why have republicans decided to take the night off in their war against voting rights and finally the more things change the more they stay the same despite the new year the occupy wall street movement got a face full of pepper spray and mass arrests courtesy of the n.y.p.d. will take a look at a new toy that might help the occupy patriots fight back. you need to know this after months of endless debating campaign ads and t.v. punditry it's time to actually start counting the votes in the republican race for the white house tonight the primary season officially kicks off of the iowa caucuses and at this point it's anyone's guess as to which candidate might win according to the most recent poll out of the hawkeye state the des moines register showed mitt romney with a slim lead at twenty five percent ron paul is just three points behind and surging rick santorum is within striking distance of fifteen percent meanwhile serial

adulterer and campaign oxter and bookseller newt gingrich is brief surge in the polls has fallen flat he's a fourth with twelve percent considering iowans have a history of choosing an oddball candidates like mike huckabee in two thousand and eight michele bachmann in last year's straw poll republican establishment has its fingers crossed hoping their boy mitt romney is able to squeak past ron paul and his legion of libertarian diehards tonight the establishment might have a different problem on its hands the likelihood that no one will win the iowa caucuses with the occupy iowa caucus movement recruiting supports to take the caucuses by storm and catapult uncommitted or none of the above to the top of the republican field for a win republicans and democrats for that matter could walk away tonight from the from the caucuses thoroughly embarrassed so how might this all play out joining me now from iowa is john nichols the washington correspondent for the nation. and

tracy davis republican strategist and former speechwriter for george h.w. bush in our studios in new york welcome to both of you tracy doesn't look to me like you're in new york are you. i am not in your studio ok i'm sorry i did yeah there you go ok. great to see you both john if i could ask you first uncommitted what's what's the strategy here with regard to the democrats or the least the democratic caucuses i mean most people don't even realize that there's a democratic caucus going on right now. well that's true most people aren't aware of the fact that there are democratic caucuses in iowa but they are taking place and the occupy wall street movement as well as groups like iowa citizens for community improvement and others have been advocating for some time the citizens out of go to the caucuses both democratic and republican caucuses and register their support for an uncommitted slate i.e.

a slate that would go to the democratic over republican national conventions committed not to barack obama or any other republican candidates but to a set of ideals and and ideas particularly those ideals expressed by the occupy wall street movement now i'd be cautious here and tell you that i don't think that uncommitted is likely to beat barack obama for the democratic delegation or to beat the republicans or at least most of them but i do think it's something we have to keep an eye on tonight because this is one way that people who are very dissatisfied not just with the dysfunction in the iowa caucuses but really the dysfunction in american politics in general might express their opposition ok tracy i'm curious if you're hearing anything about vote for uncommitted it seems like there's actually a lot of passion for some of the candidates on the republican side and also assuming that mitt romney walks out of not necessarily iowa but i think there's a general presumption certainly in the romney camp that he's going to be the

nominee what's the strategy for beating brought president obama. well you are you assuming when you say that that he would be the nominee. don't you ok. well i mean i think that i think that that's sort of a little bit premature i think of the very interesting to see what happens tonight first. but assuming that he was i guess. i don't know i i hadn't even thought that far but i think that there's so much unrest in this country about our president that we're going exactly the opposite way as where a lot of americans would want to go with larger government higher taxes and you know one of the things that bothers me the most is the debt and. the fact that he just. that is the debt ceiling is going to be raised one point two trillion

dollars and the fact that that took place you know during the holidays when nobody was really paying that much treason when congress was out when ronald reagan came into office or other than a couple of world wars had been fairly stable ever since george washington's administration. most of this debt was run up under three republican administrations how do you think a republican is going to solve the problem the three republican presidents have created. well i don't think it has legs as well as republicans i don't think it's just been the republicans and and you know from the two stimulus packages and this added one point it doesn't matter the point is that nothing is being done about it and you know it just has to be stopped and the government has to. you know it has to be curtailed and i think that that is one of the things that you know romney is

is coming in if you're saying that you think he's going to be the nominee i think that in general the republicans are for lower taxes smaller government smaller federal government involvement. you know a strong defense but i you know it's not a blame game he's the president right now the buck stops there and i think my main the main thing about obama is in my opinion is that he isn't you know really much of a leader for me i've been you know i grew up in washington d.c. and i have been friends and democrats and republicans presidents and very high level democrat i work for senator kennedy but it's always been that the president and the congress work together to try to solve the problems balance the budget or at least you know stop this this leading death and he does not work towards that i

