henschel say shoot the investigate was spot morgan after the first. let's not forget that we are in a parked car right now and. i think. the the on the well. we never got the shows they're going to keep him safe get ready because of the freedom. they tell marvin here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

a new website with twenty four seven live streaming news towns like to do about it ongoing financial part unlimited free high quality videos for download. and stories you never see mainstream. media so a neat little cynical. person on our team does just say. hey guys welcome michel ancel on the obama show with part of our just stop to sound the topic now i want to hear audio it's just going to video response more of the twitter profile of the. question the queen host on you tube every monday and on the

first day of the show is going to sponsor. local. artist time for tonight's tool time award and tonight it goes to the services the company formerly known as blackwater now here on the show we've documented the massive fraud waste and abuse by blackwater and their ploy ease in war zones overseas in fact blackwater's reputation was so bad they even had to change their name in two thousand and nine to speak hoping that a little rebranding would make everyone forget about their sordid past which includes blackwater contractors being charged with killing civilians in iraq and afghanistan a court case is in fact still pending over a massacre that took place in a sore square in iraq several years ago that left seventeen civilians dead then or

blackwater has also had problems with in afghanistan where they were fined for sending weapons into iraq without proper paperwork then investigated for bribing iraqi officials all an attempt to keep government contractors contracts and two former employees of blackwater have also turned on the company they claim with a private security company brought in the u.s. government by filing bogus receipts double billing and charging government agencies for strippers and prostitutes remember blackwater reportedly a label of disturbers in the hookers of expense reports as more rao welfare recreation so now let's fast forward to today it appears that the blackwater is again trying to rehab their image or prince or longer owes the company and they've turned to former u.s. attorney general john ashcroft for help he's been hired as an independent ethics advisor for the services firm a salary a good idea right after all the negative stories i think this company could use an ethics the visor. maybe even ten of them but let's also pause to look at who is

that they've chosen to do the job john ashcroft is really the guy of you want to help you with your ethics let's take a look to ask ross file as attorney general during president george w. bush's first term in office in two thousand and two the justice department advised the white house of the torture of al qaeda terrorist suspects might be legal if asked ross was called to testify before congress about those than us but he refused requests to make the memos public and wouldn't discuss any possible involvement by the president to a rather lively exchange between ashcroft and the late senator ted kennedy. cheney where ninety thousand two signed by john you know you august two thousand and two justice department. amendment. memo and the march two thousand for the working group those are three memoranda where you provide those to the committee. no i will not like faces. i know what they say

on the basis of a long standing established reasons for providing opinions provided the executive branch. ashcroft also proposed the domestic security enhancements act of two thousand and three was often called the patriot act two because it expanded the powers of the government to fight crime and terrorism with little or no judicial oversight now luckily the measure was never introduced in congress outcry by civil liberties groups what's the deal jay successful on increasing wiretapping capabilities while he was the attorney general and who could also forget the when ashcroft became attorney general he spent eight thousand dollars on blue drapes to hide two nude statues in the great hall the department of justice asked for one of the statues covered because he didn't like being photographed in front of them he was in a t. the it is a hard line social some conserved. and one of the breasts on the statues was

exposed so you know maybe he is qualified to help clean up black bloggers ie if they're just looking for someone to stop hiring strippers or hookers but if they're actually looking for someone to pick a box on a massive waste i would say that eight thousand dollars on curtains because you're a prude would fall right into that category and that's just a little excerpt of the ashcroft files from when he was attorney general so services is he the man to help or rehab your image and clean up your ethics problem i think not but you chose it and that's why the foley known as blackwater is tonight's tool time when. now all the news world bombards us with the latest updates on the killing of osama bin laden the gaming world is going nuts over the massive security breach of sony's networks last week we told you how the play station three online network was hacked leaving the information of seventy seven million gamers in hackers hands critical information like user names passwords

e-mail addresses network log it's all things that could be useful of hackers wanted to identity theft but then just days later sony's other online network sony online entertainment was also hacked and that case they still private information from twenty four point six million accounts some of them with our take credit card data the data back to two thousand and seven and we should also note that so we had affected mostly non-u.s. users which makes this hack now a global problem so as you can imagine gamers are now pretty pissed on multiple levels of one being that their private information was hacked the other being the bay can't actually play games on live because the networks are still shut down and we can't leave out the all so many officially reported that the actual credit card data wasn't stolen readings or is all reporting fraud on their credit cards proving that sony's attempt at claiming or calming its customers was nothing but lies so all gamers are stewing with anger sony is an emergency repair. several resources

