in january of 2011 there was an assassination attempt on a member of the united states congress. congresswoman gabby giffords was holding a meet your congress event at a supermarket in tucson when this mentally ill, heavily armed young man opened fire. this was the type of weapon he used, and the reason it looks a strange shape is because it has an extended magazine larger than the gun was designed for. the standard magazine for this gun would fit into the handle without hanging below it like you saw in the other picture. a standard magazine would hold 15 bullets. jared loughner had two of the standard-sized ammunition clips in his pocket that did at the safeway in tucson, but the clip he had in the gun held double the number of bullets as compared to the standard one. it holds 30 bullets. that's why jared loughner, last january in tucson, was trying to

kill and wound so many people before he was stopped. he fired one bullet in the chamber and fired the 30 bullets in the extended magazine. it was not until he stopped because he had to reload that somebody was able to tackle him and stop that massacre. in the aftermath of the gabby giffords shooting, the country for a second was puzzled that just a few years earlier that extended magazine would have been illegal under the assaults weapons ban signed into law in 1994. when george w. bush let the assault weapons expire in 2004, the extended clips became legal again. there's no reason for anybody outside law enforcement to house the capacity to fire their handgun 31 times without reloading. if you have a handgun for self-defense, if you target shoot with it, if you're a sportsman or some kind of hand-gun hunting maybe, are you shooting more than 31 of anything at a time? no. no gun rights, hate mailers who

are sending me right now, no, you do not need 31 uninterrupted handgun bullets for any legit, non-law enforcement use of a handgun. so in the wake of the massacre in tucson, it did not seem impossible, at least to the polyannas among us, it did not seem impossible that that relatively gun law could be brought back. it would have greatly lessoned the harm of that one gun massacre. there's no compelling reason to bring it back. weren't we shocked enough by what happened in tucson that we can make one little change? no, no, the proposed legislation by congresswoman carolyn mccarthy and senator lautenberg to fix just the extended magazine ban that lasted in 2004 to cause so much kindergarten nanlg the safeway parking lot went nowhere. the house had 111 sponsors and it was referred and never got a

vote. in the senate it had ten co-sponsors but never got a vote. that's as far as it went. since the tucson shooting here's what actually has happened in terms of gun laws changing in the united states. in arizona the state legislature there passed a bill forcing colleges to allow guns on campus even if the campuses did not want them. another bill said that every public building in arizona must allow guns inside and if they don't they must set up metal detectors and armed guards at the door. arizona governor jan brewer vetoed those bills. she did, however, sign a new law to make the comet single action army revolver arizona's official firearm. around the country gun laws only go in one direction. in indiana a new law says schools, public libraries and some local hospital authorities are now prohibited from restricting firearm possession. in kansas you can now carry a concealed weapon in or on the grounds of a public school property or grounds instructing

kindergarten through 12th graders. utah passed a similar law but decided kindergarten was not young enough. in utah you can bring your gun within 1,000 feet of buildings that houses preschools and day care centers. maine lets you bring your gun into state parks, same with north carolina. north carolinans can store their guns outside the state capitol. north carolina also made it easier for minors to possess handguns. not miners in coal miners but minors as in kids. ohio's republican legislature felt the need to pass the concealed permit holders to bring their guns into restaurants and arenas and into bars. what could possibly go wrong? also in ohio, if you're a person convicted of a drug offense, you no longer have to worry about losing ownership of your gun, you get to keep it. and in florida where trayvon martin was kid, you can openly

carry a firearm. another law makes records confidential and county authorities can no longer impose waiting periods on firearm sales. and this is just partial, this is arbitrarily chosen in terms of new gun laws since the tucson massacre in just a random list of states. anywhere else in the country it's the same story. people don't write gun laws, the gun lobby does. after the trayvon martin shooting on february 26th, the national rifle association was lobbying hard for minnesota to adopt a law to prevent the trayvon martin shooter from being arrested. the democratic governor vetoed it but that's a policy miracle. jeb bush signed the first stand your ground bill law in 2005 in florida. as you can see here with nra lobbyist mary ann deamer peering down his neck as he signed it. two other states have laws similar to familiar and the nra wants a flal law to force this

