the pill kills babies. that was the first year. they said if you are taking birth control pills, you are killing babies. that was 2008. in 2009, they kept the pill kills as their theme but they changed the theme for that year to specifically the pill kills women. if you take birth control pills, you are killing women. that was their theme in 2009. then in 2010 in their third year, it's kind of hard to go to a new theme after you've said the pill kills babies and women. in the third year they decided to say that the pill kills the environment. if you take birth control pills you are cutting down rain forests with your womb or whatever. last year, where do you go after that? a new idea for them. last year they decided that the pill kills marriage.

if you take birth control pills, you're just as bad as the gays. i don't know, because the gays kill marriage in other ways, but not with birth control? if you think about it, not specifically with birth control. that's kind of the deal. now the anti-contraception forces at the american life league after saying last year that the pill kills marriage. now they are planning their fifth annual the pill kills event. what is going to be the theme this year? what the the fifth year going to be? turns out they are getting lazy. this year the pill kills women and babies. they are just recycling their old themes. this means in year six it means the pill kills environment and marriage, whatever else they have left over.

look for them on june 2nd this year outside of whatever facility near you dispenses birth control if there's a facility near you like that still. if you live in republican controlled state, there's a chance your republican governor have tried to cut off the funding for whatever organization dispenses birth control in your neighborhood. the anti-contraception agenda on the right is not a myth. i did not have this sign designed and printed out. right? this exists. this exists. it's been around for a while. not even what you can call the far edge of anti-abortion politics. in any other movement you could call these guys the far right militant fringe. that territory is taken. the militant fringe is part of that movement that kills people and blows up clinics and stuff. the anti-contraception people you can't consider them the fringe. compared to mainstream american politics, i guess we can call them on the edge. 99% of women say they will use

birth control. the people that think it's murder are no are near a mainstream position. they are well organized and well-funded. they are visible and determined. they are starting to have a real big effect in republican politics, kind of all of a sudden. all the federal and proposals to restrict people's access through their insurance plans. the defunding through which uninsured people get their contraception, one of the main republican candidates for president saying that as president he would tell the country about the dangers of contraception as rick santorum said. this is not something the democrats have made up about the republican agenda. republicans are really doing this stuff. part of the conservative movement has been pushing them to do it. in beltway political calculus, it doesn't make sense that a group with a position like this, a position so far outside the

mainstream that it could never pay off in electoral terms, it doesn't make sense that a group like this could have any sway over politicians. they would be able to persuade politicians. it keeps happening on the right particularly around social issues like this. it's not just the contraception issue. it's also this. this was a tour organized last year in the great state of mississippi designed to persuade people that if you are raped and the rape caused you to become pregnant, it's the proper role of government to force you, to force you, to force you, the rape victim, to go through with the pregnancy and give birth by order of the state. that's a pretty radical new idea of really big government. a government big enough and intrusive enough to take over the decision making process from a rape victim and her family as to what she is allowed to do to her own body to deal with the consequences of having been raped. that's a very big government idea. that's not a very mainstream

idea. for decades as the republican party has become more draconian and uniformly against abortion rights, even anti-abortion republicans have at least said there ought to be exemptions for rape or incest. they said they should be left alone. they should be allowed to do what they want. the government shouldn't force something on those women in particular even if they think the government is going to force something on everybody else. what was for decades mainstream in republican thought is no longer mainstream in republican thought anymore. what had been a very fringe view in the anti-abortion movement, in 2008, was the view of the republican party's nominee for vice president, sarah palin. she did not believe in exemptions for rape and incest. the forced rape victims to bear the child was taken up by five candidates for united states senate. in the next round of elections

in 2010. >> how do you feel about abortion? are you for abortion, against it? if you're for it, what will you allow for a borgsz? >> i'm pro-life. i will answer the next question. >> i don't believe in rape or incest. >> is there any reason at all for an abortion? >> not in my book. >> there's rape and incest could not be something? >> i'm a christian. i believe that god has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives. he can intercede in all kinds of situations. we need to have a little faith in many things. >> of the five republican senate candidates in 2010 who did not believe in exemptions for rape and incest, of those five senate candidates, four of them lost their u.s. senate races even in that very republican year. one of those five u.s. senate candidates did get elected. rand paul did elected.