think you're going to find a lot of a lot of democrats who may agree with john. you were talking about democrats who are dissatisfied with the obama presidency voting for on committed things like that are you hearing first of all you know some of tracy's concerns echoed on the democratic side or do you think that they're unique to the republican side and are you hearing a lot about crossover about democrats crossing over to vote in the republican caucuses specifically for ron paul. well it to be honest i don't hear tracy's concerns even our express that much on the republican side in iowa the fact of the matter is that the iowa campaign has been focused on a lot of social issues and rick santorum scase on an appeal to renew manufacturing in the united states ron paul's case obviously a harsh criticism of democratic and republican presidents for being advocates very big government very big taxation now paul's appeal does cross party lines and

ideological lines to some extent there is little doubt that there will be some independents and some democrats who reregister to vote for ron paul tonight it is important to understand though that paul's core appeal is that of a genuine conservative he's an old right kind of creepy reagan era conservative who advocates for very small government and notably opposes the amount of defense spending that the united states has been engaged in and believes it's time to bring a lot of troops home to end wars and women and countries around the world that's very very appealing to a lot of violence because frankly iowa always has been a state where there's been a much greater opposition to military adventurism than others paul's only problem really i think is that some of his past statements particularly as regards racial

issues as seen in his newsletters has really come back to haunt him and has caused a good deal of revulsion not just among democrats and independents but frankly among some republicans ok we'll see how this all plays out john nichols tracy davis thank you both for being with us tonight it's a pleasure thank you yeah thank you frank and tom leading up to the iowa caucuses there was a common name being thrown around at the republican candidates. notice how santorum is a former senator you know what it's like dick durbin is that you know it's like serving the congress why wouldn't he be a good republican nominee as a very liberal to take on radical judges and for your skin's to bush don't let the liberal republican establishment pick over cuba to get rich are you surprised ron paul's is polling so well i think it's horrible i think that he is absolutely the most liberal radical left wing person to run for president of the united states in the west fifty years knows how the republicans love throwing the word

a liberal around as an insult but they're very careful about using the word progressive why would that be well if you look at the several pew research poll for example the word progressive most positively viewed is the most positively viewed political label in the united states through a pretty amazing you think about it fifty five percent of republicans like the word progressive it's more favorably viewed than the words conservative or the word capitalism seventy eight percent of americans actually follow progressive perspectives seventy eight percent of americans are opposed cutting medicare for example a program by the way that was created by progressive democrats seventy three percent of americans oppose cutting medicaid that's medical national good medical care for poor people in the program created by democrats by progressive democrats sixty two percent of americans oppose cutting social security any way at all another program

created by progressive democrats and progressive republicans sixty seven percent of americans oppose cutting off on employment insurance another program created by progressives sixty four percent of americans according to a c.b.s. news poll that asked should government guarantee health care to all sixty four percent of americans said yes. progress is brought us the minimum wage the forty hour a week the right to unionize workplace protections clean air and water safe food and drugs these were all progressive initiatives and my guess is if you were to reach out to americans and say i want to do away with these things i just not even i guess you look at the polls the vast majority well over half of americans say no i don't want to do away with these things these are things that we want these are things that we like america is actually a very progressive nation and you know you can say that that's liberal a very liberal nation i find it just quite astounding that liberal is still a fact of fox so-called news as

a swear word this is just out. after the break what makes iowa different from most other red states and answer coming up. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through it sort of being made who can you trust no one who is you know view with a global missionary see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sasha's when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.

who is screwing voters cept in iowa tonight republicans are temporarily putting their war against voters on hold that's because iowa is just one of nine states in the nation that allows for same day voter registration i mean people can go to the polls register to vote and then immediately vote all at the same time study shows same day voter registration boosts voter participation by as much as seven percent also iowa will not be checking any voter photo i.d.'s tonight as happens in so many other right wing states so this mean without all these strict new voting

requirements the iowa caucuses could be a breeding ground for voter fraud someone sound the alarm here to do just that is brad friedman author and founder and editor of brad blog dot com brad welcome back hey tom great to be here how are you sir great great to have great to see a great to have you with us why do republicans not care about strict voting laws in iowa when there is stair recall about this all over the country. again you know what this is incredible this is one of the most remarkable examples of just blatant hypocrisy by the republicans that i've seen in a long time and that's that's saying quite a bit the fact that here in iowa in the i will caucuses where they can set any rule they want for their own caucuses they have chosen to not require photo id for voting to not require photo i.d. to even register to vote and vote on the same day at the caucuses and by the way

they're going to be voting on paper ballots and they're going to hand count them they say at the precinct at the caucus sites in front of all the voters the very same things all of these things that republicans have been fighting against for years for elections when democrats are going to be participating even in the state of iowa by the way earlier this year the republicans in the state house there tried to pass a photo id requirements they were backed in a bill sponsored by the republican secretary of state matt scholtz thankfully that bill was stopped but when it comes to their own elections they have no problem either they either they have no problem with voter fraud in their own elections or they know what you and i both know which is that this notion that there is voter fraud going on at the polling place is a bunch of nonsense and all they're trying to do is keep democrats from being able to cast their legal vote sadly enough yeah i want to turn to

a very sadly want to turn to new gingrich for a moment he didn't make the virginia ballot after it was discovered that many of the signatures that he had collected in his campaign and collected more real which is a form of voter fraud that republicans were quick to latch onto when they literally took down acorn for the same reason here's how gay marriage defended his own voter fraud. you know just. we aren't sure but he turned. and we turn eleven. fifteen. fifteen hundred were collected by one guy who frankly committed fraud so here's nick new gamers that we frankly committed fraud and by the way he's suing to get on the ballot in the face of that fraud what's the difference between what gingrich did and what fox news was so hysterical that acorn was up to. well what's different is what newt gingrich did is way worse than anything that acorn ever did you know

for the record he says that it was one guy who committed fifteen hundred. signatures but the fact of the matter is to my knowledge he has not turned in that one guy's name to authorities now in the case of acorn acorn never committed any counts of voter fraud whatsoever some of their workers did in fact commit voter registration fraud and when it was found out by acorn they turned those workers into officials now that happened because acorn actually checks or used to check before they were destroyed by the republicans used to check every single signature to make sure that it was legitimate however in newt gingrich's case clearly he didn't bother to check his own signatures in his own home state to get on the virginia republican primary ballot before turning in these fraudulent

signatures and then apparently not bothering to turn in the guy who apparently created this massive fraud and now remember newt gingrich and the republican party and fox news has spent years calling this stuff voter fraud however as you just saw with the newt gingrich when he himself does it is own campaign oh in that case it was just a mistake it is a stone doing hypocrisy in this story has well this week so amazing so brad friedman the in iowa tonight the republicans and because this is in a state election it's run by the republican party they get to pick their own rules you don't have to show a photo id you can register the same day of the election you can vote the same day that you register all on site there are no electronic voting machines allowed in. it's boding on paper only and individuals will be reading the boats and newt

gingrich in virginia has fifteen hundred fraudulent signatures turned in and. you know to get him on the ballot and he calls it a mistake why do you think it will be and i think it's a safe prediction and in the minute that we have left here why do you think it'll be that the democratic party or democrats or even the media will not be pointing these things out tomorrow. well you know i don't know why they don't point them out it seems that when the democratic party in this case has been under attack blatant attack the democratic voters are under attack by these photo id polling place restrictions make no mistake about it and it's going to be a huge story in two thousand and twelve the fact that this blatant block received is going on right under their nose that they're not out there screaming holy hell i can't tell you why they're not doing it other than the say well you know what they're democrats and that's kind of how they are they wait until they get their

way or ends kicked before they complain about it i guess it didn't used to be that way i can tell you we need a little harry truman here brad friedman thanks so much for being with us thank you always my pleasure tom brad blog check it out since there is no hurdles to voting in the i was a caucus is tonight whoever does come out on top will do so thanks to the actual voice of the people that is unless the republican party is in the excuse of a threat of an anonymous hack sabotages the caucus vote to prevent ron paul from winning state to. in the best of the rest of the news the occupy wall street movement celebrated the new year by re occupying zuccotti park late saturday night and the new york police department celebrated the new year by arresting and pepper spraying the occupiers of the five hundred patriots gathered in zuccotti park on new years in an effort to retake the space but police moved in to break up the occupation after several demonstrators began dismantling the medical met the metal

barricades surroundings that got a park in all sixty eight were arrested but starting this new year i could buy wall street patriots may have a new secret weapon to fight back against the n.y.p.d. as brutal tactics and constant surveillance it's called the. occupy copter it's an unmanned drone that is seen in this test video and be flown by remote control as a full range of motion and can feed video back to the user certainly with toys like this the movement can feed the n.y.p.d. a taste of its own medicine you're going to me from now from new york is the mastermind behind the occupy tim pool and occupy wall street participant tech specialist and they use dream live broadcast or at tim cast t.v. tim welcome. has a go on great first before before i get into the questions i just have to tell you instead of watching the ball drop on new year's eve in new york city on t.v. my wife louise and i watched your live feed from zuccotti park on the web it was great thanks it was thank you it was for far more interesting than the ball

