are we. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you saw you don't run time part of the big picture. i.

thought about the big picture and sharpen coming up in this half hour as a full fledged battle brewing against a new internet bill that could send americans spiraling down the same road as an oppressive regime see who is behind this new bill and what it could mean for internet users across america plus g.o.p. presidential hopeful michele bachmann could very well snag her party's nomination once voters get to glimpse of her radical beliefs and form of religious associations her campaign for the white house could you rail and someone needs to pay their bills ideally take tonight how republicans are trying to pull their dads

at the expense of the rest of us. is the united states headed down. same road as iran a group of law professors fear so and they penned a letter to congress to raise their concerns over a piece of legislation who gives the government power to take websites offline to censor search engines and essentially break down the internet the legislation known as the protect ip act is the creature of the entertainment lobby and is meant to curb online privacy suiting piracy by forcing an internet service providers to take certain websites offline if they're suspected of copyright infringement giving away free music or movies but here's the kicker whether or not those sites are actually engaged in copyright infringement doesn't apparently need to be proven by

a third party or a court it's strictly up to the entertainment industry in other words if they don't like it shut down that as the group of law professors points out would undermine the u.s. claim to a free and open internet and to quote them would incorporate into u.s. law a principle are closely associated with the repressive regimes could this be true is congress considering legislation that will turn that would close down our internet of corporations say so here to shed some light on this issue is lawrence walters and turning specializing in intellectual property or its welcome nice to be here thanks for joining us is this bill really as scary as this group of law professors are making it out to be. well miss bill is as scary as the legislation from an internet censorship standpoint as i have ever seen and what you have here is something that allows you to have a government or private parties that have their own interests in mind who essentially censor websites and shut down entire u r l's based on

a mere allegation that they are engaged in an orange ng activity and what will do is present some one sided evidence to a judge and obtain what's called a t.r.o. or temporary restraining order shuts down an entire form of communication without the other side ever having been told and that's a very dangerous weapon in the arsenal of media companies that seek to use it and it's an even more dangerous weapon in the hands of a government that happens to disagree with what a certain website is saying doesn't this run afoul of the core constitutional presumption of innocence that you know a big entertainment company can come along and say ok that's it you're gone you're history and essentially play the role of the prosecutor judge jury and and executioner all of that at one time. well there's a number of constitutional concerns with the law the resumption of innocence may

not necessarily directly apply because that's typically reserved per criminal court but really what you have your is a an equally disturbing concern and that is the imposition of a prior restraint on each and all lawyers know from their first year in law school that if you. have to ask the government for permission to speak or a government can deny you commission to speak that's called a prior restraint and that type of legislation that kind of law is presumed to be unconstitutional under the first amendment where we expect that all information all speech is protected and anybody should be able to say whatever they want and the remedy for bad speech is more speech not censorship pat leahy is if i read this right the guy who sponsored this legislation he's things senior senator from vermont he was my senator for a number of years and i lived in that was i lived in for not and he's a decent guy i mean he's a generally

a fairly progressive and competent legislator why would he get on board with this kind of legislation. you know this this law's been sold i think is a pill goods to believe just place or is that a signed onto it now the idea is we need to protect our american media interests that one of our cheap exports in the united states is hollywood entertainment and media industry and we need to protect it at all costs there are these pirates out there stealing everything and the movie industry can't survive without some protection from congress and you know i mean to a certain extent there is some truth to the fact that piracy is out of control that her some some very devastating copyright infringement going on to the industry a spacing but the remedy for that is not the poor picture of first amendment rights the remedy for that is to go after the pirates and not to shut down an entire website entire u.r.l.

