again onur website. if it's friday, the late night comedians get the last word. have the last word online at our blog, lastword.msnbc.com, where you can watch that video again. follow my tweets @lawrence. the rachel maddow show is up next. good evening, rachel. good evening, lawrence. thanks to you at home for staying with us the next hour. i am old enough my video game system of choice, the video game consul imprinted on my muscle memory and mind is this one. oh, yes. the atari. the wood grain atari. i had this exact one when i was a kid. you hooked it up to the tv machine and played games that came on these black cartridges that sort of looked like 8 tracks. i didn't think about it like this at the time granted i was only 8. looking back on it now, the games were either manual dext dexterity becames about how you were good as using hand/eye

coordination. pong, a manual dexterity game was a classic. there was kaboom. my mom was amazing atti kaboom. i remember catching my mother on the atari and doing way better than i ever could. other manual dexterity games were frogger and pac man. there's a little strategy involved in these games. it's mostly about manual dexterity and hand/eye coordination. the other main category seems to me was killing games. space invaders where the aliens are trying to kill you and you're trying to shoot them. my favorite killing game, adventure, where you were a sword guy that walked around. you were a block and picked up a sword and poked things with a sword and killed dragons that looked like ducks and stuff. that was my favorite. there are exceptions. the broad categories of early video games measured best fast twitch hand/eye coordination like the stuff my mother was good at or best combat, killing

the dragon ducks. those are the things i was good at. the one smash hit early video game that sort of broke that dual model that was neither was a game called sim city. in sim city what you were doing was essentially urban planning. basically zero manual dexterity required and zero killing. you were building an environment, utilities, popular centers, schools and stuff. sim city was urban planning as after school entertainment. sim city now has a weird cameo role in this year's republican presidential nominating process. if there's one thing you know about current presidential front-runner herman cain though he was ceo of a mafia named pizza chain, if there's one thing know about herman cain, it's probably this. >> 9-9-9 plan. 9-9-9. 9-9-9.

>> herman cain has a plan the way you call emergency services in england. it's the tax structure of sim city volume four. not kidding. that's how it's set up. the tax structure in your simulated world, 9-9-9. since most economists think the 9-9-9 plan is -- and mr. cain says his advisers are secret, people googling around to figure out where herman cain came up with the 9-9-9 plan, what might be the basis for his thinking about this hit pretty quickly on the sim city video game connection. could his 9-9-9 idea have come from urban planning as after school entertainment? mr. cain was asked about that during a campaign stop in tennessee. watch. >> an article today says 9-9-9 is modeled after a sims video

game. is it an original idea or modeled after a game? >> it's an original idea. to people say it's modeled after a game, it is a lie. that's the difference when you become one or two in the polls. people make up stuff. that is a lie. i'm not going to take it back and not going to politically say, but unfortunately that is not totally true. it's a lie. >> thank you. >> thank you all very much. >> no, thank you very much. herman cain giving up the opportunity to cultivate the aging but enthusiastic urban planning video game market by claiming proudly his 9-9-9 plan sims city origins. mr. cain denying that allegation. what he did say about being number one or number two in the polls, that is correct. herman cain had a substantial surge in the polls in recent weeks. mr. cain places ahead of mitt romney if florida, in iowa and in a pair of recent nationwide polls as well. the sudden and dramatic surges by fringe or unknown candidates,

this has sort of been the way it's gone in the republican nominating process this year. it's been a very volatile race. there's one thing that hasn't been all that volatile. we'll get to that in a second. the herman cain phenomenon, the surge we're experiencing from him right now is not the first time we've had a big surge from an unlikely contender. for example, earlier this year, it was the michele bachmann surge. michele bachmann went up and up and up and peaked on the 18th of july. since the peak, it's been a long, deep decline for miss bachmann. the rick perry surge, jumped into the race, shot to the front of the pack, way up there, until roughly september 14th at which point he, too, saw his support absolutely crater. and now we are experiencing the herman cain surge. mr. cain appears to be climbing and climbing and climbing right now. maybe that keeps on going and he goes on to win the nomination. as much fun as it has been to

see these different candidates rise up then go away then rise up and go away and then rise up and everybody expects them to go away, what is actually more important and more interesting than that is what has not changed in this race. the one totally nonvolatile element in the republican race this year is the steady basically straight line of mitt romney. during the earliest 2012 polling in the republican nomination, mitt romney was at about 23%. right now, he's at about 23%. he did have that little wiggle in there. sort of. but he's essentially mr. 23%. now, the good news for mr. romney is he is not dropping below the basic level of support. the bad news for mr. romney is he cannot seem to get above that level of support either. in the most recent gallup poll that showed him at about 20%, gallup noted that level of support is, quote, well below where most previous republican nominees stood in october of the year prior to the election. so mitt romney has very stable

numbers. he is mr. nonvolatile in a volatile race. the nice stable number he has got is a really low stable number. it's the same kind of failure to thrive that pretty romney is in fund-raisi fund-raising. mr. romney turned in his third quarter fund-raising numbers now. they're lower than his second quarter fund-raising numbers. it's going the wrong direction. compounding the quarter to quarter decline is the fact he's raising a lot less money than he was when he ran for the republican nomination and lost four years ago in 2008. beyond the numbers, though, mitt romney is having trouble with humans. the money that he is raising is from a relatively small number of humans. as reported by paul blumenthal at "huffington post today," quote, romney continues to have the lowest percentages of small dollar donors among candidates in the republican primary. yeah, he's raising money but essentially tapping the same rich guys over and over again. he's not broadening his appeal.

that's no big deal in terms of the total amount of money he's going to be able to raise. remember, in the era of the john roberts supreme court, billionaires can give infinitely now. mitt romney is a zillionaire, himself, so he will make as much money as he wants to make for this race. if he only makes the money from a handful of people because he doesn't attract new people to give him money, mitt romney is going to have a hard time attracting people to give his their votes as well. humans are great and necessary for winning an election. the human thing is sort of a more general problem for the mitt romney candidacy as well. let's just take a recent campaign stop sort of at random. this was his campaign stop yesterday at microsoft. let's start with probably the most affable human thing a candidate does at a stop like this. the opening flatter your audience joke as you step up to the podium. they all do this, right? but here is the mitt romney-con

edition. >> i was the guy in charge of recruiting for a consulting firm called bane & company in the early 1980s. there was a young man we were trying to recruit to come to our company. his name was steve ballmer. i met with steve. he said he was thinking about the offer i made him but said he was thinking about forming a company called microsoft and trying to decide between the two. i told him it was very high risk to come to microsoft. when i saw him, he said, mitt, do you remember recruiting me? i said, no, i didn't remember us but had you joined us, you'd be worth a million or two now. so -- >> see what's funny about that as a joke is the punch line is based on fact that $1 million or $2 million is not that much money. you'd be worth a million or two now. ha, ha. that's millionaire humor. at the time that mitt romney was at bane, he was discussing there in that speech, here was the

photo of mitt romney in bane's annual report. this is not something we photo shopped to make him look like thurston howl. this is the way he wanted to present himself to the world. that's money stuffed into this clothes. the guys he's with, it's in their mouths. the punch lines are about poor saps who are only worth a couple million dollars. did i tell you i'm unemployed, too? there is the human problem for mitt romney. there's also the mitt romney candidate personal intangibles. >> i'm afraid in some corners people don't like you very much. i'm not just talking about microsoft. i'm talking about private sector individuals generally. they feel somehow business is bad. the businesspeople are bad. i don't dislike you. i love you. i appreciate what you do. >> i love you, too, man. exactly the way that you mean that. how do you -- likability and affability are intangibles in a candidate. you can't even really teach

them. you have them or you don't. they are an issue for mitt romney. they have always been an issue for mitt romney. the failure of romney's candidacy to thrive takes the form of his inability to get establishment republicans onboard with him. yesterday along former rnc chairman haley barbour, mr. establishment in the republican party was busy singing the praises of not mitt romney but mitt romney's rival herman cain on conservative talk radio. the republican party's budget guy in congress, paul ryan of kill medicare fame, he was praising herman cain's tax plan in the conservative blogosphere. and the republican party's beloved talk show host, rush limbaugh, spent yesterday essentially damning mitt romney with faint praise. >> romney is not a conservative. he's not, folks, but you can argue with me all day long an that, but he isn't. what he has going for him is that he's not obama.

>> the thing that mitt romney has going for him according to rush limbaugh is the thing that 308 million other american citizens have going for them as well. their name is not barack obama. the republican establishment is not rallying behind mitt romney. not by a long shot. this election cycle has seen the lowest endorsement rate by republican establishment figures of any election in the last 30 years. this is "the huffington post" analysis today. at this point in years past republican establishment figures are publicly getting behind one candidate or another. look at where we are this year. not this time. not with mitt romney. if you are mitt romney in this failure to thrive scenario, yes, herman cain is sort of ahead of you right now. if you think that might not last, uzbekistan 9-9-9, for example, if you are mitt romney and think it's possible the herman cain surge might not last, then it is all about timing at this point. you is to lock up the nomination before people realize you may

very well be a doomed candidate. you have to lock up the nomination before there is, say, a rick perry resurgence. you have to lock up the nomination and soon. my favorite bit of intrigue right now is people including herman cain and newt gingrich and jon huntsman are bailing on the entire nevada caucuses. they're bailing on the state of nevada because they say that mitt romney has in jon huntsman's words gamed the system. mitt romneyi trying to force th voting process to start earlier than it has ever started in order to lock up the nomination while romney still has it and nobody has figured out how to be the anti-romney. nobody noticed what a doomed candidate he is and come up with an alternative plan. quick, i'm ahead, let's vote and end this thing now. romney's rivals are alleging romney got nevada to move their k caucus early in january which bumped new hampshire to december which is bumping iowa to roughly five minutes from now or at least thanksgiving. this is a mess right now.

love it. joining us now is eugene robins robinson, pulitzer prize winning columnest for the "washington post" and msnbc political analyst. gene, good to see you. thanks for being here. >> great to be here, rachel. >> how does this end, gene? should we be looking at herman cain as a potential nominee? how does this end? >> why do you want it to end, rachel? >> i don't, honestly, i don't. >> i don't know how it ends. i don't see herman cain as a presidential nominee. in any universe. you know, mr. black walnut he called himself. i just don't see it. but the republicans clearly, the rank and file and establishment don't love mitt romney. they're not enthusiastic. it's very little intensity behind mitt romneyromney. this is a problem. if your support has flatlined like that and you're supposed to be the prohibitive front-runner,

you do have a problem. >> it is amazing to look at that polling over time. i graphed that today for the first time to say, what's happened over, say, the past year? because mitt romney has been running for president for roughly five years. we knew he was going to do this. to see him at 23% a year ago and 23% a year now with just a little wiggle in the middle of it, other than that essentially flatlining, he has a ceiling in terms of his support. is there any way for him to break through the ceiling and make rush limbaugh stop talking smack about him and get republicans more excited about his candidacy? >> if is, he hasn't found it. there's not enough time left for him to invent yet another political persona for himself. right? so he can't become this sort of rick perry without the drawl and with some debating skills overnight. he can't become chris christie overnight. he's mitt romney and his record

is his record. in fact, in the past he's taken position that an anathema to those in the republican party. they don't trust him. if he keeps working at it, this is the way he has to think about it. if i keep working at it, i'm going to wear them down and he hasn't worn them down yet. he can't seem to climb above that 23%. >> gene, let me ask you about one thing about the herman cain candidacy. and the way we have seen these other surges from other candidates, michele bachmann and rick perry in particular, is that they surged sort of either because of support from conservatives or the media sort of getting a wild hare in some cases and faded when they got front level scrutiny, when people went through their records and looked at what they said. herman cain's surge is treated differently. though he's ostensibly the front-runner, he's not getting scrutiny.

people are looking at the 9-9-9 plan saying, wow, it's like steve forbes with fewer vowels. he's really not getting that scrutiny. does that mean he could actually be the front-runner for longer because people can't take him seriously enough to ask him real questions? >> well, you know, it's possible. you have to figure that one of these surges might catch, you know? and the later the surge, the better the chance that it could happen at the right time. you know, that said, i don't see herman cain being the nominee. i don't see the surge lasting long. simply because there doesn't seem to be a lot offer there. if you look at 9-9-9, you find not much, you know? not even 8 1/2. you don't find it. and beyond that, uzbekistan, whatever he said, there's going to be a foreign policy debate at some point and my goodness, what is that going to be like? if herman cain is the front-runner during the foreign

policy debate? i just don't -- i don't see it. but, you know, i was going to say stranger things have happened. i'm trying to imagine one. >> if there is a foreign policy debate and herman cain is the front-runner, a lot of popcorn will be sold. eugene robinson, "washington post" columnist, msnbc political analyst. thank you very much. appreciate it. >> great to be here, rachel. the thing about a cliche, is became a cliche because it was true in the first place. tonight's prime example, hay senator scott brown. it's not the crime. it's the coverup. stupid crime and stupefying cover-up from scott brown coming up. think twice. it may be a sign that your digestive system could be working better. listen to this with occasional irregularity, things your body doesn't use could be lingering in your system, causing discomfort. but activia has been shown in clinical studies to help with slow intestinal transit when consumed 3 times per day.

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for as little as $4 a month with the lipitor co-pay card. terms and conditions apply. learn more at lipitorforyou.com. republican senator scott brown of massachusetts complained today that people should stop bugging him about him plagiarizing elizabeth dole on his website. scott brown telling "the boston globe" he could not answer anymore questions about the praj plagiarism. he said the whole thing was silly, insisting to "the globe" when they kept asking about it, quote, end of story. i command the hometown newspaper, end of story. the way you make a story like this actually go away, the way you make people and reporters lose interest in a story like this, is just to come clean about it. tell the truth about what happened. say you're sorry. the reason everybody is still so interested in the scott brown plagiarism scandal, the reason it's becoming more interesting than when it started now is because senator brown keeps making it worse. on scott brown's senate website,

under the heading student resources, there was this heartwarming tale. quote, i was raised to believe there are no limits to individual treatment and no excuses to justify indifference. from an early age i was taught success not material accumulation. i pursued positive change through a sense of mission and stand up for what i believe. those are not scott brown's words. those are the words pof elizabeh dole. they're from a speech of hers, in her book and on her website when she was a politician. they're in scott brown's message to students, with no atritributn to her at all as if she said the things. senator brown's staff said they used elizabeth dole's website as a template for their own website and that speech inadvertently got copied over on to scott brown's new website. here's the thing, though. look at the elizabeth dole quote again. in the original elizabeth dole quote scott brown supposedly

accidentally covered over in a technical website glitch, that technical website glitch included carefully trimming out the part of the quote where elizabeth quote says, i am mary and john hanford's daughter. having scott brown proclaim that on his website would be worse. it was a technical glitch, a computer error which doesn't exactly go over because of the trimming of the quote which doesn't happen automatically. the excuse -- this excuse about the automatic transfer of this quote between websites somehow is being mocked openly in massachusetts local media. so then today scott brown decided he'd try explanation number two. quote, it was a summer intern that put together the site. at a time when the senator's office had, quote, very little time and resources to put things up. again, now, this is the kind of story that would just go away if you would just tell the truth about it. explain it, say what happened

then we can move on. in this case, we can move on safe in the knowledge that senator brown when he does something wrong as a senator will throw the interns under the bus, let them take the blame. in this case trying to blame it all on some summer intern is a scenario that cannot be true. since senator scott brown's spokeswoman says this website was put up in february and hasn't been updated since. now, global warming is weird but even in massachusetts there's not a snow ball's change in hol holioke that the person who screwed this up in february was in senator brown's words a summer intern. senator scott brown, you plagiarizing elizabeth dole for your inspirational message to students does not seem to be caused by a computer glitch like you tried first and was definitely not caused by a summer intern like you tried second. the single most interesting thing about you plagiarizing senator dole, senator brown, is why you keep trying this

complicated evolving sets of how this happened. come clean. then it can be end of story like you insist. first you have to come up with one plausible explanation for how this happened then you should probably apologize for it and then after that you will now have to explain and apologize for the computer glitch excuse you said that doesn't seem to be true and for the summer intern excuse that also does not seem to be true. it is easy to just tell the truth in the first place. but now, senator brown, unless you really are mary and john hanford's daughter, now you have really got yourself into a mess here. e can make it from australia to a u.s. lab to a patient in time for surgery may seem like a trumped-up hollywood premise. ♪ but if you take away the dramatic score... take away the dizzying 360-degree camera move... [ tires screech ] ...and take away the over-the-top stunt, you're still left with a pretty remarkable tale. but, okay, maybe keep the indulgent supermodel cameo... thank you.

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if you go to the website for congressman dave camp of michigan you'll get to see him as a living congressional version of the microsoft office paper clip that pops up it help you with your printing problems. >> hi, i'm dave camp. welcome to my website. this website contains helpful information on issues before the congress, concerns you may have in the federal agency and many other services. but while you're here, don't forget to sign up for my electronic newsletter. that will help us stay in touch. thanks for visiting the site. hope to see you again real soon. >> isn't that crazy at the end? he just vaporizes. he just disappears. it's so weird and so awesome. dave camp or as i like to call him now, clippy, he has a great website. he also has the distinction of being one of only three republicans in the house who did not vote yesterday on

republicans' seventh antiabortion vote of the year. seven different antiabortion votes since they have been in control of congress. seven. but dave camp did not vote on their seventh antiabortion thing yesterday and is the only republican member of congress who did not vote on that yesterday who did not also have the excuse that he was busy running for president. the other two republicans who didn't come to abortion day in the house yesterday are ron paul and michele bachmann. ron paul having a relatively less interesting or at least more predictable race than he did back in 2008. this time around he's ended up being just sort of a fairly stable not top tier candidate who doesn't really seem to be going anywhere. michele bachmannid have an early surge in the race but now she also seems pretty much consigned to being not a top tier candidate who's just hanging around now until it's time to bow out or until her book comes out. this is an interesting thing. both ron paul and michele bachmann decided the key to revitalizing their campaigns is to double down on abortion.

not sub substantively as a policy matter. neither showed up for the antiabortion vote number seven in the house. michele bachmann has not gone to work at all recently. she did not vote once in the entire month of september. she nevertheless found time to introduce her new antiabortion legislation she's campaigning on in her run for president. ron paul now, too, releasing a big minute long super slick antiabortion ad. the ad is purely about ron paul being antiabortion. republican politics right now, i think the beltway does not get it but there is this really obvious magic decoder ring. if you don't want to talk about jobs and the economy and you're a republican, vote seven times on something antiabortion in the house. if your presidential campaign is suffering from a failure to thrive and you're a republican, talk about abortion. if you're trying to rekindling the republican party's interest in you as a republican candidate, double down on being antiabortion. antiabortion politics is home

