folks. affixed. but a bag of 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 take . 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 and a blatant conspiracy hatched by bush white house insiders republican party operatives in alabama

a 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 going to happen to any of us. now joining me on the phone to tell his story and what 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 you both . thank you for joining us the governor siegelman daughter i understand you ran into karl rove at the d.n.c. at the convention last week. well yeah i had gotten word that he was actually in the arena so in the time warner cable arena. talking to the media just showing i mean people had different rumors as to why he was there i mean everyone was sort of shocked to know that he was there and of course i was sort of horrified at first but i had this feeling that i was supposed to meet this person you know and

confront him about that or just ask him if he felt at this point if there was anything you could do that might crazy but it was worth a shot to me because god is going back to prison tomorrow and i want i am pretty much willing to do whatever it takes including confronting. and heard about four hours before i actually saw him face to face and so when i saw it it didn't talk much if i hadn't heard earlier some kind of grateful for that. but i just went up to him and i and i i got my hand and i said. mr rove arm 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. your side 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 it really 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 and. basically what he said was. 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 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 on to. his own motives and his own behavior everyone

can hear me yeah yeah. 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. is there. 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

a united states and south has done with over one hundred political appointees and. how is that well you know. it tom your knives it 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 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 it took a nap and 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 probably 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 that don siegelman dot org are freed on settlement or for free done. that it will send a message not only to the president but to congressman the president does commute mess and it's a pardon me or to the courts that this this dangerous situation. has to be stopped and corrected that pre-dawn what pre-dawn dot org or tree down it's a little mn dot org right ok great or don siegelman that or all of the or.

what or 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 holdover sent a lot of them were in fairly high ranking positions moreover rove used a litmus test for many of the other. subordinate positions and so those people are also embed it 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 i mean by 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 it 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 siegelman 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 the 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 opt to scan count and the up to scan count in this county had proof the governor siegelman one and he went to bed thinking he was the governor again he woke up to find. the 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 opp 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 see i'm going to be pretty sorted but yeah yeah. it also it also should hopefully awaken

a lot of people meaning kennedy thank you so much for sure and your story the this story with us thanks for having me on tom it's a pleasure. coming up in washington today it seems the lacking a concha election consciousness is a prerequisite for becoming a politician but conspiracy wallaby and politics work at a hand to help improve life in america and the world. news today violence has once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations rule the day. dear mom i'm sorry that i had to do this i've been in so much pain in the past year

that i can't take it anymore the stomach and chest pains have been getting worse and no doctor has been able to help me please know that i'll finally be at peace and with no more pain i wish i could have had a life with it was a bit always pictured her being my wife and mother to my kids i love you all see you all in heaven when your time comes i'm going to meet jesus christ. thousands of u.s. troops in iraq received one of these drugs a drug called lariam and it may have prevented many soldiers from getting sick the question tonight is whether or not soldiers were adequately warned about its rare side effects serious life changing side effects. download the official publication. choose your language stream quality and

enjoy your favorites. now a t.v. is not required to watch on t.v. all you need is your mobile device to watch on t.v. any time. 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 wrong and you know that you're wrong but if you want your right. to say what you're. doing you go 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 but 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 mary and welcome 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 jaya will be held in los angeles on nov 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 and the 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 as 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 and 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 can't hear you. 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 asked 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 before you know there is no serious attitude about spirituality and enlightenment that would never ignore 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 and i. thank you now everything you know about the relationship between politics and spirituality is right.

crazy all or nothing like a man and his goose tonight we bring you the touching story and special relationship between one eligible bachelor and one lobster can take a gander at this. so go first with some food and wine just stand. by the side of the room patiently waiting for me to return the finish he sees me. ok you're ready is a retired salesman. you. and together they have become the talk of echo park people would look at us like what is this what they've never seen a guy walking with the four that i had to play in less than 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 day so you are not allowed to be near me on account of maria oh she gets mad and it's not just other geese i've seen her go up and in scare the heck out of pitbulls bria doesn't want any species stealing her man maria be nice don't bite the dog he'll take off on his scooter and maria will be right there right by him so. unfortunately although down 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 mangos marriage and were then attacked by a flock of geese after leaving the state that. 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 we men marrying men and women marrying women and heterosexual men and women marrying men 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 i meant to or 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 and 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 ryan 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 votes are legalized 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 of 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 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 the federal level combining to 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 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

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