health care system. it's why so many of us get health care through our employers. a lot of people, myself included, think it is a cracked bad foundation, in fact. mccain proposed to eliminate it and replace it with a $2,500 tax credit for individuals and for families irrespective of employment status. he got killed. independent experts noted the plan would make health care more expensive for employers which would make them likely to drop health care coverage for employees. it was the obama campaign that made mccain pay. they attacked it as, wait for it, a tax increase. >> john mccain talks about a $5,000 tax credit for health care, but here's what he's not telling you. mccain would make you pay income tax on your health insurance benefits. taxing health benefits for the first time ever. and that tax credit? mccain's own website says it goes straight to the insurance companies. not to you. leaving you on your own to pay mccain's health insurance tax. taxing health care instead of

fixing it. we can't afford john mccain. >> i'm barack obama and i approve this message. >> mccain was in that fall perhaps the first republican in a generation to lose to a democrat on the tax ire. and obama's attacks were somewhat disingenuous. the affordable care act ended up including a smaller version of the tax increase. that is the downside of putting forward a plan. when you tell people the tough choices you're going to make, they attack you for them. sometimes a little bit unfairly. that is politics. but it's a necessary part of politics because if you don't put forward a plan, no one knows what you're going to do. republicans in particular believe this very strongly. in fact, one of their main criticisms of president obama is he doesn't put forward enough detailed plans. >> they either don't have a plan or they simply do not want their fingerprints on one. >> the silence on my question today has been deafening because they don't have a plan. >> president obama doesn't have a plan. >> where's the president's plan? we haven't seen it. >> the president doesn't have a

plan. never has had a plan. >> the white house has even admitted they don't have a plan. you know what, they don't think they need one. >> the president doesn't have a plan. >> democrats don't have a plan. >> hoping nobody would notice they don't have a plan of their own. >> if someone has seen the president's plan, please send it to me. >> got it? they like plans. mitt romney does not like plans quite so much. he told the "weekly standard" that his 1994 senate campaign taught him to keep it good and vague. quote, one of the things i found in a short campaign against ted kennedy is when i said for instance i wanted to eliminate the department of education, that was used to subject i don't care about education. so will there be some that get eliminated or combined? the answer is yes. i'm not going to give you a list right now. so shorter mitt romney, i'm not going to tell you what i'll do as president because you might not like it very much. and that's basically how romney is running some of his policy in this campaign. no matter which policy area you

look at romney has following lowed the same basic pattern. not enough detail for the plan to be understood. take tax reform. romney has a plan. he wants a, quote, permanent across the board 20% cut in marginal rates, eliminate the estate tax, repeal the alternative minimum tax. all this will cost trillions of dollars on its face according to the nonpartisan tax policy center. how will romney pay for it? he hasn't said. we don't know. the plan is so vague romney, himself, told cnbc it couldn't be scored. which means tax experts can't say what it will mean for ordinary families. or take spending. romney's got a plan. the goal is to cut the federal budget by $500 billion in 2016 alone. he has released some specifics. he said he'll cut medicaid quite substantially, for instance. he's increasing defense spending by $1 trillion. his numbers aren't close to adding up. he's not offered nearly enough spending cuts to get down to his

$500 billion cut in 2016. that means no one really knows what the spending cuts will mean for them. which brings us to health care. romney's been very specific on his attention to repeal the affordable care act and laid out broad goals for the health care system he'd like to build in its place. he wants to turn medicaid over to the states, to let insurers sell insurance from whichever state has the lightest regulations, much as credit card companies do now. that's why your credit bills tend to come from south dakota or delaware. he'd also like to cap medical malpractice awards. like with mccain, the core of his plan is, quote, to end tax discrimination against the individual purchase of insurance. to make it such that getting insurance through your employer and on your own are treated the same by the tax code. how will he do that? he hasn't said. the most comprehensive document the campaign has produced in this may fact sheet. the part explaining what romney would do expands 330 words. i know people don't like how long obama's health care bill

