i. syria's military command says israel has bombed a military center near the capital damascus killing at least two people and injuring five more. france's military campaign in mali sees more accusations of civilian deaths and strikes but human rights activists say they have evidence of multiple uninvestigated killings by the mahdi army.

the kidnappings. cyberterrorism and sonia didn't seem to the internet to find out from a top boss of google. and greece's labor ministry headquarters turns into a battleground as hundreds of protesters broke with police pension cuts. i'm next to the big picture with host status. well i'm going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight the big picture the u.s. economy shrank in the last quarter of two thousand and twelve the first time it

shrunk in four years and all thanks to republicans and their addiction to austerity after seeing the damage that this is cause for republicans continue to push austerity or finally give up on these devastating policies that and more into nights alone liberal rubble and earlier this week new jersey governor chris christie vetoed a bill that would have increased that state's minimum wage by a dollar twenty five so why do republicans are believe that american workers don't have the right to make enough money to survive and support a family. you need to know that the senate tackled the issue of gun control today in the first senate judiciary committee hearing of one hundred thirteenth congress the issue is new gun control legislation introduced by senator dianne feinstein last week former congresswoman gabby giffords herself a victim of gun violence gave an opening statement at the hearing calling on senators to take action to reduce gun violence violence is

a big problem. too many children are dying. too many children. we must do something. it's will be hard. but the time is now each month after. one of those children dying by gun violence was fifteen year old hadiya pendleton she was shot and killed tuesday night in a random act of violence on the streets of chicago as last week she performed with her high school band and president obama's inauguration ceremony and today she's one of the more than fifteen hundred americans who've lost their lives to gun violence just since the newtown shooting last month also today three people were

shot outside a business complex in phoenix and yet another mass shooting in the united states but despite all of this the n.r.a. has blood so she wayne la pierre was on hand at the hearing to again be the pitch man for a gun industry that puts profit ahead of the lives of six year olds. well we're ready to participate in a meaningful effort to solve these pressing problems we must respectively but honestly and firmly disagree with some members of the committee and many in the media and all the gun control groups on what will keep our kids and keep our streets safe law abiding gun owners will not accept blame for the acts of violent or to range criminals nor do we believe that government should dictate what we can lawfully own and use to protect our families by protect our families wayne la pierre means to say that homicidal pit bull just still be able to easily buy a gun without a background check but according to a new gallup poll only eight percent of our nation agrees with the n.r.a.

in opposing universal background checks to put that in perspective more people approve of congress polygamy and human cloning than agree with the n.r.a. on background check issues yet it was wayne la pierre again saying the universal background checks are a bad idea and getting promptly shut down by senator dick durbin. my problem with back background checks is you're never going to get criminals to go through universal background checks i mean they're. all the law abiding people you'll create enormous federal bureaucracy. unfunded the student appear that's the point the criminals will go to purchase the guns because they'll be a background check will stop them from the original purchase you missed the point completely going to think it's basic center i think you missed. after today's display from wayne la pierre and the n.r.a. my question is this why was he even at the hearing this is an organization that

does disagrees with most of its own members on commonsense gun control and is completely out of touch with what the american people believe needs to be done about gun violence in america it's an organization that's been taken over by out of touch radical gun industry shills who lost nearly all every election they invested in back in two thousand and twelve on the other hand la pierre makes over a million dollars a year i guess if you pay well enough some people will say anything that's my take now let's turn over tonight's program. it's was there let's rumble join a franchise along liberal rubble our former congressman ernest istook now distinguished fellow at the heritage foundation and horace cooper a conservative commentator a research fellow at the national center for public policy research gentlemen thank you both for joining me thank you i appreciate all the kind words you've been saying. let's get into it knew you knew you could respond heading into this senate gun hearing consider these numbers among the twenty three richest countries the

u.s. has the most guns in the weakest gun laws and accounts for eighty seven percent of all child gun related deaths what you guys make of that congress well you know it's interesting because just like anything in automobile three times more americans are killed every year by all the mobile accidents than with guns but we hand them automobiles we'll let you put but again we don't. know the point here let me just finish the point though when you say we have to have it i mean even you know president obama claims he's not against guns but you know whether we're talking about hunting or for self defense. you know there's a ton of people whose lives were saved just like this guy in the wheelchair the other day had a home intruder he was able to fend them off because he had to get all that stuff this is are the guns in the home are more having a gun in the home is more likely to be used against somebody in the home than it is against it in a trooper number one number two i agree with you you don't have to own a gun already i think that i don't know a little bit to stick there but i feel that's not the point but it doesn't matter