on states around the country that don't want it. that's the way gun politics works, all the i think whats of law go in the same direction. all the changes in law go towards more guns in more places and more legal excuses for shooting people. and once one state stakes out what used to be radical ground in terms of clearing the way for more guns and legal excuses for shooting, once one state clear that is ground like florida in 2005, as soon as one state goes there, all the other states rush toward the newly-cleared ground. i was one of the people that thought after tucson, we could have one tiny little tick toward regulating just the size of the magazines for ammunition in the handguns. as a tiny correction for a nation that was legit gnatly shocked by the horror of tucson. i thought that would happen after tucson. gun law changes only go in one direction. the florida state senate president says now in the midst of the national uproar over the trayvon martin shooting and

florida's gun law says the shooter can't be arrested, he says the florida senate will not be reviewing the law. usually on policy issues like this we say, what would it take? what would it take to make us look at this issue differently? what would it take to shock us out of a pattern that we are in? what would it take to swing the pendulum back now that it has swung so radically in one direction? what would it take? we have an answer, it doesn't matter, anything could happen, it doesn't matter. no matter what happens in the country in terms of gun violence or how we feel about it, there's no outcry enough, no shock or horror that is too grave. we do not get to make these decisions about our laws in this country. we do not get to make these decisions about laws concerning guns, they do, they are the gun lobby and they decide. at least that's how they want it to be and that's how they have had it so far. president obama was asked about the trayvon martin case at the white house by nbc's mike

baquero, here's his answer. >> obviously, this is a tragedy. i can only imagine what these parents are going through. and when i think about this void, i think about my own kids. and i think every parent in america should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this. i think all of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how does something like this happen, and that means we examine the laws and context for what happened as well as the specifics of the incident. but my main message is to the parents of trayvon martin. you know, if i had a son, he would look like trayvon, and,

you know, i think they are right to expect that all of us as americans are going to take this with the seriousness that it deserves and we are going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened. >> joining us now is bob herbert, former new york times columnist. thank you for being here. >> great to see you. >> the president talking about treating this case as seriously as it deserves to be treated. is he talking about an assurance that the victim being a young black man in this incidence will not excuse the need for a prosecution in this killing, is that what he's getting? >> i think what he's saying is -- no matter what happens in florida, and in these instances, we know we can never be sure of what will happen, whether justice will be done, that his administration is prepared to step in and see that justice is done in this case.

and i think that's incredibly important. and when the president talked about -- when he said if he had a son that would look like trayvon, that comes in the context of which a statement he said he thought every parent in america could understand the depth of this tremendous tragedy. so people on the other side trying to make political hay out of this need to stop. >> the comment that i saw today in terms of people criticizing the president for making this is from newt gingrich speaking on the sean hand any nannity program. he said, if it was a white it was okay because it didn't look like him? trying to turn it into a racial issue is fundamentally wrong. >> i just think that's crazy, but i think the republicans have been so far beyond for so long now, we shouldn't be surprised at any of their nonsense.

but one of the things that strikes me is that so many folks on the conservative side want to go out of their way to have this not be a race-based killing, that's there's not a racial element there, and i think that's crazy. it is pretty obvious that it is. we have the 9/11 tapes with zimmerman saying he has his hands in his waistband and is a male. that sets off the suspicion right there that he's male, but the other thing is, i think that there's a danger that we are all over the map here. and we can miss the central points of what we should be paying attention to. and i think there are two essential points, one is what you were talking about at the beginning of the program, the insane gun violence in the country. the country is saturated with violence and saturated with guns, which is handguns n particular, and that's just crazy.

that's one point. since september 11th when we lost 3,000 people in this terrible terror tragedy, but since then there have been over 1,000 victims of homicide in this country. over 100,000. and the majority were killed by guns, so that's one point for insane gun violence. the other thing is that we have not paid nearly enough attention to the racial violence that continues in the country. there's a tremendous amount of it. if you looked at "the new york times" today and read the trayvon martin story, there's a story about teenagers entering a plea in mississippi where they had run over, they are coming to jackson, mississippi, looking for black people to attack. that is sort of what they did. and there was this fellow, 47 or 48 years old and they spotted anymore a motel parking lot and one of the kids just ran over him and deliberately killed him with a pickup truck. so these are huge problems that

we really need to focus on and try not to get sidetracked by all the nonsense. >> the question for me, too, is whether or not how we will engage on the racial issue of this and whether or not this can lead to a productive discussion about guns. so far it shows no signs of it, but i think this is continuing and i think the story will continue to grip the country for a long time. >> i think it can and the protests are very hopeful signs. i would vote there would be some follow fund, we'll see. >> herbert, thank you for coming in. virginia governor bob mcdonald cannot understand why he's known as the transvaginal ultrasound guy. he cannot believe it. a journey into the mind of governor ultrasound is coming up. mmmm. great grains. search great grains and see for yourself.

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i wonder how she does it. that's why she's the boss. because the small business with the best technology rules. contact the verizon center for customers with disabilities at 1-800-974-6006. i'm here to unleash my inner cowboy. instead i got heartburn. [ horse neighs ] hold up partner. prilosec isn't for fast relief. try alka-seltzer. it kills heartburn fast. yeehaw! don't leave your home because you know what? when those companies say they have your mortgage, unless you have a lawyer that can put his finger or her finger on that mortgage, you don't have that mortgage. you're going to find they can't find the paper there on wall street. i say to the american people, you be squatters in your own homes. don't you leave. >> you live somewhere.

and wherever you live, the ground you live on, literally the ground under your foot is owned by a corporation or maybe a government. one of the first things americans did as citizens was set up public registries so keep track of who owned what land. if your neighbor wants to build a fence, there should be a political answer as to who is right and to where the fence can go. the answer to where that fence can go is in books like these. they tell us who owns what and how the land in our town is sold and paid for or not. this is important stuff. the public record is a clear thing or it should be when the system works right. i want you to meet lorie linear. she leaves in greensboro, north carolina. this is her here driving. she showed our producer lauren conway around town this week.

this is near bensalem. she drove us to her neighborhood to one particular house where she was friendly with the owner. it's a normal house in a normal neighborhood. not far from the big university in town. lorrie lynnier works in real estate in this neighborhood and she says they are going through a new round of foreclosures. there's been a couple of suicides in families that have lost their homes. the house is boarded up being abandoned takes a toll on a house. on the door there's a sign to tell you to call the bank if you have any questions. >> if this property is not vacant call your mortgage servicer immediately. here we have a date, 2/19. >> so they were just here. >> yeah, this is new to me. please call wells fargo. >> the owner of that particular house ended up in the newspapers last month after he got into a 15-hour standoff with police.

he was a chiropractor and was a regular guy. and now you can direct inquiries about his house to wells fargo. they've got his house now. stories like that grew lorie to go to occupy greensboro 400 the big event about foreclosures and 400 people showed up. there are not that many places where you can talk personally about the fact this is happening. it can be not just upsetting but embarrassing. you can feel like you're the only one. that night last week a couple of occupiers screened a movie to try to explain the foreclosures and why this is a crisis. they are trying out new ways of explaining and acting out how the banks wrecked the economy and document mills and forged signatures. how the banks lured people into loans they couldn't afford and loans that didn't make sense. how they traded those loans like they were casino chips. they're looking for new ways to help the public understand what happened when this happened. they're also looking for new things to do about it here and

across the country. in greensboro the occupiers have started formal training for volunteers, like lori, to examine the documents in new foreclosures to look for the sign that is the bank does not have the right to kick that particular family out on the street. >> you'll be trained to seek out evidence of fraud including robo signing. >> if the documents don't hold up to scrutiny then the bank might not be able to foreclose or the family might get into a better position to negotiate an extension or new payment plan or something. already occupy greensboro filled up the first fraud detection training. 35 regular americans, just citizens, saying they're ready to drive into county records to help some homeowner they do not even know. and more are asking for classes like this, too. going after the banks by going through their paperwork turns out not to be that hard to do, and people want to do it, it's

popular. people want to take the trainings and learn how to do this thing. it makes a mix between a geek and the save your house super hero. it works. these folks diving into bank records for signs of mortgage fraud, it is looking more and more like they may be onto something. this is jeff bigpen in his office in north carolina. he's the elected county register of deeds which is one of the most humble little noticed jobs in government, right? he's got greensboro records going back to 1771. if you ask him he'll pull down the old books and show them to you. all this documentation of who owns what signed by actual humans and using their real names and inc. the records showing who owns what going back as long as the government exists. it's who owns what land and who owes who money for it. jeff, this county register, says he cannot be sure who opens what in greensboro or who has the

