well including. science technology innovation all the latest developments from around russia we've got the future covered. blog john martin in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. even though their guns are responsible for thousands of deaths every year the gun industry is largely shills and from any lawsuits related to the deaths and injuries their products cause how do we allow the gun industry to get immunity and is there any way for this absurd protection to be repealed also today president obama announced that he is forming

a task force looking to the causes of gun violence in america will republicans be willing to play ball when the task force makes its recommendations that and more internet's lone liberal rumble and later in the show we'll have a your take my take live segment your chance to call in and ask a question or make a comment live on the air. you need to know this in nine hundred fifty the very first serious comprehensive medical study linking smoking to long cancer was published but that didn't stop the big tobacco companies from continuing to mass produce their deadly products and lying about their health effects including how addictive their cigarettes are in one thousand nine hundred four more than forty years after the first study linking smoking to cancer was published and several more published studies thereafter find similar conclusions congress called c.e.o.'s of the major divac zero firms to

testify on their products and their harmful effects watch as every single executive lies under oath to congress about how addictive cigarettes are you know do you believe nicotine is not addictive i believe nicotine is not addictive you know mr johnson. congressman cigarettes and nicotine clearly do not meet the client's suit definitions of the i don't believe that nicotine or products are addictive. i believe. i believe that nicotine is not. only the moment. to. turn to being lied to by big tobacco and tired of burying friends and family members who go on cigarettes the american people eventually say enough is enough so in one thousand nine hundred eight with the help of forty six attorneys general and a number of large law firms we the people big tobacco hard we went after the

manufacturers of deadly cigarettes with lawsuits and eventually they were forced to pay a hundred billion dollars settlement for some of the death and disease that their product caused to millions of americans they were also forced to fund a new campaign to warn people of the hazards of cigarettes and encourage young people to not start smoking big tobacco was forced to finance those tobacco truth ads you routinely see in your t.v. warning about the dangers of smoking and this settlement also dissolved the main tobacco industry groups like the tobacco institute and the council for tobacco research which are the equivalent of the gun industries and ira i say this because today we as a nation are confronting a similarly deadly threat it's gun violence which was on shocking display last friday at sandy hook elementary in newtown connecticut unfortunately this time we the people don't have the same tools to go after gun manufacturers that we did when we went after tobacco manufacturers and that's because the gun industry and mostly

republican members of congress have already taken measures to shield the gun industry from any lawsuits related to death or injuries caused by their products joining me now to explain why that is and how the gun industry got immunity and never has to pay for the deaths their products cause i'm joined by howard nation he's an attorney and the former president of the national trial lawyers association howard welcome. good meaning great to see where i went after big tobacco with a massive loss in the one nine hundred ninety s. why can't we do the same with the gun industry well the short answer is because in october of two thousand and five congress passed and president bush signed the lawful protection protection of lawful commerce in arms act which granted immunity from civil suits for misuse of firearms and ammunition. this was a very unique piece of legislation there was no such period is the legislation in

the tobacco litigation this was handled on the federal level and through the connection between the arms industry and the united states congress this particular piece of legislation is very unique in that it is an industry wide immunity and industry wide immunity in this case it they did two things that were very unusual first they prohibited any future claims which is what it customarily does but secondly they called for the dismissal mandated immediate dismissal of all pending claims they made it retroactive and there had been claims spending since one nine hundred ninety nine this was two thousand and five they went back and wiped out all those previous claims in this legislation. the second thing that was very unusual about this legislation we've had industry even unity litigation or legislation before for example in one nine hundred eighty six in the vaccine.

debacle that we had they passed industry wide. immunity for the vaccine industry and after nine one one they passed industry wide immunity for the airline industry but in those cases they provided alternative methods for the injured parties and for the claimants the plaintiffs to be compensated what is so egregious about this act and this sets a new standard is that they wiped out all existing claims which raised some pretty severe questions and to expect those back the section of the constitution but they provided for no alternative method of compensation so. it sets a very dangerous precedent for giving industry wide immunity with

no alternative method of compensation our nation's we have i have basically two questions around this one did the gun industry buy this legislation and and whether they did or not is it possible to reverse it or change. well the first the first question is did they buy this well of course again the industry makes very very substantial contributions particularly to the republican party there had been progress made in one nine hundred ninety four when the the assault weapons ban was passed and there was some excellent legislation passed in one nine hundred ninety four under president clinton and in two thousand and four it came up for sunset which was a ten year provision that if you don't renew it it will expire so in two thousand and four when president bush was the president and when the republicans were in charge they allowed that protective legislation to expire and then the following year they passed this legislation to grant totally munity to the industry

so did they buy it well they made very substantial contributions to exactly the right people and they got their results for a minute we have left what where we go from here. well where we go from here is very difficult because you have to have new legislation there's nothing constitutional about this it says that you can't has to have a constitutional amendment to change this is just legislation discusses now it has been upheld for one occasion but what would have to be done is just new legislation that would replace this right and so it would require days require an act of congress and passed and signed by the president so i had to change relation on this topic in other words it seems good luck with that our nation's thanks so much for being with us tonight. my pleasure.