in part on the strength of his forced rape victims to give birth policy position. you can still see him online bragging about wanting to force rape victims to carry the child that is the result of the pregnancy conceived in rape to term. you can still see him bragging about that on his website. it's not just at the federal level. in the states, the basic principle of making sure that rape victims and incest victims are forced by the state to give birth if the rape or incest caused them to become pregnant, that basic principle extended to the new restrictions that republicans are putting on abortion rights. it used to be that those laws in the states also had exemptions for victim that were raped or victims of incest. maybe you wouldn't have to see the same doctor three times or go through the waiting period or sit through the lecture. some other process that made it hard for you to get an abortion, it used to be those exemptions

for rape were allowed for rape or incest. if you were raped, maybe you didn't have to go to the doctor three times or whatever it was. now rape victims will be put through the same rigmaroll that everybody else has to go through to make abortions almost bobl. in virginia, that one after much debate, they decided you could be exempted from having the state force the medically unnecessary ultrasound on you if you were a rape victim, but only if you reported that rape to the police because otherwise it might not be real enough rape. in indiana republicans invade against the rape and incest loophole. in idaho, a republican state

senator said if a woman brings a, quote, rape issue to her physician, he hopes the physician will ask her about her marriage. i defy you to draw a line on this issue between the fringe and the mainstream. where do fringe politics on this issue stop and the mainstream begins? what started with sarah palin's position in 2008 and those far right senate candidate positions in the next election in 2010 and working its way through these republican controlled states in the last two years have totally taken over republican politics. that conceived in rape tour was a campaign to pass a personhood constitutional amendment in mississippi last year. we're not just talking about banning all abortion. we're not just talking about banning hormonal contraception, we're talking about banning all

hormonal contraception for women who have been raped or the victims of incest. all of the republican presidential candidates signed on to the personhood position. when rick perry was in the race, he's always been anti-abortion but he has believed in an exemption for rape and incest. he made a public conversion on the rape and incest issue while campaigning in iowa this year, saying that when he watched one of mike huckabee's anti-abortion dvds, he decide that had rape and incest victims should also be forced to give birth by the state. is there no anti-abortion position that's too fringe, that's too extreme for mainstream republican politics anymore? this stuff is in presidential politics now. is there nothing that might cost them at the ballot box. turns out that's an open question. it's a very interesting one. did you see this today? this is incredible.

governor ultrasound, the governor of virginia really wants to be vice president. he's about to start running pro-bob mcdonald ads even though he's not running for office. he's term limited for running for governor. he's running ads for himself. what are you running for? he seems to be running for vice president. he's got to try to drop the nickname governor ultrasound. he had just signed into law the forced ultrasound bill. when he was a state legislature he sponsored 35 different abortion bills. for all 20 years of his career in public office, he's been one of a kind of fringe radical edge of the anti-abortion movement people that didn't believe in rape and incest exemptions. abortion should not be legal when the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. the government should force you

to give birth when you're pregnant if you got raped. when he was running for governor ten years later in 2009, that was reported as his position. here is the washington post. bob mcdonald's supported 35 bills to restrict abortion and he opposed the practice of abortion even in cases of rape and incest. even when other republicans thought that was a bridge too far. when other anti-abortion republicans thought it was a bridge too far. even when there was a non-mainstream position, the rape and incest thing did not bother bob mcdonald. just shut up. you do not get a say. bob mcdonald decides whether you're getting an abortion. that has always been his position for two decades. except now he's trying to say it's not anymore. the washington post reporting that he would allow you to have an abortion if your pregnancy was the result of rape or incest. this is new. this is a whole new position for

him. he's never said this before. he's never said this to appear he was going to be vice president. asked to explain, his spokesman said there's been no flip-flop. there's been no change. it's just that bob mcdonald's issue has been misunderstood for two decades. it's been misreported and he's never complained about it before which is an amazing political contention. but does also raise a really interesting, and i think, open question, which is whether the conservative movement and the anti-abortion movement has been so successful in swinging republican politics so far to the right on the issue of abortion that republicans have now scared themtselves. how we reach the limit of republican radicalism on abortion and the person of one very, very desperate wannabe vice president from virginia. joining us now is nancy keenan. she is the president of pro-choice america.

