back to the big picture on top marvin coming up in this half hour while japan is still recovering from last year's wish him a nuclear disaster the worst may be yet to come what this new information suggest about the possibility of the largest nuclear disaster in history also republicans in michigan to try to stop people from voting altogether or at least make it nearly impossible so what's going on the wolverine state will michiganders really have to jump through hoops to have their voices heard and after searching long and hard and

disenfranchising thousands of americans along the way republicans have finally found the culprit in their great voter fraud scandal turns out they didn't have to look very hard at all explain why and i still take. it as the rest of the news more bad news coming from the crippled fukushima nuclear plant in japan while speaking to swiss lawmakers last month japan's former ambassador to switzerland but. warned that if the building housing reactor four at that plant in fukushima were to collapse as many officials fear it might happen it would lead to a global catastrophe like the world has never seen before as we just sort of news reports a former official with the u.s. department of energy on. it on the consequences of

a building collapse around reactor four saying if an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly ten times the amount of cesium one thirty seven released by the chair noble accident if that fire were to consume the thousands of other radioactive spent fuel rods at the fukushima plant and the radiological event could be eighty five times greater than the chair noble disaster so just how dangerous is the situation still at the fukushima plant and what are the consequences for the united states given campuses bacchis the nuclear waste watchdog nuclear welcome back thank you so it's great to have you first of all we were talking before when on the air and i learned something i thought i knew a lot about nuclear waste and power you said that nuclear fuel before it's been run through a reactor is not so dangerous as afterwards well that's true once nuclear fuel goes into a reactor and is a radiated and uranium atoms are split it's a million times more radioactive than when it went in as fresh fuel even when it's

fresh fuel it's radioactive it's toxic heavy metal it is a very dangerous material and so they actually wear we the asian suits and gloves and the works they can work with it with their hands but once it's radiated in a reactor core it's giving off deadly doses of gamma radiation in a matter of seconds if it's just not of the reactor if you're a close range with no shielding it's a very deadly material and it stays that way for a million years given the long lasting radio isotopes while so. in their infinite wisdom. general electric designed and correct me if i'm wrong on any of those design these reactors or at least some of them that you know you know for you know three you know four to have their nuclear waste stored in the ceiling . and so this is far more deadly than the fuel nuclear waste is up in the ceiling the size of the building and been blown out by the explosion the building is listing and there's this pool of of radioactive way. stop there what happens if

this building collapses well it would be a global catastrophe certainly for japan it would be very devastating it would be a larger radioactivity released than what's already happened there and melted down cores at least they are inside containment structures granted those containment structures are damaged or destroyed and hence the massive amounts of radioactivity that have escape so far in the past thirteen months but the pools again the at general electric designed this reactor not only way too small and too weak a containment for the reactor cores but with the pools outside of any containment whatsoever i mean granted they were inside a building that's called the reactor building a secondary containment but the hydrogen explosions that units one three and four completely destroyed those outer buildings and these pools are now open air so if there's a fire in the uniform pool if it collapses completely if the bottom drops out and they have steel jacks under there now trying to keep the floor from falling on this pool in a couple of hours that fuel would be on fire releasing up to one hundred percent of

its cesium one thirty seven directly into the environment and compare that to charitable well as robert alvarez said in the unit for poor alone there's ten times the cesium that was released by turn all the entire scientific. just in the pools and there are seven pools one each at each reactor unit plus a common pool which is the mother load if you add them all up it's eighty five times the cesium that was released that chernobyl and that common pool with the most waste of all at the site is fifty meters away fifty yards away from you know for if you know joe if you know for goes up in flames that site is going to have to be ok and because now it's a deadly radioactive zone you would get a fatal dose in seconds or minutes nobody could go there and you couldn't mitigate the accident all those pools would likely go up in flames are there any nuclear reactors in the united states where they store the waste in the ceiling we have twenty four such units here in the united states they're going to form where they gather radioactive waste in the ceiling there mark wants to. daiichi one of them

has been such a gallon since one thousand nine hundred seven the waist is still in the pool to save money on dry cask storage. is for my he wants for a minute he has a mark on so as pilgrim near boston so as for me too near detroit these mark winds are near our biggest cities they're the oldest reactors in the country they have much more waste in their pools than any of the pools that we see my daiichi so if you lose primary grid power if you lose emergency back up these rules at our american ones it's a matter of time at fermi to take four hours and twelve minutes before the pool starts to boil and then maybe some days but that's what happened at the casino daiichi some days later that pool water is gone the waste is now in the open air and on fire these camps thank you for being with us thank you. our addiction to nuclear power has put our planet and every human living and all life at risk today no nukes. in other news democracy is on the march out of michigan apparently

unsatisfied with trashing democracy in places like benton harbor and flint were unelected financial managers are now running the cities republicans the wolverine state are trying to stop people from voting altogether or at least making it a lot harder for people to vote that enjoyed news reports legislation is in the works that would quote retired require voters to affirm their us citizenship at the polls have photo identification when registering to vote in government sanctioned rainin it to register others to vote in other words if the legislation is passed michiganders are going to jump through all kinds of hoops just to get a chance to have their voices heard in our democracy which by the way is exactly what republicans want fewer people voting republican strategist and founder of the american legislative exchange council alec paul way rick once said. how many of our. good government they want everybody to vote. i don't want everybody to vote elections are not won by

a majority of people they never happened from the beginning of our country and they are not now. look great in the elections why can't a boy grow up owning a populist. so is that what's going on in michigan joining me now is susan k. smith president of the league of women voters in michigan susan welcome thank you very much tam i know you're a league of women voters is a totally nonpartisan organization i'm going to try and do this in as an nonpartizan a fashion as i can what are the republicans and michigan and are there any democrats who are in on this trying to do with these new restrictions on voting well it seems to be a move to bring in what the. secretary of state coach election reform and it's going to unfortunate and michigan has had a very clean election system for many years and

i'm fortunately there's a lot. a lot of inaccurate information being put out we do not have problems with will or impersonation for him so there really is no reason for us to expand the photo id requirement to absentee voting and we also. are having a facing a difficult situation where the league of women voters and other organizations like the lee are going to find it very difficult to register people to vote you know time voting is a fundamental right in our country and it's crucial to a future of our democracy believe is very concerned that unnecessary barriers would not be put out to prevent people from voting these unnecessary barriers like photo id requirements for example do not affect

the population in the same way some parts of the population find a much more difficult to get these photo i.d.'s people who are over sixty five people who are poor minorities many of those folks with disabilities it just makes certain parts of the population. in a situation where it's much more difficult for them to participate in this very important part of our democracy which of course is voting in fact i understand league of women voters in florida were this kind of law has been passed has just stopped registering people altogether because the legal potential legal liabilities associated with it are there efforts in michigan underway to push back on this kind of legislation well certainly the league and many other voters who are concerned about these new barriers and the new construe pose constraints on our ability to

register voters have been attending the committee hearings and advocating very vociferous lee against these bills and we've been trying to get a lot of media attention about them so we appreciate this opportunity to talk about it. we are very concerned that this has happened but. the republicans control both the house and senate in the michigan legislature and it's so extremely difficult. to get to prevail right now and i didn't want to really it's very important to point out that the need to leave is nonpartisan and we are not supporting either party we are supporting the voters and their rights to participate in our democratic process but there's what it seems that there's one party who is pretty committed not to having that happen

unfortunately the league has been registering people since the nineteenth amendment was passed are we have just a little less than a minute left ari are are you going to have to stop functioning michigan now well because of the way the legislation is written certainly it's going to have a chilling effect because it wait now states. really would have a fiduciary responsibility i'm assuming is the president that would be me and it would be extremely difficult of course for me to be monitoring what league members across the state are doing as they engage in this very important of registration providing this community service system so this is a case of i thank you so much for being with us tonight thank you i'll have more on the right wing war on voting coming up in tonight's daily take.

mum. just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old like to tell the truth. i am a little get a friend that i love rap and hip hop music and. cutters color the jester that. i'm very proud of the role that it's played. look look look look look look.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear see some other part of it and realize that everything you saw you don't i'm sorry welcome is a big. crazy

alert they're not mean around not that way a village in austria is in the middle of a heated debate over changing their name y. well the village is currently known as f. ing. as you can imagine such a name comes with a lot of mr f. ing village street signs are for routinely stolen and teenagers prank call at the residence on a daily basis but having troubles don't stop there naked tourist couples often go to africa to play in the street and pose next to various village signs almost to the appian villagers are fed up with all the effing mystery of taking advantage of it local business people have made up in postcards at the christmas cards even now being bare villagers will meet later this week to discuss various name changes

including talking and well being here's hoping the name change will stop all the every non-sense. our first comment tonight comes from dan our son hartman facebook page he said this about america not having a universal health care system we say we are a moral country i think that not having universal health care and putting money and profit over human pain and suffering is so immoral i cannot wrap my head around the fact that some people and mainly the you know who's don't give a damn they say they do but they don't know how pathetically set absolutely agreed and we all know who the you know who is are in fact they just passed again the paul ryan budget which is going to say now we're going to take medicare and turn into a voucher program here grandma here's a thousand bucks good luck finding

a health insurance company that will cover you now that you had a heart attack it is wrong it is morally wrong as the catholic bishops appoint now and i think that when in the declaration of independence thomas jefferson wrote about life liberty the pursuit of happiness how do you have a right to life without having health care any our next comment of the night comes from a viewer ones that pennsylvania called into our viewer ramrods he said this about mitt romney possibly being our next president i'm just amazed at the stupidity of a country that would even entertain the thought of having willard's a rat in there in the white house is draft dodger just like george w. you know your vietnam he ran like a little miles just to france and now he's a multimillionaire. and he's done nothing but outsource jobs and by his

own admission he enjoys sparring people. i think that poetic justice would be today but we take mitt romney's time to the roof of his car like he did his dog to drive to canada. first of all let me clarify mitt romney isn't a multi-billionaire he's an old a millionaire he's worth about a quarter of a billion dollars it seems but beyond that i don't think tying anything to the roof of a car and driving to canada where the mother of the mitt romney or whether be is dog is a decent or humane idea. you know i'm just saying i mean i'm not trying to be in the bag for mitt or anything but just i wouldn't time our final count of the one comes from brian who called in a viewer rant line had a couple questions that he wanted me to address. i want to know where in the constitution the filibustering my understanding is the vice president cast in

deciding vote and in the event of a. filibustering by a minority. for our point. and we. heard you say many times that supreme court justices are there for life but money standing in the supreme court can be impeached if they overstep their bounds could you care to. discuss these issues thank you very much for taking my call. sure. first of all the concept that supreme court justices can be impeached is in the constitution just like in the constitution in answer actually to both your questions it says that at the beginning of every every legislative session which is every two years every congress every two years both the house and the senate will make their own rules for their own behavior so the filibuster is part of the rule making process you are right the constitution says

a majority and the vice president write the majority but you know they can change their rules they've chosen not to which some of us think is a bad bad idea and that's that's how they've decided to do it with regard to the supreme court justices they can be impeached but it requires just like when bill clinton was impeached it requires a build impeachment to be presented in the house of representatives it requires a supermajority vote the house of representatives that goes to the senate for conviction and then removal frankly i think a better way to solve the problem of our supreme court of these guys men and women actually mostly these five right wing men behaving like they're the kings of america is for congress to exercise the power they have an article three section two of the constitution which says that they can establish rules for the supreme court in other words they get what franklin roosevelt tried to say was about seven rules as if you're over seventy years old you don't get a vote on the supreme court which would have knocked your four or five justices off so that's a start and if you like your questions or comments heard on the side of the big

picture listen up. we want to know your to send us your comments by visiting the tom hartman facebook page via twitter at tom underscore when you're in the chat room on the message boards or through the blog at tom hartman dot com you can also leave a message on our ramp line at two two three six fifty three zero six agree disagree sound off it's all welcome to remember that your comments may be used on the air. just. it's the good the bad in a very very cracked verse illicitly ugly a good drone cox cox a six year old english water taxes raised over ten thousand dollars from a lemonade stand was set up to help raise money for his sick bother randy cox his dad was diagnosed with cancer this year and i was sure it would pay for some of the costs they'd still be out thousands of dollars drew up in his stand outside his home last saturday morning charging twenty five cents a crop were to his efforts spread quickly some customers came from dozens of miles

away and one person wrote a five thousand dollars check good on you drew for helping your dad afford the health care he needs something our current system tragically can't do for a bad pat robertson robertson the highly controversial televangelist responded to a mother on his show yesterday who said her fourteen year old daughter had a gauge to unsavory acts to other girls and might be a lesbian on hearing about the situation roberts robertson gave his advice on how to revert a teenager. i think what she should do was say i don't think you can see susie and he were to do this you know you've got to explain to it what the bible says it's on the likelihood that a is that she has you know has homosexual tendencies. despite all robertson thinks studies have shown that children as young as nine years old are aware of their sexuality robinson is the same man who said the haiti earthquake was caused by

a pact with the devil so this. and a comment shouldn't come as much of a surprise and a very very ugly they should daniel genki genki of bishop in illinois spoke at a mass this weekend following a catholic men's march we come back and he actually compared president obama to hitler take a listen. hitler and stalin at the better moments which is barely tolerate some churches remaining an open book would not tolerate any competition with the state education social services and health care. in clear violation of our first amendment rights president obama with his radical pro-abortion extreme secularist agenda now seems intent on following a similar path. actually hitler tried to exterminate millions of people because they were of a different faith president obama wants to make sure working women have access to contraception and some two very different things the fact that bishop genki would

suggest that president obama's actions come anywhere near those of a brutal dictator both highly offensive and very very. well republicans finally did it in their quest to find the quest to find someone anyone who's committed voter fraud and justify these new radical voter id laws that have now knocked five million voters off the rolls in seventeen states in just the last year republicans have finally found a call for a second a heck of a lot of work to finally find a real voter fraud criminal in the george w. bush couldn't find a voter fraud he launched a five year investigation through the department of justice to find out just how rampant voter fraud is and found virtually zero interest instances of partisan

voter fraud in fact the number of people struck by light. and the number of u.f.o. sightings during the same time massively larger than the number of voter fraud cases uncovered by the department of justice and the brennan center for justice did a detailed study between two thousand and two thousand and six and several states to find the rate of voter fraud and here's what they found and wisconsin the voter fraud rate was just point zero zero zero two percent and new york the voter fraud rate was just point zero zero zero zero zero nine percent a new jersey the rate was just point zero zero zero four percent and hampshire just point zero zero zero six percent in missouri it's the same story in other words voter fraud pretty much doesn't exist and definitely doesn't exist any degree to warrant voter id laws that were hit millions of poor elderly and urban voters the voter rolls the selection as protecting the vote dot com uncovered eighteen percent of young americans people who tend to vote for democrats don't have appropriate

government issued i.d.'s to vote right now and twenty five percent of african-americans again people who tend to vote for democrats also don't have the appropriate government issued i.d.'s to vote in states of these new voter id laws so if republicans couldn't find just one person just one high profile name to repeat over and over and over again to the american people like willie horton kind of convincing them that voter fraud is a real problem and that these laws are necessary think it just get that one name everything else would fall into place then they'd have a justification for laws that require supertight id and send people to jail for years and years they commit voter fraud well luckily for the republicans they found their guy they found their voter fraud let me tell you about the suspect in two thousand and ten this suspect allegedly cast a fraudulent vote in massachusetts in the senate race he bragged to the voters illegally in that state just so he could help the candidate he supported fill ted kennedy's vacant senate seat to be eligible to vote the suspect claimed his legal

residence was in massachusetts believe it or. this guy actually wrote on the voter registration form that he lived in his son's finished a spent quite a massachusetts law for a location to be the primary residence of a voter it has to be quote where a person to wells and which is the center of is the best fix social and civic life and quote however according to the suspects former realtor he didn't even live in his son's unfinished basement in fact he'd actually moved to california long before the election that means the suspect illegally claimed a false residence just so he could illegally vote in the senate race and that ladies and gentlemen is textbook partisan voter fraud and the voter fraud carries with it a ten thousand dollars fine and five years in prison so who is it who is the man who committed this crime investors of the twenty seven and the number of acorn maybe they do but black panther party maybe a democratic party operative i guess it really doesn't matter to republicans who it is because they you know they have what they need they've now got a name all is good in the republican party that i right now i think you're screwing

the stock maybe it was a republican hoops help our voter fraud suspect is none other than mitt romney the republican party's nominee for president where is joe arpaio when you need answer for the big picture tonight don't forget to mock receive begins with you get out there get active tag you're it. used today violence has once again flared up. these are the images. from the streets of canada. for asians room today.

there hasn't been anything good on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political impact. the full source material is for helps keep journalism honest we. we wanted to present. something on. the. to the to do.