court if democrats in charge of the senate would they not allow trump to nominate anyone? is that just what we do from here on out? is there any other remedy at this point given what we just went through? joining us now is the senior editor and legal correspondent for slate.com. great to see you on this first day of the new world order. >> i feel like it has been 14 months of us talking about this theoretically and here we are. >> that has sort of been our lives. we talk about how amazing and

strange and the course of american history would be if x happened and then x happens and you figure out what to do the next day. is this just sort of the way it goes and we don't know what happens next? or do you feel like we have a sort of tale foretold? >> i think this happens now forever. i think something fundamental broke and you put it perfectly. what we learned and we learned when mitch mcconnell said that obstructing merrick garland was one of the proudest moments of his career, that this is about power now and not about putting up mainstream or centrist judge that senate can agree on. it is not about senate norms that suggest that supreme court justices are different. it is about power and winning elections and putting the most extreme person you can put up knowing that you just need 51 votes to confirm them. i don't see this unrolling. i think the other thing i add is

'8 84, 80, 78. >> if you could wave a magic wand that was not retroactive, so you couldn't wave your magic wand and go back in time and make the republicans have not done this, you can just determine what people were going to deal with the matters going forward, is there any fix that you can invent that would get us out of that very dire description that you just gave us? >> the depressing fix is that i think that this is the situation where democrats have been awfully moderate and temperate over the last few decades and so that when john roberts was put up, right to quite far right nominees from republican presidents, we saw kagen, briar, people who were sort of center

left. i think in one sense i would say just keep putting up people who are counter weights because what we have seen over the years is the court become progressively more and more right. the center of the court is now one of the most conservative jurists in supreme court history. i think some kind of parody of passion and force and enthusiasm. i think that is the only thing that might have fixed this. >> very briefly, do you subscribe to the common view that he will be to the right of every justice on the court? >> whether he is to the right of aledo or thomas i think those are the questions we are asking. i think he is pretty consistently where scalia, thomas, aledo are certainly not to the left of any of them. >> legal correspondent for slate and teller of hard truths. good to have you here. >> we'll be right back. stay with us.

7 no, i'm good. come on, moe. i have to go. (vo) we always trusted our subaru impreza would be there for him someday. ok. that's it. (vo) we just didn't think someday would come so fast. see ya later, moe. (vo) introducing the all-new subaru impreza. the longest-lasting vehicle in its class. more than a car, it's a subaru. in my johnsonville commercial we open up in the forest. hi. i'm jeff. i'm eating my breakfast and all of a sudden a raccoon come up and ask me, "what are you eating?" i told him "johnsonville breakfast sausage, fully cooked." porcupine comes in and he says, "does that come in patties?" i said "yup" wolf comes in and says, "how'd you learn to talk to animals?" and i said "books" and we had a good laugh about that. [laughter] that's a commercial made the johnsonville way.

. i know what you want. i know what you have been thinking. we should just own up to it. thinking to yourself this is all fine but i wish there was some new creepier details on that sex scandal involving alabama's handsome 74-year-old governor. it's friday, i will not let you down. dirty text messages, open threats including something rustling in the bushes. also something about a command

to bow to the throne and that is a quote. put the kids to bed, maybe clear the room of anything you don't want to upchuck on because it is about to get a little bit weird. thank you, alabama. that's next. you're going to be hanging out in here. so if you need anything, text me. do you play? ♪ ♪ use the chase mobile app to send money in just a tap,

to friends at more banks then ever before. you got next? chase. helping you master what's now and what's next. if you've got a life, you gotta swiffer

hey, searching for a great used yeah! you got it. just say show me millions of used cars for sale at the all new carfax.com. i don't want one that's had a big wreck just say, show me cars with no accidents reported pretty cool i like it that's the power of carfax® find the cars you want, avoid the ones you don't plus you get a free carfax® report with every listing start your used car search at carfax.com for the past year alabama's republican governor has been under three separate investigations as the state has tried to figure out whether he used taxpayer funds to carry on

and cover up an affair with a top staffer. wednesday it was reported that the ethics commission referred the governor for prosecution. today the impeachment committee released their investigative report on the scandal and the report says the governor refused to cooperate with the investigation in any meaningful sense which they say is grounds for impeachment. they are able to detail things like the governor dispatching alabama law enforcement officials to break up with his alleged girlfriend on his behalf. he allegedly directed law enforcement officials to drive all over the state to confront people he thought might have sexy recordings of him and his alleged mistress. the report details significant sums of money paid to his alleged mistress and that doesn't cover the salacious stuff like text messages discovered by the governor's wife because he didn't realize the cell phone was linked to the

ipad and she had access where he talks about wanting to touch her body and wishing she could be sleeping next to him. they say things like bless our hearts and other parts to which he responds magnetic. i'm sorry. i want to rescind my facial expression. i take it back. recall. there are new revelations about the culture of fear and intimidation the governor established including allegations of multiple threats against his then-wife's chief of staff who helped set up recording device. the governor reportedly cornering her telling her, quote, you will never work in the state of alabama again if you tell anybody about the affair and that he reportedly confronted her in a parking lot warning her to quote watch herself because she didn't know what she was getting into. he also told her alleged that

because he was the governor, quote, people bow to the throne. the chief of staff says the governor so far says no, he's staying. this afternoon the judge granted a governor's request on impeachment proceedings. no impeachment formally for now. republican lawmakers are repealing that decision right now. i cannot wait to see how he response. >> that does it for us today, we'll see you again on monday. now it is with "the last word" with lauren mechan