dropping all of the nonsense so tell us about the occupy. all right well you know in in poland they had something called the robo cop there that flew over their protests and you know earlier this year a friend of mine jeff out in l.a. had been talking about something similar where he wanted to use it for entertainment purposes actually and so when i started covering the occupy wall street movement with the live broadcasting you know technology cell phones he contacted me he was actually in italy and he said i think it's time we start working on our own drone and he called it the copter so so it was jeff myself my friend sam who actually met after talking to a few people about developing this and you know it took it took us a while to figure out the software you know this what we're using right now is actually just it's a market toy you can you can buy off the off amazon dot com called the drone and

what we've done is we've sort of duct tape together different software so that we can broadcast its video feed live over the internet that's that's really key right now you know what they've done in russia and poland is it essentially mounted cameras to an unmanned drone and they've flown it over the protests what we've accomplished is essentially the same thing except it's a live broadcast from an arab position what is what is the battery of the lifespan on the on this thing or have you been able to modify it or strengthen the the engine so it'll hold a stronger battery because typically in toys are designed for minutes not hours of usage. yet so it's between you know ten and twenty minutes depending on the strength of the battery we have a few aftermarket better is that are a bit stronger but when you when you think about it flying something over a particular area for fifteen minutes is is more than sufficient but also we have extra batteries so we can always bring it back down and send it back up how long

you think it'll be before the new york police department or homeland security declares your i.q. copter illegal. well i don't think it's going to be declared illegal we heard that news corp has actually made a request for the use of unmanned drones so i think we're going to see permit restrictions and then they're going to use that as a way to restrict the movement of the you know the average citizen from using these but one of the things that we're working on is a three a three g. cellular controller that will. allow anyone who is within three g. range to control it from anywhere in the world as long as they can dial in so who knows will be flying and i guess so and that way if one person gets stopped another person could pick up and. go ahead wasn't say yeah absolutely there would be you know layers where you know that if the if one i mean honestly the person controlling it might not even be at the action they might be seeing in an office flying it through the video feed so. you know redundancy of of control

systems i'm curious as a reporter as somebody who is on the ground at zuccotti park in with the occupy wall street movement what are the former occupants of the park doing right now and what do you think is next. that's a that's a good question so right now the the attention has been diverted away from sustainability of an occupation towards direct action and it's really interesting to see you know when i was down at occupy wall street in the midst of the of the towns and everything a lot of effort was going into making sure that people were taken care of the tents could stay and that it was a stain of all but after the raid all of that attention all of that energy focused now on marches and direct actions just actually before i came in i was at grand central station where occupy wall street had an action they were protesting the n.d.a. that was just signed in on new year's eve so that's where it's at right now where it's headed i think we're going to see an escalation you know i've personally

witnessed of the n.y.p.d. arrest innocent bystanders party goers who were just you know had to be crossing the street people for jaywalking and these people have become outspoken about the you know being arrested without investigation the police brutality the ties causing nerve damage and these are people who aren't protesting who are now coming out after their arrest extremely just upset over the you know what's been happening i think that's going to feed into further dissent and an alienation of police in new york at least you know what do you see happening in this election year more broadly is is in new york and is occupy movements around the country happen. yeah i mean already at the iowa caucuses there is a group called occupy the caucuses and several people were arrested at mitt romney's headquarters i think i know for a fact actually that there's another group planning something for the new hampshire primaries i think we're going to see this throughout the entire campaign trail

occupy occupy wall street protesters you know doing their my checks on the politicians and i mean i just yeah absolutely that i i personally feel like there's a loss of confidence in in the electoral system right now i mean i kind of this is my personal opinion think we're going to see really low vote maybe even record low voter turnout but i'm not a political expert so that's going to be it's going to be a million tristin you're very interesting to watch for tim pool thanks so much for being with us tonight. no problem that you so much here's to another year of patriotic activism on behalf of the ninety nine percent against the one percent of wall street and washington d.c. who are driving this nation to the brink of collapse. crazy alert illegal tender a north carolina man was arrested last week after he tried to pay for four hundred seventy six dollars for the items at a local wal-mart with his very own one million dollar bill fifty three year old

michael fuller desperately tried to convince the cashier is one million dollar bill was indeed real legal tender as he tried to buy a new vacuum cleaner a microwave and several other items after some back and forth the cashier called the police who charged with trying to obtain property under false pretenses and using a forged instrument fuller was sent to jail on a seventeen thousand dollars bond luckily he always keeps a twenty thousand dollar bill in his pocket for rainy days like this. up next supreme court's clash find out what message the montana supreme court sent to the u.s. supreme court in regards to corporate power. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through. who can you trust no one who is in view with a global missionary see where we had

a state controlled capitalism it's called saxons when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more. well go back to the big picture i've been coming up in this half hour.