bane zer ta boehner is taking the president on over tax cuts for the rich. >> said it 500 times. one more time. i think extending all of the current tax rates and the making them permanent will reduce the uncertainty in america and help small businesses begin to create jobs again. this hour, the republican takeover with virginia governor bob mcdonnell. and congresswoman cathy mcmorris rodgers, vice chair of the house republican conference. >> everybody said it was about one thing. job, jobs, jobs. that's exactly what kathy black knows about. she understands that we have to make sure that our kids have the skill sets to partake in the great american dream. whether that means going to a junior college to a four-year college, joining the military, going into the clergy, going straight to work in industry. transition in the big apple. public schools chancellor joe kline is leaving.

kathy black taking over. we'll hear from chancellor kline about the shake-up. anger and outrage in the uk. thousands lining the streets to protest plans to triple tuition rates. star of the new political drama about washington corruption. oscar winning actor kevin spacey is here with us live in the studio. the wall street journal is coming out way piece. >> i'm the super lobbyist! potentially bad news for the -- >> you're costing us $70 million, jack. go day. i'm andrea mitchell live in washington. president obama is defending his own federal reserve. some global leaders argue the fed's any plan helps the u.s. at the expense of rest of the worlds. here's nbc's savannah guthrie in seoul. >> reporter: the president arrived here in seoul late today for the g-20 summit, the meeting the world's largest economic powers, and the big issue here has to do with trade and what

some are calling a currency war. the u.s. has been criticizing china. it believes china artificially keeps its currency low which they say is unfair to american businesses, because it makes chinese goods cheaper. that issue is sure to come up when the president meets with the president of china tomorrow. the other big issue has to do with the south korean free trade agreement. the two sides trying to hammer out a deal. they may be close. we may see some movement on that. thisguthly in seoul. and benjamin netanyahu in new york, secretary of state hillary clinton issued a sharp rebuke for israel's decision to build more housing in east jerusalem echoing what president obama said in indonesia. >> the united states was deeply disappointed by the announcement of advanced planning for new housing units in sensitive areas of east jerusalem. this announcement was counterproductive to our efforts

to resume negotiations between the parties. we have long urged both parties to avoid actions which could undermine trust, including in jerusalem. >> while criticizing israel, clinton also announced today the united states is accelerating its already scheduled payments to help the palestinian authority pay down its debt more quickly. clinton is trying so far unsuccessfully to get the israelis and palestinians back to negotiations. house republicans could be heading for a fight themselves over who gets choice leadership posts when they take over. tea party caucus leader michelle bachman is challenging the aspect's choice, texas congressman jeb for a place in the inner circle. wall congresswoman cathy mcmorris rodgers is vit chair of the party's conference a title she's hoping to hold in the next congress as well. congresswoman, thank you very much for joining us. where do you stand on the shaping battle between bachman

and hensarling? >> i'm ready for vice chair and pleased we have two great candidates that want to serve on the leadership team. they both bring some exceptional experience, and i look forward to working with whoever gets the nod from the conference. we'll be having those elections next week. >> well, most everyone else in leader shapp taken sides. we know where eric cantor stands, for instance. hensarling is the choice of most of the leaders. that's been the indication, that they are not happy about having michelle bachman doing the leadership. do you really think michelle bachman is qualified to be in leadership given some of the things the unsupported claims she's made? should she be the spokeswoman for the conference? >> i would say that it's up to the conference to decide who they think is going to be the best person in that position. the competition is healthy. it makes us all work harder and i think the conference will make the best decision in the end and that will happen next week, and

both michelle and jeb bring a lot to the table, and it's good for to us have -- good for us to have the debate. >> i'm just a little taken aback, because healthy debates are not always useful when it comes to working together. these are the kinds of things most political parties are trying to avoid. you don't want this kind of in-fighting. it creates civil wars. >> well we have a very diverse conference. we have members from all different regions, all different perspectives, and when we're choosing leadership there's a lot of things that you take into consideration. you want -- you want a broad face for the party as broad as possible and you want different perspectives around that table. so the conference takes a lot into consideration. the conference member. we have 80-plus new republicans that are going to be joining us. next week. as we focus on these leadership