right to kick anybody out in the street for not paying. jeff bigpen's office in north carolina went through years of records and found just for a few years thousands of documents filed by big banks and mortgage companies in the document mills, thousands of documents, that jeff says look to him like forgeries, like the companies that filed them just did not care. >> i can't make up to mind as to whether or not they're walking over me or completely ignoring me. you know? and both are pretty humiliating, you know? it's just kind of take your pick, which one is it? >> except now you can sue. >> yes. we can sue. >> last week jeff's little county office took more than two dozen big banks and mortgage companies to court. it's jeff versus bank of america. jeff versus wells fargo. he says they wrecked 250 years of fair dealing in his county

and it's his job to fix it. this lawsuit seeks to have defendants clean up the mess they created. that's from paragraph one. it's hard to put a legal case more plainly that. jeff wants the court to appoint an investigator to go through the documents on people's houses to find the mistakes and set things right. he wants the banks to clean up the mess they have made for his office. the mess they have made in his county by making a mockery of the legal paperwork you need to prove that you own something in america. he says until the banks do that, the people in his county cannot buy and sell property with any real confidence about who owns it. the records he says have been that corrupt by the banks. the families kicked out of their homes, the bank documents that justified that, some of those documents may have been fraud. >> public recording offices are part of our democracy in rule of law and the laws that govern them need to be respected. if you don't respect that, why

am i any better that wikipedia. if that's the case, wikipedia would be better than me. >> explain that. >> at least on wikipedia, you'll have multiple people trying to correct what's going on and get the story right. all we would be doing would be logging in information signed by people four to 15 different times with no verification. then people could go out and use it for -- they have the legal force of wikipedia in my office. it is basically, if you don't get public recording offices right, you don't get the judicial system right. if these documents are certified for my office and used in court proceedings, if they are not right, it's a fraud on the court system, baby. >> jeff says he's already found about three dozen foreclosures in greensboro, thee dozen, where he considers the document that is justifies the foreclosures to be seriously in question.

three dozen greensboro families put out on the streets who maybe should not have been. what has happened in jeff's office, this situation with thousands of documents that he says appear to have stuff missing or forged signatures, this same situation quite likely exists in every county in the united states. if you look around, you will now see that lawsuits like there greensboro one is popping up in ohio and in kentucky and in oklahoma and in massachusetts with the promises of more to come. so far, so far the clerks that are suing have been losing these cases. but if these lowly clerks start winning, and it looks like they might, then this becomes a very big deal because there are thousands of these clerks. there are thousands of counties. there are thousands of people like jeff who have these responsibilities and take them seriously. with the occupiers and the volunteers and the families being foreclosed on and the clerks going through the records, the banks may start losing for what they did to

those records. on what they used to do to our economy. if the clerks start winning, we might start proving that the early warnings were right when she told americans to be squatters in their own homes because while the banks were getting rich trading and gambling on their houses, they didn't bother doing the work to drove who owned anything or who owed anything at the time, for that matter. it was a manifesto from the populist fringe. that argument is no longer fringing. now it's a day's work. getting the basic paperwork of who owns what back in good order again like we have prioritized since the 1700s. the banks are scared of this. and they aught to be. they have been trying to work out deals to avoid responsibility for what they did at the federal level and the state level. they are trying to get themselves off this hook. i would too, if i were them. the jeffs of the world and the loris of the world are trying to

get american families off of that hook first, and they might win in this. it's a big deal. i have twins, 21 years old. each kid has their own path. they grow up, and they're out having their life. i really started to talk to them about the things that are important that they have to take ownership over. my name's colleen stiles, and my kids and i did our wills on legalzoom. [ shapiro ] we created legalzoom to help you take care of the ones you love. go to legalzoom.com today and complete your will in minutes. at legalzoom.com, we put the law on your side.

