>> facts are irrelevant. >> they're only talking about the economy and not putting forth proposals -- >> as are actual plans for governing. >> this economy runs on freedom. >> adjective, verb, economy. >> this is all part of the mitt maneuver. >> his attempt to be a pretzel. >> cast blame, ignore the facts, obscure the truth. >> the president failed to lead. the path we're on is leading us to greece. what we're left with is a bit of a muddle. i'm not familiar, precisely, with exactly what i said, but i stand by what i said, whatever it was. >> if you don't run chris christie, romney will be the nominee and we'll lose. tonight, a just-released nbc news/"wall street journal" poll shows the obama campaign's swing state offensive on mitt romney is working. among registered voters nationally, president obama ads mitt romney 47 to 44%, just a three-point margin of error, and that's within the

margin of error in that poll. in the swing states, though, where the campaigns have been focusing their ads and the speeches, president obama has a much bigger lead. he leads by eight points, 50 to 42%. on favorability nationally, 48% of respondents have positive feelings toward the president, only 38% have negative feelings towards the president. 33% have positive feelings toward mitt romney and 39% have negative feelings. in the swing states, president obama's favorability is virtually the same, but mitt romney's favorability drops. 30% have positive feelings towards mitt romney, 41% have negative feelings. the polls were conducted as "the washington post" ran this headline. "romney's bain capital invested in companies that moved jobs overseas." today president obama and vice president biden brought that message to georgia and iowa voters.

>> we don't need somebody who's a pioneer in offshoring or outsourcing. we need a president in the white house who's going to every single day be fighting to bring jobs back to the united states, do some insourcing. >> so you've got to give mitt romney credit. he's a job creator -- in singapore, china, india. he's been very good at creating jobs overseas. >> if some of the obama campaign's attacks on mitt romney appear to go unanswered, it's not because mitt romney doesn't have an answer. according to his son and campaign surrogate, tag romney, tag told concerned republican voters in iowa, "you'll see us hit back pretty hard. we're biding our time. he explained how his father's campaignad to refill its financial coffers after a lengthy primary fight. we're catching up on cash on hand. if we're going to get outspent

in june or october, i'd rather it be june." joining me now are msnbc's john heilemann and joy reid. john heilemann, that is the accepted strategy about campaign spending. you'd rather hold the money for later in the campaign. but is the romney campaign in danger of allowing the obama campaign to set the image in stone of mitt romney in these battleground states? >> well, there's always a danger of that, lawrence, for sure. i think what the romney campaign is counting on is that -- that they're not actually going to get outspent in october and they're not going to get outspent for the rest of this year. i think if you think about the romney fund-raising apparatus, they're raising a lot of money and catching up rather quickly to the president. and as everyone has talked about for weeks now, the super pacs on the republican side are going to have a lot more money than the democratic side. mitt romney will probably, by the end of this the, have a financial advantage. and they're counting on that. but i do think, you know, these numbers that we've seen show that for all of the worries that a lot of democrats have had over the past three or four week

and, you know, you'll remember back in 2008, dave ploufid ploue president's campaign manager then, used to talk about and dismiss democratic bedwetters who would question the president and the campaign's strategy then. that there's been a lot of bedwetting over the course of the last three or four weeks around bain and some of these attacks. you look at those swing states, that is going to give chicago a strong retort to democrats who think they have been on the wrong track with the messages they've been sending. >> i've never seen anything like it. in 2008, the obama campaign was always right and the democratic worriers were always wrong. let's take a look at an ad that the obama campaign is running today in virginia, ahead of mitt romney's visit there. >> the "washington post" has just revealed that romney's companies were pioneers in shipping u.s. jobs overseas, investing in firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by american workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like china and india.

does virginia really want an outsourcing in chief in the white house? >> joy, mitt romney's father, george romney, advised him to get rich before he ran for president, so he wouldn't have to worry about money, so he could afford to run for president. that was the father-to-son advice when mitt was a young man. well, he got rich, but it looks like he got rich in the worst way. >> yeah. i mean the problem for mitt romney, right, is that he's got to try to capture a larger share of the white vote. he's got to maximize that vote. so to do that, he's got to do well with white working class voters. but the problem is his whole persona, his whole background, his wealth, while it is appealing to general in republicans, and even in this poll, when they were asked stream of consciousness questions, the word cloud part of the poll, what is good about mitt romney, him being a businessman polls good with republicans. but the problem is, in those swing states, the image of an outsourcing, of a guy who's not looking out for the middle class, not looking out for the working man, that's a problem for romney and it's a problem

for his bottom-line strategy, getting as many white working class voters to the polls as possible in november. >> let's listen to joe biden today talking about mitt romney and outsourcing. >> he gets to be governor of the state, and his administration signed a $160,000-a-month contract to pay people abroad to answer the phone to help poor people in massachusetts who were calling about, after having lost a job, how they could get food stamps. not a joke. not a joke. and when massachusetts legislature passed a bill saying, you couldn't outsource contracts overseas, he vetoed that bill. >> john, there's something to be said now in politics for having actually had a career in government, where you think you'll never be accused of outsourcing, at least. and it turns out, even there,

mitt romney can be accused credibly by joe biden of outsourcing. >> there's no question that romney's business background, as joy alluded to, really cuts in two directions. his strength remains his private sector background. the fact that a lot of people trust him right now on the economy. that's the one place where he polls better than the president in terms of all of the other personal attributes that the president leads him with or on. but this is a real problem for him. it's a vulnerability, and, you know, the campaign, the obama campaign has been very confident with the attacks on bain. the outsourcing thing is a whole new leg of this strategy. but when they ran those ads, when they attacked him on bain, i mentioned before, the thing about democratic bedwetters, they said, listen, this is not a strategy that is aimed at the elites in washington, d.c. and new york and boston. it's aimed at these swing states and they have been very confident, their polling show that those ads work and their

attacks work, they intend to keep it up, and they're going to keep it up until election day, especially if it keeps showing returns like it seems to be right now in key states with those key voters. >> joy, what seems to be so effective about what the vice president said, is he's talking about outsourcing and romney doing outsourcing, but not when he was in the private sector. doing outsourcing while he was governor, so there he's showing people an example of how, if you elect mitt romney, even to a government post, he may be in a position to continue to outsource american jobs. >> right. and lawrence, you have to remember, too, that the obama campaign, their campaign people have been preparing to run against mitt romney for two years, minimum. they have prognosticated that he was the obvious sort of person to become the nominee. so they have two years worth of opposition research, or really more, back from his previous presidential run, and they're going to hit him on this and hit him on this. we're seeing a rerun of the 2004 election, where he is being defined, all throughout this summer. that's what the obama campaign is going to do. and to your point, they're going to do it in ohio, going to do it

in pennsylvania, where, you know, the vice president has particular resonance. they're going to do it in virginia. they're going to hit him in these swing states and define him as the outsourcing, whether he was at bain or he was governor, he doesn't care about the working class. that's their strategy. >> john heilemann, we've just received the breaking news in my ear that mitt romney has won the utah primary, which i believe, i believe i actually noticed in my calendar this morning, that the utah primary was today. but i'd forgotten it until this moment. so he rolled up this nomination in a machine-like way. a business-like way. i think he would proudly say. and are they, in the romney campaign, surprised at this stage about how they have not yet gotten past what the trouble they were running into in the primary, which was his business record, his bain record, as raised by newt gingrich? >> well, i don't think they're surprised about it. i mean, i think, certainly, lawrence, they were surprised. although, first, let's take a moment historically to note, the utah primary is, i believe, the

end of the republican nomination fidget. we are officially now done with that, so our long national nightmare is over. that should be marked for history. i think that they were surprised that they got hit on the bain stuff, on his tax returns. they were surprised that gingrich and rick perry attacked him from a republican point of view. but they have always expected president obama to come at him hard on this issue. so nothing that's coming at them now from the obama campaign is any kind of surprise for them. they've been waiting for that all along. >> john heilemann and joy reid, thank you both very much for joining me tonight. >> thanks, lawrence. coming up, we have an nbc news exclusive. the police recording of matt sandusky, the adopted son of jerry sandusky, detailing his years of sexual abuse and why he initially lied to the grand jury about the case. that's coming up. and in the "rewrite" tonight, how the mythical individual mandate might destroy the health care law in the supreme court. it's a mythical mandate, because it's not really a mandate at all. and i will show you why.

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thought they were dead. huh? [ male announcer ] should've used roundup. it kills weeds to the root, so they don't come back. roundu no root. no weed. no problem. there is still much confusion in the news media about who won and who lost in the supreme court yesterday, and confusion about what was won and what was lost in the supreme court yesterday. but there is no confusion about the political winners and losers. the craziest hate-driven governor in america was crushed by president obama both politically and substantively. arizona's biggest embarrassment, governor jan brewer, famously tried to lecture the president in their last encounter. tried to lecture someone who knows more about the law and

governance than jan brewer will ever know. the president made no attempts to teach arizona's bloviating ignoramus anything in that moment, because he knew that his eric holder-led justice department was going to crush her constitutionally demented attempt to seize control of immigration law. some in the political media understand what happened yesterday in the supreme court. "the new york times" editorial page gets it. their first line was, "the supreme court rejected the foundation of arizona's cold-blooded immigration law and the indefensible notion that the state can have its own foreign policy." but page one of that very same newspaper, "the new york times," didn't get it. "the court unanimously sustained the law's centerpiece, the one critics have called its show me your papers provision, though they left the door open to further challenges."

okay, let's get it straight. the court did not -- did not -- sustain the law's centerpiece. the court sustained another provision, a minor provision compared to the centerpiece. theart of the law that the court let stand, at least temporarily, and probably only temporarily, makes it mandatory for arizona police officers to check the immigration status of some people they arrest or detain. that procedure is already a perfectly legal optional procedure. not mandatory, optional procedure for police officers anywhere in america. that procedure was already going on in arizona and elsewhere. the court pointed out that while it can stand making it mandatory -- it can stand temporarily, the fact that they make it mandatory does risk what the court calls constitutional challenge, as soon as arizona

starts enforcing that provision of the law. and as the court made clear, that provision does not allow police to detain anyone simply to check their immigration status. the supreme court made clear that if arizona police take someone into custody, they are not allowed to keep that person in custody for any extended period of time to check their immigration status. and the court made clear that if arizona police take someone into custody and discover the person is in the country illegally, the arizona police can do absolutely nothing about it. nothing. nothing. there is no legal reason for the arizona police to detain anyone simply because their immigration status is not legal. the centerpiece of the law, which was struck down, which was blown away, the centerpiece enabled arizona police to arrest people for absolutely no reason. to arrest them for no other reason than being in the united

states illegally. that was the centerpiece. the centerpiece of the law made arizona police able to enforce federal law. that was thrown out. that was the show me your papers provision. that was the provision that allowed arizona police to stop anyone, anywhere, in church,n the mall, walking down the street, and demand, demand instantly to see their green cards or their work permits or immigration documents or any kind, anything that they possess, an arizona driver's license, to prove that they are in the state legally, and if those people could not instantly satisfy the police in such encounters, that they were in the state legally, arizona could round them up, could handcuff them right there, put them in jail cells, or put them in not yet built prison camps and hold them there. that was the show me your papers provision. that was destroyed in the supreme court. that affront to the constitution, that offense against humanity was the

centerpiece of jan brewer's legislative madness that the supreme court wiped out yesterday. the part of the law the supreme court left standing does not allow anyone to show papers, doesn't enforce anyone to show papers. it simply requires a police officer to communicate with the immigration service center to check the status of certain people arrested and detained, something that is already allowed by law, and something that does not allow the police officer to then take any further action based on whatever information they get back from the immigration service. a million such status checks are already run every year through the immigration service center, which is open 24/7 for precisely that purpose. the centerpiece of the law, the one that had echoes of the most oppressive regimes in the world, was the one that allowed people to be stopped anywhere at any time and thrown in jail if they didn't answer a police officer's question the right way.

and that particular piece of un-american law enforcement was something that mitt romney was just as crazy about as jan brewer was. >> as president, if you had the opportunity, would you drop the federal government's lawsuit against arizona over sb-1070. >> yeah, and i would at the same time finally put in place defense -- >> but do you believe that police officers and troopers should go looking for illegal immigrants that might not be breaking the law and deporting them? >> i've told you my position. my own view is that if you secure the border and you do the job that i want to do as president, that this issue will ultimately disappear and we'll be able to have a legal immigration program thatworks. i've also told you that i support the effort on the part of arizona to have a safe and secure border. >> joining me now, karen finney, msnbc political analyst and former dnc communications director and ana marie cox of "the guardian." ana marie, mitt romney was on record in the past as saying he

supports the arizona law. and then when the supreme court rules, when one of his favorite justices, the chief justice, rules against mitt romney's support of the arizona law, mitt's having trouble mustering some strong support for jan brewer's position here. what's happened to him? >> well, i mean, he's searching for a position that will satisfy all comers, or at least satisfy with the base, and, you know, this elusive latino republican voter, who i believe exists somewhere. but they haven't been able to find him yet. and it is a puzzle for him. he might actually have to come up with a conviction that he has about something, which he's been loathe to do so far. i do feel like mitt romney has sort of been given new meaning to the memory negative campaigning, because he's like defining what he isn't all the time. he's just not saying stuff and leaving us to guess what it is he actually believes. >> karen finney, you will be surprised to know that rush limbaugh is very disappointed in his boy, mitt. let's listen to what rush had to

say about mitt. >> okay. ladies and gentlemen, yesterday mitt romney blew it. yesterday was a warning, i think. yesterday was a red flag for the romney team. yesterday, and it's the first time in a long time, first time i've thought this in a long time, the romney team was not ready for prime-time on this illegal immigration, the arizona decision. if romney's response yesterday had happened in a debate, it would have been a big win for obama. >> karen, with friends like rush, mitt isn't -- >> finally, he's being helpful. >> mitt's in very serious trouble. there's the box right there, he dares not -- mitt dares not cross rush limbaugh on this. >> well, that's exactly right. but, look, i think the response we s from mitt yesterday also reflects the practical reality that we've really reached a tipping point in this country on

this issue, given that we are fast becoming a majority/minority country. we've had more minority babies born in the last year than wte children. so, i mean, the demographics of our country are changing. which means mitt knows he's got to get a certain percentage of the latino vote, which he is trying to figure out, how do i do that and not totally alienate the right-wingers, who, you know, are perfectly happy with what jan brewer's approach to this problem. >> let's listen to president obama talking today about the diffence between mitt romney and him on this issue. >> they don't want to go backwards to a day when young people who as children were brought to the united states and were raised with our kids and went to school with our kids. are our kids, are americans through and through, in everything except the papers that somehow they should be sent away instead of contributing to the united states of america. >> ana marie, it strikes me that even if you leave policy aside,

what you see there is president obama is very comfortable talking about this, and it's yet another instance where the frequently awkward mitt romney is even more awkward, when he just can't find his way to a clear position on this. >> it's true. and immigration at its heart is actually a human issue. it's a human rights issue. and it's something that i think we forget when we're talking about building fences and deportation. but, actually, one of the things that's interesting about the supreme court decision is they kind of say in their decision that this is a humanitarian concern. and this should be something that is left to people to decide, to have some discretion about who it is we'd go after. and the really sad thing is the kind of easing of, you know, restrictions that obama's talking about, they actually just don't apply to this many people. when the republicans get so upset about these humanitarian leniencies that the obama administration is putting out, that affects like 2% of the people that are coming into the u.s. it's really a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of people who would like to be

american citizens. >> karen finney and ana marie cox, thank you both very much for joining me tonight. coming up, we have an exclusive nbc news video of matt sandusky, jerry sandusky's adopted son, talking about his experiences with his father and the -- and why he testified to the grand jury differently from what he told the police during the trial. and in the "rewrite," everything you're going to need to know about the individual mandate, the mythical individual mandate before the supreme court rules on it. that's coming up. with the spark cash card from capital one,

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the prosecution in the jerry sandusky case had a witness they never had to call. jerry sandusky's adopted son. comi up, the nbc news exclusive, the tape of matt sandusky telling police about years of sexual abuse. and on the eve of the supreme court's final decision -- well, on the eve of the eve of the supreme court's final decision day of the year, a reminder that even if the health care individual mandate is declared unconstitutional, there really wasn't any real mandate there in the bill anyway. it was all just a mirage. i'll explain all that in the "rewrite." and later, we'll show you why we should all be very, very grateful f the life and work of the great nora ephron. . the postal service is critical to our economy,

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matt sandusky, secretly met with police and told them sandusky also molested him. nbc news has exclusively obtained the audio of that police interview. we should warn you, the conversation can be graphic at times. here's nbc's national investigative correspondent, michael isikoff. >> reporter: jerry sandusky's adopted son, matt, in his own words, describes for the first time how he says he was molested by his father. >> like, the showering, with the hugging, with the rubbing, with the just, the talking to me, the way he spoke. >> reporter: nbc news has exclusively obtained a 29-minute tape, recorded by police detectives the week before jerry sandusky's conviction. at the time, they were preparing sandusky's son to testify as a surprise prosecution witness at his adoptive father's trial. matt sandusky told police he was repeatedly molested and would try to avoid being touched.

sometimes hiding in a fetal position when his father entered his bedroom. >> if you were pretending you were asleep and if you were touch ordinary rubbed in some way, you could just act like you were rolling over in your sleep so you could change positions. >> reporter: matt met jerry sandusky through the second mile and told police on the tape he was off and on molested from ages 8 to 15. like many other second mile boys, he began staying overnight at the sandusky household. jerry and dottie sandusky later become his foster parents and adopted him at age 18. >> and when you were staying at his house, then he began to come into your bedroom at night and he would blow rasberries on your stomach and his hand would rub down or rub along or against your genital? >> correct. >> reporter: matt told police he tried to escape from the sandusky house, one night fleeing barefoot to hide in his grandfather's basement. he also said that he tried to commit suicide. >> i know that i really wanted to die at that point in time. >> sandusky told police he's been seeing a therapist and memories of his abuse are just now coming back.

>> and you said at the beginning of our interview last night that things happened to you, but there was no, that you can recall, there was no penetration or oral sex, is that correct? >> yes, as of this time, i don't recall that. >> reporter: after years of denying that he had been abused, including to a grand jury, matt sandusky told police he was coming forward now so his family would know what really happened. >> so that they can really have closure and see what the truth actually is. and just to right the wrong, honestly, of going to the grand jury and lying. >> reporter: sandusky's offer to testify was a crucial turning point in his father's trial. when jerry learned that his son had turned on him, he was crushed, and it kept him off the witness stand, according to his lawyer. >> when jerry heard that initially, he was very upset. and i could tell you that the next day, when we were preparing, that was the most despondent i had seen him. >> reporter: defense lawyers told nbc news that they were prepared to attack matt sandusky's credibility. >> do we believe what matt sandusky has to say? absolutely not.

>> reporter: on monday, ramminger was the first to visit jerry sandusky in jail and described his client as defiant. >> he's not a beaten man. he is pacing a cell right now, being held in solitary confinement, wanting to get out and get his story out and continue to defend himself. i don't think jerry believes he has anything to feel sorry for. at this point, he maintains his innocence, adamantly. >> that was nbc news michael isikoff reporting. coming up, the supreme court will decide on thursday if the individual mandate is constitutional, but what if it really isn't a mandate? that's in tonight's "rewrite." i brought your stuff. you don't have to do this. yes i do. i want you to keep this. it'd be weird. take care. you too. [ sighs ] so how did it go? he's upset. [ male announcer ] spend less time at gas stations. with best in class fuel economy. it's our most innovative altima ever.

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virtually nothing. and the reason the mandate was softened, as congressional democrats were writing the bill, was not because of republican objection. democrats had already given up on getting republican votes for the bill. the mandate was weakened and weakened again and weakened some more because of outraged liberals, angry at the notion that poor people who could not afford insurance would be ordered by the government to buy it and then sent to jail if they didn't. during the drafting of the bill in the senate finance committee, where the legislative mechanics working on it always regarded the fine attached to the individual mandate to be a tax, that's why it was in the tax committee, they included the standard penalties for tax evasion. if someone violated the individual mandate and then failed to pay the tax penalty, liberal voices on this very network let loose their outrage that the government would put people in jail for failing to

add to the profits of health insurance companies. and so, in the next draft of the mandate, the standard prison sentence provisions for tax evasion were suddenly removed. and the fine was reduced. and then reduced again on e next draft, as liberals remained worried that people who couldn't afford health insurance would then be ordered to pay the irs heavy fines, and so in seceding drafts of the mandate, fines got reduced lower and lower. and in the final draft that is now law, the fine for not purchasing health insurance is so low, less than $100 for some people, that the level of fine provides absolutely no financial incentive to buy a product that costs thousands of dollars. and that's what the fine is supposed to be. an incentive to buy the product. even if you're one of those people who will get a government subsidy to help buy health insurance, you still might not do it, even though the

government is paying for half of, say, your $5,000 health insurance policy. you simply don't have the other $2,500 you need to pay for your half of the policy. and so you then get hit with maybe a $100 fine from the government. you will take that fine rather than pay the $2,500. many rational people who want health insurance will still not be able to afford it, even with the government subsidy, and will rationally choose to suffer the very, very low fine of $100. and what will happen to them if they don't pay the $100 fine? this is where the liberals went all the way and completely removed any enforcement mechanism for collecting the $100 fine. the law reads, "waiver of criminal penalties. in the case of any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed by this section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalty with

respect to such failure." it also ruled out civil pursuit. "limitations on liens and levies. the survey should not file notice of lien with respect to any property of a taxpayer by reason of any failure to pay the penalty imposed by this section or levy on any such property with respect to such failure." there you have it. the only tax provision in which the irs is forbidden from using any of its tools to actually collect that little tiny tax in the health care mandate. this is the liberal version of an individual mandate. one in which there is no real penalty for not complying with the mandate, and there is very, very good reason why liberals watered the mandate down, to the point of being a mythical mandate. liberals never liked the individual mandate, as has been pointed out repeatedly. it originated as a republican idea. the first republican to put it

in legislative language was senator john chafee of rhode island, who in the 1993 introduced a health care reform bill as an alternative to hillary clinton's health care reform bill. hillary clinton's bill had an employer mandate, mandating that employers must provide health insurance. senator chafee and the republicans countered with an individual mandate, and hillary clinton condemned the individual mandate every chance she got. and virtually all democrats and liberals agreed with hillary clinton then and were completely opposed to the individual mandate. the chafee bill never had more than 18 republican co-sponsors in the senate. that's 18 out of 43 republicans at the time, a minority of a minority of republicans supported the chafee bill. a minority of that minority actually understood that there was an individual mandate in it. and as soon as we started having hearings in the senate finance

committee about health care reform in 1994. the republicans started running away from the individual mandate. bob dole was a supporter of john chafee's individual mandate in 1993 and an opponent of it months later in 1994. no republican, not even john chafee, ever voted for the individual mandate, because the republicans never even attempted to bring it to a vote. very few republicans had a very brief crush on the individual mandate and that was the end of that, back in the spring of 1994. after condemning it as evil, an idea -- just as evil an idea as anyone could imagine in health care reform in 1993 and 1994, hillary clinton then embraced it for some reason in 2007 as a presidential candidate. her health care reform ideas as a candidate were actually written by someone who had worked for republican senator chafee back when hillary clinton was opposed to his ideas.

and candidate obama held to the democratic party position on the individual mandate, the liberal position on the individual mandate. >> in some cases, there are people who are paying fines and still can't afford it, so now they're worse off than they were. they don't have health insurance and they're paying a fine. and in order for you to force people to get health insurance, you've got to have a very harsh, stiff penalty, and senator clinton has said that we will go after their wages. if a mandate was the solution, we could try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody buy a house. the reason they don't have a house is they don't have the money. >> and when senator obama got the nomination for president, he chose, as his running mate, someone who held the democratic position on the individual mandate. the liberal position on the individual mandate. >> and one word americans don't like -- mandate. they don't like the word

"mandate." i don't want to make this hard. i want to make this simple. >> but the policy technicians don't know how to make health care reform simple. there is one way, of course. open up medicare for everyone, but the political people will always tell you that's impossible, and so the obama administration stepped through the looking glass and into the individual mandate and embraced the idea that liberals once rejected. and so they watered down the provision. liberals always hated the enforcement provision. and so the individual mandate is now simply a mirage. it is only a mandate on paper. one, just one of the republican appellate court judges who reviewed the health care bill cited the emptiness of the mandate in his opinion, finding the law constitutional. and so it may be, that the only way for the mandate to survive in the supreme court on thursday

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we were gonna be successful. he would never give up on any of us.

nora, why is it so hard to be a democrat? what's hard about it? >> oh, because they break your heart. because you believe them. because hope springs eternal -- >> they make promises? >> they make promises, hope springs eternal, and because i do think that liberals tend to be more romantic. >> that was my friend, nora ephron, here on "the last word," one of the most fun nights i had on the show. a tried to collect my thoughts today when i heard that we'd lost her today and, and i

couldn't. but tom hanks could and i want to read you what he had to say about nora. "nora ephron was a journalist/artist who knew what was important to know, how things really worked, what was worthwhile, who was fascinating and why, at a dinner table and on a film set, she lifted us all with wisdom and wit mixed with with love for us and love for life. rita and i are so very sad to lose our friend who prougt so much joy to all who are lucky enough to know her." who else, who else but nora ephron could write "silkwood" and "harry met sally." there has been exactly one writer among us who could do those two wonderful pieces of work. and speaking of "harry met sally," billy crystal put out this statement today. "i'm very sad to learn of nora's passing. she was a brilliant writer and humorist. being her harry to meg's sally will always have a special place in my heart.

i was very lucky to get to say her words." i feel like i was very lucky to get to know her. never had the great honor of working with her, and what we are all trying to remind ourselves of today is just how lucky we were to have her and to be able to enjoy her work. our thoughts tonight with her husband, nick palegi, a great writer in his own right. her sons, jacob and max. read about her. get online, read the storiy abot her tonight. read about how this daughters of writers grew up to be a great writer and director. let's look at her work. >> hi, how you doing? >> i'm in the pink. oh, god!

>> i have to go. >> where you going? >> i have to go with him. >> no! >> i'll be okay. i have it under control. >> no, don't go anywhere with him. >> it's all right. i'mcoming. you want to keep your goddamned hands off. it's all right. >> come on, karen, concentrate. >> how'd that plutonium get in my house? >> did you put it there? >> did i what? what are you, crazy? you think i put -- you think i'd contaminate myself? you think i'd do that. >> you realize, of course, that we can never be friends. >> why not? >> what i'm saying is, and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form, is that men and women can't be friends, because the sex part always gets in the way. >> yes! yes! yes! oh! oh! oh! oh, god, oh.

>> i'll what she's having. >> the whole purpose of places like starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. short, tall, light, dark, cafe, dec decaf, low-fat , no-fat, et cetera. >> what is it you really like to do? >> eat. that's what i really like to do. >> i know. i know. i know. >> and you are so good at it. look at you. >> i'm growing in front of you! ♪ amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me ♪

♪ i once was lost but now i'm found ♪ ♪ was bound, but now i'm free >> that's nora ephron. good evening, americans, and welcome to "the ed show" from new york. as america awaits the supreme court decision on the fate of health care united ruling is starting to take shape. tonight, i'll show you just who benefits from this ruling. this is "the ed show." let's get to work. >> you're going to have more money spent in this election than ever before.

and because times are tough, and because they're spending these ungodly sums, it's going to be close. >> citizens united part two. we'll show you the real world results of how the supreme court is handing democracy to america's millionaires and billionaires. senator bernie sanders joins me on how mitt romney and his billionaire backers are rigging the system so they always win. darrell issa is still going after the president for the fast and furious scandal. the white house is firing back. tonight, the huffington post's sam stein will help me expose the latest attempt in the witch hunt. >> marc anthony is pulling for president obama. >> the president has our back, so it's time to let him know we have his. >> good to have you with us tonight. thanks for watching. tonight, i'm going to start with