well i'm john berman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight the big picture today the supreme court held its second straight day of hearings on same sex marriage is the defense of marriage act dead and why is john boehner using your and my tax dollars to hire private lawyers to defend it find out in just a moment also the united states has the highest health care costs in the world is the time we're pleased our four provinces to with something better yes it's a long liberal rumble and the n.r.a. and its members are compensating for something small tell you what in tonight's deal you take.

you need to know this today the supreme court heard oral arguments in the case of the united states v windsor and it could be game over for one of the nation's most powerful symbols of sexuality based discrimination gender based the second the second same sex marriage case in front of the supreme court two days u.s. v windsor calls into question one thousand nine hundred ninety six law that prohibits the federal government from giving gay couples the same tax breaks and benefits as straight couples even of those couples live in a state like massachusetts where gay marriage is legal according to petitioner edith windsor x. ban on federal recognition of state law violates fer fifth amendment equal protection rights judges in previous lower court cases have agreed with her and declare the law unconstitutional so it seems like a simple yes or no kate's right not so much or the weird things about the doma case is that the justice department the federal agency that normally represents the executive branch of government in cases like this openly disagrees with the act and

has decided not to defend its constitute. anality but since doma is still the law of the land and the justice department still technically in force is that someone or something asked argue for it in this case that means attorneys for the bipartisan legal action group congressional body that has the authority to represent the house of representatives in a court of law maybe yes that's right john boehner the house republicans are using taxpayer dollars to fight for a law that the justice department and most of the country for that matter doesn't agree with because of the some commentators who question whether or not blog and its attorneys actually have standing to defend doma in front of the supreme court if they don't the justices could just dismiss the case standing by the way was a huge theme in yesterday's hollingsworth the perry hearings as well as california officials have decided similarly not to defend that state's gay marriage ban in front of the courts the justices were concerned that the lawyers arguing for the ban in california didn't actually represent any of the interested parties in it and

the justices touched on standing issues today but they also tackled the crux of the issue federally sanctioned discrimination at the more liberal justices like sonia sotomayor hammered at a law they portrayed as blatantly unfair conservatives like antonin scalia on the other hand worried about the federal government taking on dangerous new powers to force gay marriage on unwilling states most importantly however just to see anthony kennedy the court swing vote attacked the defense of marriage act as a violation of state sovereignty. he said in a section two was in order to help the states the congress wanted to help students . in section three the congress doesn't help the states which have come to the conclusion that the marriage was over so that's inconsistent you know the truth of the which which is to say they are preserving they are helping the states in the sense of having each sovereign make this decision and the states do if they do what we want them to if the court decides to strike down doma this could be the winning

argument so is doma done with issues of standing sway the court and more importantly what. that is what does today's hearing mean for the future of the bt rights movement in america let's ask shane farnham's a supreme court reporter for the talk radio news service and joe toy federal director for freedom to marry and welcome to both of you. if i can start with you with this whole blag thing if i can somewhat disagree with my own set up but you know it's not like somebody has to defend this law it's in fact the administration either should be defending the law and enforcing it or should be saying the law is unconstitutional and refusing to enforce it and instead they're refusing to defend it but they're continuing to enforce it which makes no sense and john roberts called out the president didn't call him how does that ever sit for asli he said he lacked the courage that if you really thought that this was unconstitutional the shouldn't force it in fact the president swears an oath to defend the constitution so you could actually argue that it's violating that by

enforcing a law that he believes is unconstitutional so he's that they're somewhat upset i believe at least from their attitudes today that the president has kind of dumped this in their lap that you know the president says it's unconstitutional still in force he says he'll enforce it and so you supreme court tell me it's unconstitutional therefore if it's actually repeal it instead of congress repeal it joe what it what are your thoughts on that you know there's two ways for us to finally repeal them or we can do it through the courts we can do it through the supreme court or we can do it in congress and at this point for us well pick cases where they are and the cases ended up in front of the supreme court and that's the first step for us to try to repeal this discriminatory law isn't there a third option though and that is for the executive branch to simply refuse to enforce it what they were by and i'm not an attorney so i can't go into the attorneys and could could could say to the i.r.s. you will recognize married couples as married couples regardless of gender in those states that have legalized i think historically when congress has passed a piece of legislation the president has not done that and i think that's the bind

of these exception of him. jackson. it's before my time. until crisis that would that it would really work well that it would appropriately regulatory in a case of controversy you certainly are standing right so it would deal with all that are and so right away and so for you know for right now in fact here's what john roberts had to say about you know this then we can just go along here's what. i would have thought your answer would be that the executives obligation to execute the law includes obligation to execute the law consistent with the constitution and if he has made a determination that executing the law by enforcing the terms is unconstitutional i don't see why he doesn't have the courage of his convictions and execute not only the statute but do it consistent with his view of the constitution rather than saying oh we'll get to the supreme court tells us we have no choice so you could

argue and i tried to today. that you know this is in at a certain level the executive branch being wimpy it on the other hand it's also john roberts you know complaining that you know why do i have to deal with this right he was he was complaining and also i think he was trying to point out because he went on a rather long diatribe later in the arguments about how the only reason there's been this type change in terms of of opinion across the site is because there's all this money and lobbyist influence and power and uses are saying maybe obama i think has been swayed by this change his mind because that seems kind of calling him out i think well and that's a really important point joe because the argument that roberts was making and you could you could argue it one of two ways you can either say. first of all the argument that he was making was that there's rich gays and rich gay groups out there that are influencing public opinion so you could say ok so this is it out it cuts both ways it's helping liberals as well as conservatives but frankly i don't

think that that's what it is i think what what's going on. and as over the last twenty years there's been a concerted and and frankly from what i've seen in my own family and among friends painful effort within the game community to for people to come out very aggressively to to come out and part of that coming out movement has cause the straight community is. you know look at this we're all here together you're finally i mean in the course of the last ten or twenty years people have on a one to one basis whether it's their sister whether it's their kids whether it's somebody in their class are meeting gay people and are finding out firsthand openly gay people finding out firsthand what the impact of these discriminatory laws are on families on gay and lesbians and that impact whether you're lobbying on capitol hill whether you're talking to friends that's what's making the difference is our stories the story of the windsor what happened to this woman after being married

you know for a few years but together with her partner for forty years when her partner passed away even though they were legally married in canada that's an amazing story you know what happened to the military families who are legally married now but are not first of notification when their spouses is killed. abroad i mean these are the realities that are having right now because of doma because the impact of this law and this is clearly. this is not even separate but equal this is separate and exactly and it certainly sound to me shane to from the argument away the arguments were being discussed that probably we're going to end up with justice kennedy saying this isn't really working and he's going to vote with the four liberals in the four conservatives are just going to you know well you know it's very doma they were so they pretty much said that the whole reason for this is for uniformity of the application of federal law. so they're going to define marriage in

a certain way so that all the statutes to mention the word marriage will be it will be subtle digs. same way across the entire country justice kennedy and specifically you know many of the other justices said well there's a federalism issue here it's for the states to define what marriage is not for the federal government so you shouldn't be doing this you don't have an interest federal government in defining marriage and you shouldn't be doing so so let's let the states do it and then as so this would be a decision goes the states however they define marriage that would be how the federal laws applied in that specific state were and the reality is that don't hold that over on its head in one thousand nine hundred six and that is not the way it operated before it's not the way the federal government recognized marriages before it's doma that changed all of that and it's repealing doma that's going to bring it back to the traditional way that the federal government and the states treated marriage in this country where there are states that recognize gay marriage before it ends before one thousand nine hundred sixty don't know in one thousand nine hundred six windover pass you could not get married anywhere in the united states or anywhere in the world literally literally and to have it recognized by the

federal government or are just could not be we're not hearing anywhere the federal government acted at that point because of a reaction to what was happening in hawaii or potentially what could happen in hawaii which didn't happen at the time but the federal government then alarmed that we were changing the universe past doma and as a result until you had the first state passed marriage which was massachusetts it had no impact but the minute you had couples getting married legally in this state that's when the impact of doma really showed up and why this news in tell us what freedom to marry your organization freedom to marry is the campaign to win marriage nationwide we're working on both the state level and the federal level to repeal doma to win more hearts and minds and to win more states and it seems to me they're appealing doma is just the beginning it's sort of like brown v board there get there there are a lot of steps don't we have concerns about discrimination in housing you know. some of these other issues there are a lot of other issues but there's also

a lot of other issues that we're going to have to answer in the marriage to be. as well you know depending on what range and what the supreme court decides to do you still have over thirty states that have constitutional amendments that say marriage is between a man and a woman so we have some work to do after but we're hoping the supreme court does the right thing if the supreme court blows up. do you and somebody lives in a state that doesn't recognize gay marriage but they get married in a state that. will be able to file federal tax returns no married couple no and i you know if you get married in the state that has marriage right now you still can't file federal taxes. but that's because you don't that's because the doma right so you are really restricted to whatever benefits you get in this state that you got married in maryland maryland law outside of maryland there's no protections for you joe thank you both thank you for. the talk more about today's supreme court hearing and its potential outcomes in tonight's lone liberal rumble coming up after

the break. wealthy british scientists are. writing for. the market why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into the report. a

little worse if you're going to take. the white house to give it to the radio guy for a minute because they all want to call for a politics because you've never seen anything like this on call. he. knew he. needed to. say.

back it's time to turn things over to our long liberal rubble guest joining me tonight patrick border with the daily caller and cameron stewart research associate for government studies at the heritage foundation thanks to you both so you heard our panelists thoughts on the doma first of all cameron congratulations you said ashley judd would drop out of the race. in kentucky and she did. that for the record thank you notes ok so i bow to your superior. ridiculousness of all that in this is going to get predictive powers. but cameron i'm curious your take on what happened today and yesterday at the supreme sure i thought yesterday it was very telling more so today it seemed as you discussed earlier that the justices were really saying hey look you know this is still very much an ongoing debate it's happening at the state level why are we here why are we hearing this now and why

would we step in to squelch that debate so i mean if the debate isn't really the issue here the issue is if doma is a case of federal overreach and i believe that it is then the supreme court in their in their power has a responsibility to strike it down on the same token proposition eight which was decided by state voters should be upheld and i think that's well within the supreme court's jurisdiction so if they're going to say i mean this is like john roberts this is like obamacare you know he he's weighing political considerations political considerations shouldn't be discussed in the supreme court it's kind of trying to split this down the middle that this is a solomon in the baby thing this is not this is not working right cameron i see this is in if this is what patrick just described you should have the conservatives on the court say you know this is federal overreach. well no no it's not federal overreach because keeping a the institution of marriage strong is

a fundamental principle that this country's been built on how does it including more people in the institution of marriage not strengthen i mean that's what loving versus virginia did back when when we said you know interracial couples can get married in excess of we're going to right no i mean it is that the but the issue of interracial marriage had had been around for centuries had been sent to you again in church and the catholic church used to be used to marry gay couples in the the in. first centuries in this country recognize civil unions until two thousand and three now look i mean as i said before the issue really here at heart is that the citizens and their elected representatives vote this both at the state and national level should be left to deal with these issues and to decide these issues the issue at the present moment is that there are nine states including the district of columbia that have this legalized and so forty one states that have

said you know what look we that's not relevant to the fact that there are some states who have this legalized means that there's a federal mandate saying that it's not legal is a case of federal overreach you know it's two different things what is included in doma is different than what things like proposition eight so doma deals with the federal interaction right between i don't i don't disagree with that right but but but what doma is doing is saying you states cannot decide for yourself that's not sure yes it is no good saying you can be you know you could have people in your state who are married but they're separate but they're not equal because they can't file income tax returns. that's not true it is it's saying you're a citizen as you interact with the federal government we will not recognize same sex unions but it states you can decide but we're not going to force other states that have decided at the state recognize these other unique there's no place right now is not the role of the federal government to define what a marriage is it something constitution it's not think of the political opportunity

here since this has been so politicized and supreme court think with political opportunity for republicans rand paul came out the other day and said even though i oppose gay marriage which he has to do being the senator from kentucky he can't support that he can still say i think that this should be left to the states and then he can be the libertarian and then and then he can have it both ways republicans have a tremendous not. just like you have a tremendous. both ways here by saying leave it to the son our camera is changing his position oh no this is the. at the level that will continue to go the supreme court step in that sequence duration. came down the road the administration was gone you know we're going to close airports and republicans are going to go do that and now they close the airports and now michele bachmann's head is exploding on national television along with representative vicki hartzler speaking out against this so you know is there is the republican party patrick beginning to learn a lesson here that i don't begin to learn

a lesson i mean look if obama had just been willing to make two point five percent in cuts then we wouldn't be in this position if the republicans had simply been willing to raise taxes but that's true too i think it's funny because you know that i thought the canceling the white house tours was a brilliant political tactic even though it seems so silly at the time because that effectively they were able to use the media frenzy over that to imprint in everyone's head that this is the republicans fault so now even after that silly episode now that we have the real of facts of sequence creation it's already been implanted in people's heads oh yeah it was the republicans who had to wait house tours canceled so when my bridges closing down or republicans for exactly i think you're absolutely right and cameron this. is a one point two trillion dollars cut on top of a one point six trillion dollars cut that happened in the previous year when you cut federal spending as twenty percent of your entire g.d.p. and you cut that by a couple trillion dollars you are shrinking your economy as most of the governments

of europe can tell you so this really is political strategy by the republicans to crash the economy and blame it on obama as tension on the republican party no it's not oh this is this is no your other do five years ago at the at the caucus room restaurant and. swore a blotto to each other to do that oh come on book be am i as a conservative you know i've argued for these cuts to get us on the right path to fiscal sanity in this country fiscal sanity what are you talking about having taxes . we are no one can hire going to everyone who does that drowning in taxes book that wants to have someone is a little know i want to focus on the t.s.a. here because this is nonsense this is complete nonsense weeks before the sequence story went into effect the t.s.a. ordered fifty million dollars in new uniforms have you ever seen a t.s.a. agent that has a threadbare uniform no because i haven't either now also they've continued it was leaking retainer in new uniforms and this is the sort of. every agency to

hire despite a decrease in so i know what you're saying is there's a lot there are ways to cut asides besides the little ones that you are because you know say guys to show up and in jeans and t. shirt they're not because they have plenty of uniforms now but you'd rather they showed up as an intentional thing right before sequester ation it to order those uniforms that hey let's get this massive influx what about all the equipment that's sitting down in texas and use it i think it's one hundred eighty million dollars worth all of the cost that i don't know you know this is meaningless in terms of the federal budget so we're talking about so is one of the little airlie in dollars one point to break what is just as you have. this is the administrative agencies left that let's do to the economy what they're doing but look if you add all those little things up all that nonsense up and it adds up to be a bigger thing and that is across the board education energy that goes the republicans lose in this argument because they've been backed into

a corner we're now they have to defend sequence creation if they had defended sequestration three months prior to this when boehner made the deal then boehner wouldn't have had to cave right i mean. i understand he got ninety eight percent of what he wanted to see chris traces what he wanted in the house and in the senate is sequence which was overwhelmingly passed by republicans but their tactics here by republicans should have been to spin this against obama and say obama is the reason for obama is the only one who was able to do that and now republicans are in the position where we're defending sequence creation which we always knew was a political tactic it was. never a budget plan there was never an economic plan from either party it was something that both parties agreed to as a political measure saying if we can't get a deal done this but they are going to turn into the lone conservative rival is i sounds like you are only not about us going to be who is winning man here looks like i'm out on my own but it will be either we owning the sequester why are we owning the sequester right now because it's some sort of budget cuts i mean let's take because you can look at it like this is a vigorous a lot of the kids want to want a smaller government want to be able to go to corporations you know billionaires

less government drowning in debt we already are drowning had been or made a lot of concessions back in at the end of the year at the end of. guess i don't know i don't know where he had been if he had been a soap i was going to those if he's going to prosecute or back then and willing to take us over the fiscal cliff then he wouldn't have had to make all those concessions why couldn't we have been pro sequester three months ago when we have had something politically again ok well let's let's let me just move this along a little bit for something that maybe republicans love to argue that our healthcare system is just great and doesn't need fixing the facts say otherwise each year the international federation of health plans releases survey data showing the prices that insurers are actually paying for different drugs devices and medical services in countries across the globe and every year the data is shocking two thousand and twelve is no exception average physician fees for routine office visits in the u.s. were sky high last year compared to other developed nations so are the costs for having to stay in a hospital overnight so the cost for getting a fairly routine m.r.i.

for millions of americans even and even the cost for delivering a baby were outrageous compared to much of the rest of the developed world and these jar charts that i'm shown there were shown full screen here on t.v. these are not outliers there's like twenty two of these charts every single one looks just like this whether it's a knee replacement or an m.r.i. or or you know a catheter i mean it just we have we're paying twice as much for health care is pretty much anybody else in the world we're twenty seventh in the world in terms of results because we've got steven j. hemsley united health care. take a billion dollars you've got one hundred executives making over a million dollars just in one insurance company you've got. bill frist and daddy you know build out of the three billion dollar empire we've got this is for profit empires your succulents and sebelius just admitted the other day that under obamacare the the rates are going to go even higher the answer is yes there is their absence you're absolutely right there is going there is there is one small fragment of americans who are going to pay more under obamacare and all men and if

you're exactly right and congress could fix that with the smallest little tweak and in fact that was contemplated you pass a law anyone when john boehner was the original author of the no child left behind act he said you know he's going to fix this we're going to fine tune this as we go down the road and he came right up said that when they were passing it obviously going through the same thing with obamacare but the republicans the house of representatives and sort of saying oh look at there's going to be twelve fifteen thousand people who are going to have to pay more we're going to complain about it instead of fixing it camera look at you the prices are going up let's make it clear right on the individuals that are going to be buying from those exchanges right this is not you know maybe you who's covered through your work through health care meet the coverage you know where you hope by an act of congress in five minutes painless it is because of an act of congress we were going to keep legislating would of course you couldn't pass a large bill without a lot of this is going to. buy the president saying oh yeah this is finally

kathleen sebelius had to come out and say yes actually you know what this is going to be a lot more than your sorry you're really going to try and ride that horse of you know we're not going to fix this because we shouldn't have to because it should have oh no i don't think no i think first of all look you need to you need to keep the market intact you you if you push down artificially rad why we're going to parties in the house of representatives fix this small glitch obamacare is going to cause a small number of people that pay a little bit more in health and i must be missing something but what is what is the small fix that you're. those would be to reduce to compensate for how they're paying for you know to move to their ways are you are saying well we're never going to agree on that because i'm just going to say we're already you know you're saying there should be a debate about it there's not even a debate but you know it looks good that while there will be a debate it would know there are there while john boehner says you know we're not going to discuss this idea we got we'll continue this all got a bit more of that ice low level already.

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