blogs are going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture today the supreme court heard arguments regarding proposition eight in the defense of marriage act could it be game over for gay marriage opponents also a meatball thief could face the same punishment as a rapist in the american criminal justice system to a harsh lesser guesses and it's politics panel and the hunger games is not a futuristic post apocalyptic fantasy it's a documentary about life in a modern america i'll tell you why and it's daily take. you need to know this over the next two days the supreme court will hear oral

arguments some half of them today have them tomorrow in two cases concerning the legality of same sex marriage many and how today went and tomorrow goes the court could endorse marriage as a fundamental right enshrined in the constitution they could confirm the rights of states to deny gay couples marriage licenses or they could avoid making a decision altogether the stakes have never been higher today the justices listen to arguments in the case of hollingsworth the very central question hollingsworth very deep areas whether or not a two thousand and eight gala for new ballot measure the define marriage as a male female union violates the basic constitutional rights of citizens of california the supporters of that measure proposition eight argue that because marriage as traditionally been understood as a heterosexual partnership the ballot vote did not infringe on any inherent rights in short they want states to have the power to decide the legality of same sex marriage for themselves. potence

a prop eight on the other hand claim that gay couples have a fundamental right to marry under the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment by california district court and the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit have already sided with proposition eight opponents in previous litigations tomorrow the court will hear arguments in the case of united states of the windsor this second same sex marriage case in front of the supreme court concerns the defense of marriage act signed into law by bill clinton the one nine hundred ninety six law prohibits the federal government from offering gay couples the same tax breaks and benefits accorded to straight couples even if those couples live in a state like massachusetts where gay marriage is legal according to petitioner edith windsor the act's ban on federal recognition of state law violates her fifth amendment equal protection rights bill clinton by the way now opposes the defense of marriage act that he signed into law the two cases are the supreme court's biggest since last year's inquiry into obamacare and have broad cultural residence

at a time when america a majority of americans have finally come around to supporting marriage equality protesters supporters of gay supporters and opponents of gay marriage alike have held large rallies all day just hundreds of feet from where the court's nine justices are considering the fate of prop eight and doma recordings and transcripts from today's hearings suggest that the debate is as contentious as ever justice antonin scalia the most conservative justice pressed opponents of prop eight to pinpoint exactly when discrimination against gay couples became unconstitutional. we did it constitutional. to exclude homosexuals couples from marriage seventeen of the one. eight hundred sixty eight when the fourteenth amendment was adopted sometimes sometime after baker where we sit it didn't even resist substantial food group question when we when and when did the law become

this. justice anthony kennedy the court swing vote at one point suggested gay marriage might be too new of an institution for the court to judge fairly at the same time he expressed concern for the children of same sex couples affected by prop eight liberal justices alina kagan and sonia sotomayor challenge the measure supporters to defend their position rationally so what happened over the supreme court this morning the justices overturned prop eight or have some as some commentators have suggested will they dismiss the case out right and what should we expect for tomorrow's hearing on the defense of marriage act sashaying florida supreme court reporter for talk radio news service chain walk they could dump the c.e.o. get so first of all we just in that set up we heard justice scalia asking when did gay marriage do it when did the rights of gay couples to be married. first get

put into the constitution yes and he was intimating there that's nothing really has changed in the constitution over the last thirty years there's a public perception public opinion has changed. the society has changed and he would probably argue i'm not going to words about that society change isn't enough he's a so-called strict constructionists and since the constitution hasn't changed the supreme court shouldn't change either so it it's more and then what happened is that ted olson came back and said well then i can ask when did this supreme court change when did to become unconstitutional to discriminate against. in a race in a racial marriage. so in the school he came back he stammered a little bit and said that when the fourteenth amendment came into being so if he was trying to make a point i think ted olson. significantly shot it down by saying the supreme court

will change with society just because the supreme court is behind in recognizing certain rights they have been there all the time prolly not just the supreme court american american not just even american jurisprudence draw i mean sometimes have to catch up in the same court needs so if so if the supreme court with the fourteenth amendment made interracial marriage legal and yes eight hundred sixty eight but then yet another fifty and yet years oh it took forever i mean you know it was nine hundred sixty what sixty seven sixty seven sixty eight the other thing . where where that was struck down and in them in the meantime you had plessy versus ferguson and then you had broad the board reversing that but also that the supreme court justices. on the whole indicated they really want to take the slowly that it was perfectly fine with them this go with the more conservative justices that it considering this maybe we're moving too fast the supreme court hearing this case so quickly and we shouldn't make any rash overarching rules right now and it did take sixty seven years for that to happen and the majority of our history here