was, but 340 words is a wee bit on the short side. to give you an idea how short it is, i've said more than twice as many words already in this broadcast. i'm not trying to reform the american health care system. romney's political calculation here is clear. and it might even be correct. he wants to run against barack obama. he does not want to run on his specific plans. but the american people need to know what he actually intends to do if he's elected president. imagine if back at bain romney has been interviewing a perspective ceo for company takeover and he said more plans, higher cost and more customer satisfaction, and romney said how are you going to achieve that trifecta the perspective ceo refused to give real details on how he'd get any of that done. i doubt mitt romney would have hired him for the job. now, we in the media need to do a better job pushing romney on specifics. for now here's what we can see about the choice between the two candidates on health care. affordable care act, obama's health care bill, expected to insure 30 million americans.

romney's plan to repeal means those folks won't get health insurance. medicaid is likely to cut many, many people off the medicaid rolls so fewer people will have health care insurance than currently do. romney says he wants to make health insurance work more like a market but health insurance is not like a normal market. in a normal market, if i can't afford the product i don't buy it, i walk out of the store. in health insurance, if i can't afford the product, i potentially die. i can't afford the product if the store doesn't give it to me. health insurance if i can't afford the product, any hospital that wants to participate in the medicare program, that's pretty much all of them, has to treat me by law if i show up in their emergency room. these considerations are why in massachusetts romney ended up passing a bill that gave poor residents of his state more money to help them afford insurance and included an individual mandate to make sure everyone was covered before they got sick or hurt. the affordable care act, the bill he wants to repeal, is based firmly on those ideas. now, until we have more details on romney's new health care

ideas, particularly tax ideas, it's impossible to say exactly what effect his plan would have on total coverage. but what it looks like, as of now, is health care coverage would go way up under obama due to the affordable care act and down under romney due to the cuts to medicaid. as for costs either to the government or to most americans, that depends primarily on details romney hasn't offered us yet. joining us now, i'm excited about this, is robert greenstein, president of the center on budget priorities. literally nobody in washington knows the numbers on this stuff better than he does. i'm glad to have you here. >> glad to be here, ezra. >> i want to talk first about romney's plan in terms of health care insurance coverage. what do you expect? you've tried to run simulations on this. what do you expect if it passes will happen to the population of the insured? >> the congressional budget office estimates that under the affordable care act, 33 million people who otherwise would be uninsured will have coverage. the one specific we know on

romney's plan is that his medicaid proposal to turn it over to the states with much less money, he has previously put out more detail on it. and it's virtually identical to paul ryan's proposal to cut medicaid, turn it over to the states. same reduction in money. urban institute, nonpartisan institution, analyzed the medicaid proposal and said between 14 million and 27 million low-income people would lose coverage under medicaid as a result of it. now, there are lots of other factors, but if you just take -- you don't have 33 million and lose 14 million to 27 million, you have the potential for 50 million or more fewer people covered here. the other thing that i think's interesting is when romney says i'm going to give the same tax break, if you go buy coverage of your own in the individual market, through an employer, that would likely weaken employer coverage. probably over time fewer employers would provide

coverage. well, if you get coverage through your employer, healthy employees, sicker employees who work for the same employer, you're all treated the same. if they all have to buy coverage on their own in the individual market, then you get rid of the insurance exchanges, the affordable care act sets up and you get rid of the subsidies the affordable care act sets up. the healthy person who loses the employer coverage maybe can afford to buy coverage in the individual market. the sick person gets charged an arm and a leg and is uninsured. >> right now we should sea raay romney does not have a plan for pre-existing conditions. i want to go to another part of the plan. republican health care policy proposals all the time, this idea they're going to let people buy insurance across state lines. in others, you see in proposals a lot of rhetoric about giving states more power. there's a real tension here. if california wants to regulate -- if it wants to regulate its health care as it currently does, health insurance options, we passed a federal law

saying insurers can go to south dakota where they have fewer regulations and sell to californians, it doesn't seem california can actually do much to take control of its own health care destiny. seems in effect we're all essentially hostage to whichever state wants to offer health care insurance the sweetest deal so they willow kate there, pay taxes there, create jobs there. >> the key to health insurance is to have healthier people and sicker people all pulled together. if you have to buy insurance based on your medical conditions, if you have medical conditions, if you're sick or can't afford it, it costs a fortune. the risk here is that you would get states in which the insurance industry is the most powerful, that were able to set up insurance plans that were targeted just to the healthiest people. and healthy people all across the country maybe could get inexpensive insurance there. the less healthy people, there wouldn't be healthy people left to pool with.