nice to have you here. >> hey, rachel. it's great to be with you. thanks. >> you have been a combat ant in these debates throughout your career. let me ask you in the terms of the way i talked about that, those issues changing over time. did i get anything wrong? do you see this as being persuaded in the way i just explained it? >> bob mcdonald wants to rewrite history, and he's attempting to modify his very anti-choice record to make it look less extreme. as you said, this is a guy that was not on the sidelines of thi debate. he was the quarterback as a legislature, and the attorney general and now as governor to pass the mandatory ultrasound, to take on abortion providers in the state of virginia. his ambitions are trumping his values here in trying to modify this position. the american public will not be fooled.

>> are his ambitions, though, opening up a window for the rest of us into seeing how far is too far for republicans? when we saw rick perry who has always been very anti-abortion, to see him go through his public conversion, tearing up on the stump in iowa, talking about how he no longer believes in exemptions to the criminalization of abortion, to see that, i felt like there was no going back. i thought if that's what you need to do in order to compete for republican votes, there's no going back. do you think his ambition shows us there is a place they have to pull back from? >> i think they can't be trusted. i think they know they are out of touch with america. he's trying to modify his position. let's look at 2010. many, many of those republicans ran on jobs and the economy and

as soon as had he -- they arrived, whether it was in state capitols across the country or here in congress, the first thing they did is launch the war on women. they can say one thing, but we have learned in this last year, year and a half that the fact is they cannot be trusted. they can say whatever they want. the record is the record is the record. bob mcdonald can't be trusted. mitt romney can't be trusted. we have to draw the contrast now in about who is standing with women in this country and protecting their freedom and their privacy and who are those that will say one thing, say one thing but literally to get elected trump their own value system. >> why do you think there was a tipping point on this issue on the right? we've seen the strength of the anti-abortion movement wax and wane over time. we have seen the number of republicans that are willing to be pro-choice. something happened in 2010 where the number of anti-abortion restrictions in the states

just absolutely spiked. we're at that same level again, that same pace now this year even though it's an election year. we did see this collapse around the longstanding republican consensus that there ought to be exemptions around rape and incest. why did this start happening so quickly in the last ten years? >> they ran on one thing and kind of did a bait and switch. you saw this cumulative effect of women seeing these attacks, whether it was a defunding of family planning, whether or not it was what happened in the states around mandatory ultrasounds and some of these egregious pieces of legislation. america said, enough, stop this. i think they are feeling that pressure. again, the bottom line is, they can't run from their record. that's our job is to expose the hypocrisy. expose the contrast between president obama and a mitt romney and if it's somebody like

a bob mcdonald, whoever is on that side as a v. p. candidate, that they are all anti-choice from beginning to end. there is no modifying their position or their record. the american public are not going to be fooled. they are not going to be fooled in 2012 like they were thinking this was going to be about jobs and the economy in 2010. they're not going to buy that this time around. >> nancy keenan, thank you for being with us. >> great to be with you. >> i have to think that what she was saying about the response to these things is on point to the way people reacting to all these merds in the states and the way republican politics have changed on this issue so much in the last two years. but why republicans have just kind of gone off the cliff in terms of contraception and the number of abortion restrictions and rape and incest and all this stuff, why the last two years

have been so different than previous republican movements on this issue? nobody can explain it. democrats can't explain it. i still don't know. i will keep asking. frank rich is here for the interview. we'll be right back. and a completely redesigned interior. ♪ the 2012 c-class with over 2,000 refinements. it's amazing...inside and out. see your authorized mercedes-benz dealer for exceptional offers through mercedes-benz financial services. in here, great food demands a great presentation. so at&t showed corporate caterers how to better collaborate by using a mobile solution, in a whole new way. using real-time photo sharing abilities, they can create and maintain high standards, from kitchen to table. this technology allows us to collaborate with our drivers to make a better experience for our customers.

