it's being called a modern day civil war labor union taking on their tough talking governor team minus two hours until the polls in wisconsin close for a historic recall election and if we find out of scott walker gets to keep his job so what does a dispute in the dairy land say about polarization fear and the us. and wisconsin residents had to the polls many in florida are afraid they won't be allowed to vote come november that's because governor rick scott and his republican administration is trying to purge the vote effectively knocking american citizens off the voters' list we'll tell you all about what's been called voter suppression

. and bigger maybe better but in america's case it isn't about being big it's about being the uncontested champion of the macho contest from live to bombers the u.s. military can't be outdone we'll introduce you to the newest to. join the fleet. it's tuesday june fifth eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our. we turn now to the has storage recall election happening today and wisconsin tensions running high in the state as the fate of governor scott walker's job is decided there where a recall election has polarized the state with some hailing walker as a hero and others human izing him as a villain behind walker is enormous sums of cash from was wealthy republican

supporters his opponent milwaukee mayor tom barrett pales in comparison when it comes to funding but he has political leaders and unions behind him at stake in the state as workers' rights and what happens today can have huge implications for the rest of the country and set the tone for the upcoming presidential election or as a correspondent christine for south reports. here to vote for many wisconsin residents today's election is personal my son here at walker wins the election he won't have health insurance anymore. but for the rest of the country the outcome has a broader meaning union busting is you know an old fashioned thing that we thought we had gotten rid of in the early part of the twentieth century and now it is extremely active national way now bottom line is nobody likes their money taken out of pocket as expected turnout was high thanks for voting on line with very few to go. in the undecided category they may also look wisconsin is in many ways

a microcosm of today's america even some of the longest serving lawmakers say they have never served in a more divided congress and the same thing is happening in districts across this country here in wisconsin you need to look no further than some of the residential neighborhoods the house i'm standing in front of now they support tom barrett but walk in just a few doors down and the neighbors have a sign on display saying that they stand with scott walker the governor start of the civil war where he picks a neighbor against neighbor worker against worker relatives don't you want to talk about politics because it becomes too divisive it's not only about affirming my role as the governor it's about for me the rule of every local and state official in wisconsin that if you do the right thing if you make the tough decisions voters will ultimately stand was also standing with walker tens of millions of dollars in outside donations making the badger state a dumping ground for cash and mixed messages if money can buy an election then you

know the fascists have won a heated contest about politics policy and the future of the way this country does business in wisconsin christine freezone are. all from our what's at stake in wisconsin are tea correspondent christine is on the ground there and joins us now live hi christine so we are the hour. or is away now until the polls close sounds like there's a lot of action going on over there where you are describe what the mood is like over there let's both close in just one hour and already if you just take a look behind me you can see quite a few people have already gathered outside of the statehouse everyone here lives knows that this is a very historic day i just found out an interesting new thought on the polling places here in madison actually had to order more ballots to be printed because so many people showed up to vote today this is one of those states where you can actually register on the day of voting so we were at several polling places so many people coming in they were casting their vote for the first time registered on the

spot but i've got to say emotions here are swirling high everyone hears that something is at stake whether you're supporting walker or whether you want to see him lose their job lose his job a lot of people who are taking this very personally so you know as you saw in my report a lot of polarization a lot of tension and a whole lot of people who don't know what they're going to do after today is over so a very divided wisconsin as you say you know and tom barrett has said that a civil war has occurred in wisconsin is that what you're seeing over there. well i mean certainly those are fighting words but this is an election and yet you know people say that they cannot talk politics within their own family that they can't speak to some of their neighbors because of this election this isn't just about how walker should you be governor or not this is about the future of workers right about unions it's about a changing time in america when you know

a governor could raise thirty million dollars for a recall i mean there are a lot of changes that we're seeing take place here and remember we're just a few months away from the presidential election but what people really paying attention to what happened today to look ahead to you know how relevant will unions be how organized are you looking at the results to get an answer to that question and you know walker has a lot of money behind him especially in comparison to to his opponent there if walker doesn't pull it off despite the fact that he has so much funding behind him what message do you think that sends out well certainly a lot of the voters that i spoke to say that they're kind of offended that that walker went and raised so much money from these outside groups a lot of them worried now what that could mean if you does in fact because job there and they're wondering to what you might hold favors to and what the future of money in politics will look like if you know all this money will in fact determine

the outcome but listen if you ask if the governor walker loses his job after raising so much money it's going to be a really really interesting message is that you know the grassroots effort that is the people and the votes of these elections come down to and it seems to be a very tight race at this point and we're just hours now until the polls close and any indication of just just one hour now any indication as to where this could be having. both sides both candidates. we spoke to them both we've been here everyone knows that this is about turnout and as we mentioned we're seeing historic turnout they're saying in some places more than one hundred percent so it's really going to come down to that a whole lot of people put their money on governor walker and in fact getting to win what happened is you know sixteen months ago fifteen months ago we saw the building you see right behind me the state capitol building from the inside and out more

