what a cool tactic here too because so many statements that i've read from the republican governors and lawmakers is that they're angry that the unions spend so much money and campaigns why is it ok when a private business does it but not ok for business to do it well i don't think i think everyone should be able to spend money on campaigns it's part of the first amendment that's why i was so excited by the citizens united case that's why i don't demonize businesses for spending my that's what do you guys use for spending money i would just like to see transparency throughout the whole thing. and on the issue of spending money unions actually represent people corporations don't represent anybody i mean there's supposedly people because they don't know shareholders and employees that are a little nuts typically don't actually have votes but let's get back to the base this year republicans are not willing to take on the real issue which is workers are not making enough in this economy and wall street has not been reformed and instead they're going to target unions they're going to target you need to because so many people are not in them anymore because of union busters that you know intimidate people you know you get fired you know if third of the time somebody gets fired when you try to join a union and so as

a result so few people are in them now that they don't feel any relation to them and so it's easy to point them out and say hey these guys are the ones hurting you because people don't understand what's going on our guys we have to wrap it up that's all the time we have an interesting dynamic turning american workers against union workers thanks so much for being here and now still to come tonight did you know the limits are not equal here the last that's the word from a supreme court justice and tonight we're calling about an article of time segment and three hundred twelfth congress was sworn into office today so the g.o.p. is in charge now but can the party of no for the last two years to actually bring all of the tea party problems we're going to hash it all out and more.

again this is all see a return of the headline. more than four hundred people remain stranded off russia's far east cards that the three ships are frozen solid on new year's eve by the breakers are trying to reach the vessels what the coral sickness is forcing them to move a left turn and walk a pace. hard work behind the times with gaza's unemployment rate still high people are finding it increasingly difficult to get

a job despite israel easing its blockade. and washington is getting ready for another two years of divisive political struggle of the one hundred twelve u.s. congress is sworn in with a republican majority in the party is making play promises about spending cuts and codes to derail what could be called president obama's big government program. up next part two of the alyona show stage. i. well it's time for tonight's tool time ward and for the second night in a row we're giving it to a member of the supreme court that's right justice antonin scalia excuse me is a hard line conservative and as we reported earlier on this show he was scheduled today to teach a class on the constitution to incoming freshman lawmakers and the class was

scheduled for today but when news of the event caused a controversy the whole thing was closed off to the media so we don't know if it really happened or not but now his recent comments on parts of the constitution are leaving many people shocked and in an interview with california lawyer magazine justice scalia proclaimed that the u.s. constitution the fourteenth amendment specifically doesn't protect women from discrimination he said quote certainly the constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex the only issue is whether it prohibits it it doesn't nobody ever thought that's what it meant nobody ever voted for that is a concern society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex hey we have things called legislatures and they enact things called laws wow really i think scalia just said that women who have back one hundred years or so i mean let me remind you right if we're going to talk about the fourteenth amendment the equal protection clause which requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people

within its jurisdiction has passed an eight hundred sixty eight at the time it was addressed specifically for discrimination against blacks but well now it's applied to everyone else in this country times have changed but still even saying no actually sorry you can't expand it leave that to the legislatures so if a legislator decides in the future to make discrimination towards women or mexicans or chinese legal they can just go ahead and do that if they please the constitution doesn't protect them from that's going on weren't you cool with its. handing the constitutional right of free speech to corporations and then allowing them to spend on political campaigns way to show your true colors there i'm just scared i'm sad the justice on the highest court in the land doesn't think equal protection means equal protection for everybody and i'm sure that his wife and his three daughters are all grateful that he just made them second class citizens so that's why justice scalia is tonight's top time winner. well it is official republicans have now assumed control of the u.s. house of representatives john boehner has been sworn in as the new speaker although

by the way the media was covering it you would have thought it was his presidential inauguration interviewing family members staking out in front of his home all eyes then on mr orange but as we learned as we've had learned time and time again campaigning is one thing leading is quite the other for republicans really focus on job creation or just on repealing health care in the name of jobs darrell issa has already sent a letter to businesses asking them which regulations they don't like and what about the one hundred billion dollars in spending cuts that was promised while republicans have already scaled that number back by as much as half so well fixing washington always remain just talk one join me to discuss it is tom hartman host of the big picture and the washington examiner is j.p. frere gentlemen thank you so much for being here do you have to start with you because the last time we had you on the show i believe we were discussing the g.o.p.'s pledge to america that they made in this pledge to america they outlined