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sad news for newt gingrich today. today was the day we learned that of the last four candidates in the race for the republican presidential nomination this year, newt gingrich is the only one who did not win iowa. on election night the iowa republican party said that mitt romney had won the caucuses. then a couple of weeks later the

iowa party said it was a tie. i mean no, we don't know who won. actually it turns out rick santorum won. now it turns out that ron paul won. ron paul won iowa. that's next. calcium they take because they don't take it with food. switch to citracal maximum plus d. it's the only calcium supplement that can be taken with or without food. that's why my doctor recommends citracal maximum. it's all about absorption. monarch of marketing analysis. with the ability to improve roi through seo all by cob. and you...rent from national. because only national lets you choose any car in the aisle... and go. you can even take a full-size or above, and still pay the mid-size price. i'm going b-i-g. [ male announcer ] good choice business pro. good choice. go national. go like a pro.

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at this time tomorrow we will be getting in results from the very, very anti-climatic republican primaries in delaware, new york, texas and

rhode island. there's no one in the seat breathlessly awaiting the results of those primaries because the republican nomination appears to be all but sewn up. even with mitt romney having all but sewn it off, though, there continues to be off-script moments on the republican side. things that run counter to the prevailing sense that the republican primary is stick a fork in it, done. newt gingrich kicking off a ten-city campaign swing through north carolina. north carolina is not on the list of states that will be voting tomorrow. north carolina doesn't hold its primary until may 8th. mr. gingrich is apparently still trying to win that one. also yesterday in philadelphia, where there is going to be voting tomorrow, the candidate ron paul drew a huge crowd despite driving rain. the campaign says over 4,000 people turned out to hear ron paul speak in philly in the middle of a drenching downpour. the main script that everybody is reading from here is that mitt romney has got it done, it

is over. frankly, there are still things going on on the republican side that make it seem like it's not done. at least not totally done. perhaps the most off-script thing that has just happened on the republican side is i think ron paul just won iowa. seriously, this weekend. you'll recall that the iowa caucuses on the republican side were a bit of a disaster. remember what the count was like that night in january? >> the numbers we're receiving from the state do not match the numbers we received just from the county chairwoman right here in clinton county. >> what do you mean the numbers don't match? >> i'll explain it to you. >> go ahead and explain it. >> the numbers, matter chairwoman, i'm not questioning your numbers. i'm saying the numbers you're giving us now do not match the numbers that the state central committee has reported so far from your county, and they say one precinct is missing. so if your numbers aren't that missing precinct and these are the final numbers from clinton county, excuse my scribble, but

487, not 356, 324, not 351, well, that would make romney the winner. >> then about 20 minutes after that, strange midnight moment on cnn, this guy, the republican party chairman in iowa officially declared mitt romney the winner oby eight votes out f 120,000 cast. >> congratulations to mitt romney, winner of the 2012 iowa caucuses. congratulations to rick santorum for being second in a very close race here. >> after that, they released certifiable results that mitt romney was not the winner. then they said the results should be viewed as a tie, and then they said actually rick santorum won. >> it is indisputable that the

certified caucus result had rick santorum win big 34 votes. >> so you're declaring this, then, a victory for rick santorum? >> yes, certified vote results. >> after all the chaos, romney winning and then santorum winning, the republican chairman resigned. naturally. then 10 weeks after moit myth romney was declared the winner, and then 14 weeks after rick santorum was declared the win, then ron paul was declared the winner. it goes to the new state chairman who replaced the guy who quit. the new guy is a ron paul supporter, so that's one ron paul delegate. this weekend, they can pick 14 more delegates and that was taken over by a number of ron paul supporters, which means ron paul has locked up at least half of iowa's delegates.