than a hundred thousand people out here fighting to see the governor. because they wanted him to lose his job but in fact since that time the governor has raised a lot of money you've raised a lot of work and you've done a lot of organization and he's been able to really you know put a firmer foot on the ground from his side of focusing on jobs focusing on you know having to make tough decisions so it's really difficult to say exactly what's going to happen here but both sides are really getting organized and you know i can't predict i don't have a crystal ball so we're just going to wait around here and see what happens right well christine thank you so much for keeping us updated on how this is all playing out over there in wisconsin that was ours t correspondent christine for that. well florida insists on purging votes this despite the justice department ordering the state not to because it's illegal under federal law as florida has until wednesday to stop purging a word is that the state has no intention of doing so that they claim that the vote

they're purging are those that are possibly not american citizens the majority of those votes also happen to be democrats for the d.o.j. is calling this voter purge illegal of florida says they're going to do it anyway why earlier dr wilmer leon a professor at howard university waited on this take a lesson well because by the time they get done with the legal wrangling the damage will already have been done the voters will have been purged from the rolls not able to participate in the election and then hopefully in the minds of the republicans that are behind this they will then have stand a better chance for for mitt romney to a to be elected i don't know why do you think florida is so bad that i'm going far and that's going forward with this well this is not the first time the florida has done this they did this in two thousand with choice point and as the company

purging rolls under jeb bush as governor so florida has demonstrated a history in doing this and one of the things that's important to recognize is that even though the campaign for president is a national election the national election is made up of fifty individual state elections plus the district of columbia and us protectorates so the individual states become very very important and this really comes down to florida ohio virginia and probably pennsylvania so if they can with the with the turnout being lower anticipated in two thousand and twelve anyway the more voters they can purge from the rolls the better chances the republicans stand stand to win and wisconsin is a perfect example of what we're seeing right now in wisconsin because they've had. add in increase with voters being able to register at the polls we're now seeing record turnout in an off issue election that shows you specifically why florida is trying to depress the turnout as opposed to increase the turnaround so

it sounds like you clearly think that this is a politically motivated oh there's. what's important for your viewers to understand if they take away nothing else this is not in issue voter fraud in the united states is not in issue that is why in all of the reports that you read all the information that you've seen they haven't given you any data that shows you the percentage of attempted or actual fraudulent votes that have been cast in the last twenty years this is not a problem it is a created solution to a fictional problem in order to depress the democratic turnout in the election that's all this is now florida is saying that many of these voters may not be american you don't buy that argument and the operative term there is may be if they had the data they would tell you fifteen percent of the voters that turned up in

this precinct or eight percent of the voters that turned up in this precinct were found to be either illegal aliens or convicted felons or whatever criteria that they want to use for determining fraudulent voters they can't make those statements because they don't have the data and they don't have the data because the data does not exist fraudulent think about this if you're an illegal immigrant. you are primarily trying to do one thing gainful and gainful employment the one thing you don't want to do is call attention to yourself show up on the radar by turning up to vote as a non registered voter in and have people asking questions why are you here this is not issue it does not exist fraudulent voting in the united states now people do make mistakes there are people who move out of a particular precinct and don't realize that they're in the wrong precinct and

they'll turn up to vote those kinds of things do happen but in terms of people actually trying to control an election by fraudulent voting that just isn't real that you want to take a moment out to take a look at some of the numbers behind floridians the number of floridians flagged as voter registration one thousand six hundred and thirty eight people in the miami dade county were flagged as non-citizens three hundred fifty nine of them provided privileged status and chat twenty six were identified as a u.s. citizen by the country but twelve hundred have simply not yet responded to the latter so what do you make of those numbers and why wouldn't those people respond well because there are practices such as caging where the where the they'll get a list of people and in many instances they know for example if the individual is in active duty and may not be in country they may be in iraq they may be in iran

they may be somewhere else so the letter has come to their home they're not home to receive it they put do not forward return to sender so the letter comes back to the post office and that individual is then considered to be on either nonexistent or no longer in the state and the the letter is put in a cage and that the individual then is stricken from the rolls so there are a lot of reasons why. particular individual may not respond to the letter that has absolutely nothing to do with citizenship has absolutely nothing to do with their being a registered voter and has everything to do with reasonable legal reasons that are then being misinterpreted and used to strike that individual from the world they may be on vacation they may be on a cruise for six hundred hours around who knows where they are or where there has