it's wednesday you ready to rumble join me for tonight's low level rubble are adam bitly editor in chief of net right daily and judson phillips associate director of tea party the tea party dot net and founder of tea party nation thanks to both of you for joining us tonight they say and just to kick this off with stay on the issue of guns today president obama. convened a task force to reform gun laws here's what he had to say. i've asked the vice president to lead an effort that includes members of my cabinet and outside organizations to come up with a set of concrete proposals no later than january proposals that i've been intend to push without delay this is not some washington commission this is not something where folks are going to be studying the issue for six months and publishing a report that gets read and then pushed aside this is a team that has

a very specific test to pull together real reforms right now. so there's the issue of guns particular assault weapons and high capacity am eclipse is the issue of making sure those guns don't end up in the hands of the criminals or the mentally ill does the issue of mental illness in america speaking of which this this news story is just like your take on this tea party nation ed judson phillips sent out an e-mail to members yesterday featuring an article by t.r. and member timothy byrd now attacking teachers over the school shooting in newtown connecticut he said the parents must take away the power of the radicals in the classroom and lawmakers most interviews right to work laws to cripple teachers' unions he said liberals destroyed the family and encouraged the shooter to be coddled all his life given free reign to indulge in senses but not to face the responsibilities of freedom necessitates going on to say that he lived in the world of the progressives making not in reality or now even suggest the president obama

will use the shooting to advance the cause of disarming the american people and that we should have people like george zimmerman guarding our schools you know besides making my head explode and this kid was not living in a progressive world his mother was it was she called herself a proper preparing for the end i mean it was full before glenn beck. so much of this seems to revolve around these senses this sense of masculinity and and tough and you know this kid was coddled and it are we are we look at a problem of too many guys who are concerned about the size of their penis judson and i think we have a huge problem in this country with people who are mentally ill who we know about that they have problems and there's no intervention until after we have an incident like sandy hook or columbine or you name it and then we sit there and go gee we knew about this and this was possible why did we do most of these were suicides and you can't you know in many cases it's hard to say that suicide is

a mental illness in fact when israel said no more gun. we're going to take away the guns from the soldiers on the weekend when they come home can't bring their guns home so the suicide rate dropped sixty percent that country and it didn't pop up anywhere else during the weekdays it just dropped because you know people are people are suicidal and they got a blaze of glory they see a gun. jump in here we just have a minute i mean. i find this all to be a little bit silly at this point that we're sitting here policy prescriptions out we're not even one hundred percent sure if they're where the system failed and we're all out of our cent sure there are more guns there are in a state the more shooting deaths there are in the state no well yes no it's not that doesn't say that a sandy hook doesn't occur that doesn't say that at all and if we're looking at preventing what occurred in sandy hook which i think we should seriously we know that when that when australia banned the gun it's all the dust settles on this matter and then make a responsible paulie's policy decision but until that time we don't know the whole

story and we really don't know you don't want to do what the conservative leader prime minister of australia did john howard and say ok that's it we're going to ban guns and put an end in one thousand nine hundred six put an end to mass murders in the country well guess what are your average murders of eighty four percent when that happened so what armed robberies went up by forty four percent when that happened more of tonight's lone liberal coming up after the break. 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 you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom hartman welcome to the big picture.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a donor. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot about my country music star are a fool you know what kind of mind their terrorist cells in your neighborhood all want the usa to defeat terrorism be a liberal and the christian point you. can secure the borders but if you notice we're going to distract us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells a sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news i'm happy martin and we're going to break that.

well go back to the lone liberal rumble joining me tonight adam bitly judson phillips let's get back to the let's talk about civil liberties guys the new national defense authorization act the n.d.a. will not include an amendment to protect american citizens from indefinite military detention earlier this month senator dianne feinstein successfully passed an amendment to the authorization bill in the senate softening the controversial indefinite detention provision unfortunately while the house and senate were settling their differences over this legislation that amendment was stripped out nobody knows why or even by whom in response senator feinstein said i was saddened