are now reporting of the japanese electronics giant has hired outside investigators to help them fix their flimsy network security and to catch the hackers who flip the company upside down and in fact many high profile government departments and firms are also getting involved in this matter data for today which is led by former agents within the u.s. naval criminal investigative service is working with the f.b.i. and department of homeland security even the house committee on energy and commerce so clearly so he has no problem driving the cash to bring in the best of the best to fix their problem but also figure out another area where they're really really hurting their public relations department we already told you they waited days even alert their customers about the first ring of security breaches now people are questioning why we haven't heard more from the company's c.e.o. howard stringer all questions have been peeled by the company spokesman and the executive deputy president offered a public apology last weekend but stringer has yet to say one word publicly on this

issue and when invited to testify before congress so many politely declined the offer i wonder why you know what stringer if you're not going to man up tell the public about what's going on and maybe somebody else out there should be the c.e.o. and as we pointed out before the company was days late on personally informing customers about the severity of the hack so sony a highly respected alex tronic company failed to protect the one area that they probably should have paid the most attention to their own customers personal data and with the constant updates of conflicting information i think it only proves that sony has no clue as to how severe or damaging this string of malicious hacks might be for the company's future so this is the most epic fail in sony's history and it could cost the company's profits and reputation in the long run meanwhile all those angry sony gamers are definitely switching to other sources to get their fix. two years ago the obama justice department. said shock waves throughout the

country when they release new guidelines telling fedorov already is not to arrest marijuana users and suppliers who were violating local laws eric holder even said that it would be an insufficient use of funds going after people in states where medical marijuana had been legalized but now it seems like they've done a complete one eighty the department of justice is recently sent letters to states threatening that they will go after state employees and a look at both civil and criminal penalties for those who run large scale operations even if they're acceptable under state law and already many states that we're headed towards and i'm a distant legalization a path of started to back off so why the drastic shift in policy and could this do a medical marijuana industry here to discuss it with me it's got more going associate editor of stop the drug war dot org scott thanks so much for being here tonight sure first of all let's talk about the letters that are now being sent out do we know how many states have received. some of the exact details of what they say it looks as though just about every state that's working on on implementing

a medical marijuana program this year has been targeted we haven't heard anything similar in the district of columbia yet but we very well may in the near future and it's also going to states where they already have going to sell marijuana right like california and the states like colorado and washington for example had medical marijuana for some time but there are efforts under way to to regulate it you know in a more strict way and so obviously anywhere where there are efforts underway to improve the regulations and get the state more involved in controlling where the marijuana is sold who sells it and so forth the federal government is interfering with that so what does that tell you that the obama administration i mean in the meantime what we have fifteen states plus the district of course of columbia where medical marijuana is legalized are they trying to just stop things to scare people i mean if you send a letter that says the state employees are going to get you know thrown into jail obviously it's working that's making a lot of governors already step back it works as a propaganda tactic as a scare tactic. i don't know that it's going to work beyond that but essentially

the their agenda here is to to distract this story and confuse states that are working to regulate medical marijuana and these are the same sorts of tactics that we've seen from sort of the old guard of drug war demagogues going back to the mid ninety's when when medical marijuana was first legalized in california for fifteen years we have been told you can't have medical marijuana it's illegal under federal law you just can't do it now we've been figuring out ways to do it in one state after another after another and one thing that the federal government has never taught is arrested a state employee for enforcing their own state's laws and this is unprecedented what we're seeing right now it's it's not unprecedented in so far as the government is misrepresenting its own illegal agenda they don't actually intend to do this it's a law it's just one in a series of lies that the department of justice and the drug enforcement administration of put out there in an effort to you know push down the medical marijuana industry as it obviously is continuing to spread throughout the country

they're really just trying to intimidate the states and stop the medical marijuana movement from moving forward it's not going to work one thing that i think we see happening on the sidelines or as a result of this move is now there are certain governors out there that are trying to lobby for marijuana to be rescheduled right as a substance to or at her schedule to excuse me by my knowledge isn't completely up to par but so that would you know back in february normal was saying that this is something that pharmaceutical companies were also lobbying for because that way they can get their hands on it to create some you know some types of drugs we've driven is from t.h.c. so in essence if they get all of the governors to start lobbying for the rescheduling of marijuana then is that going to end up helping out the pharmaceutical companies and is that why the government's doing it because the pharmaceutical companies are lobbying them i just came up with this very well you know what you're not a you're not alone and i think that there's certainly truth to the fact that in the . pharmaceutical companies are interested in getting involved in the medical