a plan to cut one hundred billion dollars in discretionary spending somehow that's already been scaled back the first day yet and there are already like one you know it might just have to be fifty what kind of a pledge is that well i think what they're doing is they're being they're being fairly pragmatic i do i want to play you know i make a lot of you know i told you i wrote a very good no no no what i was that what i'm saying is that it was a very ambitious plan it wasn't business enough frankly and to see them scaling it back to fifty million. cut back half of what they had originally said that too is a disappointment but then you look at what they're actually trying to accomplish here i mean they are they are trying to also accomplish the repeal of obamacare now or they're going to be able to do that not with the senate not with this president president obama is not going to sign the repeal of his own landmark legislation so that's not going to happen so basically what they need to do is they need to be as much of a. of an obstacle to getting more spending done. and in government as possible and they're actually doing a pretty good job with it if you look at the house rules that they just set up they allow the budget chairman paul ryan to actually say that you know there's that

there's a cap on how much congress can spend and that's that's a step in the right direction top do you think of actually being an obstacle to cutting or to add to spending are they being an obstacle to this is insane first of all yes we're going to going to one hundred billion dollars maybe they were it was there were lying in the beginning their campaigns number two and they never thought they'd get health care and number two the whole larger issue here of what these republicans are trying to do you talked about you know let's stop the spending really the plan is let's stop obama let's stop any any possibility of any kind of success on this guy's part so that when he runs in two thousand and twelve he will be as as mitch mcconnell said a one term president that's what this is all about although it's awful can be i mean it one must say though that obama is sort of synonymous with greater spending i mean that's not to say the republican spending ronald reagan spent borrowed talking about iran more money the funny thing is that every president yeah we're

just going to enjoy my own of reagan and then and then and then and then george w. bush doubled what reagan did but you know it's all going to join reagan residents gave us seventy five percent of the total national debt that you guys are saying oh my god we've got to choke off everything to pair off well you know the interesting thing about that is that at least reagan was able to defeat the soviet union when he spend that money now letters to you know the last years i predicted a decade before reagan came into office we did two years by the. world when it happened now we want to tell anybody was paying because it was so that you would have to take about so that's really interesting me now what i actually have bought and i'm sure you have to do all of that any great on a candidate i've got a set all the spending is going to be ok you know what i actually actually if obama's spending had actually lead to positive results for the economy and actually helped to defeat unemployment well we'd be having a very different conversation and fourthly that hasn't been the case president obama's spending. these have been devoted to the project when i know we're not going to say it was so she's still be losing four hundred thousand jobs a month. we were losing four hundred thousand jobs a month under george w.

bush we're now actually adding jobs you're saying that didn't happen unemployment is now higher than it was when obama said that we we would not have more unemployment as you please on how to save you thousands of people every single muslim into the job more my mother no longer losing jobs the main point here is that president obama seems like he's addicted to spending and republicans when they are opposing him they're opposing think he's absolutely addicted. also addicted to spending when tommy does it the government in general is addicted to spending sure the freshman g.o.p. if i'm correct just threw a fat party at the w. hotel last night with leann rimes performing where it was twenty five hundred dollars a ticket just to get in and that's not a little lavish spending when they're supposed to be here in the the the rain of austerity when republicans have taken over i just don't see any actual cuts going on yet they're already walking back from everything that they promised well i mean let's not let's not conflate the things right i mean you know they weren't using taxpayer dollars for that party that was something where they were trying to get

contributions to the party there's really no reason to hate there are there are going to be starting campaigning right away i'm going to have a certain year or is that already a campaign for twenty twelve obviously this is a reagan started the perpetual campaign and it's been going on pretty much your persons. are doing it for you i also want to ask you is. there anything that has written a letter here to businesses asking them what regulations they don't like so maybe republicans can fix that for them to make their lives a little bit easier all in the name of this providing jobs what do you make of that well i think that that's probably a smart move i mean the first thing they're going to want to do is you're going to want to solicit input from everybody i mean it's like when president obama president obama actually had a meeting with a group of labor leaders as well as with corporate executives and he's been talking about reaching out to corporate executives as well as they. leaders. are your apple you know what rules they have we set on you that you don't like following the you don't like abiding by what happens when i was doing