these 13, plus 14 in the form of the state party chairman, 14 of the 28 delegates. after the delegates are his. he will not get less than half. so ron paul either wins iowa, or worst case scenario, he ties for first place. and while we're on the subject, it looks like ron paul just won minnesota, too. minnesota has 40 delegates total. this weekend ron paul won 20 of them. now, not all the rest of minnesota's 40 delegates have been allocated yet, but with half of them locked up, ron paul cannot come in worse than first. worst case scenario, ron paul ties for first place in minnesota. anything better than that, he wins outright. and it should be noted he warned us this would happen. >> when the dust settles, i think there is a very good chance we're going to have the maximum number of delegates coming out of minnesota. >> ron paul was right. nobody is getting more delegates than he did in minnesota or in iowa. or in wherever else this ron

paul delegate strategy of his pays off. the main plot of the republican nominating process remains mostly on script. mitt romney appears to be buttoning up the nomination, but it is not tidy. want one more example? in texas, texas republicans met in their district party accommodations, whatever those are, forget the beltway media narrative here, forget the raw script, they were marching this weekend under the banner of warren g. harding. they are citing the warren g. harding strategy of 1920. in 1920, warren g. harding went into the republican convention with fewer delegates of the surviving candidates and warren g. harding walked out with the nomination. if it worked 92 years ago for the man who would become our 92nd president, could it work now if the republican party keeps this race as chaotic as it

has been in the states? who knows. if this race keeps going the way it has been, frankly, newt gingrich is due to win iowa any day now. everybody else has already had their turn. ♪ [ man ] when i went to get my first new car, my dad said to get a subaru because they last. ♪ he drives a legacy, but i'm nothing like him. i got the new impreza. maybe i should have picked a different color... [ male announcer ] the all-new subaru impreza. experience love that lasts. ♪ experience love that lasts. and we are talkingren about activia.

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he was one of the guys who appeared in jack abramoff's saga. the reason we know of jack abramoff's enterprise was tony rudy even when he turned himself in. even jack abramoff has been on trial and been in jail and finally released in jail, tony rudy has been stuck in limbo for six years until now. tony rudy has been the last person to be sentenced in the whole jack abramoff saga. tony rudy's sentence, five years in a halfway house and three

years probation. five years in a halfway house, but frankly, a lifetime in the history of washington scandal. this is a favorite photo of jackie bernoffe, also ralph reed, the former head of the christian doe licoalition. that's republican mayor bob hie. these guys are mug forg the country after an all-expense paid trip to st. andrews golf course in scotland in 2002. mr. rudy helped organize the all expenses paid part of this golf trip. when bob may got home from that golf trip, he said the whole thing had been paid for by the center for public policy. that group denied paying for it at that time. before tony rudy worked for jack

abramo abramoff, he served as an aide to tom delay in the mid 1990s. while he was there, tom delay took a 6-day trip to russia. again, jack abramoff went along for the ride. again, the expenses were paid, and they claimed the whole thing was paid for by this obscure non-profit called the national center for policy research. this organization, it turns out, funded all sorts of jack abramoff activities. remember, abramoff's goal was to serve his corporate clients by essentially using corporate money to bribe members of congress that favored whatever corporation hired him. and this group, the national center for public policy research, was essentially one of the ways in which abramoff funneled money or perks. the choctaw indians, for example, donate $10 million to this group for public policy le

search and then that group would bankroll an all expenses paid trip to tom delay. it actually apds to have been paid for by money that was give p to that group by abramoff's russian oil client. the money comes from an abramoff client, it gets paid out in the form of golf trips or whatever, but because there is this little known organization in the middle moving the money, nobody is supposed to be the wiser where the corporate money is ending up. this center for public policy research was essentially the middle man between the corporate money and whatever they were doing to arrange for them in congress. a national center for public policy research. put a pin in that name for just a second. today one of the most significant developments in the how this count makes our laws department was that the ginormous company procter &

gamble became the third company to drop out of alec. alec is a corporate funded group that promotes conservative legislation at the state level. basically, corporations join alec, alec then writes model legislation to serve the bottom line of those corporations. alec then spoon-feeds that organization to mostly republican state legislators across the country and those legislators turn it into law. corporate legislators get to pay for the results. they get to shield the snults in order to achieve some policy goals. aits perfect setup. it was a perfect setup until alec started to get all sorts of unwanted attention for pushing stuff like the stand your ground laws, laws that make it harder for people to vote as well. sure, those things might be good for some corporations bottom line somewhere, but how about the effect on the rest of us? alec last week announced that they are disbanding their task force that pushed for things like the relaxed gun laws and