elections and i'm confident that the conference will make a smart decision for putting the right people at the table for this time. >> does this underscore the fact it's going to be difficult for establishment republican leaders to work with the tea party, the newcomers, who are coming in? michelle bachman is not a newcomer but leads the tea party caucus. so many more tea party representatives in the house. >> well we are united in that we are republicans. and you have, in this contest in this particular contest, you have two very strong conservatives, actually. jeb hensarling and michelle bachman have both been very strong conservatives both fiscally, socially and i really don't see it as a fight between the tea party and the establishment in this case. they both probably have very similar voting records as such. it's other considerations that

the members will take into regard. >> now, i know you've been sensitive to the fact that women have had a hard time breaking into the inner circle of the house republican leadership. couldn't michelle bachman make the argument that there aren't enough women, you're a leader, but there haven't been very many more republican leaders? it's been an all-boys club? >> i would love to see another woman around the leadership table. i think is important that the leadership table, that our committee chairman, that our conference in general reflects america. and that when possible, we're putting -- you know, we want to put the best person possible in every position, but it's also -- i think it's also helpful to have that diverse perspective around the table, and that's all taken into consideration as the members make these decisions. >> thank you very much, congresswoman. it's going to be interesting to watch it from the outside. thanks for joining us today.

and governor bob mcdonnell of virginia led the republican wave a year ago when elected governor. governor mcdonnell joins me frou in richmond. thank for joining me. good to see you. >> thank you. >> first, our condolences. i know you recently lost your father around the election. we're very sorry for your loss, your family. >> thank you for that. >> and talking about politics, a lot has changed since were you first elected. now we've seen, first of all, you've picked up three republican congressional seats just in virginia. defeating some democrat whose were very high-profile. the president campaigning for tom perriello and making a big case of that district. >> right. yeah, there was a big swing. republicans now hold 8-3 majority now and the virginia delegation and a sign of what happened nationally, andrea. the issues here in virginia where people were focused on cutting spending, job creation, lower taxes. getting people back do work,

really dominated those campaigns and i think the republicans had the bert message on actually getting stuff done and fixing problem. it's part of what happened nationally. >> haley barbour, fellow governor, head the republican governors has spoken out against michael steel and the job he did. when do you stand on whether michael steel should be replaced by someone else as republican national chairman? >> well, i haven't said anything on that. michael steel was very helpful to me a year ago when i was for governor and the rnc did a great job supporting our campaign as well as the republican governors association, immensely helpful pap decision played in a couple of months by the leaders that we elect. two people from each state that will vote on that. honestly, since the election i've been focused on working with new leaders, eric cantor, talking about things we need do to improve state and frel

relations and i haven't focused on the party issues. >> one of your other -- well a former governor, sarah palin, was in pennsylvania yesterday, abscess one of the things that she's campaigning against is a local option there. public school there's trying to cut back on fats and junk food for the kids, but then let's play a little bit of her response to one of the young people who was singing "the national anthem." watch? >> that singing, absolutely beautiful. would you like to sing that at inauguration? not necessarily mine. he should, though. at somebody's. right? >> she seems to have inaugurations on her mind. it's becoming clear to a lot of party insiders that she has taken this one step more farther along that she really is considering it. do you think she's qualified to be president the united states? >> well, first let me say i encourage young people to get

involved in the political process and learn how to sing well. especially the "star-spangled banner." listen i think sarah palin's been a mayor, andrea, she's been a governor of the state. i happen to be partial and think governors make great chief executive officers and have the experience to be a good chief executive officer of the united states. i think sarah palin's qualified. i think the republicans will have probably ten or more people that will be looking at running for president in 2012, and i look forward to talking to some of them, meet wig them and then making a decision down the road. >> one of the big issues i don't know if you talked to eric canter about this, one of the big issues that the republicans in the caucus are pushing is something that came up in "usa today's" study that federal workers are now paid higher than, than any previous point. the increase in their salaries especially under this white house. is that an issue for you? i know a lot are your constituents that live across the river here in virginia?