a big oil what do you like so we can change it so we can have another huge oil spill in the fall the point is what's the point of a hearing for instance you get people in that know something about their area where they're affected by government and you ask them what you what you can change or what their thoughts are now you can ignore it you can discard it you can then i mean i said has also gone after companies that were in bed with government so it's not like he's so it's not like he's just immediately answerable to these people but sending out these letters is not the worst idea in the world i think the optics are bad but it's not necessarily it was a fabulous idea tom i says one of the most corrupt politicians in america he started back in two thousand he said earmarks are tantamount to bribery and then in two thousand and seven he got two hundred twenty four million dollars for their marks two thousand a to get one hundred forty million dollars for the march two thousand and nine ago he was back again over two hundred million dollars in earmarks of what he calls bribes i mean this guy is and you look back at his campaign to get to see gray davis and his collusion with with kennelly and enron the whole thing he thought he was going to be the guy you know when schwarzenegger

came and he broke down in tears on television oh my god i'm not going to be the governor. he's totally power mad i'm really frankly concerned about this guy having this you know what do you think the republicans are going to do with the debt ceiling because this is an issue where the tea partiers you know the people that helped get them elected many of these tea party elects they fundamentally are opposed to raising the debt ceiling at the same time we have an administration official saying that this is going to be absolutely catastrophic cataclysmic you cannot let the entire country defaults are republicans going to go ahead and do it i think that i think the republicans will the debt ceiling to go through but there should be but they should do so with a big which is never again i mean they should basically say if we're going to sign on to this debt ceiling we are also going to have to get an exchange a great deal of spending cuts so should the risk the world go by any more american bonds and just watch our bond rating plummet. i mean if we were as if we were if they don't see it if they say never again that's that's saying to everybody else in the world twelve months from now or twenty four months from now. you're going to be

useless you'd actually be correct if it weren't for the fact that we're also talking about you know reducing spending i mean it needs to be are you going to get involved with like i would really like to be able to get an appointment without you interrupting me know as soon as it were you know going to get a stream of you know dollars now when i was in now now when i say that they need to be serious about spending spending cuts they need to figure out how we're actually going to cut this all back how we're actually going to pare it down and it's just interesting that we take it as this foregone conclusion that government needs to continue spending as much as it is who said and nobody here said the government needs to continue spending as much as we all think i would say that no good and this is you want to get in sixty one percent of americans start cutting down but where republicans going to do that how are they actually going to fulfill like i said any of these promises because they don't want to touch anything military they don't want to touch i mean this hundred billion dollars right was discretionary spending that's not that's not medicare and social security so where is going to start from well and it also needs to happen in meet we need to actually have real and out of it we need to look at social security at least in terms of means testing

i mean there needs to be. it's not easy but it did has it's own budgets go two point six trillion dollars surplus it's going to be a four point six trillion dollars surplus everything is fine with social security you feel the social security will be able to pay every obligation for at least twenty seven years and then if you simply raise the cap from one hundred six thousand dollars to one hundred fifty thousand dollars toward or drop to put a hole up to two hundred fifty and got rid of the capital that would be solvent forever what with the different guys on your side of dollars and we did that the difference in opinion between tom and myself is that. when when i look at the election of november i think to myself this is a public that wants government to be reduced that they want to see actual cuts that's what they're saying ok so what did you take away from the c.b.s. poll that was just you know two days ago c.b.s. just just came out was full so when they asked americans what do you want to do to reduce the deficit three percent said cut social security four percent said cut medicare twenty percent said cut defense spending sixty one percent raise taxes on

the rich it's not a coincidence that after one hundred years of more or less balanced budget reagan drops the top tax rate from seventy four percent to twenty eight percent and all of a sudden we've got exploding deficits that continue to this day we need to roll back the reagan tax argenter or say i have to wrap it up because we're at a time where it will be interesting to see what this new republican led congress actually if any of the money keeps getting spent or starts getting thanks so much thank you now still to come tonight if you know that ninety percent of all americans eat healthy we heard that statement today we laughed about it we'll tell you who's making out because it's just a moment and conflicts of interest inside the department of defense after pressure from congress the d.o.d. was supposed to announce new regulations when it comes to their contracts but just wait until you hear what this new rules for me are only.