domain name that may have all kinds of content on it some of which may be an arranging but some of which may be perfectly acceptable and legal and that's what this law does is allows the government private party to shut down an entire website based on an allegation infringement and that's where runs at all because of course with this with this law provide for a website that was hosted in another nation to be shut down here in the united states the way that some of the more pressure of regimes around the world shut down block blocking to me. that's one of the chief criticisms of the bill any website that is under the control of the u.s. court system can be shut down and when you think about it every single dot com domain name every got net every or every got us is subject to the registry that is in the united states regardless of where the website happens to be

registered even if it's in an already distraught so we essentially become the. rulers of the world with regard to the internet. but the united states government has always tried to play that role even though they deny it in the same breath you know the local data or the free marketplace of ideas when it comes to online communications but in the background they always want to have that kill switch they always want to have the ultimate control over icann and over the domain name system and this is a very effective tool in their efforts to control the internet i for one hope it doesn't pass but it is subject to a constitutional challenge of it absolutely lawrence thank you so much for being with us tonight and to be here currently to protect ip act is held up in the senate by oregon senator ron wyden let's hope it stays there.

it's the good the bad and the very very allegations legally. they're good there are michael bloomberg now that we've seen the media get it wrong twice in two weeks and they can both dominique strauss kahn and casey anthony before they faced a fair trial mayor bloomberg is reconsidering the whole idea of perp walks in the united states in an interview with the new york times bloomberg said if somebody is innocent even if they're guilty they're not guilty until they're convicted and yet we vilify them for the benefit of theater for the circus you know they did it in roman times too it's not a new. billboard is right our court system depends on juries not answered grace let's hope we learn some lessons as to case the bad. republican senator james inhofe after nearly nearly killing a team of construction workers when he landed his plane on a closed runway last year inhofe is now trying to rewrite history claiming he was

the victim introduced legislation this week to create a pilot's bill of rights because he thinks the f.a.a. treated him as a pilot unfairly last year when they threaten to revoke his license over the closed runway and so i guess inhofe thinks pilots have a right to land their planes anywhere they want even on top of construction crews and he's willing to spend taxpayer time and money to make sure he gets those rights and the very very ugly minnesota republican the minnesota government has been shut down for a week now because republicans refused to go along with the slight that seem crease on millionaires and billionaires in that state proposed by democratic governor mark dayton minnesota's losing out on millions of dollars each day that the shutdown continues but hoping to reach some sort of deal yesterday they dropped the tax made a right on the rich in exchange for a one dollar tax cigarettes on. that's. but even though ten to temple once you run for that republican said no to that idea to calling it

a disappointing step backwards so the government will stay shut down i guess minnesota republicans will do anything to look out not just for the millionaires and billionaires but also the big tobacco lobby these guys make john boehner eric cantor look reasonable and that's a very fair. after the break you and i just can't tell a credit card company we don't want to pay off our debts so why is the republican party getting away with exactly the same thing i'll tell you the truth about the debt limit debate and i still accept. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime.

i think. even one well. we have the government says they're going to keep things safe get ready because you get your freedom. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear see some other part of it and realize that everything you saw. i'm sorry is a big. show

bachmann has brought a lot of early success since jumping into the race for the white house a few weeks back she's running a close second in iowa just a few points behind front runner mitt romney she has name recognition and immense popularity among the tea party and she's raising tons of money and she's the buzz

candidate among many political pundits who are predicting her to be the dark horse in the republican race are there things about michele bachmann the most of that it nation doesn't know yet things that could be real her presidential campaign for example does michele bachmann have a radical religious worldview that's incompatible with the beliefs of most americans would offer his take on the issues frank schafer author of the book sex mom and god how the bible's strange take on sex led to crazy politics and how i learned to love women and jesus anyway. welcome. hey thanks for having me on what a great title for a book tell me what do we what do the people not know about michele bachmann that they should know. well specifically what they don't know is that she was influenced to get into politics for a one time by a book my father wrote years ago called a christian manifesto and another book he wrote how it should be done live newsweek

called me a few weeks ago to interview me because they had been talking to her and she said the reason she got into politics was because my religious right father who was a leader in the religious right in the one nine hundred seventy s. and eighty's wrote a number of books including calling for the overthrow of the us government based on his view of roe v wade our view because at that time i was involved and i describe in my own book sex mom and god and since got out. of abortion rights and so michele bachmann comes from a segment of evangelicalism that is radical even for evangelical christians she someone who is a fundamentalist literalist about the bible and in the best of all worlds from her point of view the u.s. would become a kind of a theocracy so she has a dedication to the democratic process as long as it gets even joke of christians like her elected but then she says she got into politics because she heard the call