and disappointed that we could not take a step forward to ensure that at the very latest american citizens and legal residents could not be held in detention without charge or trial to me this was a no brainer so i'm guessing that we all agree this is crazy that our government can can snatch somebody without a trial in clear violation of the fifth sixth and seventh and eighth amendment of the constitution and so are we in agreement on that if so i have a follow up question. you remember the movie mars attacks a little greed martians their heads would explode in the well that's that's kind of my reaction to this whole idea you think this is the this is something liberals and conservatives are all of agreement on well then here's my question why were you debating why you know there's a lot of progressives out there in the streets talking about this and you know occupies been all over this whereas the tea party well you know that's something i've been concerned about honestly is you know as you just said liberals and conservatives seem to agree on this except for the ones in congress who have passed this law before without these programs i don't think that's liberal or conservative

i think that's who was made by the military industry versus who isn't maybe or maybe not but it looks like the whole senate might be maybe the house in the president well no this is a moment to strip this past of this bill has but has the ground you see without the protection. see i know but both not not innocent but the big question here the big problem here is that we have this lack of transparency when these huge bills go into committee you said yourself nobody knows who stripped this thing after nobody tried to congressman the senators can answer that question that's what i'd like to know who stripped it out why it came head of the committee report on this so we'd have to you know the buck stops with him honestly on the whole matter so it's not surprising john mccain did this by the way really i'm not at all i would think that john mccain who prides himself on constitutionalist would want to honor it at least to its fullest but to a degree on the war on terror he's been all over the board on this matter and you know you look at guantanamo bay is an issue or torture or various things that he's never been consistent with while he was opposed to torture yes he was opposed to

what that are but on the heels of the host of this this is this i just i just i'm just astounded by i think it's a he had this in guantanamo or international lots on the on the on america it's just getting out the fiscal cliff let's get to the fiscal cliff president obama has a proposal out cutting taxes on people who make over four hundred thousand dollars on their first dollar after their four hundred thousand dollars he had originally proposed two hundred thousand and that also extends unemployment insurance seems like a good thing although the republicans don't like it and invest fifty billion dollars in infrastructure for infrastructure spending in return he's apparently offering to cut social security benefits through this chained c.p.i. canard and cut a trillion dollars in other places that are as yet specified republicans are saying no they want the millionaire people making up to a million dollars to have. tax cuts which is pretty much everybody pretty much nobody takes a salary of over a million dollars anymore because congress has ruled that if you take

a salary of over a million dollars the company that pays it can only deduct the first million dollars in salary so people take the second million third million ten million fifty million in stock and then pay fifteen percent like mitt romney does so you know this is like it's a like a no deal so what's going on here where is this going to go that adam you know i'm not really sure where this all ends originally i kind of thought that they would go all the way up to the cliff and maybe go over it so to speak but that's my hope. well i think that that may indeed happen and first off this is that partly mainers problem in the sense that when they passed the bush tax cuts they knew that there was an end date on that because they asked them through reconciliation are going to want to only last ten you know bamma do that too when he when he signed into law two years ago a renewal of these things while he was what he was being held hostage we get all the way up here we are ten days out from supposed to diplo short of the fiscal system if we survive friday and he was told that if we get to this point there's

going to be unmitigated financial disaster. but why would we wait till ten days twenty days out to start working on this matter why weren't they doing this last summer why were they doing this last spring it's not a surprise that this letter is the judson is the is this not just this is this is the annual budget theater is it's a it's a business and you know i agree i think we're going off the cliff i think obama wants us to go off the cliff because it's a win win i put him in or wants to know because they are you kidding me opener's going to do is raise his freshly laundered white flag of surrender the man doesn't have a bone in his body to stand up for a fight and that's the problem if he gets the republicans to vote for a tax cut he said before the end of the year he's toast on that although grover norquist did come out today and say dominate dominate dominant role you know tax cutters now you can go ahead and vote for it but you know it may be that that's the thing that tells me that this is actually going to get voted on because i think grover norquist was like yes i'll step out of his bus and then claim out of the way

of this bus and then claim credit for going down the street. now when the other side according to this was pulls his plan that boehner is now out there selling it shallow back away from it she's saying oh no no no no i was just testing the waters with such a low season not suggesting to change c.p.i. she was suggesting the exact tax plan at that. time up because those are other matters they're going to do the tax cuts and if the republicans are going to bring up two hundred or so votes. why would the democrats don't with us i think they would you think. you know and how are the people going. if john boehner pulls on another one of his typical sellouts the conservative base on the well that's why i use the term another one you know if this is this isn't his first rodeo and selling out surrendering but if he does it the conservative base is going to be absolutely hacked i mean just this is this going to be the moment at which eric cantor steps up and sticks that shiv all the way into banners back that has