>> well it is. obviously, northern virginia benefits a lot from everything from defense contract, federal employee, technology used by the federal government. it helps drive in part that northern virginia economy. we've looked at that. the state employees in virginia are generally paid less than both the federal government employees and some local government employees. so it is an issue. i think what the congressman is talking about is trying to see some kind of pard pip state and federal government employee celeries and benefits of a huge part of the overall cost of government. unfunded liabilities and pension funds, andrea, you know, something governors are talking about all over the country, concerned what will happen in solvency of these pension funds down the road. i think the federal government right as they look at paring back spending and doing something about this $13.5 trillion debt fop look at all issues and federal salaries is one of them. >> all right, governor bob

mcdonnell, thank you again for joining us today. and we are following breaking news in london right now. conservative party headquarters under attack from students and lecturers. protesting a plan to hike tuition fees by more thanes 14ds,000 a year. that is triple the current rate. the protesters have now smashed windows and lit a fire at a clock tower in the building forcing it to be evacuated. eight people hospital sewed far, and we continue to monitor the situation there. up next, shake-up in the nation's largest public school system. new york city. with us, outgoing new york city school's chancellor joe kline. still ahead right here, oscar winning actor kevin spacey. with us a sneak peek into the world of casino lobbying. his new movie, "casino jack." are if old water bottles became new seats? if you never bought another gallon of gas? or what if cars had force fields?

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over the past eight years joel who stake an organization that was a case study in dysfunction and turned it into one that the obama administration has hailed as a national model. he has also incidentally in spite of doing all this, much of had controversy, he's been the longest serving school's chancellor in the city's history which happened provide much needed stabt in the reform effort. >> after more than eight years leading sweeping reforms in new york city, joel kline is stepping down at the public school's chantsler. his successful, magazine publisher kathy black is leaving the private sector to take on the challenge. chancellor kline joins us. >> now congratulations, i think, are in order, and the thanks of a lot of grateful citizen, but why the decision to leave now? >> first of all, thank you, andrea, and the decision is when i took this job, i really was planning on doing it for eight years. i didn't expect the mayor would be running for a third term.

in terms of my own life i really think that i would like to move on to a new career. we've got a terrific replace innocent in kathy black. give her three years with the mayor to do the work they need to do. and i have an exciting offer to really work on something i care deeply about, which is a the whole use of technology to change the way we instruct kids to bring in new and different content. so for all of those reasons this seemed to be the right time. >> do you want to -- i want to talk to you, it might be surprising to some people for someone who came out of bill clinton's justice department, a democrat, to be joini ining rup murdoch. what kind of career path or choice is that? >> first of all i still am a democrat, and i wear with pride the fact that i worked in bill clinton's white house and justice department. i work with rupert murdoch closely on the whole issue of education reform. he's been a big is a porter of the work done in new york fill

tlopically and he's interested in the whole area, a burgeoning area of education and technology, of online programs and so forth which i think are really going to become essential in trying to change education. i've done a lot of it in new york. as we talked about it, he made clear to me he would leak to get involved in ta area, have newscorp involved and that's something i want to work on deeply. i must say, good education la no politics. >> a number of things you had accomplished. there's controversy, teachers' union, the others you battled with, but first of all because were you reporting to the mayor, the first mayor with control the school system, you managed to take back all of these decentralized school districts. you gave more budget clout to principals. you eliminated a lot ever the practices that the ten-year practices and some of the other practices long criticized. just going over the record, joel. we talk about math proficiency

from 21% to 35% over the years. for fourth graders. reading proficiency went from 22% to 29%. drotout rate cut nearly in half. graduation rates, all-time high of 63%. i know there's some concern about a drop in some of the test scores in the last year, because the tests were made much tougher, but overall, it's a pretty darn good report card. >> well, thank you, and i do think we made real progress, because the mayor showed leadership. took on a lot of really the sacred cows in education. manageded system effect 2i6shly. willing to hold people accountable, and those numbers you read on the federal tests where you're talking fourth grade, talking significant improvements to go from 251% to 35% is a 67% growth in proficiency of our students. there's a lot more that needs to be done, andrea. nobody would think we're remotely where we need to be, but the key point is that

serious school reform can work, it does work. we saw it in washington, d.c. we've seen it in new york. but if we continue to play politics and play the power game, then our kids are not going to get the education they need and we're going to be in the same ditch we've been in for a long time. >> i want to troupe the next chancellor, the chancellor designate, kathy black. someone we all know, both know, rather. schae newcomer to education. this is what she had to say at news conference yesterday i. have no illusion about this being an easy next three years. quite the opposite. but what i ask for is your patience as i get up to speed on all of the issues facing k-12 education today. what i can promise is that i will listen to your concerns, your interests and your expectations. in turn i ask the same of you. >> how hard is it going to be for her coming without education experience but with a lot of management experience, obviously, in the business world?