of god telling her to get into politics to save america and or bring it back from what she regards as the brink of a secular disaster and you know i'm not being facetious when i say maybe we don't really want people in political leadership positions who hear voices so when you have people who say god has told them to leave the country a red flag ought to go up when you combine that with the sort of. theocratic and reconstructionists theology and philosophy that she follows including being a follower of my father and his own strict calvinist use of the law and following the old testament strictly and so forth. i think when the general public gets wind of this she doesn't stand a chance however it goes to show that total corruption of the republican party as david brooks put it in the new york times no longer a normal political party but really. an extremist religious group or people

pandering to them which the other candidates will have to do on the litmus test of their culture war issues like abortion and gay rights and she's just the be to me of it i guess she's scarier than the rest because i think she's completely sincere and actually believes her own her own statements you know frank tell us about bradley dean he seems to be a christian axl rose wanna be like we have a photo of both of them and and bradley bradley dean is the guy with a longer and you know he's. christian rock n roll singer i guess yeah there's more. well if you go on youtube and listen to his rants you know every other words homo sexual this homo sexual that homo sexual criminals this homosexual that he seems to absolutely be. not just homophobic but but essential.

you know fearful you know there was this story about michele bachmann and it really nice talking about how she was in a women's room after a conference where she had spoken forcefully against wrightson. to lesbian women followed her into the ladies' room in order to continue to discussion in no sense threatening her just want to have it out and say hey why are you talking about people like us this way and she called the cops and screamed and said they were pursuing her and following her and the police dismissed all of it said it was all nonsense and just our own is this guy you know her or her reverend wright i mean is that how yeah i think so and i and i and i think when you listen to his rants on you too you have someone who is really on the unhinged side of the right in addition to which i fact i'm sorry to be so implied but none too bright you know the anybody who takes the bronze age myths of the old testament seriously and thinks they apply to gay rights and science and psychology of why people become gay which is because they're born that way it's

a perfectly normal condition no less ordinary than being heterosexual in terms of just how things play out you know to continue the bronze age good local mythology to people like michele bachmann told you need gurus who need them in that direction and she went to one of his meetings and offered up an incredible prayer that i was listening to the other day on line just this event jellicoe blather about how god would raise him up and so forth and so on and when you understand that's how she sees her politics in addition to how she sees these fringe crazy elements and these gay bashing groups that he leads for instance you know to see her running as a presidential contender anywhere would be beyond believe but of course we've seen . before you know when she was sarah palin morphing into a different character that my old friend john mccain who wrote a forward to a book i get on military civilian relations a number of years ago you know he he only nominated sarah palin to throw a sop to the evangelical right so james dobson focus on the family and these guys

would stop working against him and now you know you see the fruit of that some mean here you've got mccain who used to mean something you could agree or disagree but he wasn't an idiot i'm talking ten fifteen years ago completely sold out why because the evangelical right that michele bachmann represents and her gurus represent have the republican party in a headlock and so either you have to be enough yourself as she is or you have to pretend you're a nut and meet them half way during the primaries and hope voters in the general election forget which you had to say to get these fringe groups these religious loonies saying nice things about you so it's a real bind i mean i think that every country has a village idiot but when the village idiot takes over one of two major political parties and now you really have an abnormal friend party run by the religious right on one side and the normal political party on the other it's terrible for the country no matter what your politics are some serious you know everything we're

talking i think you're right frank and this this concerns me about this is why i think we may see a romney bachmann ticket and that's totally spooky frank thanks so much for being with us tonight and my pleasure thanks i have friends i'm innocent of all told the same thing don't ever underestimate michele bachmann and even though she may have some religious radicalism in her closet i mean it might be nothing but she'll be a real content contender in the republican race for the nomination and maybe even beyond that by democracy a low theocracy let's hope. at his twitter town hall event yesterday president obama said this about republicans threatening to force america into default. as it was