started a lot of controversy some people are even saying that this is a several riots do you think that raven. definitely is a civil rights issue because the one nine hundred sixty five voting rights act did two things primarily one is it made it illegal for states particularly in the south to engage in these types of practices and the other thing that it did was it required when the states want to change their voting practices or processes they first have to get it pre-cleared by the justice department and the state of florida has not done this this is called roe at his best and their logic is we're going to go ahead move forward do what we want to do reap the havoc caused the damage and we'll fight about it later because after the election and if by chance mitt romney were to win and then florida is disciplined by the justice department that's not

going to bring about a recall in the election they will have accomplished what they set out to accomplish. in the in the in the in the penalties that they paid in their minds will just be considered collateral damage and lastly it's a kind of boil it down what impact do you think if more of a goes there with this voter suppression what impact could it have on the election but we could have tremendous impact again because in two thousand and twelve we are not going to have the same degree of turnout that we had in two thousand and eight and so every vote is going to count on both the democratic side and the republican side because mitt romney isn't really still. and it hasn't really warmed up to a lot of the social conservatives so he's got to get all of you people to turn out as do the democrats for president obama and so every vote matters and if this works in florida it will be replicated in virginia in south carolina in north carolina

all throughout the so we're going to see problems what do you think could set a dangerous precedent across the cold no question absolutely right dr welner we are out of time thank you so much for coming on the show that there will more leon he is a professor at howard university. well bigger is always better seems to be the case for the u.s. military back in the 1930's the u.s. constructed a seven hundred eighty five foot long helium balloon airship that was meant to rival germany's air fleet it was the biggest airship ever to be built in america at that point although it ended up crashing no one really knows why or how moving along the be fully it is another testament testament to the bigger is better mentality of the seventeen bomber was known as the flying fortress because it could survive massive damage and still land safely as cousin the b. twenty nine bomber upped the ante it was used in world war two and the korean war

and the famous b. fifty two strato fortress bomber made the u.s. all the more powerful with its long range jet. howard bomber but it doesn't stop there take a look at this newest gadget they recently test launched a massive drone the biggest and existence you are looking at the phantom launching from nasa research center last week the military is hoping that this mega drone will be able to soar at sixty five thousand feet for ninety six hours at a time that's four days the enormity of the enormity of this drone made by boeing would allow four hundred fifty pounds of sensors cameras and all kinds of nifty spying devices on board now that's a far cry from what the drone actually did during the test flight it was only airborne for about a half hour but it's the first step for the military sending the biggest spine machine to hover in our skies one that can keep a close eye on cities for days at

a time so what does this mean for your privacy to have one of these drones loitering above earlier i was joined by john glasser assistant editor for antiwar dot com and i asked him was bigger necessarily better. well you have this actually gets to the spirit of what the military industrial complex and imperial grand strategy for the united states has been for decades primary among those was to prevent any other peer competitor in the world from gaining their own dominance or independence from any american dominated system and that plays out in all kinds of ways i mean. take take defense budgets the obama administration and both parties in congress have been lying through their teeth for years now about the doom that our national security would face if we decreased the rate of growth in the projected defense spending that's

a key phrase because of course they talk about cuts to defense taking an ask x. to defense budgets but all that's being talked about is decreasing the rate of growth in projected defense spending and now when you think about these this drone war what we're facing now is that drones have become a tool for war but the war makers don't need to declare war and so again this is about total dominance nobody can face against us and that's the nature of what it's like to be in washington and the part of the war party now that we've reported a lot on to around and plenty around but what exactly is this new magazine around capable of. well this this mega drone which is far bigger than the type of drones that are now flying over pakistan or somalia or in the war zones for a war zone in iraq and afghanistan it's far bigger it can fly fly far higher at

sixty five thousand feet the ones where only a few thousand and it can stay in the air without being refueled for up to four days so what this means is an expanded power to. spy on and perhaps drop bombs on people below. and the fact that these drones and they are unmanned they can hover and there for days at a time why should people be concerned about that and is there a possibility that this can be used domestically to monitor u.s. cities. well people should be concerned about it because drones in general are already representing a significant expansion of power that is unchecked government power that is unchecked goes on accountability without accountability no transparency it's secret we're not allowed to know about it but they have incredible behind power behind them essentially like i said the power to declare war without actually declaring it

the reason americans should be concerned about it is that is that you know police departments are now getting more in touch with the drone technology and that's happening all throughout the country the f.a.a. is started to lease licenses for drone use and it'll get to surveillance and perhaps weaponized drones in some amount of time already and i do want to go and to drones and the use of drones by the u.s. military has been controversial lately especially the way they've been used in pakistan anchor angering the people of countries abroad a u.s. official says a drone strike in pakistan's northwest tribal region has killed al qaeda second and command what does this say about our a lot rocky relationship with pakistan as well as president obama's drone campaign for pakistan has repeatedly asked us to stop bombing their country they talk about