>> i think it's a trade-off. yeah, terrific management experience and we're facing great management challenges in terms of our budget, in terms of personnel and the issues that i think she brings a real strength and power to. by the same token, she's going have to learn about the insides of the education system. the great news is, the team i have, i think it's clearly the best thing ever assembled in public education. i've been doing this 8 1/2 years now and we've got significant career educators and deputy chancellors. people with real manager's budget material skills. she's got a team and she'll be heavily engaged with them the next several weeks and trail support her strongly. in looking for the precise right kind of person, you want some of this, some of that, but i think the management issues that the district is going to face, particularly as the nation looks as budget cuts is going to become really significant. >> joel klein, thaen thanks so .

you'll be there and we'll talk to be before you leave. >> looking forward to it, andrea. thank you. up next, democratic in-fighting. how ugly have it going to cigarette and alaska starts counting votes this hour. how long will that take? chaos in london. the shock of budget cuts sending tens of thousands to the streets, storming government buildings protesting big tuition increases. this is "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc. cars with me by the way. no problem. is there gas in it? yeah, um, you got plenty. and the oil? oil is good to go. tires? all four tires. full of air. now only if i could get the keys... i could start it for you too. ok, now your just showing off. the onstar mylink app. safely connecting you in ways you never thought possible. live on.

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nancy pelosi is sticking to her guns back in washington vowing to run for house minority leader to the dismay of many dpems are plans setting off a leader shl scramble. andy barr is with plea. what's the arrest hassest from the hill? we saw pelosi out there doing a ceremonial event for vet trains day not taking question, considering questions about the scramble, but we've got an increasingly tense situation right now between steny hoyer

and jim clyburn? >> reporter: that's right. some of the opponents, pelosi, kind ever the leadership structure that existed before, are asking democrats to slow down the process right now. schedules to vote next week. that, of course, would favor those head leadership posts in the last congress, specifically pelosi, hoyer. so right now they're asking peter fazio and others, slow things down, point out they're still trying to process what happened last week and until they fully process that, they shouldn't move forward with electing new leaders. >> i wanted to play a little of hillary clinton's interview. she was in australia and talk and "nightline "asked about the analogy of what happened to bill clinton in 1994 and whether president obama should move to the middle. this was her response. >> yeah. i don't think that bill changed his principles or changed his objectives or reversed course in any way. i think what he did was take a very clear-eyed assessment of

what was going to be possible with the congress after the election and moved on every front that he could to get things done, and i think that's what you'll see president obama doing. >> well, i'm not sure that many people are going agree with the analysis. the political analysis, but is that what you see president obama doing is? >> reporter: that's what they're indicating they're doing. the question is, what they're going to be able to work on. republicans have been strict in their messaging about the things they're willing to work with the white house on. that includes deficit reduction and the rest of it. other things they've been clear they're going to go exactly right at the white house with promising repeal of health care. seems there's a smaller amount of things the republicans in congress and democrats can work together on than maybe bill clinton was able to look at in '94. >> good point. andy barr, thank you very much. and coming up next. former president george w. bush loosening up a little bit with matt lauer today, and the hill was alive this morning on the "today" show.

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ulitching to geico realis a bird in the handre on worth 2 in the bush? appraiser: well you rarely see them in this good of shape. appraiser: for example the fingers are perfect. appraiser: the bird is in mint condition. appraiser: and i would say if this were to go to auction today, appraiser: conservatively it would be worth 2 in the bush. woman: really? appraiser: it's just beautiful, thank you so much for bringing it in. woman: unbelievable anncr: geico. 15 minutes could save you 15% or more. topping headlines right now on "andrea mitchell reports" a volatile situation unfolding in lond's. thousands of university students are marching on the conservative party headquarters. protesting against government plans to raise tuition fees.