if the c.d.c. says with what the body let's then let's you agree with your studies on a common sense research which includes deaths would you would you agree with me on a common sense impression as recently says the reason why we register cars require liability for car insurance cars for cars and car owners and car drivers and license car drivers is because they're capable of killing people why is it a public group and capable of killing people and why is it that hey it was one hundred twenty five one hundred twenty six when we first started requiring these things and it was only because cars were going fast enough that they were killing people we didn't we didn't we never write regular horses and you know and one of these so why not is to but just a very simple question here say why not federal regulation why not why not simply say with guns register it insure it and prove proficiency what's why not do that it's just common sense study the group that does more training for people to guns and you're right i need to talk to the that does more training for people in

firearm safety because the national i've been through an n.r.a. course i've been to the georgia beliefs academy i am i'm quite familiar with the. elements are hit with her on a screen you use any circumstance any terrible tragedy as an opportunity to push an agenda that you've been trying to pay i think jennifer thirty years you know exactly nothing is changed there's been no circumstance a lot of people have to in fact in the facts of this case nothing that is being proposed would change a person from killing another person who owns a weapon taking that weapon and then. using it to engage in a massacre there is nothing that is being proposed but what address that the truth of the matter is the c.d.c. identifies this danger because suicide is the leading cause of gun related deaths and so you have it in your home but that is a misleading way of describing the fact that overwhelmingly firearms are used

legitimately to protect people from others and even the police and the supreme court admits it's your primary responsibility and retailers and we know that a lot of people would commit suicide with guns probably wouldn't have committed suicide if they didn't have something that they knew would simply end their life going to golden gate bridge and explain to them because that's just not true and my best friend i was nineteen shot himself in the head and yeah i'm going to highlight a bridge and i know we go we didn't take you down here but you're saying that smaller capacity magazines wouldn't change things mark kelly would like to disagree with you here is that he speaking before congress gabby giffords was. the shooter in tucson showed up with two thirty three round magazines one which was in his nine millimeter he unloaded the contents of that magazine in fifteen seconds very quickly it all happened very very fast before it first bullet went into gabby's head but number thirteen went into a nine year old girl named christina taylor green who was very interested in

democracy and our government and really deserved a full life could made it to advancing those ideas if he had a ten round magazine only back up when he tried to reload one thirty three round magazine with another thirty three round magazine he dropped it. and a woman named patricia mace grabbed it and it gave bystanders a time to tackle him i contend if that same thing happened when he was trying to reload one ten round magazine with another ten round magazine meaning he did not have access to a high capacity magazine and the same thing happened christina taylor green would be alive today i certainly want to disagree with mark kelly yeah i disagree with mark kelly the fact of the matter is this whether you have a five seven fifteen he would have pulled off at least five of those shots now with odds going to be that he might have hit five for five three four five we don't know

but for the comments that i gave to believe that they cut bait am just another magazine size and that's going to change any deaths it's just not not statistical so i think if you look for example new york city police if i remember correctly they typically have fifteen rounds and there's i mean there's nothing magic but there's they have fifteen rounds which seems to say well why do some people need fifteen and other people need ten and who's a better marksman such because i'll tell you those cops but i'll tell you this i think the trend is right now those of you who are pushing to say well let's not get down to ten if you got that then you'd say let's knock it down to seven then five business or related to seven or nine that barney fife used to keep in his pocket in the andy griffith show works quite well for him ok senator durbin asked la pierre if you believe the second amendment is there to protect against guys like you congressman here's what he had to say. we need the firepower and the ability to

protect ourselves from our government. from our government from the police if they knock on our doors and we need to fight back do you agree with that point of view center on it without any doubt if you look at why our founding fathers put it there they had lived under the tyranny of king george and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny well chief johnson you've heard it. the belief the n.r.a. is the second amendment has to give american citizens the firepower to fight back against you against our government that's now so how do you conduct your business in enforcing the law and not knowing what is behind that door i find it to be it it's scary create a. simply it's just not based on logic. congressman i've read the federalist papers i've read and in fact wrote an op ed a couple weeks ago about the entire debate in the ratifying the virginia ratifying

convention that led the second amendment the phrase king george or for that matter the phrase tragical government was never mentioned once so you know the second amendment is not there so americans can rise up and kill congressmen like you and your thoughts whether to a king george or the history of soldiers that employed or you know just a general reference to the british but the point was that people felt the need they had to defend themselves against something and that time it might have been marauding indians it could have been marauding settlers it could have been any of a number of self-defense the point of the law yanking the governor and that is the point ok where we're going to we're going to get i want to actually stop i mean we come back we really have to take a break right now more of tonight's long live or on the right of the break.

here the reindeer is interesting for the herders. and when it suffers. people do their best to help. the distances are. predictable.

back to long liberal rabble i'm joined by former congressman ernest istook and horoscope are let's get back to horace you wanted some final thoughts on going to the real quick there's a difference between the debates that happened in the legislatures as the amendment was being ratified and the debates that occurred as it was being drafted in the congress of the united states and the history is very clear in the congress of the united states and that's what judges use is their intentions when they submitted this to the public some states may have used other justifications to get it through but those justifications are not binding in terms of interpret in the law i think you'd find fascinating i'm not disagreeing i think you'd find fascinating correspondence between jefferson and madison when it was in december of seventeen. eighty seven right after the when he first in fact was the christmas christmas eve december twenty fourth. one jefferson had gotten the first draft of a constitution he i'll let you read it yourself it will move along new data

released today by the department of commerce shows that the u.s. economy shrank in the fourth quarter of two thousand and twelve the first time our economy has shrunk since two thousand and nine is one tenth of one percent contraction in our economy is mostly due to defense spending slowing down the war in iraq being wound down according to the report real federal government consumption expenditures in gross investment decreased fifteen percent the fourth quarter in contrast to an increase of nine point five percent of third so now we know the government spending affects economic growth why republicans calling for more spending cuts congress and i would think that government taxes also influence economic growth and there's a chilling effect when people know that tax increases are on the horizon or there's uncertainty there and how do i find it i was on board. this is a six hundred seventy people can automatically jump to a conclusion well it's defense spending cuts after all it was it was democrats who wanted as this you know congressional deal they wanted the defense cuts to be on the table republicans wanted other cuts and that's what you know about your side so

it's that event spending on the during the last quarter i don't see this is partisan frankly the defense spending during the last quarter was down twenty three point one percent that reduced g.d.p. i mean a g.d.p. is not necessarily a good time to add what numbers you're looking at there tom but defense spending is not going to drop by a magnitude of twenty three percent in one quarter especially not when that's not consistent with the you see quest ration numbers so i don't know your numbers there that you're i don't like to see them makes it so so i think that some sort of subset that you're looking at as opposed to overall defense spending but the over after almost as it is personnel the overall issue is this and we've been arguing for a while government is taking up too much space the spending that it's spilling crowds out the private sector the taxing that it's doing crowds out the private sector as the congressman now notes and we've increased the amount of taxing along with this unparalleled presence of the government in terms of its g.d.p. presence absolutely we must reduce the g.d.p.

presence of the federal government and we must also lower the taxes that is like government as a percentage of g.d.p. is you know lower than percent and you know what would happen if interest rates went up one percent because we're carrying a debt of sixteen point four trillion dollars be very expensive so well that interest alone would go up by a hundred sixty four billion dollars a year more that government would need just to pay that i don't disagree that when ronald reagan actually and all george bush ran out of fairness to this death row ok we're going to see how much is going up during obama's term is it five trillion or six let's also talk about this we just got to deal right and we're going to raise the rates appropriately on the four hundred k. plus crowd the money that we're going to. days this year has already been spent on hurricanes same be just hurricane sandy the money raised from them then it is not the place ok go get some results get back here is this one of one things it's not

just hurricane sandy relief they spent a lot of other things too here's a chart on non-defense discretionary spending levels are the lowest since the one nine hundred sixty s. and our taxes right now are at the levels that they were in the one nine hundred fifty s. and you're saying taxing if you take a station share the only d.p. there well if you want it as a share of the per capita basis then different ways to look at it you can look at it on a per capita basis and you will see that actually during the obama administration spending as a percentage of the base is gone down nine percent and obama came into office it went up consistently during both the bush and having served on the defense subcommittee for appropriations i realize that i'm in charge such as that people will only use basic defense spending they may or may not include the call to say this isn't what it would be so i understand what portion of it would be my point is is just this if your point is that we're not doing enough on defense spending i'm going to agree with you right now now my point is i thought our levels of spending right now are not that different than they were in one thousand nine hundred fifty

and our level of taxation is radically lower than one hundred fifty nine hundred sixty one nine hundred seventy the top tax rate was ninety one percent corporations are paying over thirty five percent of spending which of taxation which is what is driving out everything else when you're looking at you know the big three medicare medicaid social security don't take social those already biggest component of the first and only generation that were double taxed to pay not only for their retirement or their parents but also for their own retirement they've got two point seven trillion dollars sitting in a trust next generations there is no return tax brilliant i must do something to cut spending there is no give them this idle bit of the reform game how many bamboozle of a community that just hate those treasury bills treasury george w. bush with it's one of the million dollars in treasury bills they didn't exist. way out of the money it's just a question of when do international bankers stop accepting after well it is international bankers that was on top of surgery we're selling them to ourselves right and we're selling side of the fed to the brain to the end you know and to the

