but a bag of the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour it's not easy being a democrat in a red state just as former governor of alabama done siegelman to talk with him as he prepares to serve serve in a seventy eight month prison sentence as a political prisoner of karl rove also politicians might want like might come to washington with the best of intentions but many quickly become corrupted by money and power so a way to bring consciousness and genuine spirituality into washington and could it be the best thing for moving america forward and since he took office president obama has been the most radical anti-drug president at least anti-pot president in

american history despite promising otherwise should he continue america's failed war on drugs or take a surprising page out of paul ryan's playbook i'll explain in tonight's daily to. in the best of the rest of the news in the next several hours former alabama governor don siegelman will report to a federal prison in louisiana and begin a seventy eight month sons behind bars what was governor siegelman is crime being a sex successful democratic politician in a red state like alabama which made him a political enemy of the bush white house and in particular karl rove siegelman story is a long one that took him to the heights of political power in alabama only to see his career kneecapped by trumped up bribery charges corrupted judges. a blatant

conspiracy hatched by bush white house insiders and republican party operatives in alabama that conspiracy has worked which should trouble us all because of a governor could be targeted taken down and sent to prison and the exact same thing can happen to any of us now joining me on the phone to tell his story and what the future holds for him as he gets set to begin his prison sentence is former governor of alabama don siegelman and his daughter dana siegel welcome to. day. thank you for joining. the d.n.c. at the convention last week. actually. so in the cable arena. showing people had. their i mean everyone was sort of shocked. of course i was sort of. i had this

feeling that i was supposed to. confront him about. ask him if he felt at this point if there was anything he could do that might crazy but it was worth a shot to me because god is going back to prison tomorrow and i want to i am pretty much willing to do whatever it takes including confronting calls from. its little help anyway i heard about four hours before i actually saw him face to face and so when i saw him it didn't it didn't talk to me as much as if i hadn't heard earlier some kind of grateful for that. but i just went up to him and i and i got my hand and i said. before mr rove armed siegelman don siegelman daughter and i wanted to say you know i'm sorry about everything that's happened but i really want to hear from you you know you're top of the story and also if there's anything at

this point that you could do for us to make this all go away but of course you didn't get to see that because he cut me off and he started yelling at me because finger really close to my face. you know it's weird because he started to run away . while he was. and shaking his finger and so it sort of following him. and. gave us basically what he was telling you that i have a message that you tell him not my name to make money or i'm going to press charges and on the screen and exactly what he. thought about it. after about that. which is just sort of ridiculous because god doesn't even have a book. really capitalizing on this horrible thing that happened. projecting onto. his own motives and his own behavior everyone

can hear me yeah yeah. i agree he was he was projecting his own motives and behaviors onto you your dad's on the line right now with this governor don siegelman governor welcome back to the program thanks. i appreciate you having me on this one last we're going to sort of making our way from birmingham alabama through mississippi. to. the western part of the state actually closer to houston to do this but i will be back in the swamps of louisiana tomorrow. now i understand it don siegelman dot com. there is. there is a link that people can use to get to a petition to ask president obama to pardon you you are going to jail

for appointing somebody to a non-paid position somebody who never gave you a penny you got no benefit out of this this is the kind of thing that the present united states and south has done with over one hundred political appointees and. how is that well you know it tom you knives is said this before but this case is is is bigger than me and is it is more important than than my freedom yes i want to be out of prison i would like the truth to be told but he you know it is more important for the just the president to commute the sentence or to pardon me to but to underscore the need to restore justice and to preserve our democracy because as you said if it can happen to me as governor that it can happen to anybody at any time and we just have to go back to a few years ago when the u.s. attorney scandal broke a date attorneys u.s.