base in republican politics right now. meanwhile, antiabortion activism on bill o'reilly's show on the fox news channel has just helped cost a republican attorney general his license to practice law. or looks like it's about to. a crusading antiabortion activist named phil klein was elected kansas attorney general in 2002. elected to be the top law enforcement official in that state on a largely antiabortion platform. phil klein delivered. at least he delivered on the antiabortion part if not the law enforcement part. we reported on show in the past, phil klein turned the power and resources of the kansas state general office on to a crusade against planned parenthood and more pointedly against abortion provider george tiller. >> now, any of you heard of george tiller? george tiller performs late term abortions. >> another example in kansas is george tiller. abortionist george tiller. >> i want to tell you who does

not endorse attorney general klein. abortionist dr. george tiller does not endorse phil klein. >> as kansas general, he used the power of his office to get ahold of medical records from patients of dr. tiller in an effort that seemed like he was trying to find something damning enough to use against the doctor. in november 2006 days before phil klein's unsuccessful re-election bid as attorney general, he appeared on bill o'reilly's tv show on fox news channel. bill o'reilly had somehow obtained private medical information about abortions performed by dr. tiller, the same klein was investigating. o'reilly said he had a source inside and phil klein confirmed for him he received the medical records in question and talked about those records to bill o'reilly on tv. people's private medical records. he did that in order to make an antiabortion point. in order to make a point these abortions for which he obtained the medical records in his view should not have been legal.

one of the findings in the disciplinary hearing report recommending phil klein's license to practice law in kansas be indefinitely suspended is what he said on bill o'reilly's tv show violates legal ethics rule. prosecutors are only supposed to speak publicly about ways that they inform the public that disciplinary panel found not only did the bill o'reilly show not do that but the statements made by the respondent on the o'reilly factor heightened public condemnation of dr. tiller. klein may lose his law license in kansas. he says he doesn't care. he's been taken in by a law school which is happy to have him. he succeeded in getting into the public domain and antiabortion narrative in this country. private details of the individual patients' private medical records and personal medical decisions. because he talked about those things so much after he got his

hands on them. bill o'reilly, when it was clear phil klein's law license was in danger in part because of what he said on bill o'reilly's tv show, bill o'reilly is still talking, still attacking dr. tiller after his death and talking about those medical records as recently as last month on fox news. of course, dr. tiller was murdered by an ant abortion extremist more than two years ago. ♪ a refrigerator has never been hacked. an online virus has never attacked a corkboard. ♪ give your customers the added feeling of security a printed statement or receipt provides... ...with mail. it's good for your business.

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it's heart-healthier than butter. with omega-3s. 64% less saturated fat. and clinically proven to help support healthy cholesterol. ♪ put a little love in your heart ♪ now, we don't take any options off the table in terms of how we operate with iran, but what you can expect is that we will continue to apply the sorts of pressure that will have a direct impact on the iranian government until it makes a better choice in terms how it's going to interact with the rest of the international community. >> earlier this week the justice department announced they stopped this man, mansoor , a dual american citizen from hiring someone he thought was a member of a mexican drug cartel

to assassinate said arab ya's -- at the request of the highest levels of the iranian regime. if this is true, the stakes are very high over this. haven't had enough of war with iraq, afghanistan, pakistan, somalia, yemen? want more with iran, too? new york republican congressman peter king, head of homeland security committee called this plot an act of war by iran. democrat carl levin, chairman of senate armed services committee basically agreed saying, it may be, adding he'd want to see what the implications of that characterization are before i use it. the u.s. is now taking its case against iran to the u.n. security council which could authorize new sanctions against iran and authorize the use of force against iran. the justice department says this plot was hatched by a shadowy elite part of the iranian military, the quds force. loots of people came out this week questioning that assertion, saying this bungled poorly planned screw up of an assassination where the dude

thought he was dealing with the drug cartel and really dealing with an american government informant, this is screwed up enough it doesn't sound like the quds force because they're supposedly good at this thing. to the skeptics, u.s. officials have said we know it was the quds force, we know for sure but you have to take our word for it. we don't know that much about the quds force. experts estimate it's a 15,000 member group and their role is to, quote, clan destinely exert power to advance iranian national interests abroad. clandestinely to promote economic power abroad. whose actions are often denied by the government. we have one of those. this story is tricky to even talk about because there is so much secrecy, so much opacity, so many unknown unknowns.

on one side we have this iranian military branch part of the even more secretive iranian regime. on the other side, the u.s. government that says we know for sure the iranian regime is behind this, trust us on it. the u.s. has the added problem the charges we're lobbying guest the quds force, secret acts of war in other countries, we do those things, too, which makes it harder to convince the rest of the world to be outraged by iran's outrageous behavior. the cia is engaged in a war in pakistan, for example, conducted by drones, a war that's for all intensive purposes secret. there are no reporters embedded with the cia. politicians don't answer questions about what the cia does. this is a war happening with no one officially watching. maybe this is just the future of war. underground war waged by iran, waged by the united states, waged by other countries who figured out it is easier and more convenient and less hassle frankly to go to war without telling anybody you're doing it. joining us, steve clemens from

the new america foundation. find him online at the washington note and "atlantic" magazine where he's washington editor at large and they're really lucky to have him. steve, thanks for joining us tonight. >> good to be with you, rachel. >> how do you get to the bottom of a story like this iran story and confident you're telling a story that is real and not spin? >> the bottom gets deeper and deeper and deeper. that's the process of this. united states lost a lot of its eyes and ears some years ago. you want to see a bungled case, a "the new york times" national correspondent in a book called "state of war" warranted the wiretap story and told a fascinating story of how the cia accidentally revealed and sent an electronic message where our iranian based intelligence assets were unveiled and the intelligence network inside iran was rolled up. some opacity was self-inflicted by the united states which at one point did have an

intelligence network. how do you get deep? it's very, very hard. the administration is saying trust us. after the wmd case in iraq, after so many cases in which particularly during the bush administration we had outright lies, told to the american people, there's not a lot of trust of government when the president comes out and says we know this leads up to the very highest levels of the quds force. >> in relationship, in the overall relationship of political accountability and military force, there's a remarkable development today separate from the iran situation. president obama today sent a letter to congress telling them that past tense he has ordered 100 u.s. combat troops to four countries in central africa to find the lords resistance army. the letter says these will be combat ready troops but they'll be doing training, not actual fighting themselves. did we have any idea this was coming, steve? is this relatively out of the blue? >> this is semi out of the blue. general carter ham, commander of

the african command, about ten days ago in washington began to telegraph we needed this capacity to send advisers in to help deal with the various national militaries that were dealing with growing mostly islamic violent islamic groups inside deep africa, sudan, somalia, uganda, the congo and these areas. when we first made these statements they sort of went without any public notice, no news release about them until the president essentially notified congress that he had done this and it's now raised this whole question of, you know, this is how wars and deeper engagement start is advisers go in. i imagine you're going to begin doing a lot more shows on what's really happening in deep africa now which is not something many of us have been talking about. >> how significant is it that the president sent these troops first and notified congress after? how much leeway does he have to

do that without consulting congress about this? >> well, the way the war powers act works, the president needs to notify congress within 48 hours of deployment of force which holds. within 60 days, there has got to be larger action. congress has to approve this action and then he has 30 days to withdraw. there have been suggestions the war powers act is unconstitutional or doesn't in effect work. and that there needs to be much more of a consultive process back and forth. right now in this political climate i think that the administration is trying to live somewhat by the letter of the law but not necessarily by the spirit which is to basically draw in senior levels of the intelligence committees and the various armed services committee and begin having a conversation about why this is a matter of grave national interest to the united states that you would deploy so many combat ready troops that they say are not necessarily going to be in combat but are combat troops that have been deployed.

>> steve clemons of the american note and editor for "atlantic" magazine. you brought so many different parts of information about this to this discussion. i'm incredibly grateful, steve. thank you very much. >> thank you, rachel. starring in the best new thing in the world today -- >> bang. >> not clyde the ore rang tang. he's not the best new thing in the world but rather clint eastwood. and consistently fast speeds. ♪ i have to be a tree in the school play. good. you like trees. well, i like climbing them, but i've never been one. good point. ( captain ) this is your captain speaking. annie gets to be the princess. oh... but she has to kiss a boy. and he's dressed up like a big green frog !

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this next story comes from the commonwealth of massachusetts, of which i am a proud resident and of which we have things like tom brady, which is amazingly awesome. also the red sox. who have become an unmitigate d disaster, including star pitchers drinking beer in the clubhouse during games. tom weaver, a republican who ran for congress from lowell. he has a number of causes he cares about. including making it harder to vote. he leads a group that approximate it up this billboard near a heavily latino this

district in time for an election. last month mr. weaver set up a camera for a special election, so he can watch for things that go wrong at the polls. so he can show others how to set up their cameras in their polling places. this week he posted that video that he took at that polling place. he thinks he saw some stuff go wrong at these polls even on this slow voting day. for example, a poll worker's cell phone rings and he leaves to answer it. i would fix where the subtitle has receives spelled wrong. having the ringer turned on violates the rules, mr. weaver says, exclamation point. someone else had trouble feeding a ballot into a voting machine. scandal. random stills, including one that shows two men sitting at a table inside the polling place. hey, that guy on the left looks like tom weaver. yeah, it's definitely tom weaver. and he is sitting at a table

with a big sign that says, show i.d. to vote. i think it's this sign right here. show i.d. to vote. then it's got some rules listed. rules. have valid government-issued i.d. wait a minute. have valid government-issued i.d.? now we're on to something that is wrong. massachusetts does not have one of these new republican laws that won't let you vote without an i.d. that hundreds of thousands of voters in that state do not have. massachusetts doesn't have that law. massachusetts isn't tennessee or texas or wisconsin. all of which have these new republican-passed laws that instantly disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of people in those states. massachusetts does not have one of those laws. which explains why at the bottom of the show i.d. to vote poster, the very last rule after be polite, the very last rule is, voluntary compliance. see, show i.d. to show is not a rule or law in massachusetts.

it's the name of tom weaver's organization, an advocacy group that wants to make it harder to vote in massachusetts. he wants show i.d. to vote to become a law. right now it's the thing on top of the sign. it's occasionally an intimidating billboard. it's a couple of guys in suits trying to look as official as they can and greeting voters with their misleading, intimidating sign inside the polling place. when tom weaver's group wrote this stunt up about getting inside the poll is place with this nonsense, they wrote proudly that nobody complained, nobody spoke up. that's what of course they are counting on.

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best new thing in the world today requires a trip back in

time to the summer of 1988. it was two days before george herbert walker bush would stand up in front of his party and the nation to accept the republican nomination for president of the united states. he was running behind in the polls. way behind. double dij jids behind. he needed a boost, he needed to make a big impression. instead, mr. bush did something that flummoxed his party and the press. he decided his running mate would be this guy. indiana senator dan quayle, whoo-hoo, who at that moment was more of a question than the punch line he soon became and remained to this day. instantly the media questioned everything, from dan quayle's youth and inexperience, to his military record, to his connections to an attractive lobbyist. the response was so negative to the selection of dan quayle as vp that behind the scenes, some republican heavies mused about dumping dan quayle from the ticket before he was even nominated. they started talking about this almost immediately. publicly aides insisted that

george herbert walker bush considered quayle to be his first choice and his only choice. but that was really only the public line, that was the official history of this, but not the real history. we learn the real history of this today. thanks to an interview with poppy bush's former secretary of state james baker, an interview just released today. we now know the 1988 republican ticket could have been very, very, very, very, very, emphasis on very, very different. >> so the real candidates were dole, quayle, simpson, kemp. is there anyone else that you remember being an important candidate? >> you don't have clint eastwood on there. make my day. which you know clint eastwood's name was thrown out at one point? >> no, i didn't know that. >> when we were way behind, it was suggested in not