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quarter to midnight tonight, president obama will get on his helicopter marine one and fly to andrews air force base in maryland. from there he will fly to seoul, south carolina south korea. there will be more than 50 heads of state and international

organizations all discussing, negotiating and arguing over how to make nuclear terrorism less likely. this is happening because of the speech that president obama delivered in 2009 in prague. he said one, that loose nuclear material and the threat that terrorism goes nuclear threatens the security of every carbon base life form on planet earth. two, he said it's a threat we can do something about. three, he said we are going to do something about it. >> today i am announcing a new international effort to secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years. >> the following year, washington, d.c. hosted the very first nuclear security summit. the participating countries, more than 40 of them, agreed to the president's four-year goal. one of those countries was the you cain. the other was mexico. mexico agreed to work with the united states to get rid of all of its highly enriched uranium.

as we exclusively reported on this show this week, as of monday, that promise was kept. the united states upgraded mexico' nuclear research facility so it can use the kind of material that we can make a bomb out of, gave them that safer material, and the national nuclear security administration packed up mexico's dangerously enriched uranium and took it to the united states for lockdown and blending. in the past few years the united states has helped clean out weapons usable uranium from six countries from romania, libya, turkey, chile, libya and mexico. the u.s. says five nations clear out five weapons grade uranium, it's six, not five. six is better than five. we'll be right back.

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southern state so far. he lost south carolina, he lost georgia. he lost tennessee, he lost alabama, he lost mississippi. if you want to count florida as the south, the part of florida that feels like the south, he lost there too. it's very important to republican chances in the general election that they have no trouble at all wins the south. not only do republicans expect to win the south, they don't expect to have to waste too many resources competing there. mitt romney's inability in the south could be a bit of an issue in the republican party. virginia is the most interesting part of that calculation. virginia republicans screwed up their presidential nominating contest so that only two of the candidates qualified to be on the ballot. it was only mitt romney and ron paul on the ballot in virginia. technically, mitt romney won there but the only person he beat was ron paul.

it was definitely not a test of how mitt romney would do in virginia overall. this is not a pointless hypothetical. in the 2008 election, john mccain lost virginia to a guy named barack obama. mitt romney has lost everywhere else in the south. we have no idea how he would have done in an actually contested primary in virginia. virginia is a must-win and might-not-win state nor the republican party. virginia is really important. that's why pollsters are testing how barack obama versus mitt romney might go in virginia in 2012. the answer if you are a republican, look at that, not good. president obama beat mitt romney in virginia in a general election and match-up by eight points. there's yet another factor at play in virginia which is that virginia has a relatively -- i'll get back to his popularity in a moment. virginia at least has a governor. virginia has a republican governor who seems to want to be chosen as his president's vice presidential nominee. he has endorsed mr. romney, he's

been traveling around the country, stumping on behalf of mr. romney, and not shy at all talking about how delighted and honored he would be if asked to be the vice presidential nominee. we know that mitt romney versus barack obama is not a good outcome. what if mitt romney picked virginia governor, bob mcdonnell, wouldn't that put him over the top? wouldn't that lock up virginia for the republicans. you want to see the bob mcdonald effect. by himself mitt romney loses to barack obama by eight points. get ready for the bob mcdonald bump. ready? go. aww. bob mcdonald has a tiny bump. a mini-bump. a one-point bump. he still loses to barack obama, not by eight points but by seven

points. even bob mcdonnell is down in the polls. his approval rating has dropped. the pollsters looking for an explaination for governor mcdonnell's approval rating dropped turning to two bills. the forced ultrasound bill and the bill repealing the one handgun a month, anti-gun running law. virginia voters preferred the old gun law. the one-month limit on handguns over the repeal signed. they also found that the state is not happy with the law that gave bob mcdonnell the nickname governor ultrasound. virginia voters disapprove of the new ultrasound law by an 11-point margin. for his part, bob mcdonnell is furious that everybody calls him governor ultrasound. he has been trying to argue his way out of being held accountable for enacting the forced ultrasound law since before even he actually signed the bill. >> if you were educating

yourself on this bill, did you originally not realize it might mandate? >> it wasn't my vote procedure. you have to realize this was not my vote. >> you're always so busy advocating your agenda. we can't help what the media decides to focus on. >> he's been trying to distance himself from his own decision to sign into law this radical, unpopular bill. blame the media. blame the republicans. now he would like to blame democrats for what he did. >> governor, you've gone through this with the person who debated the bill in virginia. there's a feisty conversation going on there. the democrats are calling this war on women. do republicans need to be -- is it more careful in their language? >> this war on women argument is very unfortunate. it's false. it's been a political theater from the democrats for a couple of months. >> political theater for the

