well i'm tom foreman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight the big picture michael jackson's doctor was found guilty just had to get it out so we can continue with things that might actually affect your life or the future of america that's the end of that many to start with wall street wasn't the only thing that was being occupied over the weekend as tea party darlings and the g.o.p. high rollers gathered at the d.c. convention center to pay tribute to one of their heroes ninety nine percent managed to create an. outside world and the citizens of ohio going to the polls tomorrow

determine the fate of that state's anti-union will some voters have already been barred from having their voices for have the latest as both sides here are cool surely via hot button book and do you know what the motto our founders came up with for america is well it figured god we trust sounds familiar then you might be surprised to learn that we may all have it fall wrong. you need to know this the koch brothers got occupied over the weekend as the koch brothers holes hosted their annual americans for prosperity convention on friday night hundreds of occupy d.c. demonstrators marched to the event to join in as well so while the tea party crowd was wooed by the likes of herman cain mitt romney and g.o.p. t.v.

news talking heads inside the washington d.c. convention center roughly five hundred american patriots peacefully assemble outside the convention to demonstrate against the koch brothers patiently. convention was interrupted by ninety nine percenters who managed to sneak in but as usual with the occupy movement it didn't take long before there was a violent backlash against the patriotic occupiers according to reports a silver lexus drove right into a crowd of demonstrators running over two people and then running over a third as a tried to flee d.c. police excuse me as they tried to flee d.c. police officers stopped the vehicle but let the driver go shortly after with no criminal charges instead police ended up arresting members of occupy d.c. we took to the streets outraged that the hit and run driver was on the run was let free run a patriot over you're free to go protest hitting and hit run drivers. you're going to go to jail but aside from that incident there were other questions are raised

regarding the tactics behind the occupy the coast demonstration and just how nonviolent it really was for more on what happened friday night when the coach met the occupy wall street patriots i'm joined by adel stan washington bureau chief for not who was at the coke event friday night and ethan rome executive director of health care for america now and a co-sponsor of occupy the folks who knew both things are going to be where have you with us ethan why occupy the koch's it's very important situations like this to expose who they are and what they do their billionaires they use their money to corrupt our democracy to attack the american dream to hold back the middle class and this organization is one of their front groups and we want to make that clear and what happened and how did it come about when we have a health care for america now and the other ninety eight percent came together and said this is a real opportunity for public education but let's do it where we have a little fun so that's where we decided to have the so-called drive in and to have

movies and have popcorn and a festival and an atmosphere that's a little different than a typical protest and so that's what we did and that's how we came together and a lot of folks came up just off the grounds of the hotel or on the grounds of the hotel parking lot and ellen seventh. oh really yeah and then from there it went to the surrounding the building folks marched and went outside and we projected some of the films that were part of the film festival to the side of the buildings and that was our we did for a little bit before the event came to a close and so that was your gig yes and then adele you were inside. so you know tell us what happened inside well inside it was you know very interesting i mean you had this. folks do this every year and they expected it to go the way it goes every year which is that it's just sort of state dinner and often david koch it's a few remarks and they have a speaker well what happened was a young man stood up and started yelling and i couldn't quite hear what he had to

say and the response to him was really quite intense i mean they all not only the sky there were police right in the home in the ballroom of the convention center hall the guy out but they kind of slammed him on the floor and went through his pockets and turned him over and went through the other side and it was it was quite something and then later on there was another disruption at the desert reception that i thought was quite effective it was a very i'm young woman who her message was we are not democrats we're not republicans we are you but she got drowned out by a group of young. koch acolytes yelling usa usa and of course she was i want one of middle eastern descent who looked a little bit different from the people you know where he shouted chance you could she was not a genuine american well that's how i read it and it's certainly right. we have

there's a headline on drudge tonight. ninety nine dogs ninety nine percent pogues beat up seventy eight year old woman or whatever and it leads to a song. to a you tube video. of a woman who had fallen down the stairs that links to a story that it came from which links to an update which says that apparently she fell or was pushed by accidentally by one of the people who was associated with a coke organization i don't think the whole story has come out yet but the headline that's on drudge is. ethan you and your friends basically shut down the stairs and it looks pretty bad you know and then there's and then there's another one that shows from the inside a woman in a wheelchair trying to get out let me just show just a little twenty second clip of this. if. you guys are you coming home with a wheelchair for getting you know. there's

