so how much longer until we can finally say to mitt romney corporations are not people around looking at the recent decision out of montana supreme court it might be some of the things also there was an earthquake in ohio over the weekend you won't believe what caused the explosion expose how oil and natural gas companies are leaving us literally all shook up and later rick santorum is name is synonymous with a lot of things google him in the find that out but in tonight's daily take i'll tell you something else santorum stands for unconstitutional law. two years ago this month the supreme court ruled in the citizens united case the corporations are people and money is speech there's been one national election since then and corporations spent massive amounts of money and republicans won in a landslide but now one state is pushing back against the idea that corporations

should be able to buy politicians ahead of elections and that's montem last friday the supreme court of montana took on the u.s. supreme court and ruled the citizens united only applies to federal elections and those montana can do whatever it wants and state elections and put whatever restrictions they want on corporate electioneering so the montana supreme court kept intact a one hundred year old election law that prevents direct spending by corporations in state elections the judges argued that corporate election spending quote represents a threat to the political marketplace and quote so what does this latest victory in the fight against corporate personhood mean could this be a stepping stone to overturning citizens united all together david cobb joins me now from california he's a spokesperson for move to amend and national projects director of democracy unlimited david welcome back. thank you so much tom it's a pleasure to be back on great to have you with us how can a state supreme court overrule the u.s. supreme court or do they not. in

a nutshell this state supreme court can't overrule the u.s. supreme court however what we're seeing is that developing crisis of jurisdiction the citizens united versus federal election case was so outrageous and so inflamed people across the political spectrum that you're seeing a court in bold and in montana by simply saying look this supreme court we're duty bound to follow the supreme court but we're not going to overturn citizens united we're simply going to follow the strict scrutiny test and say that in montana who are state election law citizens united does not require us to overturn our state law i predict that this case will go up to the united states supreme court just as i predict that this movement that is growing across the country is going to get legs and will politicize ever more i'll tell you time in a nutshell what we're seeing is the functional equivalent of the abolitionist

movement or the women's suffrage movement or the civil rights movement you're seeing a number of i think of them as fronts and a long campaign for real democracy in this country there's a political front there's an electoral front and there is a legal front and i think that what we're seeing with the montana supreme court decision is just a harboring or of things to come to and and i mean arguably in eight hundred fifty six and dred scott the supreme court ruled the people in that case african-americans were property and then in twenty town the supreme court ruled the property was people it's like the mirror writers of each other and both provoked an incredible backlash and i think a both cases the court didn't expect that backlash but you know anyhow we'll see have we found or has the montana supreme court found a huge loophole in the citizens united case that any case any state or for that matter even federal legislator legislators could exploit by explaining the

demonstrating the compelling interest you just spoke of. unfortunately probably not because ultimately i suspect this case goes to the u.s. supreme court and we know what this roberts court is likely to do however i do think it's shown an opportunity for state legislature worst poor state supreme court justices to actually step up and take on in a true way the argument of corporate constitutional rights and money is speech now so i don't think it's a magic bullet but i definitely agree with you tom that this is providing an opportunity that we're seeing ordinary citizens step into let's not forget that we're already seeing local initiatives local resolutions in cities and counties across the country passing move to amend. campaigns that are challenging the idea that a corporation has constitutional rights or that money is speech so this campaign is growing it's got legs and i predicted in the two thousand and twelve election cycle

you'll start you'll see it become a political issue and by twenty thirteen in the local elections in two thousand and fourteen it will be a true which side are you on kind of political question i think you're absolutely right and in fact one of the steps to that is the occupy the court's action that's coming up on january twentieth tell us about them well yes i'm very excited tom and of course you'll be joining me and medea benjamin and a host of others if the supreme court of the united states on january twentieth at noon east coast time where we will return to the scene of the crime because remember that the doctrine of corporate constitutional rights was created by the supreme court not by the legislature not by we do people but the court created it out of whole cloth they also created out of whole cloth the idea that money is political speech they have basically stolen our democracy from us and try to use the legal system to justify that that so we are rallying in front of the united

states supreme court on january twentieth and get. this tom we are already over eighty other federal district courts across the country i'm urging your listeners if you can't join us in washington d.c. go to the website move it to amend dot o.-r. g. and get plugged in on one of the actions taking place in a federal district court near you and if you can't go to an actual district court contact us by phone even alle web what have you because we are a growing movement we are ordinary americans rolling up our sleeves in the same spirit that has so sial movements have done and i want to be clear tom we don't want to just be right we want to win david it seems to me that there are three basic ways to challenge citizens united there is the amend amend the constitution so that so that they can no longer hold the position that they've held which is the the straight on that you've just been talking about there is a change in the composition of the court which basically is waiting until one of

the conservative justices retires or dies not that i'm wishing that on anybody but you know that's how life is and and i hope that you have a democrat the white house replaces them or actually having congress exercise the power that they have in the constitution under article three section two of the constitution that says that you can that the supreme court will operate under rules regulations as the word that they should be regulated by congress. clearly you think that amending the constitution is the the most solid way i mean the last president to try the we're going to regulate the court was f.d.r. when he was going to change the composition the court didn't work out so well although there are some scholars who think that it could have do you think that all the obviously the wait wait and see move is nothing that we can do other than trying to keep the democrat the white house but do you think that the the congressional strategy is one that should be pursued as well. well absolutely i think that what we need to recognize is that this is

a movement and movements have multiple tactics so yes to elections yes to lawsuits yes to protests and demonstrations and tom i'm glad that you're bringing up and reminding us of the fact that the constitution gives congress the authority to set the parameters of how the supreme court operates you know i am a believer in the old adage a switch in time that saved nine because f.d.r. so called court packing scheme created a political context where the supreme court all the sudden began to find it legal the new deal legislation did not violate the constitution where a year before it had violated the constitution let's be clear the u.s. supreme court operates as a political entity that's been true from its inception it's especially true now and we need to hold these justices accountable to in every manner in with every mechanism that we have available yes to calls to impeach the print court justices

when they are acting inappropriately and are not recusing themselves when they should be yes to congressional restrictions on judicial power yes to constitutional amendments yes to electing politicians regardless of what political party they're in that will stand up against the legal doctrine of corporate personhood our money is speech there are many things that we can be doing and we have to move to amend coalition are willing to put our shoulder to the wheel on those have so great david thanks so much for being with us. thanks tom thanks for all you're doing and good and good luck check it out move to amend or let's push other states in the same direction as montana go to move to amend or. just. kids the good the bad in the very very late truly ugly look good the u.s. treasury building last week the u.s.

treasury became the oldest building in the world to be certified lead go l. the lead gold certification accord in the u.s. green building council thanks to an issue ordered by the obama administration the treasury building boasts several new environmentally friendly renovations that increase natural lighting use energy more efficiently and foster recycling conservation programs all told the new greener u.s. treasury building is saving taxpayers three and a half million dollars a year in lower energy costs well done i say it's also time to put jimmy carter's solar panels back on the roof of the white house. the bad charlton public library in an agreed just case of overreaction the local library in charge massachusetts dispatched a police officer over the weekend to collect an overdue book from a five year old officer notified the five year old and her mother the two of the books were months overdue and had to be returned or paid for take a look. shannon benoit often reads to daughter haley sometimes with books they

borrow from the truck in public library until one knock at their door last week i thought it was way over because the visitor was a very polite charlton police sergeant dan down not to warn her of a mugger loose in the neighborhood but to let her know that her daughter had to book several months overdue which needed to be returned or paid for a close my door i looked at my daughter and started crying and i said what's the matter is that please more i'm going to arrest. they found it again we're talking about policing. cers chasing down overdue library books along into a five year old it's unclear if the library calls on the swat team to silence people who aren't quiet when they get shot and the very very ugly eric cantor was majority leader and john boehner backstabber did an interview with sixty minutes this weekend and had to be saved mid interview by his own press secretary. your idol as i've read anyway was ronald reagan and he compromised he never compromised

his principles well he raised taxes and it was one of his principles not to raise taxes well he also cut taxes but he did compromise with this group. and at that point cantor's press secretary interrupted yelling from off camera that what i was saying wasn't true and so actually it is true blue true reagan raised taxes twelve times while in office and the fact that eric cantor one even consider doing so and relies on his press secretary to lie about it in a hard hitting interview just shows how radical and misleading the republican party is today and that's very clear again. after the break surging republican rick santorum things condoms should be outlawed i'll explain while the why his campaign should be outlawed itself and. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions

it's going to break through it's already been made 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 sas it's when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.

the ground shook in ohio this weekend but it wasn't your typical earthquake no this was an earthquake apparently caused by natural gas fracking a fracking quake rattled northeast ohio on saturday and registered as four point zero on the richter scale it was the eleventh irq earthquake in the same area which just so happens to be near an oil injection or fracking site in youngstown ohio officials believe that shooting thousands of gallons of wastewater to the ground alongside a fault line is responsible for causing the earth to shift and a seismologist with the ohio seismic that work warned that war quakes are possible until fracking near the fault lines stops and the pressure is eased for injection wells along with the one in youngstown are now inactive while further investigation is a launched into the cause of the earthquake so how much more evidence do we need that fracking is inherently dangerous when the earth below us starts shaking for more on

this i'm joined by dr tony engraft the dwight's president professor suni of engineering at cornell university dr graff you're welcome good to be with you thanks for joining us for those who may not know could you quickly recap what fracking is and why it's spreading across the u.s. . sure fracking is a means of stimulating in this case and gas well to more easily give up its gets its the injection fracking fluid under relatively high pressure into in this case shale formations to fracture and reopen the practices that are naturally in the shale to release the gas fracking essentially increases the productivity of the well and makes for a better economic return on the investment and they do this by pumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of of water mixed with chemicals under pressure into the ground to bust up the underground underground formations to either a yes that's essentially correct except in this case for shale formations it's

called high volume perhaps during any typical shale gas well like the one you're seeing on the screen right now in pennsylvania uses somewhere between five and eight million gallons of this record which as you said is mostly water but it contains certain chemicals that aid fracking process and protect the well while have there been other other reports of earthquakes or other side effects from fracking in anywhere else the sets. yes this most recent incident in ohio follows incidents very similar incidents in texas in arkansas in oklahoma and actually in england all with about the last year or so as the fracking process gears up and the volume of fluid waste that's produced from the wells after cracking increases it has to go. and where it's been going in in large part out of pennsylvania west virginia ohio into this is in the injection wells in ohio like the one that caused this most recent quake. he said waste water is

there if they're pumping millions of gallons of water into the into the earth to break it up under there does it come back out or is it still in there or that the problem most of it comes back out depending upon the well it might all come back in a year or two a small percentage of it might come back in a year or two where the life of the well might all come back but the major problem with fracking and shale formations in my opinion is the potential environmental impact in this case seismic impact of what to do with the waste load so there are millions of gallons of waste load coming out of each well and in pennsylvania it's expected that there will be one hundred thousand shale gas wells at least in ohio the same number and that waste fluid is dangerous why and how is it being treated right now. it's dangerous because it's not just water it's that there have been

chemicals added to it to assist in the fracking process and to correct the protective welcome corrosion for example but while the fracking fluid is underground before it comes back it's also gathering large quantities of saw heavy metals and in some instances naturally occurring radioactive material so when it comes back to the surface it's certainly not water it's certainly not just salt water it is a very deep very dangerous material to the environment because i was not seeing waste it's a toxic waste and so is it being treated as toxic waste is it being recovered and appropriately disposed of. there are very few ways that it can be disposed of properly and unfortunately in pennsylvania recently and so many department of environmental protection asked the operators in pennsylvania to stop dumping this that would waste through so it's treatment plants because it was causing problems with drinking water and so the companies then said well we then have to do

something else with it there are a limited number of industrial waste treatment plants to you with them to handle the volume of the waste some companies are recycling and reusing some of the waste . in opposition to what the industry has been saying for years that one hundred percent of the waste load being produced in marcellus wells in pennsylvania never leads well never leaves the pads it's always cycle that's obviously not true because a lot of it is still going to ohio to the limited number of injection wells there and of course the people of ohio are wondering what's going to happen as drilling perks up in ohio they're going to be tens of thousands of gas wells in marcellus and utica and ohio too so there's a limited number of places to put the waste and that's the problem that's amazing how are other countries regulating or treating fracking. fracking has been going on for a long time what we're really talking about here is a certain form of cracking it's necessary to produce gas from shale formations in producing gas and shell formations in the relatively new process then here in the

u.s. it's now being picked up in a couple of countries abroad in some countries it's currently under moratorium. grants for example south africa. there are many places where it's under moratorium temporarily for example. so different entities different countries different provinces and different countries are treating the issue in different ways because many of them are concerned that a proper science hasn't been done especially with regards to waste disposal well it seems like we've just leapt into a technology without considering the long term consequences not unlike the nuclear experiment nuclear power thirty forty years ago. a good analogy corn ethanol another one said i always see people science and very often you have to. withdraw there you go thank you so much for being with us are my pleasure thank you very much oil and natural gas drilling companies love running television commercials showing just how safe fracking is take a look. there's

a lot of discussion going on about the development of natural gas whether it can be done safely and responsibly at exxon mobil we know the answer is yes when we design any wells the groundwater is protected by multiple layers of steel and cement most wells are over a mile and a half the so there's a tremendous amount of protective rock between the fracking operation and the groundwater natural gas is critical to our future at exxon mobil we recognize the challenges and how important it is to do this right so doing this right means causing earthquakes this weekend's events prove or at least indicate strongly that when oil and gas barons tell us how safe their fracking is. it's not quite true.

surging republican candidate and current internet meme rick santorum added another radical position to his long list of radical positions in an interview with a.b.c. news yesterday santorum pushed back against a nearly fifty year old supreme court ruling and said the states should have the right to arrest you for having or using a condom even if you're married and using it in your own home. are in their view out of the mainstream and they talk about the griswold versus connecticut case that was an issue that casey used against you about whether or not a state has the right to make a law against a married couple using contraceptives is that something you're at all concerned about is has a right never questioned the citizenry that's right if rick santorum were dictator he'd let states ban contraceptives no more condoms in kentucky no more birth control in alabama back in october santorum railed against contraceptives saying one of the things i will talk about that no president has talked about before is i think the dangers of contraception in this country it's not ok it's

a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. it is a reason why as santorum said no president has talked about this before because it's already been settled in one thousand nine hundred sixty five in that griswold case the supreme court ruled seven to two in the case of griswold versus connecticut that americans have a right to privacy and that state laws banning contraceptives by a late that right to privacy justice hugo black decided in the case saying that since nowhere in the constitution is the word privacy written then americans really don't have a right to privacy at hugo black been alive when our founding fathers were writing the constitution however he'd have known why they didn't use the word privacy back then in the late seventy's hundreds if you use the word privacy it meant you had to use the bathroom or use the privy as they call privacy was never used in the same

way as it is used today to describe what's personally yours or what you can do with your personal time and our founding fathers included in the bill of rights a right to privacy then they would have just in shrines in the constitution the right for all of us to use the bathroom at least in the language of that day and while that's important it's hardly worth mentioning in our nation's founding documents which is why the fourth amendment which does guarantee our right to what you and i do they call privacy referred to it as security the fourth amendment says the government can't come barging into your life can't come into your home or examine your person or read your papers a little less at least one no witness swear that they have enough evidence that you've committed a crime and there's probable cause to issue a search warrant and only when that warrant is issued can they invade your privacy . specifically the fourth amendment reads the right of the people to be secure in

their persons houses papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched in the person or things to be seized now you can spend all week searching every word jefferson or madison or hamilton or even ben franklin ever wrote and you'll never find them use the word privacy because back then people didn't write about using the toilet heck that was even before the modern flush toilet was invented a distinction that lore attributes to thomas crapper which is why in the late one nine hundred century they stopped calling them privies and started calling them crappers but they understood well the concept back in the late seven hundred the founders well understood the concept that today we call privacy and they laid it out in the fourth amendment explicitly and ninety nine percent of all women in the united states have claimed that right virtually every single american female has

used at least one method of contraception preventing two million unwanted pregnancies a year and we can thank the right of privacy for that but today rick santorum doesn't think you should have that right he would rather have big government in your bedroom he thinks the government should be able to look inside your cabinets and drawers and make sure there are no condoms he would create a whole new division of homeland security calling the condom police to go door to door making sure no one is engaged in illicit contraceptive use the condom police can share an office with the google police we're trying to scrub reference of rick sorenson who sent arms name off the internet but today i'm going to direct a favor and redefine him based on his opinion the birth control could be made illegal from now on santorum will mean a frothy mix of constitutional ignorance and bigotry that is sometimes a byproduct of pandering to the tea party. google as the big picture for more

information on the stories we covered visit our website to tom arbonne dot com free speech dot org and. also check out our two you tube channels there are links over tom hartman and this entire show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes and we have a free thom hartmann i phone and i pad app at the app store you can send us feedback at twitter at tom underscore hartman on facebook at tom underscore hartmann our blogs message boards telephone comment line at thom hartmann dot. and don't forget democracy begins when you show up when you participate it all starts with you get out there get active tag your it occupy something we'll see them.

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welcome to the a lot of shall we get the real headlines with none of them or see or can live out of washington d.c. now tonight we're going to take a look at iowa and how it shows us where this campaign season will be had a lot to say the big money is already rolling in for this very first primary though david sirota and james fallows both join us for a panel discussion then while the overwhelming majority turns its back on sopa and protect ip there is still are a few out there they're touting this piece of legislation or those pieces of legislation including at the boston globe what would.