chinese we're selling it on what happens when the market value is demonstrated not to be valuable precisely because people believe we're never going to be able make hold on those things and go up three percent that's you know almost five hundred billion dollars more year we have is are we tore a hole you know what happens when i mean i don't need to get ok looking we can look at your germany we can look at japan we can look at a lot of countries in the last hundred years in the last hundred years and see what happens when the government uses the central bank the way that they try to do to deal with the problems are you talking about after the thirty first i should austerity that was the word that we can find quite intentional on the part of the germans that was their way of saying screw you to us because we don't you want a vacation doesn't matter i mean they now days they want of value you know the weimar and ultimately it was the us that's what most wanted world war two according to nielsen television ratings fox news has had its lowest viewership among key demographic since two thousand and one this month and fellow conservative

mouthpiece rush limbaugh's says the reason why is because president obama is promoting a secondary boycott limbaugh's words against those he disagrees with like fox news and limbaugh so are fox's remains in the tank because a white house conspiracy to sally's right wing media or have the american people finally woken up to the steady far right polarization of fox news and decided that they no longer want to be less informed than people who watch no use at all or a similar the same the study and they've been debunked it's absolutely not true that fox viewers less informed they may have gotten anybody believe more things that are wrong there they're more informed than normal but all label this is new this week numbers are down that's the point you see you talking about the holiday season people were busy with thanksgiving they were busy. does it chris was the key is not whether somebody is ratings were down but their share their portion of the audience the fact that the total audience is down to five zero zero zero is the same then then your audience goes down too but again i'm not sure necessarily.

fox's share is still double that of c.n.n. is still greater than that of m s n b c n c n.b.c. and some of the other programs that are out there now if i were an investor in fox i'd be wanting to know what are you doing to change that direction but it's clearly not the case that all of the other progressive programs are somehow expanded those programs don't have an audience while what i say because i think they are and so they're already one of the american people less by a lot of politics and frankly that happens on both sides and i think you know we're posed absolutely to as well i think it's a fairly weak topic republicans want to refight the civil war after president obama unveiled new gun control executive orders a group of tea party lawmakers in mississippi introduced legislation to create a permanent committee in that state which would be dedicated to nullify overturning federal laws the mississippi tea partiers don't like and mississippi isn't alone in pennsylvania wyoming and texas republicans have also introduced legislation to make

enforcing federal gun control laws a crime was the settled with the articles of confederation and being put aside in the constitution being ratified and then settled again with the civil war i mean absolutely and that's why all that pot smoking legislation in the state of colorado i know you objecting to and all of the states that are passing these laws in violation of the defense of marriage act i know you're objecting to it is remarkable how you progressive pick and choose the american people have always been interested in saying sometimes of the federal government i want to put my thumb in your eye and this is just another word i agree with you about in both those cases you've got the supremacy clause is in conflict with what the states are doing well and some friction and you know the. obama administration says when the state of colorado in the state of washington passed laws to say you can use marijuana for medical as well and have armageddons but in this case it's not even restricted to so-called medical which is

a joke in most places as far as the criteria they put in but the federal government rather than saying to colorado and washington look we've got something called the supremacy clause in the constitution and the united states supreme court has held that in this area it is federal law that governs but instead of saying the same thing you're saying about the supremacy clause which is proper constitutional law the obama administration says oh but it's something i like so i'm going to ignore the fact that there thumbing the nose at our laws because obama's team happens to be on their side that's the real problem an equal enforcement rather than having to do all of ya'll this is fly to everybody would you suggest that in colorado and california are awash in state rather than we should bring in federal forces you've got the drug enforcement agents who have you know their budget like crazy in california right now medical exactly and the whole point here is if you want

a system of order in this country if you don't want people were belly and ok so what i want to let me those well we've got just as you know that for an enduring we're going to enforce the law i agree not. million we're all in agreement and us we're all in agreement on the supremacy clause so why would say what's your position on states saying they're going to ignore the supremacy clause they should eventually get now because if they think that the federal government has overstepped its bounds they can challenge they can take you to court and so forth or worse i think it is with us letting off steam and we let you to let off steam it's no big deal in this particular instance however i believe that you can't have an equal enforcement the first time that mississippi or any other state. moves forward with some action that's contrary to the supremacy clause they need to be smacked down but social colorado and so should leave those there's no yeah they were going for this to change in federal law being tell the federal government you

maybe ought not to be doing so many things and maybe we wouldn't have conflicts the way that we do now let's come back to a small though so you're calling for the end of doma and the end of federal guidelines i mean with the arena of if we could get rid of a quarter or more of government in its existence at the federal level i'd take that trade off ok ernest earth is took it more as cooper thank you both of you thanks. tonight for coming up four hundred billionaires america have more wealth than one hundred fifty million other americans combined these billionaires have the right to such extraordinary wealth while working class americans don't have the right to a living wage.

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