a woman with a wheelchair it can't be the building because you're occupying the place your. wife and i are you we're having a woman in a wheelchair. why are you trying to get woman in a wheelchair for getting you know. so what's happening is the seventy eight year old on the ground of this are just absolutely exploding by really on the right wing blogosphere right now. you were not let out of the building right and you're saying that this all happened after we were about so you know what actually was going on here well you know i mean the occupy movement is this big thing right and you know you can plan an event and has a beginning a middle and then but that doesn't mean that movement actions are going to end and

so what i saw it was about one hundred people who remained out of the i don't know how many you felt your. you know surrounded the exit. the main exit from the convention center and i understand they were around other exits as well and formed a human chain and so if you tried to get out i mean you were basically confronted with a choice of either not going anywhere and sort of being held hostage inside this building or very can through the chain and you know i here's the thing that's so maddening about this is that most of the american people want exactly what the ninety nine percenters are demanding with the i people are demanding social security. accountability for the people who wrecked the economy. but the optics of this were what i just showed you is what's going to be worth it is what you're going to be a and b. morally i just don't think that's appropriate well and in fact ethan civil

disobedience whether it was practiced by gandhi or marked with or came or jesus or i mean you pick your. is refusing to comply with unjust laws. and letting people out of building out of a building is not an unjust law this doesn't qualify as civil disobedience in anything that i ever studied what are your thoughts you know this basically holding people in the building like this right i mean i don't we don't think that people should be trapped in a building under any circumstance we don't think that any protester or any tactic should put people in harm's way it's unfortunate that after our very end a small number of people engaged in this activity we don't know if it was the so-called occupy k. street movement because that they may well have been focused and i think masks on their face yes i think what's important is that you know there was an unfortunate tactic that occurred and at the same time it's being used as

a distraction like what a shock it would be on the drudge report where we all go for facts i mean it's really it's so unfortunate so i just feel like the the assignment editor for most newspapers or magazines and television interviewer and it's you know dave weigel at slate he's a great reporter i mean to write a book that really contextualizes how this is playing in the right way and i'm sure drudge probably why because well and you know i think there's a conversation that needs to be had a battle playing into the hands of the very people you're trying to defeat and i think you know already matt got people inside your organization who want to play those hands because there they are those people and none of us know you know and there's there's enthusiasm there's there's a lack of political sophistication there's some people who think that turning the whole thing down is the whole best way to sort of over again is a bunch of we're out of time here is the real important point you want to me is a really short just because it's very frustrating but they didn't direct the woman

in a wheelchair to one of the fifteen other exits because i feel like that's how these things also get blown out of proportion when folks don't use what makes the most sense you know that's that's a weak argument i mean any no exit i think should. blago no question in any case all in all the folks didn't exactly get a warm welcome in washington and thank you both for being here. in washington d.c. that they're accustomed to a sign that americans are waking up to the way that they've been manipulating politics and media in this country for decades. crazy alert putting it down a bronze ronald reagan statue in newport beach was leaning to the left early sunday morning after an unidentified driver tried to tear it down like we did with the statues of saddam hussein according to witnesses around five thirty in the morning the man walked up to the statue put a rope around reagan's neck it was also tasha's pickup truck and then tried to

drive off either the tear of the statue down or to take it with him and then may not have held a political grudge against reagan as police noted there has been an uptick in copper and bronze robberies as a result of work on a me thanks to the economic damage ironically of thirty years of reaganomics ultimately the man was unsuccessful in his heist to tear down this reagan statute but he didn't flee the scene before police arrived so let me say the investigators some time here i was nowhere near newport beach at the time of the crime i swear. coming up find out why everything you think you know about our national motto is wrong. drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions. through. who can you trust no one who is you in view with a global missionary see where we had a state controlled capitalism it's called sasha's when nobody dares to

ask we do our t. question more. well a fourth woman has come forward to say that herman cain tried literally to screw

her is brothers by a different mother the koch brothers are continuing their efforts to economically screw the american middle class but tomorrow are we going to see politicus in iraq this election set for tomorrow to determine the fate of the radical anti-union laws known as s.b. five public and gov john k. sick and his buddies are doing anything they can to stop repeal of a wall that he has lost it over so on friday ohio republicans prematurely ended early voting to keep people away from the polls you know i was secretary of state john husted who also has a cozy relationship with alec the american legislative exchange council where the polling stations to be closed despite the fact that early voting in ohio has always been available to the public in previous elections but this election is different thanks to a new law passed by republicans in the state legislature it conveniently took effect last week and bars early voting three days before an election and as we all