to roughly $14,000 a year. that's a tripling of those fees. one group managed to smash a glass reception area in the building and made it on to the roof. disturbing new details about last month's failed karg other bomb plot. scotland yard says the explosive device found in an aircraft at the airport was timed to detonate while the plane would have been flying over the east seaboard of the united states. instead, of course, thankfully, the bomb was discovered at the airport and deactivated. rather than a lash lavish seafood display, eating crab meat today. the navy ferried food. an engine fire left the carnival "splendor" without hot water on phone service since monday. tugboats are towing the ship towards san diego. the mystery behind that missile fired off the california coast, that may be solved.

the pentagon says it is satisfied that the vapor trail seen in the sky were not caused by a missile. instead they were likely caused, says the pentagon, by an optical illusion, just the contrail of an aircraft. federal health officials announced plans to require cigarette packs and ads to carry a more prominent and graphic health warnings. the new warning cover half the cigarette pack and they will include images of dead bodies, cancer patients and diseased lungs. and developing this hour, trained election workers have begun the task of var tying more than 90,000 write-in ballots. whether to accept ballots on which a candidate's name is misspelled. a hurdle for lisa murkowski. kristen welker is in juno. what's the process going to look like up there? how long do you think it's going to take? >> reporter: well, it could take a few to several day, andrea. depends on how much legal challenges there are, but this process just got under way about

20 minutes ago. take a look. you can see 15 teams of 2 sorting through about 90,000 write-in ballots. each of these tables, you can see, has two observers watching this counting process. one from the miller camp and one from the murkowski camp. this comes on the heels of what you minced, andrea, which is that joe miller's camp filed a motion for an injunction trying to halt the county process until stiffer guidelines can be set. the miller campaign arguing write-in ballots in which lisa murkowski's last name is misspelled should not be counted. the board of elections says they will look at voter intent to determine whether or not to count a ballot as valid. so this counting process is going on despite that lawsuit. andrea? >> shades of recount, the kevin spacey movie, we'll have him on in a little bit. let's hope they don't have any hanging chads.

kristen welker, a couple of days? you may be up there a couple of days. >> reporter: wild. thanks. and former president george w. bush appearing on "today" in connection with his new book asked by matt lauer to choose among his most trusted adviseers from the white house years nap proved to be a tough question. >> it's a pretty unfair question. like saying which of your children do you love the most. because i got a lot of good advice from a lot of good people. hank paulson gave me very good advice during a financial crisis. condi rice great advice for eight years. colin powell, great advice. don rumsfeld, dick cheney's advice was consistent and strong. >> saying pick one. pick one. >> say pick one all he wants. i'm the guy that gets to pick and i'm not picking one. >> at least he wasn't asked about your advice. only give great advice for

former president bush and president of maverick media. good to see you. do you think the president got good advice from all of those people? what about the war in iraq? >> well, you know i think that the book shows a human side of the presidency, and it shows first of all how complex all of these decisions are. as the president said, the easy decisions never get to the president. but i think that the one thing a lot of readers will be surprised by, viewers surprised by, the extent to which the president takes responsibility, a, and b says he made mistakes and talks about katrina, about iraq, about afghanistan. but he never blames anybody. that's the thing i really admire as president bush, and i think that president obama could really take lessons in this regard. president bush never complained, never criticized anybody else for what landed on his desk or what was happening to hill. he accepted the deck of cards he was dealt and said the reason i'm here is to make the tough decisions and sometimes it's

tough and sometimes it makes you unpopular but i'm not here for a popularity contest. i'm leer to make the tough decisions. so that's what i think a lot of people will get from the book. >> what about the war, though, and the whole question of wmd and the justification for the war? one of the quarrels that lawrence o'donnell and rachel maddow both pointed out last night some critics are having when he writes in the book, that he's now revisiting the justification for the war, and saying, you know, going back over the whole question of weapons of mass destruction, rather than acknowledging that they didn't find the weapons of mass destruction and that that justification no longer existed. >> well, i think he's acknowledged that they got bad intelligence or wmds and the fact is that he got the same intelligence in a john kerry got, and he voted for it, most of the congress and most other countries around the world supported the resolution.

it wasn't just president bush, it was everybody else and a matter of faulty intelligence and everybody knows that story. so, you know, president bush wishes more than anybody that the intelligence was good and it wasn't. it was bad. >> asking you as an experienced republican strategist and political observer where we stand now with the tea party so resurgent, where do you see the nomination process going as you look forward to its 2012? sarah palin hinting and joking about it last night in pennsylvania about her own possibilities, denying it while sort of giving it a wink and a nod. is the tea party going to be in a veto role, or is the tea party basically going to determine what kind of nominee the party's going to choose? >> well i think it's going to be fascinating. i think sarah palin, some of the blush is coming off the rose. she put up candidates who weren't really qualified, and didn't win and we could have taken the senate had we had

other candidates. i think people are kind of looking at this in a sober way now and looking at the nomination process. i think the question of whether sarah palin runs will be which part of sarah palin do we gee the ambitious part or intelligent part of her? and that's yet to be determined. if she's smart, she doesn't run. she has more power, fame, influence than she'll ever has. if she run it will be diminished you i think. you can see a pathway where she could possibly win iowa, maybe even south carolina, all mightily the nomination but no way she'll win the general election. burning down the house, in my opinion, if she were to run and win the nomination. so but i think a lot of republicans recognize that now and there's going to be a lot of deliberations about the best way to go forward. but if palin get the nomination, i can make the point the vast middle of america is waking up.

the next big story. the tea party was the story this election. the middle america who doesn't feel represented is the next big story. so i think people have got to show that they recognize the interests of the people who haven't been rested who i think are the real majority in this country. if they don't start feeling like they're getting a voice here, then we may see some interesting things happen in the 2012 election, like a third party bid. >> very interesting outlook. thank you very much. good to see you. and a big award for tina fey, the woman who made sarah palin a fixture on "snl" became the youngest winner ever of the kennedy center the prestigious mark twain prize for american humor at the kennedy center last night. she thanked palin for her success. and betty white fulfilled a lifelong dream. the u.s. forest service named the actress an honorary member presenting her with a badge and ranger stetson hat. being a ranger was a childhood

hope. back then, women weren't allowed to hold the post. coming up next, a political drama about a washington lobbying scandal. oscar winner kevin spacey. >> i'm humbly grateful for the wonderful gift ice received here in america, the greatest country on this planet. i'm jack and, oh, yeah i work out every day. milk looks warm. finally got the whole gang together. maple brown sugar, strawberry delight, blueberry muffin. yeah, a little family reunion. [ wind rushes ] whoa! whoa! whoa! whoa! we're cereal here! what? just cooling it down. enough said. gotcha. safety first. whoo-hoo! watch the whole grain! [ female announcer ] try kellogg's® frosted mini-wheats® hot. just add warm milk and you've got a hot way to keep your kids full and focused all morning. oops. dude your eight layers are showing. [ female announcer ] mini-wheats® hot. keeps 'em full, keeps 'em focused. when it comes to investing, no one person has all the answers. so td ameritrade doesn't give me just one person. questions about retirement? i talk to their retirement account specialists. bonds? grab the phone.

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some people say jack aim bramoff moves too fast and cuts corner. i say to them if that's the difference between me and my wife and family using the subway, so be it. i will not allow my family to be slaves. i will not allow the world i touch to be vanilla. >> academy award-winning actor kevin spacey playing corrupt jack abramoff in the new movie "casino jack." we're excited about it here. kevin spacey, nice to you have.

>> thank you for having me. >> commander of the british empire. prince charles awarded you that for your work starring in "the old vick." >> honored that the queen decided that i should become what's called an honorary knight, because not being a british citizen i can't be a sir. my friends are calling me commander k. >> commander k, not sir kevin. let's talk about "casino jack" a morality plain and couldn't be more relevant than what is going on in washington under whether it's democrats or republicans we've got corruption. you have jack abe braoff, fascinating character. what interested you in him? >> i've always been a bit of a political junkie. i remember the case in 2003 and '04 when it was in the headlines, with a distance. i was still living in england. what we tried to do with most make it an entertaining film that's actually far funnier than people suspect, but in the same way the way question approached "recount" the film about the

bush/gore election, you think about, oh, a lobbyist, moved by the election. your people start to yawn before they go see it, but because the circumstances, because of the choices that people made, the outrageous behavior, excess, some of the stuff is inherently funny. it just is -- it's crazy what people did and got away with and i think in his case, he was for me a fascinating character to try to understand. try to understand what motivated him. what was he as he was certainly framed out to be the evillest man that walked the face ever the earth. or was he really caught up in a culture, in the lobbying industry that i think still exists to this day. >> you've got abram auf lobbying to bet nor money for the indians to rip them off with their casinos? explain how this happens? >> he was ultimately one of the things he went to prison for was overcharging them and then they sort of underhandedly, he and his partner mark scanlon were --