they'd be hung out to dry. they either couldn't afford insurance or pay $20,000, $30,000 for a policy. so that whole approach -- the them underneath the romney proposals, that this should be like buying tires or autos. when you go and buy a car or tires, they're the same price. whether you're short, tall, skinny, obese, healthy, not healthy. that's not how health insurance works. unless you set up the markets and the regulations to do that. that's what the affordable care act and employer coverage tried to do and those are the two elements romney seeks to eliminate or weaken. >> which when romney was in massachusetts he knew. mr. greenstein, thank you as always for being here and going through the numbers so carefully. >> my pleasure. democracy has been caught an tape. or at least the infringing upon democracy. anyway, there is tape and we have all the tape. you're going to see it here first. plus, a magnificently nerdy best new thing in the world. stick around. [ male announcer ] this is the at&t network...

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as we've told you on the show previously there's still unbelievably some real debate in this country about whether we should say global warming or climate change or rising sea levels or recurring flooding. when we want to talk about the fact it's getting warmer on our planet as time goes by. this is what we're discussing. we here are going to blissfully ignore that dumb debate for a minute and examine the data. in the last 100 years the average temperature in the continental united states risen 1.3 degrees fahrenheit. since 1970 the rate of warming has increased dramatically. again, this is the data. this is the temperature readings. as it turns out the rate as which temperatures have been rising across the lower 48 has varied state to state. want to see how much warmer your state has gotten in the last 41 years? thanks to the work of the good people at climate central, there's a map for that. here it is. it's like the scariest ever map on the back of the blue section of "usa today." enjoy your flight, arizona. dry as your heat may be now,

it's gotten hotter faster in arizona than in any of the 47 other contiguous states. florida, while it has many issues as a state, warming is one category which it is right where it wants to be. it is the slowest warming state in the union. now, you can gaze endlessly at this map on the blog at washingtonpost.com. my colleagues are incredibly cool and awesome and love to post maps. my colleague is actually the one who discovered this one. you'll want to come back for more often. do you read out loud or in your head? do you need a lamp to see? and does it leave your bedmate be? don't you wish there was a light that wouldn't keep them up all night? if so, you'll be happy to know, our newest nook now comes with glow. introducing nook simple touch with glowlight.

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180. that is the number of bills to restrict voting rights that have been introduced in state legislatures since the beginning of 2011 according to the nonpartisan brenner center for justice. 18 1 1 180. here's another number, 14. passed laws to make voting harder. together those 14 states represent 70% of the electoral votes you need to win the presidential election this year. if you've been following the show's coverage of the campaign to make voting harder you won't be surprised that these are passed by republican rolled states then signed by republican governors. join make voting harder you tend to siphon off votes from poor folks and students and minorities and the elderly. groups that tend to vote democratic although with the exception of the elderly. makes sense the republicans would like to tighten the restrictions on voting if they possibly can, especially with the presidential election coming up. and it is coming up. it's coming up kind of fast really. if you haven't tied in

restrictions on voting already, you have to hurry up. oh, hey, michigan. michigan, where the republicans control the governorship and both chambers of the legislature and where the house yesterday passed three bills, count them, three, aimed at making voting harder. the bills require you to show i.d. you never had to show before. they make it harder for groups like the league of women voters to hold registration drives to sign up new voters. legislation makes it harder for you to remain a voter if you fail to respond to an inquiry from your local clerk and go a while without voting. as in so many states michigan republicans say the purpose of this legislation is to stop voter fraud. put new requirements on voting, new restrictions for casting a ballot and get less voter fraud. that's the argument that seems to make sense. except as in so many states where lawmakers fulminate about voter fraud there does not appear to be much voter fraud in michigan. last month the republican secretary of state's office reported more than 1,000 dead people and 100 prisoners appear to have cast ballots in michigan between october 2008 and june