attorneys were fired because they would not do karl rove's political bidding and prosecute democrats. are proud there are big political prosecutions but the flip side of that was that all the other u.s. attorneys were doing his bidding including the u.s. attorney in alabama ten. you know this is the kind of abuse of power and the misuse of the department of justice using it as a political to that that has to be stopped and and so it is our hope that by signing this petition it don siegelman dot org or free down settlement or for free done. that it will send a message not only to the president but to congressman the president does to be nice and it's a part of me or to the courts that this this dangerous situation. has to be stopped and corrected that predawn. raid on dot org or park street on it's

a little mn dot org right ok great or don siegelman dot org all of the. what are what are your thoughts on the obama justice department have they had they had he had any interactions with them it seems like they should at the very least be looking over their own attorneys. well you know i think what has happened is that there were a lot of holdovers from the bush administration a lot of holdovers and a lot of them were in fairly high ranking positions moreover rove used a litmus test for many of the others. aren't. subordinate positions and so those people are also imbedded into the system it took the department of justice took the president a while to get the some of these u.s. attorneys reappointed and of course i got caught in that in our the u.s. attorney that was appointed vetted by bush rubin appointed by bush was stayed on

case in fact the prosecutorial team remained the same pretty much throughout. throughout this whole prosecution and up into and including today so it is my hope that the president will be reelected and when he is reelected that some things will change and hopefully some of the personalities character within the department of justice will change along with his reelection from your lips to god's ears governor don siegelman and his daughter dana siegel and thank you both for being with us thank you tom thank you. governor siegelman story and how things have reached this point i'm joined by many kennedy actress author and board member with progressive democrats of america many welcome it's great to be here tom thank you for joining us just how sordid is this takedown of got governor siegelman. it's very sordid it was targeted they've been at it for ten years trying to destroy this man

and his political future but what's really sordid is it's been done by a loyalist to one party and the our loyalty i think is american citizens and certainly if were in government or in that the judicial system should be to the united states there was a one party system in the soviet union tom remember my father was a lawyer once told me they have elections in the soviet union but there is only one party and you can only vote for their candidates and it's a test of your loyalty to do so and i was shocked and thinking wow you know that's bad and people don't like our two party system sometimes they want third parties they want more of a choice but one of the things that has been positive is that in a two party system at least you can presumably battle it out over the issues but what happened was the g.o.p. had a southern strategy they wanted a one party state and loyalty to the republican party among these people took over

loyalty to the united states and they used the prosecutorial apparatus and appointed they have a thing called the commission for justice committee for justice that was trying to install right wing judges with grassroots support using abortion as the reason and right to life well right to life involves a lot more than just reproduction and to destroy someone's career and reputation is hardly respect for life and i had to stand up against it now governments governor siegelman actually was certified as having won the election in two thousand and two as governor and then in the middle of the night after the democratic poll watchers of love that only the republicans were there in one one district in one area with one computerized voting machine they suddenly discovered something. you know they had paper ballots it was an opp to scan count and the up to scan count in this county had proof that governor siegelman won and he went to bed thinking he was the

governor again he woke up to find by. saying i am the governor because in this one county there was a jiggling a digital electronic scoreboard thing where suddenly the votes redistributed themselves among all the gubernatorial candidates and it cost governor siegelman three thousand votes which was just enough for him to lose the whole state of alabama those paper ballots have never been recounted because part of this apparatus said thou shalt not recount these votes they are put away they will never be recounted and that is that which is the other sort of part of this tom is we have to be very suspicious and put a lot of transparency on all this digital voting whether it is an op to scan count or whether they are digitized machines we need to know what's going on and a lot of people are working on that with public right to know public record requests looking at computer logs and so forth there you go he's going to be pretty

sorted but yeah. it also it also should hopefully awaken a lot of people mimi kennedy thank you so much for sure and sure the this story with us. thanks for having me on tom it's a pleasure. coming up in washington today it seems that lacking a conscious election consciousness is a prerequisite for becoming a politician but in spirit you're ality in politics work hand in hand to help improve life in america and the world. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you

glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom hardy welcome to the big picture. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that you remember it's called. a dome. the far left doesn't want the usa to defeat terrorism. to sell neighborhood. hockey only and a christian. group called you a lot. of kids who believe so because. you know the corporate media distracts us

from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells us from facials to garbage because that breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to break this that. so sometimes you know it you know and sometimes you know it you don't know and sometimes as the fires and theater says everything you know is real and. you're right. to make. sure. you go what is wrong. with all the bribery namecalling and personal attacks that go on in washington d.c. it would be easy to think that lacking consciousness is a prerequisite for being in politics that it seems more and more like those in washington care more about the bottom line and the well being of those they were elected to serve if you think the politics and having consciousness spiritual

