are you. 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 realize that everything you thought you knew you don't turn on time or the big picture.

well go back to the big picture and sharpen coming up in this half hour as a full fledged battle brewing against a new internet bill we can 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 was g.o.p. presidential hopeful michele bachmann could very well snag her party's nomination once voters get a glimpse of her radical beliefs and form a religious associations with her campaign for the white house get you rail and someone needs to pay their bills ideally take tonight how republicans are trying to

default their dad 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 and 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 and giving away free music or movies and 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 you're 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 more closely associated with repressive regimes could this be true is congress considering legislation that will turn it will close down our internet of corporations say so here to shed some light on this issue is lawrence walters an attorney specializing in intellectual property lawrence 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 this bill is as hot as scary piece of legislation from an internet censorship standpoint as i have ever seen and what you have here is something that allows you to the 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 the mere allegation that they are engaged in an engine activity and what will do is represent some one sided evidence to a judge in a chain what's called the t.r.o. or temporary restraining order that 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 is wrong to follow all of the core constitutional presumption of innocence that you know a big entertainment company can come along and say ok that's a you're gone you're history and essentially play the role of prosecutor judge jury and and executioner all of that at one time. well there's

a number of constitutional concerns with the law or the resumption of innocence and may not necessarily directly apply because that's typically reserved for criminal court but really what you have your is a is an equally disturbing concern and that is the imposition of a prior restraint on speech and all lawyers know from the 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 sneak 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 in 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 the senior senator from vermont he was my senator for a number of years and i lived the reason i lived in for an hour and he's

a decent guy and 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 as a bill of goods to the legislature or is that a sign onto it you know the idea is we need to protect our american media interests that one of our chief 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 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 there are some some very devastating copyright infringement going on that the industry is facing but the remedy for that is not the purpose your first amendment right 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 infringing but some of which may be perfectly acceptable and legal and that's what this law does is allows you to have a government or a private party to shut down an entire website based on an allegation infringement and that's where we're in the fall of the constitution with this with this law to 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 repressive regimes around the world shut down block blocking there to me that's one of the chief criticisms of the bill and 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 dot 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 a foreign registrar while so we essentially become. the rulers of the world with regard to the internet. well the united states government has always tried to play that role even though they deny it in the same breath you know the local state 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 for one hope that 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. happy 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 allegation is legally. the good there are michael bloomberg now that we've seen the media get it wrong twice in two weeks convicting 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 if somebody is innocent even if they're guilty they're not guilty until they're convicted and yet we build a fire them for the benefit of theater for the circus you know they did at the roman times too it's often you. will grow it is right our court system depends on juries not nancy grace let's hope we learned some last two cases 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 pilots 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 republicans the minnesota government has been shut down for a week now because republicans refused to go along with the slight actually increase 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 dayton dropped the tax hike on the rich in exchange for a one dollar tax on search. 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 our 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 it's a right still it's a. misnomer

given that we had an apartheid regime right. i think. one well. we never got that says there for keeping safe get ready because their freedom. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else she hears sees some other part of it and realize that everything you saw you don't i'm sorry is a big. show

bachmann has enjoyed 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 or other things about michele bachmann the most of that it nation doesn't know yet things that could be real her presidential campaign for example has michele bachmann have a radical religious worldview that's incompatible with the beliefs of most americans and offer his take on the issues frank schafer author of the book sex 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. thanks very. 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 should you know and 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 as i described in my own book sex mom and god and since god out. of abortion rights and so michele bachmann comes from a segment of evangelicalism that is radical even for evangelical christians she's 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 jellicoe 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 lead the country a red flag ought to go up when you combine that with the sort of. theocratic and reconstructionists jala jian 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 bishop doesn't stand a chance however it goes to show the total corruption of the republican party as they would 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 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 is 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 word is homo sexual this homo sexual that homo sexual criminals this homo sexual that he seems to absolutely be. not just homophobic but but essentially.

you know fearful you know there was this story about me show bachmann in the daily beast 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 wanted to have it out and say hey what 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. her 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 tube you have someone who is really on the unhinged side of the right in addition to which i found that i'm sorry to be so important but none too bright and you know the anybody who takes the bronze age myths of the old testament seriously and thinks they apply to gay rights and the 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 extra sexual in terms of just how things play out you know to continue the bronze age biblical mythology that 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 online just this this event jellicoe blather about how god would raise him up and so forth and so on and when when you understand that's how she sees her politics in addition to how she sees these french 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 unbelievable of course we've seen. before you know when she was sarah palin morphing into a different character. my old friend john mccain who wrote a forward to a book i did 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 so i mean here you have mccain who used to mean something you could agree or disagree but he was 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 the voters in the general election forget what 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 ability yet but when the village idiot takes over one of two major political parties and now you really have an abnormal french party run by the religious right one side and then normal political party on the other it's terrible for the country no matter what your politics has

a history of your 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 contender contender in public and race for the nomination and maybe even beyond that biden ocracy fellow theocracy. 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 us is one of the four it's a debt is just irresponsible and by expect it's actually more than irresponsible mr president it's nearly criminal what our nation is faced with today is a mountain of debt run up mostly by three republican presidents ronald reagan the two bushes and now today that very same republican party is say 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 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 tax 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 the credit card bill it's and today the republicans don't want to pay off herbert walker's debt either that's two republican presidents in a row blowing up our national debt from just under

a trillion dollars where it where it had 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 galloped into like reagan bush promised his billionaire funders and his family friends good times so he cut taxes again for the rich and give him suffer a shoe in victory in two thousand and four which 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 they 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 e.p. of debt to hand over to president obama along with a nice little bonus gift of 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 a 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 of 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 good eats 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. how would the police take your offer to pay off your credit card bill only if the bank for example sent you and a half a dozen friends on an all expenses paid trip to disneyland i think victoria put in jail but 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 pain off their own bills and to 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 archie dot com also check out our to you tube channel where there are links that are about the stars show is also available as a free video podcast i suppose and we have a free town are going to i phone and i pad app and he asked his son his feedback on

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