marijuana business the drug has a better reputation for the stuff that's on the market now people know that it's safe it's highly effective it treats a wide variety of conditions so the pharmaceutical ization of marijuana is going to happen the question is will that coincide with suppression of the existing herbal cannabis market that's emerged in my opinion i don't think it will and the reason is that we've made all this progress in terms of reforming medical marijuana policies because that's what the public wants because the medicine is cheap it's easy to grow the side effects are pleasurable people like it if you want to pharmaceutical eyes that take the fun out of it drive up the costs we have a legal framework to do that but it's not going to reduce the public and through z s m for reforming marijuana laws that process is always going to continue to support it's always going to be there and you can you can manipulate state governments you can threaten to arrest state officials people no you're not really going to do that people know that as long as we continue to move forward this

industry started in one thousand nine hundred six it was valued in a recent report at one point seven billion dollars every dollar of that is technically illegal under federal law and yet it continues to grow so i think the important thing is for for state officials and for the public to recognize that these threats are erroneous they're aimed at intimidating us they're aimed it at preventing our further progress and you know we have a lot more progress to make and we're going to continue to succeed every year there are new medical marijuana space there are new reforms taking effect and the polls show more support for that than ever before and it's definitely interesting to think back to two thousand and nine when attorney general eric holder was saying that we don't need to waste our resources and waste our funds offer going after these people it's not like we're in any better financial situation today so i don't know why they would want to spend money on that but why do you think they're going about this in a much more secretive because when i feel like when they first released i'd like everybody heard about it right there are whispers everywhere they said they're not going to go after people within this. and here i think they're trying to keep it

completely below the radar well i think the reality here it's a bit of a conundrum but i think that the obama administration does understand the intense political popularity of the idea of bringing more of an era when it was you know when they announced the initial holder memo saying that they were going to respect state medical marijuana laws they leaked that story to the associated press on the sunday night you know they were looking for a whole full week's news cycle on that when they knew the public was going to like it they were delivering on a campaign promise and it got really positive press everywhere but now it hasn't liver and so i'm just curious where do you think that you know advocates of legalization are going to go in two thousand and twelve well in two thousand and twelve i think we're likely to see full scale legalization measures on the ballot in multiple states and if the results you know for prop nineteen in california last year any indication you know that thinking in the last three and a half months and in an offer of action you're going to have this huge boost in young voters in two thousand and twelve they could more than fill that gap so fold

legalization is coming up on the horizon very very quickly here and that's likely got something to do with why we're seeing the department of justice kind of freaking out a little bit right now realizing that this thing has already sort of moved beyond that point they can't push it back in public support is just so immense and continues to grow and once that sense of inevitability kicks in suddenly there's nothing to fall back on all of your propaganda talking points have been refuted the internet creates this powerful resource the president's online forums are getting dominated by discussion of marijuana legalization everywhere you look at this issue is taking control and it's probably too late for the people that are deeply invested in keeping marijuana legal to come back and actually read it and we will see where it goes because i definitely remember you know a lot of momentum around prop nineteen that it didn't go through selling definitely keeping our eye on this and you so much for joining us thank you. i don't go anywhere we save the best for last night have a cocktail and join us for happy hour if i can fly a listener and lucy craft an awful join me to discuss. on the hottest headlines

today when we return. we. will have the. safe get ready for freedom. hi guys welcome to shelly's hell on the on the shelf part of our just stop to sound the topics now i want to hear the audio just go on to this video response part of twitter first part of the question is a link hostile you feel that every monday and on thursday the show long response is

a lot. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else here's some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you don't . charge is a big. car

right it's a wednesday and we're doing another round of happy hour today so joining me perhaps it's night our correspondent lauren lyster and our two producer lucy gavin out an all girls happy hour kind of like as you know we always have to throw a guy and has to be fair but any of them any of them exactly let's talk about something obama they did they announce today that they aren't going to be releasing a photo of osama bin laden to prove his death what do you think about that i think they're waiting to release a bloody severed head on ground zero tomorrow. i mean you know i think that neo should go i will tell you i was really hoping he'd walk out of the bloody severed head when he gave his speech to the nation but i thought i'd like people freak out

over this is kind of absurd i mean at the end of the day first of all we know that sixty one percent of americans apparently believe that osama bin laden is spending the right of the rest of his. metaphysical time in hell according to a very useful c.n.n. poll which decided to ask people what they think is what kind of benefit metaphysical space is occupying but at the end of the day if their rationale is they don't want these photos to be out there because they don't want to be or a recruitment tool they don't want to incite violence you know what i hate to break to the white house there's plenty of stuff that this country does that would incite violence or could be used as propaganda tool whether we like it or not whether it's dead images of casualties in our wars in iraq afghanistan and elsewhere where you can do video tomorrow from obama at ground zero if you haven't been dead against this country it's not that hard to find stuff to inspire people to go and do bad things i agree with you and that's something that we often talk about and there's so many instances of our u.s. foreign policy that many critics argue does fuel that kind of you know people to take action against the united states or could feel and i think it's really interesting that coming from obama who just you know and his interview with sixty