consciousness are two things destined to never work well together then everything you know is wrong joining me now from our l.a. studios marianne williamson author of many critically acclaimed books including new york times bestseller a return to love she's also the author of the recent huffington post article sister giant consciousness and politics very unwelcome thank you so much tom thanks for joining us in your huffington post piece you said that america needs to be having a new conversation what is that conversation. well right now economics is obviously the order i'm ordering principle of human civilization and humanitarian values should be the ordering organizing principle for human civilization and so we keep trying to change the deck chairs on the deck of the titanic when really if you look at the entire way we are living our lives on this planet we could be arguing that these that the ship is sinking so if we put moneyed interests short term economic

gain for just a few people whether that's the way we're doing politics in the united states or even just the way we're ordering geopolitics on the planet then that leaves out the majority of people it creates an increasingly unsustainable dynamic that is something that i think millions of millions of people recognize millions of millions of people see is something that they do not want and yet if you look at the dominant political conversation particularly that being held by the two major political parties in the united states people don't see anywhere there that they can have a non-corporate dominated conversation i also think that that's what's keeping a lot of the best among us from even wanting to run for office because of the toxicity in the meanness the crassness of that so i think that there is an effort that's what sister giant is an effort to recreate the conversation so tell us about how much to think how do i win within the old system but how to create a new one so it's also a source sister giant. sister giant will be held in los angeles on november tenth and eleventh and it is an association with the women's campaign school of yale

university you know tom less than seventeen percent of our elected representatives in congress are women and on the state legislative level twenty four percent less than twenty four percent so if we had anywhere near gender equity in our elected representatives i think the conversation would be different we have a twenty three point one percent child poverty rate in the united states that second only to remain it is so high that among thirty five developed nations in the world was second only to remain here we have the highest incarceration rate of any nation in the world. in any nation in history now neither of our main presidential candidates are discussing child poverty they're not discussing the incarceration rate and for those of us for whom the milieu ration of human suffering is not just talk but a very real principle by which we seek to live our lives we want that is part of the political conversation and that's what along with citizens united which i believe the overriding of citizens united is the great moral task of our generation those will be the three main issues as well as how women have to deal with the

psychological i think very unique psychological and emotional and even spiritual issues involved in even wanting to run for office so that's what that we can all be about join us i hope you'll be there we would love to you're bringing together people i'm having a hard time i mean i hear me ok can you hear me know. ok i'll try to talk about. the people that you're trying to bring together and what what would you like to see come out of this. i i i can't hear you i i'm sorry mark are you cranky all the way up what would you like to see come out of us. i think you asked me what would i like to see come out of it yes well is that what you ask yes yes ok so i think that there are a lot of people who are are very serious about wanting a spiritual journey in their lives some people through organized religious systems some people through non organized it could be people the millions of people who do

yoga the people who take the inner life very seriously sometimes these are the people who are the most disengaged from politics because of the toxicity and the mean spiritedness and yet that disengagement is very very dangerous and i think sometimes people with this almost notion of enlightenment think that it's ok to disengage from politics but as i said as i said before you know there is no serious attitude about spirituality and enlightenment that would never have nor human suffering of the suffering of any sentient beings so. i'd like to think that that weekend i know that what that weekend will do is put the two together so that people who are interested in a spiritual journey and internal journey and not just personal. but public morality economic justice as a moral issue people who want to put those two worlds together that's what sister giant will be for and i hope that they'll be their sister giant dot com people can find out anything that one that's great marianne williamson thank you so much for being with us tonight. thank you now everything you know about the relationship

between politics and spirituality is right. crazy alert nothing like a man and his abuse tonight will bring you the touching story and the special relationship between one eligible bachelor and one lobster can take a gander at this. live here begin their daily routine so go for a swim some for food and one just stands there. by the side of the road patiently waiting for her make to return the finish he sees me. she is a to lose goose named maria ok ready is a retired salesman named dominic your baby and together they have become the talk of echo park people with a look at us like what is this what they've never seen