laws to make it harder to vote. alec is now officially getting out of that particular part of their game when it comes to making it harder for people to vote across this country. guess who is taking their place? a group called the national center for public policy research. that jack abramoff-linked, middle man organization that helped get cash and perks to members of congress. they have now announced they are taking over the voter i.d. stuff. they are launching a new voter identification task force in order to pick up where alec left off, to keep pushing bills that make it harder for people to vote across this country. corporate money has always wo d wormed its way into politics. tony rudy made a transfixed art form doing that. would an oil company or whoever even bother with abramoff and with the middle man? secretive alec and these other

corporate front groups even bother recovering now that they have shrunk in the light of day? why would they bother when corporate money is all there really is in politics. it's now not even legal, it's not considered embarrassing anymore. could she's cscandals even happn anymore as people tried to cover up what they did. frank rich joins us to talk about that next. [ male announcer ] imagine facing the day with less chronic osteoarthritis pain. imagine living your life with less chronic low back pain.

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the more you bundle, the more you save. now, that's progressive. the white house does not want anything in the papers tomorrow about oil. or plastics. >> her whole position is green jobs. >> this didn't come from me, okay, so just do it. >> you love this. >> i'm not going to say i don't enjoy it. >> ladies and gentlemen, i want to welcome you all here tonight and thank you for coming. >> just a small change in the speech. >> what is that? >> plastics talked to the president. white house doesn't want us mentioning oil or corn starch or plastics. just wing it. >> front and back. very little romance. >> that's the entire speech. what's left here. i've got hello and prepositions. >> just wing it. that's a clip from the new hbo

show "veep." joining us is frank rich. he has a new piece called sugar daddies. the old, rich white men that are buying this election. congratulations on this. it's great. >> thank you. it's been a lot of fun and working with a great cast, julia louis-dreyfuss. trying to tell the truth about washington and make it funny, try to make it funny. >> you feel like because you have the -- because you get to use humor as your medium you can say harsher things? >> i think humor always works that way and allow you to say harsher things, including in my regular writing and the writers of "veep" can be really funny and really, really harsh and also use words, of course, that cannot be used on this network. because it is hbo, after all, it

is not television. >> we had to set up one of these systems that make sure it was tripled checked that the bleep was complete because i'm quite sure that nobody has kept their job after not bleeping that word on this network. i'm just saying. in new york magazine this week, you're talking about dark money in politics. you get at one of the things that is least appreciated about the distance between what we expected from citizens united and what we got. we all thought we would get elections brought to you by exxon. instead what we got is elections brought to you by sheldon adelson and foster friess and these individuals rather than corporations becoming overwhelmingly large players in terms of the money and elections. why is that? >> i don't want to minimize the role of corporations that you were just discussing because they are big players. but there is a slight checks and balances on them. if they're a company like

procter & gamble that dropped out of alec, they do have shareholders. they do have board members that might object to it. they also tend to give to both parties to protect themselves, so when a party that's out of power comes back in again, they can still fix everything. these sugar daddies, most of then republicans, don't have any of those obligations that someone running a fortune 500 company would. they can do whatever they want and because of citizens united but other decisions and rulings they can give unlimited amount of money, and sometimes can do it anonymously to things like a rogue organization called crossroads gps. that's vaguely distinguishable from the ones that do have to name their names. so they can go to town. and one thing that i found in this piece is that at the time we came in, and i think we're now adding more, there were 25

sugar daddies defined as people who have already in this cycle given over a million dollars each. and that's just in primary season. >> if you end up with enough of them, do you end up with a less idealogical caste to what they want, or do people who can give that much money have one thing in common on their agenda? >> they do have one thing in common, and they want no regulation, because people who have private companies, they don't care about shareholders or pr or anything of it, so they want to serve their own interest. some people may be idealistic and have other interests. there are a couple sugar daddies like bill mauer, but i don't know about the texas billionaire in the nuclear waste business.