possibility make sure we pay our bills we've always paid them in the past the notion that the u.s. is going to be felt on its debt. is just irresponsible but i expect it's actually more than irresponsible mr president it's nearly criminal but our nation is faced with today is a mountain of debt run up mostly by three republican presidents ronald reagan in the two bushes and now today that very same republican party is saying no way to democrats who just want to pay off that pile of republican debt think about it this way the republicans ran up a huge credit card bill and now they're refusing to pay for it they took the good times the stimulation of the economy from all that spending and the political benefits from all those wars and now they don't even want to pay for it and if you or i did that with a credit card and did it intentionally we'd be in jail that's why we're in debt before reagan took office our national debt was just under one trillion dollars and

our top tax rate was seventy four percent but reagan promised the nation good times so he gave his rich buddies all of x. cuts and then put two trillion dollars on the nation's credit card reagan borrowed and spent in just eight years more money then every president of the united states from george washington to jimmy carter come by and now the republicans don't want to pay the bill for reagan stepped. then george herbert walker bush came along he kept running up the nation's credit card so that by the time he left office four years later he added another one and a half trillion dollars to the debt and to or the credit card bill and today the republicans don't want to pay off herbert walker is dead either that's two republican presidents in a row blowing up our national debt from just under

a trillion dollars where it would have been basically for all of american history to over four point three trillion dollars in just twelve years then bill clinton comes into office raises taxes on the rich and slow down the growing national debt even though clinton tacked on another trillion dollars to the debt by the time he left office in two thousand and one he actually had our nation running a budget surplus and was poised to pay off our entire national debt in just ten years by two thousand and ten last year so here we have two republicans reagan and bush running up a huge debt and a democrat bill clinton figuring out a way to pay it off and george w. bush gallatin into like reagan bush promised his billionaire funders and his family friends goods i ams so we cut taxes again for the rich and give him selfish and victory in two thousand for bush started two wars and he paid for all the stuff the

same way reagan and herbert bush had paid for it by putting it on the national credit card it took bush only one year to turn bill clinton's budget surplus into a budget deficit so after eight years in the white house george w. bush took the five point seven trillion dollar debt that he had inherited mostly from reagan and his dad and turned it into a ten point four trillion dollars heap of debt they hand over to president obama along with a nice little bonus gift of a republican great depression. in total bush added over four point five trillion dollars to the national debt and republicans don't want to pay off bush's credit card bill either but while bush was piling on the debt republicans in congress had no problem raising the debt limit the credit limit basically seven different times in all by the time president obama took office in two thousand and nine reaganomics

said jack our national debt up nearly nine trillion dollars and nearly eight trillion dollars that debt was courtesy of three republican presidents this is what the so-called debt limit debate is all about this debate isn't about out of control spending or big government under president obama it's about republicans now wanting to pay the bills that their own guys ran up and was to get some goodies imagine what would happen if you ran up a huge credit card bill and then call up citibank and said that you know i'm only going to pay it off if you give me something i want how would the police take your offer to pay off your credit card bill only if the bank for example sent you a half dozen friends on an all expenses paid trip to disneyland and could throw you put in jail for when republicans ran up a nine trillion dollar debt and now don't want to pay it unless they get their wish list the media doesn't even mention how it all came about this is

a crime and if republicans really are willing to crash the economy just to avoid paying off their own bills and get some political capital to her president obama politically and they should be charged with financial fraud and thrown in prison and certainly never allowed to have the nation's finances and those democrats who are too timid to call those theft from all of us what it is intentional fraud that actually even had a name starve the beast was what reagan called the strategy. those tema democrats deserve whatever the voters that's the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our website to tom harkin dot com free speech dot org and r.t. dot com also check out our year to you tube channels with our length of time part of the stars show is also available for free video just i tunes and we have a free time are going to i phone and i pad app in the astral since feedback and

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