been holder for two years i don't think can or will can or seems to be totally on board with boehner right now youth leadership and so if cantor at all supports this plan even with the boat because he supported the right all the way brutus the support of you know caesar walking down the steps to. you know if there was a nuff noise made when there was the conservative purge that have been or i mean if cantor was going to give boehner the push that would have been the time he could have rallied some conservative support because you know boehner is going to be reelected speaker january third he's got to have a majority of all the votes present not just a majority just not the most you know only eighteen but he's got to have a majority of the people present and voting and it only takes seven cards yeah if the speaker gets that so it only takes seventeen republicans to defect and boehner is not reelected so that could have been cantor's moment but that's why i think cantor's on board with your question just as a straight up question the debt limit is allowing the government to pay off its

bills it is not extending the ability of the government to borrow money and it is borrowing technically but it's to pay off its bills it's not to buy anything it's to pay for things that have already been bought is to pay for bush's war in iraq it's to pay for bush's war in afghanistan space for medicare part d. they. sure all of the above whatever care why is it that the conservatives that republicans specifically keep suggesting ed same explosives. that the debt ceiling that if the debt ceiling is raised it means that obama can spend more money when that's not what it is what it means is that we can pay off the debt and why is it that they're not pointing out that the fourteenth amendment says that the full faith and credit of the united states shall not be questioned and that's essentially what this does this is an unconstitutional thing well there is a correlation between the debt ceiling going up in government spending going up along with it there's no yes there are just like saying there's a correlation between government spending going up and and all kind or spring coming i mean government spending has been going up since the george washington

ministration yes it has and so has the debt. what is the debt limit the creoles the debt limit didn't even exist until one hundred seventeen but even since it's since its inception we have not seen the government borrow less money we have not seen them actually we have our our borrowing peaked at one hundred twenty seven percent of g.d.p. after world war two ok outside of we paid a national emergency but we still haven't stopped that spending problem and. we have we have a huge problem that is coming under the taxes no no you can tax one hundred percent you're not going to get enough money you know here's here's corporations pay what they were paying during the eisenhower administration no no we're going to have a thirty percent yeah like eisenhower did here's and here's the problem you know eisenhower had good are employed because america had no competition europe would still bomb despite the result was really awful your europe was rebuilding we were out of we're going to know here's the real problem so much of our debt is short term debt under the obama budget plan by twenty twenty two are our national debts

going to be twenty five trillion dollars at some point our creditors are going to take a look yes trust me on this and. at some point our creditors are going to take a look at us to go you know america is not that great of a credit risk what happens when anybody is not that great of a credit risk and the interest rates skyrocket and they're and they're there and we're borrowing money at less than two percent they're borrowing money as normally low rates and when these interest rates are normal it's because you know the full faith and credit of the united states is a pretty good thing and low. yes the republicans to work the low ok let's move on if you're going to go up and start consuming the literally the entire but we all know that they're going to go up because the fed has basically said that they're going to start inflation in in favor of jobs and they all want to pay off the debt with deflated or with the inflated dollars the value dollar i agree with you on that newt gingrich was on a local talk show in cincinnati this morning and he blamed the shootings in connecticut on godlessness and our schools check this out. when you have an anti religious secular bureaucracy and secular judiciary seeking to drive

the public. something fills the vacuum and it's something you know i don't know that going from communion to playing war games in which you practice killing people is necessarily an improvement and so is do we have a problem of not enough religion do we have a problem too many video games and what's good with what's our problem in your opinion judson it is a morality issue and when i talk about morality people or you talk about religion no we are governed as a nation we are governed by a set of morals it's common beliefs that we all live by now shalt not kill you know i shall not steal i don't punch out of here on the nose just because i feel like i want to what somebody is bradley has got to control and somebody moralities got to control right now the morality that's controlling seems to be telling people you know it's ok if you go shoot up a school it's ok if you go shoot up a movie he said that the that's my opinion who said that who said it's ok to go

shoot up a school this is the morality of the cvs who said it was the moral leader who is the person is not an overall moral leader is right now one person don't take a look at for example the video games i think those violent video games are ok sort of video game manufacturers saying it's ok we're going to see all full disclosure i love grand theft auto it's one of my favorite video games i play it as much as i can assassin's creed running around helping defend america during the revolutionary war if you're going to be. the difference is i want to have certainty when i was playing those versions of games that you know. i never thought you know this is also my school and i could go into my school do these things that never crossed my mind and the reason is because i learned at school and at home that those types of things when you're playing a video game that's that's fake that's just for fun what you're doing in your real life is what's different from that and i don't see a lack of morality we have these tragedies all the time and that's just it's just

a problem society we have that we have to wrap it up on that point adam bitly judson phillips thank you both for being a child thank you very christmas thank you and you too merry christmas to you. coming up our phone lines are now open for your take my take a live segment so if you want the chance to ask me a question live on the big picture it was a caller to a tune i know for twenty one thirty four i'll be talking with you after the break. stories.

i'm i'm. i'm i'm i'm i'm. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for life you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture.