people all across the political spectrum. ed, how many people do you know who think exxon mobil is a person entitled to first amendment constitutional rights in the political process? >> exactly. if colbert and stewart can help people get people's attention on the seriousness of this i'm all for it because it could damage this country. senator sanders, thanks for being with us tonight, appreciate it so much. that is the ed show, i'm ed schultz, listen to me on channel 127 monday through friday 12:00 to 3:00. the rachel maddow show starts right now, have a great weekend. good evening, happy friday, thank you for being with us for the next hour. fridays are supposed to be slow, right? fridays are supposed to be nobody is paying attention days, fridays are supposed to be the days you do stuff or release information you don't want people to notice. friday is the weekend already, nothing happens on a friday.

right? bullpuckey today was avalanche of news day. first up a federal judge in virginia today, ruled on the legal challenge brought by texas governor rick perry to force his way on the virginia republican primary ballot. virginia of course one of the biggest plums on super tuesday, march 6th. the republican party of the commonwealth of virginia controls the rules of the primary including who gets to be on the ballot there. under the virginia republican party rules, the only people who qualify to be on the ballot this year are mitt romney and ron paul. that's it. they are the only ones who qualified. rick perry sued to try to force his way on the ballot, jon huntsman, newt gingrich and rick santorum joined the lawsuit. but today, a federal judge in virginia said to all of them, no. they all knew the rules ahead of time, they should have complained about the rules while there was still time to change them and so, effectively no

dice. so, this is your choice on march 6th, virginia. mitt romney or ron paul. full stop. also happening right now, in the great state of texas, as we speak, some big ranch somewhere they tell us between houston and austin, kind of a big somewhere, 125 leaders of the religious right and spouses are gathering for what time magazine called "operation what to do about mitt romney" the sponsor of the event is the former head of the american family association, done widon wildman financed rick perry stadium prayer rally before he kicked off his presidential campaign this summer. gary bauer, used to be the head of the family research council, who ran for president in 2000. mr. bauer becoming most famous during the campaign for this, well, oh! flipping pancakes in new hampshire and falling off the -- it was all mr. bauer -- oh.

g gary bauer and don wildman hosting this, basically a religious right conspiracy to find someone to topple mitt romney as the republican nominee. sounds like a crazy liberal connoisseco conspiracy. they are not denying that that is what they are trying to do. they admit it. while some of the people have endorsed some candidates, the invitation asks they all be "willing to compromise and change your choice to one that the body as a whole supports in order not to divide our strength." that meeting in texas starts tonight. then i think there is a sleepover at the ranch, oh to be a fly on the wall, tomorrow they will reportedly try to decide who they will support in the republican primary. one very specific point of light in the religious right panthoen, tim la hay, the books about the rapture, mr. left

behind, the obama is the anti-christ guy i got to interview once. he endorsed newt gingrich for president. he sent a letter to south carolina religious leaders urging them to unite behind newt gingrich's candidacy. having the best chance of beating president barack obama. his letter said if we do not change our leaders in the next election, we will end up being like the godless socialist countries of europe that will so destroy our country in four years, many experts believe we will never be able to reclaim it for moral and physical sanity. i don't understand the last part, either and i don't know who the experts are who agree with him. but, i should also note that tim also says that jerry falwell is endooring newt gingrich. endorsing. jerry falwell is dead but tim says in this letter that before jerry falwell died, he told him

"speaker newt gingrich is the most qualified man in america to run as president of the united states." mr. gingrich for his part said that he was very happy to receive the endorsement, mr. gingrich did not comment on whether or not he was happy to receive the endorsement of dead jerry falwell. in south carolina, newt gingrich is doing well right now. in the three most recent polls, ppp, leans democratic, rasmussen and leads republican, insider advantage, in all three of the polls, the three most recent polls in south carolina, mitt romney is still ahead, but newt gingrich is close and gaining, and the ppp poll, he's up over mr. gingrich by 5. in the rasmussen up by 7. insider poll up by 2. the movement in the polls broadly speaking is mitt romney is holding steady or dropping. newt gingrich is rising. ron paul is rising. and rick santorum is falling.

now there is still another week to go until south carolina votes. they vote next saturday. south carolina does not seem to be a gimme for anybody. south carolina seems to be in play. rick santorum so far is not showing much momentum in south carolina. he had that disappointing fifth place finish in new hampshire. oddly, this is an observation, who am to give him advice, i'm sure he wouldn't take it. i find it out when he went to new hampshire, about every event, he stressed all of his social conservative positions. so in the least sheelly conservative of all the early republican states, rick santorum went hard core and full bore on social conservative, abortion, anti-gay, how you should have sex and with whom, now that rick santorum is in south carolina, which is probably the most socially conservative state of all the early republican states, maybe contention with iowa, but up there, now that he's in south

carolina where the social conservative stuff might play, he's talking about jobs and blue collar side of his appeal, which is not an unattractive part of his message, just kind of seems like the timing is backwards. i'm just saying. mr. santorum has now re pri reprised a version of mike huckabee's line. >> people are looking for a presidential candidate who reminds them more of the guy they work with rather than the guy that laid him off. >> mr. santorum's version, he was trying to say he wasn't going to go after mitt romney for his record at bain capital but --. >> it doesn't necessarily mean that you want your boss to run for president, right? >> it should be noted as rick santorum reprises that line from

2008, should be noted mike huckabee has sort of now dropped his whole criticism of mitt romney. now that he's a fox news personality and not a candidate, mike huckabee joined the republican establishment chorus telling our candidates to not criticize mitt romney's record at bain. he sent a message to his own e-mail list saying "it's surprising to see so many republicans embrace that left wing argument against capitalism." mr. romney's most high profile surrogate john mccain said people should leave bain alone. >> these attacks on "bain capital" is really kind of an anthem to everything we believe in. >> that is john mccain now. taking what sounds like a principled stand on mitt romney's behalf. here he is now. >> as the head of his investment quote company, he presided over the acquisition of companies

that immediately laid off thousands of workers. >> john mccain, everybody, mr. principles. john mccain has turned out to be a little bit of a mixed blessing for mitt romney. yeah, he was the nominee the last time around, his endorsement sort of represents the ultimate bygones be bygones, but the bain flip-flop thing is embarrassing and last week, mr. mccain mistakenly endorsed mr. obama while campaigning with mitt romney in south carolina. did you see that? >> i am confident with the leadership and the backing of the american people, president obama will turn this country around. we believe in america. we believe --. >> president romney. president romney. president romney. president romney will turn this around. >> obviously an honest mistake and one he wishes he didn't make

but it was a high profile mistake with bad timing. my vote for the most under appreciated political story of the week comes from john mccain's appearance on sean hannity's radio show, when mr. mccain said this about his pick for vice president in 2008, his pick was sarah palin. >> i'd love sarah, i think she is still the best decision that i have ever made. >> best. john mccain is an older man. he has made a lot of decisions in his life including joining the navy, made decisions about who to marry, having children, decisions about wars, decisions about more wars, a whole lifetime of very important decision. he says the single best decision he has ever made in his entire life was -- i realize that mitt romney wants john mccain's

endorsement. but this week john mccain's endorsement came with a whiplash inducing reminder about john mccain's judgment. ? terms of the other candidates, there is ron paul, who as i mentioned before is doing well in the most recent polling. he was third in iowa, second in new hampshire, polling third and rising in south carolina right now. back home in texas, a federal appeals court today cleared the way for immediate enforcement of texas' new rather radical anti-abortion law. this is kind of amazing. think about. this this is the new law, it says that any woman who wants to have an abortion in the state of texas will now be forced by the government of the state of texas to undergo a medically unnecessary ultrasound, even if she does not want the ultrasound and even if her doctor does not think it's in her interest. doctors can lose their license to practice medicine unless they force their patients to undergo medically unnecessary ultrasounds against their own medical judgment in the

interests of their patients because the government of state wants them to do it. ron paul of course is running as the libertarian no-invasive government guy. asked about the new law, about the mandatory forced ultrasound law that has been passed in his home state of texas, ron paul said "it should always have been a texas state position." you want big, literally physically intrusive government dictating to doctors how to practice medicine? then ron paul is your guy, mr. liberty. that brings us back to the meeting of conservative religious right types in texas. for all of ron paul's anti-abortion libertarian heracy, time magazine reports that the only three non-mitt romney candidates at the religious right they are considering at the ranch are newt gingrich, rick perry an rick santorum. not only jon huntsman but radical anti-abortion big government interventionist ron

paul, they somehow with the religious right they don't cut the mustard, they're not being considered. republican politics are weird. and they are really internally inconsistent and they are therefore, radically unpredictable, which at times like this on fridays like this in political seasons like this, which is why i have the best job in the world. [ male announcer ] feeling like a shadow of your former self? c'mon, michael! get in the game! [ male announcer ] don't have the hops for hoops with your buddies? lost your appetite for romance? and your mood is on its way down.

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a totally different way to save on car insurance. the better you drive, the more you can save. no wonder snapshot's catching on. plug into the savings you deserve with snapshot from progressive. for republicans, there is nothing more infuriating, confrontational than a president that agrees with them, the nerve. that's next.

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at my house tonight in western massachusetts, i can confidently tell you there is a 30% chance of snow, and expected low of 21 degrees. tomorrow a high of 29, tomorrow night a low of 4 degrees, and first glance i looked at the weather forecast and got excited i thought i could go fishing on sunday, i noticed yes, it will be sunny, but a high of 19 degrees. i did catch a rainbow trout in the snow last sunday which was very exciting, but i'm not sure company do 19 degrees standing in the river. i'm not sure the river would let me in at that temperature. after it was 4 the night before. maybe would be iced over. the reason i know all that data, it has gotten me excited for the weekend because of my beloved o noah. it provides a great, well used service in our country. even if the only thing you care about is hurricanes, we need

them. the national weather service is great, i love it as much as i love the post office and subway. the weird thing about noaa is that noaa is part of the commerce department. the commerce department says the mission is to help make american companies more innovative at home and more competitive abroad so they can create jobs. now i'm sure accurate forecasting of the weather may be can help with that, but it is kind of weird, right? a weird match. president obama admitted to day that it's weird. >> the interior department is in charge of salmon in fresh water but the commerce department handles them in salt water. if you're wondering what the genesis of this was, apparently had something do with president nixon being unhappy with his interior secretary for criticizing him about the viet nam war, and so he decided not to put noaa in what would have

been a more sensible place. >> president obama while he was announcing not only does he want to take noaa out of commerce department, and put it somewhere more normal, like the interior department. not only does he want to move noaa, maybe wants to get rid of the commerce department altogether. he wants to take six departments or agencies that deal with business or trade, the commerce department, small business administration, u.s. trade representatives office, export-import bank, overseas private investment corporation, trade and development agency, all these agencies that have overlapping responsibilities for different parts of business and trade, wants to take all of these six agencies and console i date them. the white house says that consolidation would not only simplify and streamline government would save $3 billion and cut 1000 jobs over a period of ten years, they don't plan on

firing people in the jobs, they plan to lose the jobs through attrition. at the end of the game, a leaner federal government. i don't know how the people at noaa feel about potentially moving, i don't know how all those offices and their public servants feel about being reorganized from the outside looking in, this sort of reorganization does seem rational. shrinking and streamlining government to make it make more sense to the people who need to use to it get stuff done. republicans naturally have no idea what to do with this development. republicans have been so busy screaming that president obama must shrink government, so busy alleging that he's devoted to growing government whenever he can, but now that he is trying to shrink government, they reacted by being sort of suspicious and not happy but not sure why they're not happy. john boehner's spokesman released a statement "given the president's record of growing government" not sure what he means, "we're interested to

learn whether this proposal represents actual relief for american businesses or just the appearance of it." mitch mcconnell's spokesman called it interesting, but still accusing president obama of growing government. while he's proposing shrinking it. the white house is doing here is a political move called the flabbergast. because of the effect it has on the other side or it ought to if they had shame. a default talking point to accuse all democrats of wanting to grow government and say instead government should be shrunk. despite that republican talking point, government did grow more than at any time since world war ii under george w. bush and a republican congress. this democratic president is proposing shrinking government but that will not interrupt the talking point which alleges the

opposite of what is happening. it's a default epithet that democrats want to increase taxes and regulations. >> our taxes are too high, our democrats friends want us to raids taxes more. >> we need to lower the regulations and the taxes. >> this president has enacted job killing regulations. >> it's a government issue. it's high taxes, high regular. >> so not only does president obama want to increase taxes and regulations but he already has. and while that talking point is a tried and true talking point, an applause line, what the obama administration has actually done, bear no,sir resemblance to the talking point is a bit of a fl flabbergast. it has gone down the memory hole for republicans. president obama wrote an op-ed calling for government wide pruning of unnecessary or overly burdensome regulations.

in february of 2009 the president imply meanted one of the largest tax cuts in american history, part of the stimulus you would never know it from the way the republicans talk about it. the administration brags on 17 tax cuts for small businesses. so naturally republicans keep denouncing him as raising taxes and piling on the regulations. and growing the government. >> government is already too big. we have rein in. >> government is too big in washington d.c. >> this administration has blown the lid off high cost regulations. >> this is a real theme and challenge, concerning democrating administrations. because the talking points, the hurled invectives stay the same. these guys know what republicans like to hear, they know what they think the country likes to hear what is wrong with

democrats. when that is not true of the actual democrats who are being criticized, we are faced with the question of whether or not we demand our politics make sense, whether the talking points start to sound off point. >> when we get people who are more concerned about the -- let me think carefully how i describe this -- more concerned reading the rights to an al qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the united states against people who are absolutely committed to do everything they can to kill americans, then i worry. >> that is the line from the republicans, the obama administration soft on terror. they coddle terrorists. then there is the obama administration. >> u.s. and yemen ai officials y it was a drone strike. >> a top al qaeda leader and

potential successor to osama bin laden is reportedly among nine people killed in a u.s. drone strike in northwest pakistan. >> u.s. drone strikes killed seven al qaeda linked militants in yemen overnight, one of those was one of the most dangerous militants in yemen. >> tonight, i can report to the american people and to the world that the united states has conducted and operation that killed osama bin laden, the leader of al qaeda. >> this is almost an existential challenge. politics are fighting about governing, what the government does. but the epithets people use to make politics have become disconnected what is happening in governing. when the candidates talk about immigration, how the administration is soft on illegal immigration and won't enforce the laws. in any just world the talking point ought to be flabbergasted

that a record number of lillega immigrants have been deported. the way you can tell that obama was coming for your guns, was that obama had not yet come for your guns. and the whole reason there had been no encroachment on gun rights under the obama administration because they were lulling us in a sense of co complacency to come for your guns some other time. when that happened, i felt we're all on the same page. i felt we had the ultimate fl flabbergast. the moon had been shot on whether or not the rights case about obama was connected at all to how obama has governed as president. but now, today, with obama saying he wants to get rid of the commerce department, and the response on the right being we'll see government grower, now i feel there is no moon to shoot, there is no shark to jump. this is the way it goes and the way it will keep going. joining us is ezra klein,

msnbc policy analyst, ezra, thanks for being here on friday night. >> good evening. >> if president obama were a republican president, would republicans be super psyched about what he announced about consolidating these agencies? >> they would be sipsyched. this is a tinier examples. a policy that bob dole supported, heritage foundation, that newt gingrich supported, that mitt romney passed in law and began to implement. that was a conservative idea, barack obama opposed it and embraced it as part of a way to get a deal. republicans said it was unconstitutional assault on power. cap and trade, for carbon, nowadays, cap and trade was proposed and passed in law george h.w. bush, then john

mccain had it in his 2008 platform. we let political parties decide what is left and right and don't hold their feet to the fire when on fthe fly they decide to take the thing they were supporting yesterday and say today it's a horrible idea that nobody should ever be allowed to support. >> there is the sort of dynamic that is not an exact mirror image, it's not to say one side is better than the other, on some of those issues i pointed out where obama actually does something that republicans criticize him for not doing, enforcing immigration laws and deporting people or the drone strikes and some of the national security stuff and his approach to fighting terrorism around the world, liberals are not happy about those issues. but republicans never say they are happy about those issues, so we end up in this situation where the left is criticizing, the right is not criticizing and we're never able to sense even on an issue where he comes down on the middle or right that he's doing something that is actually

a partisan-style compromise. >> right, this is not only true i think it ends up being brilliant. in this following way. the old theory of american politics, the way you got your ideas in law if you weren't in power, you compromised with the other part tirks you said in exchange for my vote, you have to put this in the bill. what mitch mcconnell and republicans have figured out you don't have to. if you with hold the votes, you move the necessary votes to pass a deal to the right of the democratic party. your health care bill can't be further left than senator ben nelson, the nebraska senator who won't run for reelection. can't be any further left than you allow it to be. you end up with a health care bill almost what you would have thought you would end up with if the democrats and republicans had come to a compromise but not only do you not have to vote for it but you attack the other side and make them look partisan, make them do all the work of passing it into law. the unpopular parts of your

idea, too. turns out to be pril -- brilliant, not a good thing we have figured out a way to get what they want without compromising given how much the system is reliant on compromise. >> is part of the problem the media tends to find the partisan or left-right contours of a policy based on who from which party is squawking about it? is there a way the media should be covering policy issues like this, that sort of separate from how partisans are fighting about it? >> who us, no? we do a wonderful job. look, i think we have a problem. we don't want to take a side. so what we do is allow the republicans and democrats to decide at any given time what the sides in american politics are. they change the sides quite a bit, and when they do that we don't jump in front of them and say wait, two months ago, three years ago weren't you saying this? some could argue it's not the media's job to decide what the

republican party believes, what is right in the country, there has to be somewhere in between here and there we could be. the other side is too that you got to be watching the policy closely to catch on to the shifts. when you're covering politics and this is not political party's fault, when you're covering pom particulars and you're moving with the politicians, and to some degree we miss the distinction between the place of politics of driving people and the plals you -- place you would have assumed they would have driven to. >> ezra klein, as always, invaluable insight, thank you. >> thank you. >> if your weekend plans include floating around the indian ocean, i have a recommendation for you, you will need an umbrella but need to be made of teflon or armor. that is coming up. and make them simple, intuitive,

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the president's state of the union address is scheduled a week from tuesday, the 24th of january. we do not yet know who will give the republican response this year. for the president's first official state of the union it was given by bob mcdonald. the republican party wants to be a rising star, that is why he got the speech gig that night. tomorrow he will be going to south carolina ahead of the south carolina republican primary. he is not running for president, so what is he going to be doing in south carolina? everybody thinks he's there essentially running for vice

president. pick me, pick me. why no matter what you hear, why bob mcdonnell won't be anybody's vice presidential pick is an easy story to tell. has dirty words in it. that is coming up, next.

. they packed up the new hampshire primary in a hurry, hand mitt romney the trophy, put the teleprompter on the bus and get to south carolina. the last one turn out the lights. now that the national circus has gone, republicans are left with their own politics, own agenda. they are working on rolling back rights for gay people. new hampshire republicans want to take away the existing right of same sex couples there to get married. freedom to marry is not live free and die. republicans to take prioritize those rights had a perfect choice for candidate in the presidential primary, rick santorum. senator, man on dog, suggested that as president he would intervene to annul the marriages of same sex couples nation-wide. rick santorum nearly won in iowa. when he showed up in new

hampshire, he talked about gay rights and was booed off the stage. when it came time to vote, the rank and file put him in fifth place. the only candidates who got close to him, ron paul and jon huntsman who supports civil unions. new hampshire republican lawmakers in that state are still talking about repealing same sex marriage. 27% of new hampshire voters say they want that to happen. the republican legislature is offering a bill not just to do away with gay marriage in new hampshire, but allow anybody to just ignore the rights you are entitled to if you're in a civil union. if you have visitation rights to see your partner in the hospital because you are knin a civil union, the bill would change the law to make that right optional for anybody who doesn't want to respect it or enforce it. the bill would also for the first time let close family members like brothers and sisters enter into civil unions. why is that?

i don't know. next up, men and their dogs. as i say, i don't know. what is happening in new hampshire makes me wonder if republican leaders in general are maybe outstripping their own voters when it comes to being anti-gay. this presents a quandry for chris christie, one of the choices for the vice presidential nominee. he is facing a push in his own state legislature to legalize same sex marriage in new jersey. democrats with some republican support say they want to pass a marriage equality bill for new jersey, if they do so they will put it on his desk. what will he do with that? he wants to be known as somewhat moderate on social issues, somebody not a crusader on those issues, doesn't want to be seen as a dinosaur, but he's ambitious, will republican party politics this year make chris christie veto that marriage bill. what will doe to his standing in new jersey in exchange for

raising his standing in national politics. bob mcdonnell worked so hard to reinvent himself as a milk toast pro business guy. worked so hard to get away from his days as a religious right ae a thesis, public policy should be used to punish could habitate tors, homosexuals and fornicators. look what he has done as virginia governor. republicans have passed new rules for adoptions, that say it's acceptable to block you from adopting a child in virginia on the basis of your sexual orientation. but in the mcdonnell administration zeal to go hard cor anti-gay, they changed the rules in virginia not just on the basis of sexual orientation but the basis of your family status or age or gender or disability or religion or political believes. seriously. under bob mcdonnell, virginia

changed its rules to say you can be blocked from adopting a child in virginia if you are a registered democrat. or a registered republican. or if you're gay. or if you're a jew. who wants bob mcdonnell to be on their ticket as vice president? anyone? all this perkolates in the states. mitt romney has been consolid e consolidating support, his own uncomfortably gay friendly past keeps rearing its head. posting pro gay romney from his past. smiling on the cover of boston's gay newspaper, bay windows from 1994. he was running for senate that year promising he would be a better advocate for gay rights than ted kennedy. that same year, mr. romney told

the log cabin republicans, "if we are to achieve the goals we share, we must make equality for gays and lesbians a main stream concern" that was posted by buzz feed. gay pride flyer, mitt and kerry wish you a great pride weekend. all citizens deserves equal rights. paid for by the romney for governor committee. the current romney campaign denies knowing anything about the flyer, but a former intern said he was told to hand out they were campaign literature. now of course mitt romney says that equal rights for same sex couples are a threat to the nation, that must be stopped. mitt romney's gay friendly past puts an exclamation point after this question mark, in republican politics today. the question mark about how anti-gay national republicans want to be. how anti-gay do national

republicans want to be or need to be. the conservative movement made eight litmus test for politicians. has that become a liability in general election campaigns? are republican politicians now more anti-gay than voters at large? or even than republican voters? joining us now it is frank phillips, state house bureau chief for the boston globe, mr. fimr. mr. phillips, thank you for joining us. >> good evening. >> we've seen discomfort in the mitt romney for president campaign when couldnnfronted wi the statements of mitt romney the massachusetts candidate in the past. how would you characterize mitt romney's legacy on gay rights in massachusetts? >> well, i was there in 1994, and he was out there on the edge. he was pushing ted kennedy, saying he was going to be as you just said, he would be better

than ted on gay rights. he thought that don't ask don't tell, that was going to -- he wanted to go beyond that. and that was just put in place by the clinton administration. he was out there, and when he came back and ran for governor, he continued to be domestic partnerships, and there was in massachusetts he was a moderate socially progressive person in a lot of social issues, one of them was gay rights. >> of course when the massachusetts supreme court legalized same sex marriage in the state, in 2005 was it? no, earlier. >> 2003. november of 2003. he was in office a year. >> his reaction was he was against it and he got involved with the republicans in the legislature to try to block it. was that -- was that a characteristic move for him, was he acting the way he had

previously or did that change him at all? >> i think it did change him and made me for the first time think that he had national ambitions. and confirmed a lot of what we were suspecting. he went in overdrive on that, and he never really interacted much with the legislature, but even with the republicans in the legislature, who are the small minority, but he was actually going down to their offices, and trying to rally votes to vote for a constitutional amendment to put before the voters to ban same sex marriages. so he was in overdrive, and it was clear to us that something was going on here, he was playing to the more national audience, and from then on i think we saw a different mitt romney. >> do you think that the gay marriage issue in massachusetts had anything to do with his decision not to run for

reelection or by the time that happened do you think he already knew he wasn't going to try to get reelected? >> i don't think it had anything to do with that. even early on, although it's very popular now, it was 40-40 in favor and against, the rest undecided, i think there were other factors. i don't think he ever intended to run for reelection, he wanted to get on the national stage, run in '08, a lot depended what happened with john kerry in '04, once kerry lost, he was off and running. his unfavorability was in the high 50s, he could have come back. i think he could have gotten reelected, not a certainty, but he's a strong candidate, he did a decent job in a lot of ways as governor, nothing overwhelming, but he was very competent governor here in massachusetts. >> frank phillips, state house

bureau chief for the boston globe, always enjoy the chance to talk with you sir, thanks very much for being with us. >> it's a pleasure, thank you, rachel. so russian space debris might fall on your head this weekend, i'm sorry. also sorry to say if russian space debris falls on your head, russia thinks it's your fault. a moment of geek with the blame game just ahead.

. good news/bad news on the moment of geek tonight. a bad news, a russian spacecraft that has been falling to the earth sense november is about to crash back to earth. the good news, pieces of the 30,000 pond stays craft loaded with toxic rocket fuel are not all that likely to fall on you specifically, depending on where you. the spacecraft was supposed to fly to the martian moon. it was supposed to take a soil sample from that moon and fly it back home. but although the first stage of its life went pretty smoothly and made it into earth's orbit, the second stage of the launch never happened. thein jinns that were supposed to seasoned the rocket out of

earth's orbit never fired and all that fuel that was supposed to be burnt up when the engines fired never burnt up because it never fired and that has been circling over our heads ever since. two months after it failed to get out of earth's orbit, the laws of physics started to do its job. the steadily decaying orbit is bringing this piece of scary space junk and all of its fuel back into our atmosphere. experts are expecting it to hit sometime this weekend, probably sunday, maybe early monday. mostly it going to burn up upon reentry into the atmosphere. that includes the fuel, which should kaboom once its tanks burn up in the reentry fall. they estimate 430 pounds from the solid junk will make it all the way down to where we humans are to, you know, where we are but also where the oceans are and there's more of the surface area of the earth covered by oceans than by land. they will not know exactly where this is coming down until right

before it happens. the whole world cursing the lousy russian space program and worried about getting hit by their defective space junk is not a prideful thing for russia. so the head of the russian space program has done what comes naturalry to people who are embarrassed. he's turned it into an excuse to kick someone the head of the russian program said it might not be russia's fault. heap said some other country might have sabotaged it. heap sa he said, we don't want to accuse anybody about there are very powerful devices that can influence spacecraft now. he did not name names of course, america, but he spoke about the frequent failure of our space launches which occurred at a time they are flying over a part of the earth not visible from russia, we're do not see the spacecraft and do not receive

telemetric information is not clear to us. the "new york times" assumes that is a reference to us. so the guy who heads the russian space agency that we now pay to transport our astronauts to the international space station is alleging somebody, possibly us, might be sabotaging russian rockets from space when we've got them over on our side of the earth so russia can't see us doing it. you know, if i were them, would i want to blame somebody else, too. but remember that if space junk does hit somebody this weekend, russia's going to blame america. is romney unstoppable in the south carolina primary? [ coughs ]

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