a guy walking with before. the pretty much a fact there was something about his waddle that did it for maria and she's been smitten ever since the other days are not allowed to be near me on account of maria oh she gets mad and it's not just other geeks i've seen her go up and you can scare the heck out of pitbulls bria doesn't want any species stealing her man my area be nice don't bite the dog don't take off on his scooter and maria will be right there right by him. on. fortunately although it is a bachelor he says he's not ready for a live in goose friend. fermor has if you're seeing this incredibly touching video republicans in california quickly are news to bill forbidding man whose marriage and were then attacked by a flock of geese after leaving the state. you

might remember a way that in may vice president joe biden went on meet the press and said this about marriage equality in the united states i am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men women marrying women and heterosexual men and women are entitled the same exact rights all the civil rights all the civil liberties and quite frankly i don't see much of a distinction beyond that whether a mentor and not by coming out in support of marriage equality before the president had vice president joe biden forced president obama's and and just three days later the president himself was ready to make the same proclamation at a certain point i've just concluded that. for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that i think same sex couples should be able to get married and with that the president pull the united states right into

the twenty first century at least they're going to this topic endorsing equal rights to married couples regardless of their sexual orientation and also picked up a lot of support both money volunteers and votes from the community thanks vice president joe biden. now it's time for the president to stand up for another important issue and just like the way vice president joe biden forced the president's hand on marriage equality a different vice president or i should say a vice presidential nominee could conceivably forces in on this issue to paul ryan was in colorado recently a state that's poised to become the first in the nation to legalize and regulate marijuana i was asked by a local news affiliate what his views were on medical marijuana and here's what he said. one of those questions you want to him to answer was about medical marijuana medical marijuana is a hot button issue here in colorado and across the nation it's up to colorado to decide. marijuana. you think look my personal

position on these issues have been let the states decide what they want to do with these things as in if the states vote to legalize medical marijuana and paul ryan is ok with it that makes a vice presidential nominee paul ryan the first candidate for the executive branch in history to say that the fed should stop their crackdown on medical marijuana when it's legalized by the states it also puts ryan and odds with president obama who has used his department of justice to continue to crack down on medical marijuana facilities that are legally operating under state laws in fact president obama's justice department has conducted nearly two hundred raids on marijuana facilities roughly the same among conducted during george w. bush's eight years in office and those raids have occurred and nine of the sixteen states plus the district of columbia that have passed medical marijuana laws leading to sixty one federal indictments all since october of two thousand and nine so some of the president is allowed paul freakin ryan to get the jump on him on an

issue with huge support among america's younger voters particularly those who think they're libertarians which means it's time for the president to have a joe biden moment wake up and change course on an issue the election itself may be at stake. consider this there are two third party candidates running in this election who could pull a lot of votes from americans who are upset with nixon's failed drug war in particular the crackdown on medical marijuana both gary johnson and the liberty the libertarian party and joel stein with the green party support legalizing medical marijuana at the federal level combined gary johnson and joel stein are polling at around five percent and right now the romney ryan ticket may be peeling off those voters because ryan has come out in favor of federal decriminalization of medical marijuana that's still a lot of votes and considering presidential elections are rarely decided by more than five percentage points and it's politically important vital in fact for president obama to make a play for some of those supporters not to mention that is the right thing to do

and one of the best ways he can do that is is but by right now coming out in full support of medical marijuana and ordering his department justice to stop any future crackdowns this really is a no brainer a recent poll shows the seventy four percent of americans want the president to respect state laws when it comes to medical marijuana and only fifteen percent of americans agree with the president the federal resources should be used to crack down on medical marijuana the president thinks he can afford to ignore these polls or let paul ryan scoop up the medical marijuana vote and he's making a huge mistake we can't expect joe biden to strike twice and push president obama making the right decision but paul ryan had done the work this time and president obama better respond the right way legalize medical marijuana today it's the right thing to do it will help millions of sick americans and it just may be the thing to keep the white house in the hands of its current resident. and that's the way it is

tonight monday september tenth two thousand and twelve and don't forget democracy begins with you get out there get active tag your. download the official r.t. application to choose your language stream quality and enjoy your favorites from alzheimer's now t.v. is not required to watch on t.v. all you need is your mobile device to watch r.t. any time any of the. hottest avoid u.k.b.a. keep the definition off of the show. question going to go if you have occasionally

it's like walking or you capitalism without bankruptcy is like christianity without bail.