democrats. he explaining to john king that this whole war on women thing is the political theater cooked up by the democrats. it has nothing to do with republicans in congress voting to defund planned parenthood or voting to roll back access to contraceptives or republican led legislatures enacting a record number of anti-abortion measures or bob mcdonnell to sign a new 24-hour waiting period for these dumb, dumb women seeking abortions who don't realize what an adorgs abortion is. no one made him sign the forced ultrasound bill. virginia democrats are still trying to make him pay for it. a couple of weeks ago they sent governor mcdonnell a letter asking him to set aside funding for the ultrasound that he was forcing women to get. governor mcdonnell's office at the time dismised that request with a lot of anger, no way we are going to make women have this procedure done to them and we are going to make them pay for it, too.

the governor's office responded with a nasty statement calling it petty and accusing them of playing political games. the virginia budget does have to get through the senate. virginia democrats are not giving up on this point. the senate is set to vote on monday on a democratic budget amendment to not force virginia women to also have to pay for the medically unnecessary ultrasound that bob mcdonnell is forcing them to have done to them, even if they don't want it. bob mcdonnell wants so badly to be done with the ultrasound bill and he's so mad people won't stop talking about it. he wanted to be able to sign the bill into law but not have anybody notice it. certainly, he wanted nobody to ask him about it. it does not work that way, governor ultrasound, your record has a way of following you around. the democratic party put out an ad last week highlighting his

very, very long record of anti-abortion legislation calling his ultrasound bill more of the same pointing to the fact that as a state legislature, he sponsored or co-sponsored 35 bills to restrict abortion rights. we fact checked the heck out of that, actually, and it is true. 35 bills. you cannot be the 35 separate anti-abortion bills guy and say, stop saying that abortion is my priority. i don't want to talk about that. bob mcdonnell would like to be seen this election season as the ash blonde mitt romney. he wants to be seen as a jobs kind of guy. a guy that might help mitt romney win the south. but you don't just get to say what you're agenda is. people figure out what you agenda is by watching what you do in office. watching what bob mcdonnell does in office is watching a culture warrior at work. joining us now is mark seagraves. governor mcdonnell appears on the show "ask the governor" we

have month. it's nice to have you here. >> thanks for having me, rachel. >> when democrats first started pressing him to fund the ultrasound mandate, to set up a system by women will not be forced to pay for the privilege of this thing they may not want but the state is forcing them to have, his office is dismissive of the whole thing. now it's a real issue in the budget negotiations. how do you think this new front in the all straw sound fight is affecting the governor? >> he would rather talk about jobs and the economy than talk about social issues. he's got to deal with this. the general assembly is much closer to passing their budget than they were a week ago. now they have to deal with this ultra sound funding issue. i asked the governor about this on my show last month whether he's upset about federally mandated unfunded mandates and asked him what the difference was with this, and he was very comfortable with this pointing out the government passes rules, laws, regulations that impose a

fee or a cost to taxpayers and that this was no different. the democrats tried once before to get this funding measure through. it wasn't successful. we'll see how it goes next week. >> in terms of the governor's responses to you pressing him, we played a bunch of tape of you talking about it because you seem to draw him out on this issue than a lot of other people have been able to. obviously, he wants to downplay the social issues on his agenda, but when he gets asked about it by people like yo who press him on it, he doesn't go very far in advocated for this stuff that he believes in. he did sponsor or co-sponsor 35 anti-abortion bills. he did sign this into law and said he would support it. why won't he defend it when pressed? >> he will point out that he cautioned the general assembly, which is just turned totally republican, republican dominated

that they shouldn't get too far ahead of themselves with social agendas as we have seen that they have done. he warned them of that last year. when you ask him about these bills, the gun bill, the abortion bill, this bill, he'll point out these weren't his ideas and he's got an agenda of 100 bills for the economy and would pref to talk about that. when you really press him on abortion, he doesn't back away from the fact he's always been a staunch supporter of the pro-life agenda. he's never waivered from that. he maintains he will be a defender of the pro-life position. when you ask him about the transvaginal or ultrasound requirements, that's when he will start to deflect and point to the fact he didn't propose those bills, others did, but at the end of the day he does support them and signs the bills. >> the polling that's out suggests that his drop in the

polls could be tied to the socially conservative bills that despite his best efforts he's very much tied to because he signed them into law and supported them throughout his career. not just the all straw sound bill but the one-per-month limit. they pulled on those specifically. they seem to have found a correlation. does that correlation seem reasonable to you? do you think that is affecting his approval ratings? >> certainly if you look at the time frame alone, and that he's enjoyed a 60%-plus approval rating pretty steadily. he still is above 50%. he gets a good approval rate from democrats in the state of virginia. when you look at the slip in his numbers as well as the bigger slip in the general assembly's approval numbers, they go hand in hand with the timeline of these more socially conservative bills that have passed about gay adoption, one gun a month and the ultrasound bill.

>> mark segraves, reporting for wtae radio, who does a great interview from what i have seen of your show, it has been really helpful to talk to you about this. >> thank you. >> tonight, does the head of the newly-appointed bank sometimes dress up as a robot and dance around? the answer is obvious but the pictures are amazing. that's coming up. not that we'd ever brag about it. turn right. come on, nine. turn left. hit the brakes. huh? how'd that get there? [ male announcer ] we can't hide how proud we are to have nine 2012 iihs top safety picks. so we're celebrating with our "safety in numbers" event. that's the power of german engineering. right now lease the 2012 passat for $219 a month.

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programming note. on sunday, the day after tomorrow, i'm excited to be david gregory's guest on "meet the press" which airs on nbc sunday morning. i have this new book called "drift" which i'm stult simultaneously proud of and nervous about talking about it in the public as it gets born all over the world. "meet the press" this sunday morning. i hope you'll watch. did i mention nervous? we'll be right back. behr ultra paint and primer in one now starts at just $29.38,

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[ female announcer ] live the regular life. phillips'. oh! [ baby crying ] ♪ what started as a whisper ♪ every day, millions of people choose to do the right thing. ♪ slowly turned to a scream ♪ there's an insurance company that does that, too. liberty mutual insurance. responsibility. what's your policy? ♪ amen, omen america gets to run the world bank. it's kind of like the world series, it says world in the name, but eh, it's kind of us. because of the clout we have wielded in the world since the end of the second world war by tradition the united states gets to pick the person who heads the world bank. it does not have to happen that

way but so far it always has. membership has its privileges. what has america done with that privilege? here is who president george w. bush chose to run the bank, paul wolfowitz and that was after iraq. thanks for getting us into the iraq war, that was really awesome. now get to run a hugely important program providing economic aid to those in developing companies. within two years he was forced out in an ethics scandal. today president obama got his first chance to nominate someone for the wrote bank he pick something everybody described as a surprise or unconventional choice, picked the president of dartmouth college. if you were googling dr. jim young kim for the first time today you probably quickly read into this. ♪ i came up and here to rock like fire ♪ ♪ make it hot are you rooting for my idols ♪ ♪ give it all you got ♪ so come on let's go ♪ the show is out of control

♪ the house is hot tonight ♪ go, go big green, go, go >> the new president of the world bank dressing up like a robot and rapping not all that badly about the college's version of "american idol." nice to meet you, dr. jim kim. he is pretty spectacularly accomplished. i'm doing all this press for my book just coming out and as part of that press i did the questionnaire that runs on the back page of "vanity fair" magazine, one of the questions they ask everybody is which living person do you most admire? my answer was paul farmer. paul farmer is a doctor who founded organization called partners in health and founded partners in health with jim young kim. he has dedicated nearly his entire adult life to eradicating disease among the poorest people in the world, beginning in the 1980s in haiti when he was still a medical student. these guys have done the seemingly impossible providing high level health care to people everyone else in the world wrote off as a lost cause.

this year partners in health is planning to open a teaching hospital in the central plateau of haiti. how did that happen? that is impossible but there it is, they are doing it. dr. kim and partners in health went on to peru, created the first large scale program to treat drug resistant tuberculosis, he brought the program to 40 more countries around the world and went on to work for the w.h.o., ran another impossible program, one that would ultimately provide drug treatment for 3 million people with aids in developing nations and it worked. so if he is approved as president obama's choice this guy might get to be in charge of a giant international pool of money called the world bank meant to help lift people out of poverty. and knowing that is kind of a nice way to ease into the weekend. go, go big green indeed. that does it for us tonight. see you again sunday morning on "meet the press."