investigate was scott morgan after the birth. let's not forget that we met in a parking lot right here. i think. either one well. we never got the look as to the keep him safe get ready because their freedom. they charge in here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

new website which twenty four seven live streaming news tell us what to do about it ongoing financial heart unlimited high quality videos for download. and still you never see. me so. the political. posts are too dumb to say. hey guys welcome to shower and sell on the obama show which parts are just stuck to say on the topic now i want to hear audio just go on to this video response to twitter first part of the question that will host. on you tube every monday and on

thursday the show longer sponsored. your voice you. are it's 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 employees in war zones overseas in fact blackwater's arbitration was so bad they even had to change their name in two thousand and nine because the helping 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 sort of square in iraq several years ago that left seventeen civilians dead then or blackwater has also had problems with iraq and afghanistan where they were fined

for sending weapons into iraq without proper paperwork then investigated for arriving iraqi officials all in attempt to keep government contractors contracts and two former employees of blackwater have also turned on the company they claim of the private security company and defrauded the u.s. government by filing bogus receipts double billing and charging government agencies for strippers and prostitutes and or blackwater reportedly labeled the strippers in the hookers of expense reports as more ryle welfare recreation panellist forty today it appears that the blackwater is again trying to rehab their image erik prince for 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 adviser for the services trying to salvage a good idea right after all the negative stories i think this company could use an ethics advisor maybe even ten of them. but let's also close to look at who is that

they've chosen to do the job john ashcroft is really the guy that 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 illegal ashcroft was called to testify before congress about those minutes but he refused requests to make the memos public and wouldn't discuss any possible involvement by the president which led to a rather lively exchange between ashcroft and the late senator ted kennedy. january ninth two thousand true signed by john you know you all just two thousand chief justice department and the. amendment. memo and the march two thousand troop. working group those are three number where you provide those to the committee. no i will not. basis. on which bases

on the basis the long standing established reasons for providing opinions provided the executive branch. now ashcroft also propose that the best of security enhancements act of two thousand and three was often called the patriot act q 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 you don't outdrive by civil liberties groups but the d.o.j. was successful at increasing wiretapping capabilities while he was the attorney general and who could also forget the when i became attorney general he spent eight thousand dollars on blue great side to nude statues in the great hall the department of justice asked thought of the statues covered because he didn't like being photographed in front of them he was in a tizzy because the hardline social six conservative and one of the. breasts on the

statues was exposed so you know maybe it is qualified to help clean up blackwater's e. if they're just looking for someone to stop hiring strippers or hookers but if they're actually looking for someone to take a barf on the 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 formerly 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 network last week we told you how the play station three online network was hacked leaving the information of seventy seven million gamers and hackers hands critical information like user names passwords e-mail addresses network log it's all things which could be useful of hackers

wanted to conduct identity theft but then just days later sony's other online network sony online entertainment was also happed and that case they still private information from twenty four point six million accounts some of them with archaic credit card data the dated back to two thousand and seven and we should also note that as so we have 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 one being that their private information was hacked the other being that they can't actually play games on live because the networks are still shut down and we can't leave out and also he officially reported that the actual credit card data wasn't stolen many users are reporting fraud on their credit cards proving that sony's attempt it claiming or calming its customers was nothing but lies so while gamers are stewing with anger so many is an emergency repair about several risk.

sources 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 type firms are also getting involved in this matter that authority which is led by former agents within the u.s. naval criminal investigative service is working with the f.b.i. and the partner of homeland security even the house committee on energy and commerce so clearly so he has no problem dropping lots of 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 that's their public relations department we already told you that they waited days to 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 fueled by the company spokesman and executive deputy president offered a public apology last weekend but stringer has yet to say one word publicly on this

issue and one invited to testify before congress so any politely declined that offer i wonder why you know what stringer if you're not going to manage tell the public about what's going on that maybe somebody else out there should be the c.e.o. and as you 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 with conflicting information i think it only proves that sony has no clue as to how severe or damaging this string of malicious haps might be for the company's future so this is the most epic fail and 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. out the

country when they released new guidelines telling federal authorities 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 and informative justice is recently sent letters to states threatening the bay will go after state employees now look at both civil and criminal penalties for those who run large scale operations even if they're acceptable under state law and already in many states that we're headed towards and i mean this in the legalization path has started to back off so why the drastic shift in policy and could this doom the medical marijuana industry here to discuss it with me it's got more going associate editor of the drug war dot org scott thanks so much for being here tonight first of all let's talk about these these 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

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 but it's also going to states where they already have to sell marijuana right like california is going to states like colorado and washington for example have medical marijuana for some time but there are efforts underway 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 they are want to hold who sells it and so forth but federal government is interfering with fast 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 these 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 away. beyond that but essentially the

their agenda here is to to distract disorient 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've been told you can't have medical marijuana it's illegal under federal law you just can't do it but 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 done is arrest state employees for enforcing their own state's laws so 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 legal agenda they don't actually intend to do this it's a law it's just one in a wall 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 these 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 substance to or at schedule to excuse me my my knowledge isn't completely up to par but so that i would you know that in february normal was saying that this is something that pharmaceutical companies are also lobbying for because that way they can get their hands on it you create some you know some types of drugs with derivatives 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 theory but well you know what you're not alone you're not alone and i think that there's certainly truth to the fact that a number of pharmaceutical companies. they're interested in getting involved in the