2011. but the audit showed these were not cases of voter fraud. they were clerical errors. quote, in every instance where it appears a deceased person or incarcerated person voted and local records were available, a clerical error was established as the reason. if you want to find evidence of election fraud in michigan, you might actually start with some of the michigan republicans. specifically republican congressman thaddeus mccotter who dropped out of the race after his campaign filed nominating petitions with pages of signatures, quote, unprecedented level of fraud. in fact, obvious fraud. he did not, in fact, have enough ballot signatures to qualify for the ballot. mr. mccotter feels terrible about the state of his petitions. he doesn't know how it happened. he wants state investigators to find whoever betrayed his campaign by filing such obviously fraudulent nominating signatures. michigan has some clerical errors and a congressman whose nominating petitions are a wreck.

what it does not seem to have is much voter fraud. people who are not supposed to vote will be stopped by these bills. regardless, michigan has gotten closer to making voting harder after the house approved three bills yesterday tightening requirements for casting a ballot. the bills passed along party lines, new requirements for voter registration drives passed with 66 votes. that is important because under the michigan state constitution, you need a two-thirds majority for a bill to become law right away. that's 73 votes. not 66. if you have 73 votes, the constitution says you can put the law into effect immediately. otherwise, you wait until the following year. in this case, until 2013. and then the presidential election is already over. putting laws into immediate effect is not unusual, michigan. both parties are done it for some time. lately michigan democrats in the house have begun asking republicans to prove they have sufficient votes for immediate effect. which is something michigan democrats are empowered to do under the state constitution. yesterday michigan democrats looked at the 66 votes for this

legislation they firmly oppose. when republicans made a motion for immediate effect, the democrats immediately objected. under the michigan constitution, you can get a recorded roll call vote to count the votes if enough lawmakers request one. in the house, 22 lawmakers have to ask for that vote in order to get it. the problem, according to democrats, is that republicans are ignoring their requests. they deny them that vote. check out this tape, house democrats sent over from yesterday's vote. >> immediate effect is in order. >> what you're seeing there, republicans move for immediate effect, democrats run up to ask for a record roll call vote. republicans gavel in immediate effect. when the republican speaker does that he's saying in his personal judgment 73 lawmakers stood to support immediate effect in those few seconds, so that's a quick count he made. even though the measure only passed with 66 votes and the

chamber is filled with democrats crying out their protest. after the voting, 22 lawmakers read their objection into the official record. 22 again being the number you needed to require the roll call vote the democrats wanted. today, the michigan senate finished approving the bills. republicans of that chamber used the actual two-thirds majority they have to agree the bill should take effect immediately. and now the bills are on their way to the republican governor's desk. if he signs the legislation, it will take effect immediately. all this comes just when mitt romney, native michiganer, sees a little room to actually run in michigan. no republic an for president has won the state for a quarter century, but mitt romney plans to campaign there beginning next week with a bus tour his team is calling every town counts. mr. romney has, in fact, gotten a little bit of good news in the polls lately in michigan. a survey out last week found him in a statistical tie with barack obama. so it's true. every vote does count in a race like this. the question is whether every voter will actually get to vote.

joining us now is reverend david, pastor of the greater st. matthew baptist church, president of the detroit chapter of rainbow push coalition and highland park chapter of naacp. reverend, good to see you. >> thank you, thank you for having me. >> voter fraud sounds to folk, fairly it is if you're having it like a real problem. people often hear about bills like this and, look, i have i.d. at home, i'm legally registered to vote, what's the problem if there are a few more hoops to jump? what is the problem? why isn't this, it's a hassle but no big deal? >> the problem is there isn't a problem. there is no voter fraud in michigan. there's hypocrisy in the republican party. passing these bills, sending them to the governor to sign them, to restrict voting behavior. 1.2 million voters voted in the last election cycle. there were zero cases of verified of dead people voting. there were four cases of undocumented citizens voting. there's no voter fraud in

michigan. we're wrestling with voter suppression by this legislation, voter suspension because of emergency managers. there's an all-out assault on the right to vote in michigan. michigan is ground zero for tyranny and state occupation. we must fight back. >> let me ask you, why do these bills actually need voter suppression? i mean, yes, you have to show more i.d. why does that actually suppress the vote? what is the mechanism by which that keeps people from voting? i mean, don't folks have i.d.? >> well, actually, a lot of people don't have i.d. for instance, seniors would be required to purchase i.d. this amounts to a sort of a poll tax, seniors on fixed income have to acquire a birth certificate, have to acquire a secondary i.d. a lot of minorities, african-americans and other minorities don't have i.d. they'd have to go through extra hoops to require i.d. also, this legislation will impede voter registration. over 500,000 african-americans

in michigan aren't registered to vote and now folks like the league of women voters and other groups are saying they won't register people to vote because of the new law changes and because of the legislation attaches a penalty, i think a felony, if people fill out the paperwork wrong. so this legislation restricts voter behavior. we should be making it easier for people to vote, easier for people to participate in the process, not harder for them to exercise their rights. >> one of the odd things about the election bills is that they add a box to the ballot where you have to put a little check mark. you have to affirm you're a u.s. citizen. presumably if you're not a u.s. citizen and you want to lie your way into the vote you'll check the box anyway. what is the thinking behind adding that in? what is the purpose there of that little box? >> i have no idea what the thinking is. i think it's ludicrous. if i have i.d., why do i need i.d.? when i register to vote, when i get my voter registration card, i already have to check a box

that says i'm a citizen. also the signature is a surefire way to determine people's identity. again, these bills are the height of hypocrisy. this is partisan politics with a capital "p." this will not stand in michigan. i cannot believe that in 2012, in the united states of america, the land of the free, the home of the brave, that democracy is under attack, the right to vote is being restricted, emergency managers in the land, voter suspension and voter suppression. something has got to change in the state of michigan and around the country. i believe someone is trying to steal the vote by shaving the points. >> reverend david bullock. president of the detroit chapter of the rainbow push coalition and highland chapter of the naacp. thank you very much for being here this evening. >> thank you so much. they are called shadow and raven and wasp and predator.

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it may surprise, maybe even shock, many of you to learn that i, ezra klein, i sort of like the star wars movies. well, the original three, anyway. and to be honest, my feelings about "return of t" is complica.

i an throw around words like darth mal. darth mal? some of you would know what i mean. but i won't. this is a news program for everyone. also i will not talk like yoda, even though i can. and sometimes maybe i do. what i will say is today's best new thing in the world contained some awesome news concerning luke skywalker's home planet of tattooing. the best new thing, star wars edition, coming up. oh, and one last thing.

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could've had a v8. on the issue of killer spy drones, america's not like other countries. for one thing, we have them. i mean, other countries have some of them but we have a lot of them. we have way more of them and we're really, really good at making them. america's drone supremacy is unrivaled. we're number one. we're number one. and it will probably stay that way until we begin selling our drone technology to every tom, dick and hungry. until then we're on top. today in pakistan, our great ally, pakistan, nbc reports that

a u.s. drone reportedly shot two missiles into an inn, four militants hiding there on the second floor were reportedly killed. it was the second deadly u.s. drone strike in pakistan in two days. our air force says it wants to send more drones to its forces in the pacific and south america, once the war in afghanistan wraps up. wouldn't want to let a good drone go to waste. the point is america has more drones than anyone else and we use more drones than anyone else. we also like drones more than anyone else. in this new global survey, a solid majority of people in more than three quarters of the countries polled disapproved of the way america uses its drones. america's drone policy is not okay, that's the majority opinion almost everywhere. almost everywhere except america. in the u.s., almost two-thirds of people think the opposite. they approve of the obama administration's use of drones. so for the time being, drones, those flying, spying killing i machines are an american thing. an american thing we're all used to seeing in other countries.

in war zones. we're not used to seeing them stateside here in america. maybe we should be. a drone belonging to the u.s. navy crashed on monday. a crash occurred around noon. there were no injuries which is sort of the point of unmanned aerial vehicles which is what drones are. this particular unmanned aerial vehicle was a global hawk drone. it is a surveillance drone, the kind that spies, not kills. it has an extremely sensitive camera on it that can see through inclement weather and survey tens of thousands of square miles in a single day. it's huge. 44 feet long with 116 foot wingspan weighing in at over 25,000 pounds. thus the large craft site. another thing about the large craft site, it wasn't in iraq, afghanistan, somalia or yemen. this global hawk drone was in maryland. to be exact, a marsh in maryland on monday. the global hawk drone was in maryland because that is where the global hawk drone lives on an american base in maryland. this is our new normal.

we are now a country that has droned stationed all over the country. there are 64 american drone bases. 64. a non-profit group that promotes public access to information put this map together showing where they are. it's true military drones cannot legally spy on americans. there are about 60 organizations, mostly police departments and government agencies that have licenses to operate surveillance drones here in the u.s. drone proliferation isn't only disconcerting if the technology spreads to other countries. it's a little freaky if it spreads too quickly here, too. or at least maybe it should be. what happens when domestic surveillance and spying go from expensive and time consuming and requiring lots of people and being very difficult, to cheap and quick and easy? a country that can use drones so easily might make a different calculation about what it's worth doing because the costs of doing it are now so low. joining us, spencer ackerman who reports on national security for wire.com's excellent danger room and written much on this subject. spencer, great to have you.

>> thanks for having any. >> you guys reported today there are 64 drone sites in the u.s. what should we take from that? is it just where we store them? is there implications to it? it sounds like a big number. maybe it is. >> that's right. these are places that have the drones, hangars, runways. they're places where you train remote pilots how to fly these things from air-conditioned boxes with lots of computer screens and i.m. windows and that sort of thing. the bigger concern for drones in the united states isn't just the military. it's in police shops that are increasingly getting faa licenses to use these things in law enforcement contexts. >> and so there's a law that drones cannot spy here. and as you say, but they can be in law enforcement. so how is that distinction dealt with? what does it mean for a drone not to be able to spy but be able to do surveillance for a police department? >> so here's an example. basically what we're talking about is something called incidental collection, usually. imagine if there's a hostage

situation in a building downtown and the police is called in and the negotiators are running around. there's a s.w.a.t. team trying to figure out areas of entry. you can put a drone up in the air, the theory goes, in order to get a better 360 degree aerial view of a potential crisis situation. that was actually a scenario described to me by a sergeant in miami-dade's police department. >> so that seems like something we would want to do. one of the questions i think that sort of arises, we have, my understanding, is very much ramped up how many of these we have during the war on terror. it's been an exponential increase. what happens as we pull out of afghanistan, as we leave iraq, as we have all these sitting around with nothing to do? there's been talk about moving some of them to south america. what is going to happen to our sort of drone fleet? >> well, some of them are going to be, if you pardon the term, sniffen dring drugs. they're going to be flying ov over --

>> how smart are these? >> not smart enough to make these kinds of decisions which we don't endorse. they'll be over navy boats that are going to be scouting out. drug dealers. some of them increasingly are going to go toward civilian, law enforcement use. that's where the market for drones is going to go as the war in afghanistan sort of winds down. >> so we've been talking primarily here about spying drones. the kind of look and see drones. obviously a lot of them are killing drones for lack of a better term. rachel has written an enormous amount of drift in american military policy, certain decisions we've made in the political system has made it easier to go to war and easier to stay in war because there's simply less of a cost of doing so. there's this idea of technological drift, too, now we don't have to send as many men. we can do this from here. it's easier. we have less risk involved. how does this change the cost/benefit calculation going forward about what kind of military and i think the term is kinetic excursions are worth doing? >> it's a tremendous temptation.

you don't all of a se sudden to have amass the same kind of equipment or do the politically difficult work of building support for a war. you candon't have to declare wa. what you can do instead is basically move a small unit with a few remotely piloted aircraft into a place like yemen, into a place like pakistan, into a place like somalia and a the substitute other than weighty considerations about the wisdom of a war, the efficacy of the war. it's rare you hear the president of the united states really talking about what are really very hot battlefields all over the world that really marginally declared would be a generous way of putting it. >> is it an issue in congress at all? you don't hear the president talking about it. is it at all partisan or even at all a question in relevant committees in congress? >> you really get silence over it. if it's telediscussion there's

using drones for remotely piloted war, it's in terms of enthusia enthusiasm, in terms of what the things can do, in terms of what greater battlefield situational awareness they can provide. not really much in way of criticism, very little in the way of questioning the wisdom of the development. >> spencer ackerman, wire.com's danger room. thank you for jot dronot dronin election results including the latest in the contest between a mr. kreep versus mr. peed. that will be judge kreep or peed to you. find out which, next. unlimited cheddar bay biscuits. then get your choice of one of 7 entrees. like new coconut and pineapple shrimp shrimp and scallops alfredo or new honey bbq shrimp. then finish with something sweet. your complete four course seafood feast just $14.99. come into red lobster

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the election music. i love it. it never, never, never gets old. i know it sort of feels like there are big elections every single week now, but last night was yet another big election night across the country and we have got the results. first off in the great state of arizona, voters in the eighth congressional district held a special election yesterday to replace democratic congresswoman gabrielle giffords. gabby giffords threw her support behind her former congressional aide ron barber who was injured alongside her last january. now with all of the votes counted, voters in this republican leaning district decided to send the democrat ron barber to washington. mr. barber repeated his republican challenger jesse kelly by a margin of six points. barber will serve out the final six months of gabby giffords'

term. they'll likely face off again this coming november. fans won't have to wait until barber/kelly two rematch, assuming arizona wants to give mr. kelly another chance. that's remain to be seen. i'm sure we'll break out the awesome election music again. in north dakota voters took to the polls yesterday to decide on a number of headline grabbing ballot measures. among them a ballot measure to abolish the state's property tax. north dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the country. the state government is awash in cash thanks to the oil boom there. and voters were asked yesterday, do you want to get rid of your property tax? and by an overwhelming margin, north dakotan voters said, no. we do not want to get rid of our property tax. the eliminate the property tax ballot measure failed yesterday 77% to 23%. if it had been approved north dakota would become the first state in the country without a property tax. but north dakotans yesterday voted to keep paying property tax.

also, on the ballot yesterday, north dakota was a very controversial measure to add a religious liberty amendment to the state's constitution. critics of the measure argued that would give essentially carte blanche for people to claim religious liberty in order for people to apply abortion rights or to discriminate against gays and lesbians solely on the basis that the gays and lesbians offended them for religious reasons. this is an issue that gained attention at the national level earlier this year as congressional republicans tried to pass a religious liberty exemption when it came to providing contraception coverage to women. last night voters in north dakota had a chance to vote on their version of that and they said no. they said no in great numbers. the religious liberty amendment was defeated in north dakota last night by a margin of 64% to 36%. north dakota is not generally considered a bastion of liberalism. there are no jokes about the people's republic of north dakota, for instance. so north dakota residents rejecting this religious liberty measure and also rejecting the opportunity to abolish their

state's property tax may give us some indication about how far is too far on the right these days. or maybe it doesn't. if you want to see how far can be too far, look no further than san diego, california, proved that in some areas there's actually no far as too far. san diego county is still counting the ballots tonight in their superior court judge race -- hey, the music again -- where voters have this close to sending a real-life birther to the state bench. gary kreep, who you may remember as the star of one of the greatest birther infomercials of all time, is holding a lead over garland peed in the race for that superior court judgeship. you might be saying, okay, mr. kreep appeared in a birther commercial a few years ago, that doesn't mean he's still a birther insistence president obama furnished his long-form birth certificate. if you're thinking that, you would be wrong, as evidenced by this interview with gary kreep on san diego television, just two days ago.

>> mr. obama's spending of over $2 million, according to published reports, to keep people from seeing his real birth certificate, which no one has yet seen. we've seen copies -- reported copies of it, we've seen computer compilations of various documents that are supposed to be the real birth certificate, but no one's ever seen the real one. and in fact, the governor of the state of hawaii earlier this year said they didn't have mr. obama's birth certificate in hawaii official records. almost three months later, all of a sudden they found it. >> do you think barack obama is a citizen of the united states? >> i have sincere doubts. >> "sincere doubts." that's the guy, mr. sincere doubts, that san diego voters may be about to elect as a superior court judge, the birther guy. again, mr. kreep now leads mr. peed by -- hey, there it is -- by 216 votes, though there are still more than 13,000 absentee ballots that have yet to be counted. so as i say, anything could happen. kreep versus peed are neck and neck. stay tuned for the final results tonight. aren't elections grand?

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it kills weeds to the root, so they don't come back. roundup. no root. no weed. no problem. we all know the word "fan" derives from the word "fanatic." but the best new thing in the world today shows the good side of fanaticism. when fans love something so much, their efforts to show their devotion actually brings something good into the world, even into a world far, far away. >> all right, fine. let's go. >> luke! luke?! luke, tell your uncle if he gets a translator, be sure it speeches botchi.

>> doesn't look like we have much of a choice, but i'll remind him. >> remember, no translators that don't speak botchi. for those of you not familiar with "star wars," i don't know what to say about that exactly, but we'll catch you up here. this is the first time we meet luke skywalker, as he's about to help his uncle purchase a couple of droids to put to use on the family moisture farm. these scenes in a few others were filmed on location in tunisia, where the barren desert landscape and the amazing architecture screamed a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away to director george lucas. and if you are the kind of fan that's not satisfied just to watch the film, to get a little deeper into the experience by visiting the actual sets, most of which are actually still standing. dedicated "star wars" fans have tracked almost all of them down. this is that obiwan kanobie's

little hut. you probably can't pick up any power converters there. those films were cut from the film anyway. and this is the old skywalker place, a little igloo known to "star wars" fans as the lars homestead. one big "star wars" fan, really big "star wars" fan, a belgium fan was one of the first to track down the film sets and about two years ago became concerned that the condition of the lars homestead was deteriorating in the harsh desert climate. so he did what anyone would do. he embarked on a two-year campaign to save it. he and a band of loyal followers raised more than $10,000 and are working with the tunisian government to get all the necessary permits when all of a sudden the tunisian government did not exist anymore. it was the first regime to fall in what later became known as the arab spring. but the project did not die. and this may with the blessing of the new regime, mark dermull

and five die-hard fans around the world hopped planes to north africa and set to work. and they did this. >> the lars homestead is saved. yes, we did it! look how beautiful she's come out. we did it in under a week and within the budget. you can see that we put a lot of stack into details. we tried to roadway create it as it was scene in the movie. the entry corridor, the doorway, everything has been restored to its full movie glory. gentleman, take a bow. this is for you. [ cheers and applause ] >> it's one thing to love a movie so much you watch it over and over and over. sometimes in costume. i'm just saying. not that i do that. it's another to try to experience a movie by seeing where it was made. but to make the extraordinary effort of saving a piece of film history, and thus becoming part of the film you love, arguably even a small hero in it, that's incredible. and the best new thing in the

world today. that does it for us tonight. we will see you again tomorrow night. until then, you can check out my work at wonkblog.com at "the washington post." now it is time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." have a great night. and just when you thought ohio was getting way too much attention in this presidential campaign, president obama and mitt romney have both decided to give big campaign speeches tomorrow, in ohio. >> the last thing we can do is return to the very policies that got us into this mess in the first place. >> the president will be making a speech on thursday. >> we'll hear what he has to say tomorrow. >> just goes back and blames president bush. >> what he called the failed policies of the past. >> to fix the damage done by president bush. >> in a major campaign speech -- >> the president will argue they would be worse off if mitt romney were in charge. >> nobody wants to hear him whining and complaining. you actually have to do something. >> he has done stuff. >> quest