in the united states it has been between one man and one woman and they are pretty much saying we will slow down or slow down so today's case was about prop eight and kill for exactly and there's this issue of standing yes yes seems to be at the center of today's arguments actually what is standing is whether or not someone can bring a case very simply anyone can file a case but will the court hear it are you the proper person to bring this guy for example if you were harmed in a car accident i could sue someone for your harm and i could walk and say i'm suing on behalf of tom hartman i had to do it myself you'd have to do a show i hired attorney well then i'm suing on your behalf that's what you have to be in the person who is actually injured in ors. there's to be case in controversy under the article three of the constitution and then clues that the party has to have some kind of remedy some injury that can be remedied by the court or they can just be a general grievance so when the first the case was first brought it was brought by two sets of gay couples who wanted to get married they had standing because they

were being prevented by this proposition eight law. there they got a favorable ruling and it was ruled unconstitutional so then there would be an appeal the loser in that case would have been the state of california the officials in the state of california declined to defend prop eight now and they had the very beginning when it was it was very short he did he did defendants in the state level and then it became perry v brown right and then to the governor brown is a democrat who supports gay marriage correct and they did not want to defend prop eight on the substance so there was no one there to sue no one there to defend prop eight so the district court just said ok the people who put forward the initiative i'm going to substitute you folks it and you can defend it and now the problem is when they want to appeal because they lost do they do they have standing or are they that how are they harmed what is their personal injury they are there are others in arguably being insulted because they lost yet there is no just ago today

it was said well how do you stand just because you really really really dislike a particular law does not give you standing and just a sort of mine or even one even further saying well you really can't represent the people of the state of california because you don't have a fiduciary obligation to the new you are not representing the state you're representing your own personal interest in prop eight and where there's a conflict there would be an issue now here's a clip of justice sotomayor take it. outside the. marriage concepts. can you think of any other rational basis reason. for a state using sexual orientation as a back. in. denying. homosexuals. benefits. now that's not her making the point you just made that's

her basically saying if you're going to if you're if you can't find a legal basis to discriminate against a group of people gays in this case broadly in housing and employment if you can discriminate against them in those bases how can you discriminate against them and what's the difference essentially and by the way that was to mr cooper who was defending prop eight he could not he could not come up with if you continue on in that clip he could not come up with an instance of a marriage where the state has a reason for discriminating and the overall reason that they presented was that it affects the family such that it could harm children that what they want this family union units and the purpose of marriage is for procreation ok and so then the children argument didn't go over all that well with the swing vote justice kennedy didn't seem to had this to say. on the other hand there is an immediate legal injury or legal. what could be

a legal injury and that's the voice of these children or some forty thousand children in california according to the red brief. that live with same sex parents . and who. want their parents have full recognition and fools the. so. a what do you think is going to come out of this today and b. what he thinks going to happen it was interesting that there were so many justices both of the liberal leaning and the conservative leaning who really were concerned about the issue of standing whether or not this case should even be before them it would not surprise me if there was in a strange conglomeration of them they got together and said no that you did this party did not have standing you should not be here so they kick prop eight backed out of the lower courts and it's toast well they would even say that the ninth circuit court of appeals didn't have standing the party didn't stand to bring that appeal so it would be the district court ruling to stand so which also blew it up which also goes away and your thoughts on what may happen tomorrow and what's going

to be different case deals with the same group of people in dealing with you know with with same sex marriage but it's what rights once you have legally married what must the federal government provide to you in terms of can we can the federal government say straight couples get this same sex couples dumped right and that's the i would guess a lot of that is going to turn on i.r.s. code sure also that in terms of the defense department. same sex soldiers you know who don't ask don't tell is gone now but the defense department come out saying these are all over the rights now that we can give you and if doma is overturned here's all the other rights which is what was one of the last things that panetta wrote as he has been very very upset yes cheney thanks a lot for being with thank you so much for having me and for showing up this morning as your network. we'll talk more about today's supreme court here in its potential outcomes inside the big picture politics panel coming up after the break .

let me let me i want or don't let me ask you a question. here on this board is what we're having a debate we have i know you see. the truth is this right it's a bad thing to get your. the great thing will be and i don't want to talk about surveillance me. you know 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 harpur welcome to the big picture.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a dog. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot of money you sir are a fool you know what that is my other terrorist cells in your neighborhood all want to give us a defeat terrorism be a liberal and a christian. you're really going to. get you know the corporate media distracts 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 having martin and we're going to break that. looking for every dollar up in the field that we won't find it here if you're looking for relevant stories unique perspective from tom my skin's.

all go back now it's time to turn things over to our big picture politics panel joining me tonight horoscope are conservative commentator and senior fellow at the night. public policy research richard follower of strategist and host of the richard followers show and chris allman conservative commentator and activist they are all for joining me tonight ok you heard the conversation i had i'm assuming with the supreme court it looks like the consensus seems to be among the the the speculators and the the chattering so if it were that the court has some real doubts about standing in this case but there's this larger issue of the constitutionality of gay rights i'm just curious each of your take on it chris do you you know the at one point. school leah asked the question of ted olson at

what point did gay rights the right of gays to marry get put into the constitution and ted olson said at the same time that the rights of people of different sexes or different races to marry got put into the constitution which was eight hundred sixty eight with the passage of the fourteenth amendment it wasn't fulfilled at that point in time but that's when i put the constitution where you think so we basically say that a behavior is the same as an innate caught in a something you're born with i guess according of the here's the bottom line tom if the people look at why don't the people of california just refocus on proposition eight if they if the tide is turning in the polls are all in their favor and those of us who oppose are all you know small minded and and in the minority why doesn't california just revote well that's it that's a good question the fact that we're wasting everybody's time let's just go back and do it in the final phrase in the arguments richard in the in the in the final closing argument before the court. mr charke cooper was neutral scooper charles who

were you the guy who was arguing this he paraphrase jefferson although he didn't he i think had i been writing it i would have said as thomas jefferson said when he was asked you know who should who should make the final decisions with regard to thinking this is in the marbury vs madison case. he said you know who should make the decision and he said the people themselves isn't this. something should be up to the states or is this something that the supreme court should be but i think we've seen over the years in the life the life of the supreme court is the supreme court has been a place of the great equalizer or the scales of justice where groups go to find just as brown versus the board of education roe v wade we see tons and tons of those cases where the supreme court sort of plays that middle row where legislators that were you sort of take legislatures and politics out of it and the money out of it and you really have a conversation about the philosophical nature and how that relates to our constitution but aren't those both cases within had to have the court never ruled within ten years legislators live anyway well i mean you know i think that argument

i think you know hindsight's twenty twentieth's there's no way to really know if that was the case i think in this particular case what we have i think what we what we've seen here is we've seen a situation where the polls have shifted the tides have shifted and the fact that this case has gone the supreme court mean that's something that is part of our social conscience part of our social conscience in this country and i you know the standing question is a big question we see in the secretary the secretary general in california say you know there is no standing here i think you take standing out of it and i think the supreme court making a decision is sort of telling of where we are the society chris does not think for the record just to be clear that the fourteenth amendment confers the right to get married to people who are gay right and she's right about that no not at all and i'm just and i want you to know that that i talk to high school students last night medicare who was bisexual she wants to marry a man and woman was that put in the fourteenth amendment when the fourteenth amendment was passed polygamy and the ability to marry two people because she feels she went to war in that way actually those things were decided when you became

a state well so i mean there's a debate about it the federal law you know i don't like you know it was actually decided the original you do see that on the fourteenth amendment i do i do i think you know it's equal protection of the law and i think the fact of the fourth of them was used for interracial marriages i think that that same standing still exists that you can't discriminate on a commitment between two people who love each other so. morris your take is absolutely let's focus on what the law actually is and chris is absolutely correct when. the mormon church was active in utah before they became a state it went to the supreme court and that set a precedent that one of the interpretive rules at the time that the fourteenth amendment was crafted we understood that it did not cover this kind of an issue and by the way to keep one other one other point here for when mr scalia when mr justice scalia asked the question ted olson did not answer the fourteenth amendment he said it was once we as a society understood that people no longer

a choice about being gay that we had this obligation that is something that is a societal policy question not something to be found in the law itself. i have a clip. and actually did respond saying that it was an eight hundred sixty the first time he responded he was fond of the way that i described and secondly in the fourteenth amendment you can see the congressional debate and absolutely they raised the question of black marriage that was something that they absolutely wanted to address and whether they wanted to address gay marriage they could have said that they were going on and so wait wait hold on a second now let's i mean we could talk about the course i want to with the philosophical difference that i think we're debating here and that's the big elephant in the room do you realize and i always ask this question to my conservative colleagues and compatriots is do you really feel as though that people are born and they say i'm going to choose to be gay i'm going to choose to be

discriminated against i'm going to choose to be bullied do you think like little kids make those type of choices i just really really guys it's not as if some reality check here let's get so i don't like yeah this is the reality. people prefer to be the top producers are this celebrated stars in america the front page of all the coverage preferred over the stodgy. older white guys in their traditional ways yes a lot of people would probably prefer to be that. you tell your about your ad blocker to hold out your telling me so no i don't really know how that you are can you tell me a couple years ago when you when you joined the military you weren't allowed to talk about you were allowed to express who you really were that people really said this is a great thing i'm going to didn't i'm going to i'm going to choose this leslie even though i know i'm in the military and people can discriminate against me when you have a military you're not allowed to engage in adultery even if you find the person of your choice that you hug you were here when they would bury you can't there are a lot of rules that exist in the military because the idea that this this idea what