medical marijuana business the drug has a better reputation of 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 lies it takes the fun out of it drive up the costs we have a legal framework to do that but it's not going to reduce public enthusiasm for reforming marijuana laws that process is always going to continue for supports 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 sixty it was valued in a recent report at one point seven billion dollars every dollar of that was technically illegal under federal law and yet it continues to grow so i think the important thing is for first state officials and for the public to recognize that these threats are erroneous they're aimed at intimidating us they're aimed 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 states there are new reforms taking effect and the polls show more support for that than ever before and it's definitely interesting to think that's a two thousand and nine when. 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 matter 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 the states 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 regarding marijuana laws you know when they announced the initial holder memo saying that they were going to respect state medical marijuana laws they read 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 the campaign promise and it got really positive press everywhere but nearly half a dozen livered so i'm just curious where do you think that you know advocates of legalization are going to go in trying to 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 thing came last by three and a half points and in an awful direction you're going to have this huge boost in young voters in two thousand and twelve the could more than fill that gap so full

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 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 relatively we'll 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 scott thank 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 arjun's lauren lister and lucy calf an awful join me to discuss the hottest headlines today when we return.

we. will be. safe getting ready for you know. hey guys welcome michel ancel the alone a show we've heard our guests talk to say on the topic now i want to hear. dislodging you seem to video response are to twitter for part of the question the police host on you tube every monday and on thursday the show long response is.

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

all right it's a wednesday and we're doing another round of happy hour today so joining me for happy hour tonight are some correspondent lauren lyster and our to producer lucy catherine up here at all girls happy hour kind of like this you know we always have to throw a guy in just to be fair but many of them many 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 they're waiting to release this bloody severed head on ground zero tomorrow i mean i know i do that the ocean go i will tell you i was really hoping you walk out with a bloody severed head when he gave his speech to the nation but i think i'd like to

hope for get 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 the. metaphysical time in hell according to a very useful c.n.n. poll which decided to ask people where they think what kind of difficult metaphysical space is occupying but at the end of the day if their action now is they don't want these photos to be out there because they don't want to be a recruitment tool they don't want to incite violence you know what i hate to break to the white house but there's plenty of stuff 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 or even the video tomorrow from obama at ground zero if you have a vendetta 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 fuel and i think it's really interesting that coming from obama who just you know and this interview with sixty

minutes according the transcript has said that you know he doesn't think that releasing a picture would you know 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 that kind of ironic coming from a man who just a week earlier finally released his long form birth certificate us and all i was going to try to gave him to try 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 rich in spirit and various and try to please them and i especially think it's interesting because these days i think a lot fewer americans are actually questioning whether or not osama bin laden is dead people internationally right if that's the type of message here that we want to send to the light this is america you can see it here then we want to we want to show you you know for example do you think that's how bad it is coming out saying that they have their doubts i mean because you know that guy is going to be releasing this warning videotapes just like did you see why do you record.

these are not 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. how about this let's make a five dollars bet two weeks from now one week from now we're going to be back here talking about look they had to cave in and they release the photos anyway i don't know if you believe that 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 had on the ninth floor out there that decides to prove it to the entire world and i want to be with them and i think that for the record that a sitting u.s. senator fell for the fake photo today and said that she saw a bin laden photo which then and then maybe it was really that bad on the ground what is her name the hottest one the really hot one the hottest i want to correct your errors going on larry it's true we need a new hampshire senator we can't have her name when we are still reporting live out of the next subject sarah palin 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 fairy tale and no

pussyfooting around so she's saying that obama actually went bury the committed the cold blooded assassination or did the strike but now he's being a. pretty good throughout you getting out speaking of sarah palin she was at the white house correspondents dinner of the weekend where everybody got hammered right before the actual report of the fact that with her been killed they were still recovering and well she's had this type of once before where she was asked a question and couldn't answer but it was this time. these. things are. not. just because it's not ok. who's the most interesting point to a journalist i don't know i've got an entire dinner table of journalism the light house correspondent dinner she goes on fox she's a paid contributor to fox news she couldn't even say like bill o'reilly or somebody

that she speaks to every single day listen to grab and just like i mean yeah totally put in her defense i don't know who the most influential journalist as of today you know i only want her to and i think what's so and i think what's so interesting too i mean looking beyond sarah palin the people that answered so many of the mention commentators and opinion makers and rachel maddow jon stewart as they're the most influential journalists and of late what they're sort of battling children losing on these days if you look at anyone i mean the one show that any alliance are the ones that normally do hold those positions it normally will be a writer it's not going to be someone who's on t.v. you can reach 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 last year that was the scariest moment of all time well ok let's move on to our last story here the a.c.l.u. is going after some columbus city schools for censoring the web site 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 you know i didn't find this shocking that this is an issue that a.c.l.u. is 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 layers yeah that's why i went to public school and so. california and i have only allowed him to do the abstinence so i think that the fact that this is the issue that a.c.l.u. is 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. you girls thanks for

joining me for before we go tonight 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 them and put him on display in the international i for me just a picture would suffice but that's it for tonight's show thanks for tuning in from that tomorrow musician and comedian go grammy will be stopping by for happy hour and in the meantime go forgive me for my fan of the lower show on facebook and follow us on twitter and you missed any of the nicer and other nights you can always catch dolly. plus the our show where we post the interview as well as the show me some party coming up next is out of roses.

i tell marvin here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture. wealthy british. markets find out. why not 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 kaiser report on

our cheap. more news today violence has once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. trying to go for asians are relieved a.