their own sovereignty and we have not declared war on them and it's a non war zone technically and they've repeatedly demanded that we stop pakistan after these latest set of drone bombings in the tribal regions pakistan today some in the u.s. envoy to the foreign ministry to lodge a formal protest with him over the series of drone strikes that pakistan repeatedly has asked to be ended. and yeah. you know as you had mentioned earlier john defense cuts are supposed to be put in place in order to adhere to a tighter budget but how can defense justify splurging this big fancy drone and does the u.s. really need it no the u.s. doesn't really need it you could cut the defense budget in half and still and still the united states would outspend most of the world probably all of the world

considering the vast amount of military bases we have across the world and all of the advanced military technology that we have and i would spend you know the rest of the world we don't need this stuff it's dangerous and it represents. serious legal problems when the administration starts to use them with no accountability. you know john to kind of put it from the military's perspective can you blame them for wanting to have the biggest and the best in wanting to be the most well equipped well yes i can again that this is part of the mentality behind a foreign policy that is inherently expansive and inherently seeks to dominate the entire world and doesn't take into account stuff like civilian casualties in this drone war so yes i can blame them they should be held accountable for this kind of reckless behavior all right john thank you very much for coming on the shell that

was john glaser assistant editor for antiwar dot com. well how do you feel about the government being able to get ahold of mass amounts of information about you in complete secrecy well it happens and a law from decades ago enables this to go further than you can imagine a recent study from the federal judicial center reveals a federal docket they handles tens of thousands of secret cases each year and what you may find troubling about these cases is that it allows for electronic surveillance we're talking cell phones e-mail and any other information stored on your computer or what you do online and this is all regulated by the electronic communications privacy act of one thousand nine hundred eighty six and privacy groups are saying this law is a way outdated especially since the way we communicate has evolved drastically over the decades many privacy groups are now pushing for this law to be updated to discuss the privacy act and more cade crockford privacy rights court nater for the

american civil liberties union joined us earlier today. part of the electronic communications privacy act is called the storage communications act and under the stored communications act those are a piece of that called subsection of section twenty seven zero three which basically allows the government to submit what's called section d. orders so it's actually it's somewhere in between a warrant and a subpoena subpoena as many of you probably know is simply a form that a prosecutor fills out and submit to you know the holder of some content that it wants information from the judge or perceives that order a warrant is a much stricter standard there are probable cause requirements for warrants to the stored communications act order sit somewhere in the middle it's not exactly a warrant it's not a subpoena but what what this judge magistrate's report shows is that the rules

that. are put in place twenty perhaps over twenty five years ago. are woefully inadequate primarily because they don't allow even congress let alone the general public to know how many of these orders are being issued because there are gag sealed and blindfold provisions which prevent people from even knowing how many of these orders are out there so what can be done now and what parts of this law need to be updated in order to reflect you know the times and the way that we communicate today. sure so the judge magistrate stephen smith who issued this really important report i encourage people to read it you can go to my web site privacy s.o.s. or the latest blog entry links to the report and i talk about it he basically is asking that congress reform act but to mandate judges and judge magistrates

to provide some kind of notice alternately to to the people who are targets of these of these orders because a key piece of what we need to realize here is that you know it. my emails the e-mails that i sent to my friends to you know my lower my coworkers whatever i don't actually possess them you know if i use google or g. mail to send emails it's it's google or g. mail because that's my e-mails so the government doesn't have to go to you can completely ignore me if it wants information about what i'm talking about or one talking to and go to google instead so the number of issues one is transparency we need to know how many of these orders are being issued another is accountability so that you know if if if if a magistrate agrees with a prosecutor and issues an order for my communications information you know i should be notified at some point so that i can challenge that order. under the under act as it stands according to his report people do not have the ability to

challenge these orders so you know we're this is a this is a very troubling situation in which tons of people are potentially being watched by the government without our knowledge ever people might never find out so there needs to be transparency there needs to be accountability and we need to update the law to reflect the fact that many of us use third party content providers to spread our information around to communicate online. well that's going to do it for the news for tonight but don't change the channel the always passionate tom hartman is coming up at the top of the hour class and i have edition of the big picture of doomsday is officially here for over a year time has been breaking down the battle brewing between union leaders and governor scott walker in wisconsin tonight we'll tell you why the public needs to be more organized and more active preventing money buying democracy for more of the stories we covered you can check out our you tube channel it's.