children down. see a thousand by the end of elementary school five hundred thousand violent acts by the age of eighteen from movies television shows to video games to children. twenty four hour news channels is now team every day formulate a stable. in. those flooded for shakespeare. and journalistic future. god came down from heaven and stopped. at the. moment in a pretty what. makes the pill.

everybody wants come. sergeant of the israeli defense forces. during his service scorched a street fight. on the colonel of the chilean armed forces participated in keeping down a military revolt. a sergeant in the u.s. army. tried to become an american by getting pardon the. franks and reasons differ but one thing brings them together once they disobey. in the backyard i'm not going to let it. i'm not. crop up and then

spread all over the country. virtually all terrorists today are muslim do we have the right to make such provocative statements and do muslim schools have the right to exist. in new york city. it's no secret that with a new year people are making efforts to start being healthy and that includes what they eat a consumer reports survey asked about one thousand americans if they think they are eating healthy and considering the obesity is a national epidemic in this country well it's safe to say that we were completely shocked when we saw the results of the study according to the poll ninety percent of people think that they either eat a somewhat or extremely healthy diet and only ten percent so they don't eat healthy

at all now when you look at the details of the study sixty percent of the people surveyed say that they try to incorporate whole grains let's start into their diets and i guess that's good news until we come upon the last probably the most crucial part of this study when respondents gave their answers they also had to give their body mass index and unfortunately the b.m.i. is do not quite fit about fifty seven percent of participants have body mass index that declared them obese or very overweight oh really there's just one conclusion i can come to with this poll either most americans are living in la la land or they just are simply lying to themselves sure you can say to you your greens substitute salads for greasy foods but if you're eating a huge salad with a range dressing all over it don't kid yourself and yeah you might be cutting back on the sweets but if you're still eating four or five meals a day you're still consuming too much food it's like that joke about ordering

a supersize meal and then getting a diet coke get real guys look at this video i mean it was not hard to take to the streets to find obese people everywhere and that is not the picture of a country where ninety percent of people are eating healthy. all those popular e-cards everyone sends out around the holidays turns out they can be deceiving just before christmas it is a little e-card from the white house started arriving in boxes around the country and the red holiday email card with its brightly decorated christmas tree prompted recipients to click on a link and that's where the problem began the link unleashed a malware that was able to steal information off the person's computer and a fake card was sent to steal documents and other data from law enforcement military and government workers and get this they targeted those involved in computer crime investigations so analysts who study the malicious software say that hackers were able to use the e-mail to collect sensitive law enforcement data now

so far there's no evidence that any of that classified information was compromised but law enforcement officials are of course still checking and the attack comes as the federal government is trying to beef up its cyber security after the release of state department cables on wiki leaks and the e-mail has been traced back to a server in belarus now security officials are not sure how many people got the e-mail or how many items were affected by the latest attack but while these types of attacks are fairly common this one stood out because of the use of the white house connection to lure in those recipients and why it targeted law enforcement but don't you find it just slightly ironic that people in law enforcement fell for an e-mail scam and in the end of the obama's health hack you that is the world that we live in. conflicts of interest government contracts are rife with them and as one defense contractor might be awarded a large amount of cash to build a weapon rather rather than

a completely independent different source testing the weapon will often be a subsidiary of that same defense contractor so after increasing pressure from congress the dia de was set to unveil their new strict regulations on conflict of interest only problem is once the final document can. on december twenty ninth it turns out they instead loosen those restrictions they limited the reviews to only major programs pledged not to unnecessarily were stripped the ability of defense firms to land and could have deals and they didn't define any penalties for any violators so what was the point of all of that when joining me to discuss it is scott horton contributing editor on legal and national security matters for harper's magazine scott thanks so much for joining us tell me first when you think happened here i mean there was all this pressure right from the pentagon pressure from congress we thought that they were going to make the regulations more strict and then come december twenty ninth they loosened them talk about a one hundred. well i'd say grandfather frost arrived on the scene with