hebrew for tom what do you show that is the philosophical difference is there chris is on record as saying that you don't believe that people are born gay or straight i mean as you said their ally don't know oh i don't know yet that doesn't matter whether it doesn't take notice until i let some people meddle with i have friends this is a choice other people maybe not but you know what some people might feel that they're born with a need to marry two people or temporary to their job they are not important to marry or. balcony fleetly appearing now that completely aren't you though you say nothing was right given that you guys have alone are they behind that argument you guys have and we've heard this argument that i want to get made and i can produce i don't want or whatever you want her and i are you that is my own we heard this argument made in the counter-rally that happened today at the site of the article on marriage it was money yes it was made like we didn't choose to be black i woke up as a black man and it was what it was that you're just saying that i don't know if people are born to of born to be gay just like i don't know people are born to be

black or not to i was actually at the rally today and it was imagine i could make that claim so i really admire his hair the fact here is the fat we have a contract the fourteenth amendment was ratified people said this is what they were intending to do if you wish to distort that to address to abortion sanity or all the other topics that progressives have used the courts to do. you push them to the cultural war all the same as we have then had over the last five years once again the only people cream the cultural wars is the folks on the conservative side i think are progressive but i will be misnomers rise of ice what i have my own are everywhere. and repeal the progress of the arguing is that we need to accept everybody no matter who they are and their public record how do we really think that the republican party haven't done more who had a was born meeting to people that that they actually have last completely because that isn't all that well you either bought into that the way our leaders are having . on what people that are like are in their own field are they care i don't know where you're going to you are who live here this is really. not.

just about are you sad i hope you don't live in agony for the guys continue to know why a governing you guys on hold so far to the out of the mainstream. having government chorus are you going to use a good jeffrey dahmer argument to i don't have any particular argument other than to say we have a contract or you are having a hunter i started to ask this question earlier and then we just did a very one off kris is on the record saying she she. sure was ok some aren't some are richer i believe is of the opinion that people probably are born knowing what their sexuality is or what their preferences i certainly have you know i was six seven years old i noticed what mine was don't you think that progressivism want to turn this question on that that is not whether they had steak before the supreme court today whether it would be wrong is it would be wrong do you think that people are born with a with a sense of sexual i didn't injure or not i do not believe that that's what the

history of what has happened with gays in america is anyway like what has happened with being blacks not the lynching not the not the denial of like of vogue with oh please the record is nowhere near that and that is an insult and. listen to this why don't you go where you look at you look at the gay rights the gay rights movement you know florida you look at a gig mitt you look at. ok well you can marry remedy for extraordinary misdeeds and there are now we are in this misdeeds against gays not three as they have the functional equivalent in this case a wise man once said injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere and you know it isn't. as you look at the old you two movement in a vacuum and just america this is a worldwide problem you look at the laws that are happening in uganda people are being killed and lynched and they're being taken away from their families because of who they choose to love who choose to commit to and you cannot tell me that there is not some sort of you can't there's no equalization between what the black

folks monthly what gay people want to know why the bush administration pushed a very progressive effort to try to thwart those very kinds of issues and get less for me oh i did credit i absolutely no greater being i know you're gonna bite my evangelicals out of the only story however i don't want to hear you know what you're not interested in fighting those fights you're only interested in fighting not here in america clearly we need a wedge and mother leonor you don't know what i am committed to on what i'm going to have my arguments are bogus so you want to know what i'm not i don't my argument is i'm just i just. yeah i'm not sure but you're just. i could tell him what his arguments are if you can tell me what mine are so i'll assume the same question so to me or asked which is if you can't discriminate against gays and housing and jobs should you be able to discriminate against them in marriage if the logic that she puts forward is accurate then the answer is no you should but the truth of the matter is that it doesn't place no it's not in many places in some places and that's

a lot is in california that's the last up on the community so let the community sell it what you guys want to claim is that the fourteenth amendment that we had our only war in this country about which we resolved with a thirteen fourteen fifteen amendment has now been hijacked for something other because that is. the this is the. here right i love the whole like the argument you guys use about the community but if it wasn't for the course we would still be in segregated school because the community didn't. actually enforce the idea of us being in segregated schools not more of tonight's politics after the break.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you. are welcome is a big picture. of potentially deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit stunning in a few hours from new york to maine we have team coverage of the storm. but what we're watching is the very heavy snow moving into boston proper earlier today it was very sticky you can see it start to become much more powdery down the line

there's still a lot of snow out here a place for snowball fight. d.c. it is been a pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout much of it might still be a slog through drug words and see. right out of. the radio guy and for a minute. what. did you never see anything like that i'm telling. you. what a bag you are paul.