know this latest effort to cut off people from the polls is just the tip of right wing voter suppression efforts all around the country. so tomorrow there's a possible rejection of democracy in tomorrow's vote john casey may not get any satisfaction tomorrow there's really a larger issue here and that larger issue is the this whole thing of stopping the early vote and how basically what's going on is that occupy wall street it's a middle class revolution we're seeing it it's it and in some ways it may be either the last gasp of the middle class in the united states and i would say frankly the tea party falls in the same category at least at the ground roots or it's the rebirth you know frankly what history shows and what william f. buckley was writing about thirty and forty years ago is that

a middle class is dangerous to the top one percent that a middle class is dangerous to to long term political stability the middle classes are unpredictable buckley famously said a conservative is a man who stands it's struck athwart history history with his arm out shouting stop so when people feel safe and they have decent jobs when they have health care when they have their in other families are provided for they can get into school when when basically you have a stable middle class what russell kirk predicted one hundred fifty one support the conservative mind which was buckley's bible which was very cool waters bible which informed the modern conservative movement he predicted was that if a strong and steady and stable middle class made up mostly a blue collar workers emerged that they would be troublemakers because the middle class would revolt. that they'd say hey wait a minute we want a little more and sure enough it happened in the sixty's just exactly as russell

kirk and william f. buckley and others predicted women or demanding the not just the right to vote but the right to have equality in the workplace the civil rights movement was exploding you had you had your cities on fire you had you know people people saying no we're not going to take me in particular you know with the city's on fire pretty in particular saying no i'm not going to put up with for example police violence every single one of the you know rights or the watts riots of the right what all of them began with an incident of police brutality every single you had the anti-war movement so basically there had been this contract the social contract this started around the time of the great depression the franklin roosevelt response to the great depression which was you know work hard. pay your taxes do you do your job right do it well and you'll have a decent retirement with social security you can it you can raise your kids we'll

have a good school system you'll be able to get good health care you can take a vacation every year and reagan broke that contract looking at this this whole conservative agenda that russell kirk laid out one hundred fifty one fifty two looking at that and saying you know bets dangerous having that strong middle class thirty five percent of the workforce unionized seventy percent functionally unionized to having that kind of a job so we deregulation in the north american free trade agreement and you get the tax cuts for the rich and a war on unions and cuts in the social security net all of this stuff and many more were basically tearing apart this social contract that we had the united states the result of this is that the no the american dream is basically no longer available to everyone and the middle class has shrunk. so what these guys knew was that feudal society historically feudal societies were the most stable. societies where

you have a very very small very wealthy group you have a very small middle class it's the doctor and the lawyer and the you know the small business owner and mercantile are in a very large class of the working poor and that's how that's how futile societies work and they tend to be stable for thousands of years occupy wall street has created a fork in the road to feudalism either it's going to fizzle out and reagan's america is going to continue down the road to feudalism with the death of the middle class or we will take a different fork and there will be a rebirth and it's going to require some change a little glass is going to get broken it's going to it's going to be very interesting to see how this thing plays.

sometimes you know you know and sometimes you know what you don't know and sometimes it's the fire thing in science theatre says everything you know is wrong and i don't think you know what you are you're right. make. sure. you're always right. you know is wrong everything you know is wrong my expert guests challenge the conventional wisdom on the very things that most of us just assume to be the truth even though we've never really stopped to think about the real story behind the accepted norm. last week republicans the house of representatives decided not to take up legislation to create jobs and instead to take up legislation to reaffirm the motto of the united states as in god we trust but is in god we trust really the his story that motto of the united states the one that our founding fathers intended if you think that it is that's the case then

everything you know about our national motto might be wrong. here to tell us why is reverend barry lynn lawyer activist and executive director of americans united for separation of church and state also author of a number of brilliant book signings and one of my personal heroes reverend lynn thank you so much for being it's terrific to be here. how long has in god we trust . in god we trust was one of our aficionados only since the one nine hundred fifty six you know jefferson ben franklin they never thought about this because back in the seventeenth eighties through legislation we created something called the great seal you can still find it on the backs of money and there is the word in god we trust on our money everybody knows that but how about it pluribus unum out of many one that was the original idea of what made america you know bumper sticker way and of course in latin but that that was that was exactly