a nice big present for raytheon and now a bird that's what we have of the day if you read through the regulation that finally came out of the pentagon and it looks like something that a major defense contractor would have written it not only does not have stringent new rules it goes so far as to say that you know if in the event he does have a serious conflict it must be allowed to a million or eat it in some way build a chinese wall or an anti conflict wall or something of this sort so you know i think it's certainly not the case that all depends contractors were against this idea of conflict of interest were you. regulation in fact i'd say the entrepreneurial small new contractors who were trying to get the put in the door really wanted it in fact they wabby tore it they were up on capitol hill pushing

for it were as the big stablish defense contractors were the ones that have the problems were opposing it but they were opposing it very quietly behind closed doors and hitting keep people on congress and this point is absolutely no question who. rules the roost at the pentagon it's the big contractors it's the majors and the contract officers have an incestuous relationship with them there's a revolving door and they expect asian employment the level of oversight monitoring is very very little low and those contract officers like the big contractors they feel comfortable with them they want to keep them they distrust the new young entrepreneurial guys and that's a disaster for the taxpayers frankly now i probably did a horrible job of explaining the conflict of interest probably over simplified by saying that someone could be contracted to build a weapon and they're subsidiary was the one that was going to inspect the weapon

can you can you go a little further into what types of conflicts of interest to really think well that actually is the prime concern we've got because we're talking about major defense weapon systems and it is it is entirely possible in fact it's likely be a major contractor would both be involved in webs doing research and development or assist writing software or at. figuring in building a hard equipment or it and they'd be involved in testing and proving it well course you've got obvious conflicts of interest and if it's the pentagon comes to them and asked them to do a study or research on something that. that's been prepared by a competitors a conflict of interest is obvious and that's waiting but it's also not usually direct so usually the division they would go to to do that stuff they wouldn't have

any direct competition but it would be a part of a massive corporation would be competition and what we hear is part of the pushback is that although these these companies are all professional they understand they can build fire wall. and they'll just do their job but in fact to every serious skaro who's looked at this says no the laws of the marketplace apply here and if they're part of a major corporation beds looking for business on the other end they're going to perform in a way that reflects the interests of their of the corporate whole and i think that that's it's just common sense frankly and that's what the pentagon is not taking into account here well i was going to say you would think that they would put up some kind of a defense mechanism for themselves right but within these new rules and they don't define any types of penalties for violators there's no there's no fines here you know no withholding of payments no de bar mens and it's almost like they're asking

hey have all the conflicts of interest you want screw up all you want because we're not going to touch you anyway. exactly right that because it's worse than that it's worse than that the policy statement that the beginning here says that the policy of the department of defense is not to de bar or block a contractor because of a complex the policy of the department of defense is to continue as they put it to get the best benefit they can from established contract relationships so they say we like you we've used you before we think you're a good contractor so we're not going to we're not going to kick you out the door penalize you just because you have some t.v.'s stupid conflict of interest that's official pentagon policy and then sharking and it runs flatly contradictory to the policies that barack obama announced when he was elected he said we were going to see a toughening of conflict of interest rules across the board and a lot of attention paid to government contracting

a large part of which occurs inside the department defense this is another area in which the obama administration has not come through on a campaign promise and i think you're right and this definitely shows us who rules the roost here in washington scott thanks so much for joining us great to be with you. now before we go it's time for our tweet of the day another historic first here in washington today as the hundred twelfth congress was sworn in two years after voters in this country elected their first black president now democrats were tweeting on the arrival of john boehner we thought they would tweet what a country our first orange speaker of the house what took us so long that's it for tonight's show thanks for tuning in make you come back tomorrow you know america's michael lyndall be on the program to talk about his recent obsession with the constitution and whether or not it should be taken at face value in the meantime don't forget to become a fan of the lower show on facebook and follow us on twitter if you missed any of tonight's show or any other that you can always catch all the you tube dot com.