scanlon didn't have to declare as much, all of his money in the same with abramoff did. peeling money off. strange, unlike a character like bernie madoff, stealing money from clients and living high on the hog, abe brahamoff wasn't. he wasn't flying around having fabulous ski -- he gave a lot of money away. not diminishing the thing he did that were wrong and crossing the line. in some ways it appears he was thrown under the bus to make it appear they were cleaning up the lobbying industry and i think we all know they haven't. >> talk about an epilogue. he's out of jail and working in a kosher pizza place. >> correct. >> somewhere near baltimore. >> yeah. >> you just can't make it up. what lessons should we be drawing about money and politics? we now are after a supreme court decision that just unloaded,

unleashed a floodgate of money. >> they've now decided corporations are to be treated like people now, as individuals. look, i think -- look, let's just say the networks. all right? why don't the networks show political ads for free? why don't networks become a part of the political process and stop this incessant need to raise the kind of money that's raised? we just had a mid-term election. some of it's candidates raised ridiculous amounts of money and in some cases didn't win. maybe ideas -- >> meg whitman spending $161 million of her own. >> we unfortunately lost our director. >> i was going to say that. >> extraordinary. >> he was in colorado. >> in denver, partly to show the film at the denver film festival but also there because his cousin john was running for governor. and if you look at john as an example, he refused to go negative on his opponent, ran a campaign base and ideas never on how much damage he could do to

his rival and won everwhelmingly in that state as the new governor. sometimes there's hope all of the bit irpolitical commentary and the kind of campaigns that are run every now and then someone squeaks in with just ideas. >> just ideas. like you. we thank you very much. i've got to tell bureau was as you were coming here. everyone is saying they all have their favorite movies. >> that's very nice. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. >> good luck with the film. what political story will be making headlines in the next 24 hours? that's next. tomorrow, jon stewart will be joining rachel maddow live for an exclusive interview at 9:00 eastern right here on msnbc. re that can simulate head injuries and helps make people safer. then they shared this technology with researchers at wake forest to help reduce head injuries on the football field. so, you know, i can feel a bit better about my son playing football.

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the waterfalls of the september 11th memorial at ground zero have finally begun flowing. engineers began testing one of the twin waterfalls on tuesday. the cascades are the largest man-made waterfalls in north

america. they will be emptying in massive reflecting pools marking the spots where the footprints of the world trade center towers once stood. testing on the second waterfall will begin this spring. and which political story will be making headlines in the next 24 hours? chris is joining me now. >> andrea, the g-20 -- the world's 20th largest economies will be gathered in seoul over the next two days. this is -- we'll be talking about the global economic crisis, it may come down to a meeting between president obama and chinese president hu jintao. allegations of currency manipulation, trade. hu jintao said that countries

should face their own problems, making it clear that china is not in a giving mood. high stakes here as president obama seeks to steady the economy at home and also, you know, america's influence on the economy in the world community. >> it could not be more important. this is the whole ball game. thank you very much, chris. >> thank you. >> we'll all be watching. that does it for us for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports." tomorrow on the show, president bush's national security advisor, stephen hadley, joining us to talk about president's new book. tamron hall is next on "news nation." great to see you last night in new york. what have you got coming up on the show? >> congratulations to you being named one of the top most powerful wim omen in 2010. breaking news out of florida. police have lifted the lockdown on schools in the broward county school district. we'll have the latest on why they locked down that school district in the first place. then a new report finds nearly 59 million americans

don't have health insurance. will this help democrats fight off republicans who say they will repeal health care reform? and the pentagon released a new statement just a short time ago about that mysterious sight in the skies off the coast of california. what the official word is. i can't believe i used to swing over those rocks...

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right out now on "news nation," we've got breaking news. hundreds of thousands of students put on lockdown after what police called a credible threat. and chaos on the streets of london. violent protests over billions in spending cuts that could include a drastic increase in college tuition. we are there live. and stranded at southeast with spam? will, the painfully slow ride for thousands of cruise ship passengers, and it could be another day before they are finally back on land. plus, years of dire warnings have not convinced a lot of