minutes according to transcribe has said that you know he doesn't think that releasing a picture would really do anything to debunk conspiracy theorists that you know al qaeda already knows bin laden is gone they don't have a problem with that nobody you know these pictures are only do anything i find i kind of ironic coming from a man who just a week earlier finally released his long form birth certificate after all i was going to try to gave it to the but i know he i mean he if anybody knows the theories it out is saying that there's no need to give up to the people who. try to please them and i especially think it's interesting because these days i think it's a lot fewer americans that are actually questioning whether or not osama bin laden's dead people internationally right if that's the type of message to that want to send the like is america. here that if we want to we want to show you know for example do anything that's how bad it is coming out saying that they have their doubts i mean because you know that is going to be releasing this morning videotapes just like tupac did we're going to see what. are you going to pull are

going to trust anything that comes out of this government anyway and so they might as well just get it over with and do it because you know it. cut this let's make like a five dollars bet two weeks from now one week from now we're going to be back here talking about look they have to cave in and they release the photos anyway or how much you want to bet they come out on wiki leaks how much you wanna bet they find a way to surface or they just somehow come out and make it into the well and we have and i know everything below or out there besides to prove it to the entire world and i want to be with them play for the record a sitting u.s. senator for the fake photo today and said that she saw i've been photo which then and then maybe if you look on the ground what is her name the hottest one the really hot one the hottest one with the correct air fares very honestly it's true the new hampshire senator we can earn a living artist not reported move on to the next subject sarah pavan tweeted about this today and she said show photo as warning to others seeking america's destruction no pussyfooting around no politicking no drama it's part of the mission just murder very pale and no pussyfooting around so she's saying that obama

actually went buried that committed the cold blooded assassination you know ordered the strike but then now he's being a he was one of the being alone he was there because he really getting out speaking of sarah palin she was at the white house correspondents dinner of the weekend where everybody got hammered right before they had to report of the fact that a song gone for good and killed they were still recovering and the law she's have is have a lot before where she was asked a question and couldn't answer see what it was this time. these. are. not. just because. they're getting. who's the most interesting influential journalist i don't know i have an entire dinner table of journalists with the white house correspondents dinner she goes on fox she's

a paid contributor to fox news she couldn't even say like bill o'reilly or so because she speaks to every single listening rather than just. put in her defense i don't know who the most influential journalist was up today to you know me i don't want her to and i think what so and i think what's so interesting too i mean looking beyond sarah palin the people that answered so many of the mentioned commentators and opinion makers and rachel maddow jon stewart as they're the most influential journalists and of what they're sort of low in children list is not done in these days if you look at anyone i mean the one show that any alliance are the ones that normally do have all those positions it normally won't be a writer it's not going to be someone who's on t.v. each a a larger audience that's how people gauge influence these days you know for better or worse like how many people glenn beck brought out to the national mall aster that was the scariest moment of all time all ok let's move on to our last story here the a.c.l.u. is going after some columbus city schools for censoring l.g.b. t.

web sites and they're claiming that this is because they don't want kids to access pornography or any kind of adult material but essentially anything that might tell you about i don't know gay people or lesbians or transgenders isn't allowed yeah i didn't find this shocking that this is an issue that they feel you are dealing with with schools i mean i went to public school and i don't think they were even allowed to teach in health class that there was any other form of contraception other than abstinence i so i think that this is really like it is yeah that's why i went to public school and so. california. only allowed him to do that even abstinence so i think the fact that this is the issue that they see all use going up against with schools with sex that sort of thing it's kind of shows the progression maybe that we've had i know that's kind of a different take but i'm outraged that they're blocking congressman mark foley's web site i think it's a terrible thing but you know i have to say when i go i'm human rights watch website or their human rights campaign website and look at all of those hot steamy

photos pussyfooting is not really the next comes to mind are being girls thanks for joining. me go to now we have our tweet of the day and as we just mentioned sarah palin tweeted this afternoon that obama should release those death photos and stop pussyfooting around so she's basically calling him a weak leader so tonight we think obama should tweet that he's not a moose we can't stop i'm going to put him on just playing the only thing better for me just a picture would suffice that's it for tonight's show thanks for tuning in make sure you come back tomorrow musician and medium go grammy will be stopping by for happy hour and in the meantime go forgive me for fan of the alone or show on facebook and all of us on twitter and you missed any of tonight's or any other nights you can always catch dollar. plus three of our show where you force the interview as well as the show some party coming up next is adam proces the man.

marvin here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture. wealthy british. market. find out what's really happening to the global economy

with my next concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our keep. the official ante up location. called touch from the i.q. sampson. video on demand policies mindful of costs an r.s.s. feeds now in the palm of your. question. com. limitless .