romney is surrounded by a couple sugar daddies like frank van der sloot who attached to companies who sold, in my view, weird health remedies and do all sorts of strange housewives sell at home and make money kind of schemes. so it's really -- and they're all regulated by government agencies who presumably will be defanged and have employees and friends and cronies of these sugar daddies in them if there is a romney president. >> simmons has so clearly -- and has been very overt about it. part of the reason it's so clear is he admits it -- has quite clearly used money in texas to get the regulatory climate that he wants for, for example, his giant nuclear waste dump and some of the other things he wants to do. so he has had regulations not only stripped, but he's also had people who might have claims against him diverted into boards within the state agencies that could be easily stacked with

people who have views that would be friendly to his business interests. do you see somebody -- harold smith or others -- do you see them angling for having that acute an impact with their donations at the federal level than they've had in some of the states they've been involved. >> i think they would like to, and i think they would like to feather the nests of their cronies. someone like bob perry not related to rick perry, but a texan that's in the home business has given tons of money to mitt romney over the years. he's a big businessman. why wouldn't he want to have a bigger effect beyond texas? not that texas is small, but i think, you know, we would see a lot of them, and some of them are up against federal -- regulated by federal agencies, like the federal trade commission, securities and exchange commission or department of justice in the case of some of addleson's

regaming interest. >> you compiled this list of about 25 different donors giving a million dollars or more to superpacs during this cycle. is there anyone who you feel isn't really famous but ought to be. in most cases they're giving in ways where they can be found out. guys like foster freeze and ray adelson tend to want to be found out. >> there are some that should be known because they sell products that some people watching tonight may have bought. sometimes they've been questioned by regulatory agencies about their practices where the viability of some of their products. yeah. they're dealing in consumer goods in a way that a procter & gamble might, but they're much more tightly held and not famous. >> do you think that over time

we are going to see the emergence of this kind of thing on the left? do you think that ultimately over time, even in this election cycle, we're going to see as much money emerging in pro-obama ways from zillionaires as has emerged from obama and the other public companies on the right. do you think it's another public right or do you think we'll see parody? >> there are plenty of wealthy individuals who want to give money to obama, and some of them in show business already might step up to the plate. but they don't seem, for whatever reason, maybe it's a character flaw, they don't feel the need to sort of further their business interests in the same way through the political system. right often, as cites george saurus, who does have interest in public government, that's the kind of person that might step up, but there aren't many of them and he may not.

>> fascinating. if you think of politics in structural and not personal terms, if you think about people having zillions at their disposal being able to influence elections almost infinitely, you find them almost impossible to deal with politics other than those at the very top, and it's hard to imagine a way out of this. >> it's pretty bad. it furters the inequality. >> head of the hbo show "veep." frank, good to talk to you. >> thank you. >> we will be right back. i'm more of an absentee plant parent. [ cellphone rings ] tuscaloosa? schenectady. des moines. ok. ok. ok. i can't always be there to weed my petunias. so now we use miracle-gro shake 'n feed plus weed preventer. it feeds plants and prevents weeds for up to three months.

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so close! now where were we? ok, this one's good for two. score! [ male announcer ] share what you love with who you love. kellogg's frosted flakes. they're gr-r-eat! can i help you? kellogg's frosted flakes. yeah, can i get a full-sized car? for full-sized cars, please listen to the following menu. for convertibles, press star one. i didn't catch that. to speak to a representative, please say representative now. representative. goodbye! you don't like automated customer service, and neither do we. that's why, unlike other cards, no matter when you call chase sapphire preferred, you immediately get a person not a prompt. chase sapphire preferred. a card of a different color. (phone ringing) chase sapphire preferred, this is julie in springfield. a little late-breaking news for you before we go tonight. recently we've been report ing n a trend in the u.s., a little

known trend in the united states for states to turn away from capitol punishment. new york is the fifth state to get rid of the death penalty for state prisoners in connecticut. but we're told tonight that it is now expected that california voters will have the option in november of replacing the maximum sentence in california for murder, they will be replacing the death penalty with a sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole. it's called the savings accountability and full enforcement for california act, the safe california act, and we are told that it will be on the ballot in november, giving california voters the option to repeal that state's death penalty. that does it for us tonight. we'll see you again tomorrow night. now it's time for the last word with lawrence o'donnell. have a good one.