what the country was about out of many kinds of people we would form one union one republic well members of congress of course last week decided that there was some kind of threat to in god we trust there are occasional lawsuits get in god we trust off the money they always fail i wish they didn't fail frankly but they do always fail so there was no effort serious effort to get rid of this model no member of congress said look we have a better motto but nevertheless john boehner and the republican leadership decided to bring this up last tuesday afternoon and to literally act as if if we did not reaffirm as a nation in god we trust probably religion would just disappear and as one gentleman said what we should do if we don't do this he said we might as well just admit it we're an atheist country and nothing but warm food which is the kind of quote that probably is not going to go into the history books that was trent franks

from arizona the chairman ironically of the subcommittee on the constitution. of the house judiciary committee i mean this is this is the kind of vote the traditionally gets called for with the idea of turning it into a campaign ad a few of you know we're down the road it's going to be joe blow voted against in god we trust is our national motto he can't be. out of america but it's even worse it's against god if you don't vote for this right or literally against god and god presumably i don't think i am a bit of a theologian you know yes i don't think that god in the heavenly hosts last tuesday night we're having a big celebration in heaven saying finally the congress has really recognized our significance and and in fact. this in god we trust this whole thing came out of the anti-communist and tell us a sorry history of the godless communism all that stuff in the fifty's and you know following joe mccarthy i mean there was just this isn't around that time it is in

general hysteria i'm curious outside of patrick henry who you know i read a nuff histories of the early found new republic to get it particularly in jefferson's autobiography thought very poorly of patrick henry right i think he used the word demented or something close to that point. because patrick henry was a real bible fault it's the god fearing and he was an advocate of things like in god we trust being actually the first words of the constitution that kind of thing but outside of him were there any real fundamentalists among our founders i mean we know jefferson he stripped all the miracles out of their testament and published it as the jefferson bible is still in print and rangoon was a deist madison was a either a presbyterian or congregational to the base of the strong advocate for religious real and. in franklin was jefferson so washington was arguably. were there any was the you know what's the baby you know you've got david

child running around making these claims quotes of oh i don't know i literally david barton does. is making progress and as a consequence we have to call in on it every once in a while but know the framers of the constitution and you don't just have to stick with them you can look at andrew jackson not a guy that most people think of a great constitutional scholar but when he was asked to do a national day of prayer during a cholera epidemic he refused to do so because he said the function of the president of the united states cannot be to become involved in religious matters it was asking the united nations if the revolution can you imagine anybody saying that today you know even on the coins people think well in god we trust at least was on the coins forever not true also it was first put on a coin the two cent piece which we don't have anymore and probably don't need right about the time of the civil war and then you're right in the one nine hundred fifty s. we put under god in the pledge of allegiance which was of course a document written pledge written by

a baptist minister specifically to avoid the controversy of including any religious language he didn't put it in under god was then added again in the mid fifty's to show that america was godly and that soviet union was atheistic and on godly right that was there was a contrast in the minute we have left are very aware of. what. how do we reclaim even those of us who who might describe ourselves as religious or or spiritual how do we reclaim a secular government. i think it's very important people understand that secularism means many things to many people but essentially what it should mean as a government matter is that the government is absolutely neutral on matters of religion it doesn't decide the issues on the basis of scripture you know but unfortunately as you know we're in a situation now where three of the political candidates for one major party in the

republican party believe god has chosen them to be the next president which statistically i took a close and statistics statistically means at least two of them are wrong all three could be but that's the culture we're in tom and that's what we've got to reject and we've got to get back to real history real constitution not this phony constitutionalism of guys who discovered a document in their sock drawer and mistake it for the real constitution that story and the founders had to be rolling over their graves they have been actually very good to say so much for coming out we do appreciate now everything you know about our nation's pato is right. coming up on the big picture we'll have a special edition of conversations of great minds of the cultural historian who says that the problems the united states are strike is struggling with today were inevitable i don't why just.

let's not forget that we had an apartheid museum right. i think. even well. we never got the book says they're going to keep you safe get ready because you get their freedom.

you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lack of sleep you think you understand it and then he lives something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture .