well coming up on our t.v. with the case against bradley manning somewhat veiled in secrecy a question comes to mind what exactly makes someone a whistleblower and are there really protections in place to help them we'll explore the cases of those who wouldn't remain silent just to have. an a debate continues on the merits a fourth fullbacks nation still a recent court decision in oregon has decided that doctors have the right to make medical decisions for children without parents consent now is this a case of protecting the child or wrongfully overstepping gruntal right. and in ohio if you can't pay the bills you just make it the book thrown at you people in that state are being imprisoned for not paying fines and tickets without even a hearing in a possible violation of the cost constitution so we'll take

a look at ohio's debtor prisons later in the show. was wednesday may eighth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm margaret how you're watching our t.v. . starting off the sour whistle blowers earlier today pretrial hearings continued in the case of private bradley manning now manning stands accused of leaking more than seven hundred thousand classified files and diplomatic cables to transparency organization wiki leaks now since his arrest manning has spent more than a thousand days in the literary prison much of it in solitary confinement without a trial now today's pretrial hearing was closed to the public and to the media and unprecedented move made in the name of national security now manning's treatment senses arrest is part of what some are calling the war on whistleblowers which has punished government workers who speak out against waste fraud and abuse now under

the obama administration seven people so far have been prosecuted under this espionage act more so than any other presidents in history combined so that's what makes a whistleblower anyway and what are the rights and provisions in place to protect those who come forward well our chief political commentator sam sacks brings us more today so-called whistleblowers took center stage in the house government oversight committee three state department officials who oversight chairman darrell issa has deemed as whistleblowers are testifying on the events that happened in benghazi on september eleventh of last year there here's a round up of various news outlets reporting on it today from c.b.s. news benghazi whistleblowers head to house committee from fox news republicans look to show cover ups as whistleblowers give benghazi testimony and from usa today benghazi whistleblowers to testify state defends its actions so you get the picture

at the hearing chairman i said made it clear that he expects whistleblowers to be protected. these brave whistleblowers are in fact what makes this committee's work work. we are the committee that oversees and that lead for new whistleblower protection signed by this president the public has a right to hear their accounts and we more than any other committee in the congress must respect whistleblowers and work on a bipartisan basis always to protect them. well anyone who's been paying attention to what's going on the last four years and has seen the ruthless crackdown on whistleblowers by our government must think that what's going on here is rather odd the white house has gone after more whistleblowers and used the espionage act to do it than all other presidential administrations in history combined and how many of those whistleblowers were given a platform and chairman chairman ice's government oversight committee how many were

heralded in the media and given protection from retaliation and prosecution none. no such credit was given a whistleblower thomas drake who exposed a massive illegal surveillance program on american citizens run out of the n.s.a. after nine eleven he was charged under the espionage act and faced thirty five years in prison before he eventually was let go with a means to misdemeanor chairman eissa did run to the defense of drake nor do you run to the defense of former cia agent john kiriakou who blew the whistle on torture within the agency for exposing this crime kiriakou was also charged under the espionage act he's now in prison serving thirty months and nothing for bradley manning either one of you exposed to the american people quote what happens and why it happens in our wars abroad he blew the whistle on this particularly disturbing video from baghdad where a dozen people including two reuters journalists were killed by an american apache

attack helicopter manning is facing another secret pretrial today and has been in detention for more than one thousand days the number of hearings held in chairman eyes has oversight committee on manning's detention zero so what is going on here what's behind these stark differences in how whistleblowers are treated. well for one we have to question whether or not today's benghazi hearing witnesses are actually whistleblowers there's a difference between on one hand exposing crime in wrongdoing and on the other hand second guessing decisions that were made or questioning political motivations that seems to be what's happening here also these so-called whistleblowers hold information that could be politically embarrassing to the obama administration and in particularly embarrassing the former secretary of state hillary clinton who might run for president a few years unfortunately thomas drake john kiriakou and bradley manning they have information that embarrassed both republicans and democrats who've been complicit in a legal surveillance and war crimes these men couldn't be exploited by one political

party or the other that's why they are where they are now and not sitting in front of chairman ice's oversight committee instead so if you want to be a whistleblower if you want to expose moral wrongdoings in criminal activity well go for it unfortunately you just have to make sure there's a political agenda to hang your whistle on in washington same sex are to. well it's hard to see your child in pain but for many parents keeping up to date vaccinations is considered by some in society and necessary obligation to keep their kids healthy and that means a lot of shots on average american children now receive twenty six vaccinations by the age of two that is unless parents exercise that decision to opt out now oregon no leads the country in the number of parents who chose to exempt their kindergartners from school required vaccinations and for most of the us parents do have the right to make that decision for children for religious or medical reasons

but last month the oregon state court of appeals ruled that the state was better equipped to make medical decisions then the parents of eight marion county children now the court ruled that the parents who lost custody of their children a year prior due to unspecified reasons did not have the legal right to exempt their children from required immunizations for religious reasons now vaccine refusers are seen by some as threatening public health but just what rights do parents have when it when others may be opposed to vaccines due to a no risk and what comes to mind with the medical decisions for these children and when should the state step up well they discussed this and i was torn earlier by doctors to jot the ruddy from atlanta i started asking her where the line is for parents to decide on medical care for their children. well i think you know the parents obviously have the last say in virtually everything but when we look at vaccines that are known to save lives i think here it's pretty much

a no brainer the vaccines are helpful and if you ever have met anyone or know someone in a third world country who saw someone die or get very ill from a preventable disease they will tell you how important and lucky we are to be able to get vaccines universally in the u.s. well that's certainly an excellent point what does the law have to say you know about parents who want to opt out is there is there any legal anything on the books while in some states there are some laws that allow parents to opt out but you will see we actually have seen in medicine trends of you know children dying of things like whooping cough or pertussis in states where parents have opted out and i can only imagine if you're the parents of that child how bad the mosquito if you if you not vaccinate your child and they can contract whooping cough and die from it how terrible that must feel but there are some states from parents can do that but what we're starting to see is when you don't vaccinate you see you lack herd immunity and so we're going to start seeing children you know who even though they got

vaccinate are going to be exposed to things and may get ill because these other children are vaccinated and that's very concerning do you think that parents just are informed on the benefits of vaccines or or are these parents who are refusing to immunize i mean do they have a legitimate fear that it can threaten their child's health. well i have to think that anyone that doesn't vaccine their child is is thinking they're doing the best thing for their child but i have to think that that's not based on fact you know there was some concern about side effects of vaccines of things like autism but all of that has been really disproven over and over and over again and you know medically there is no question that the benefit of vaccines you know outweigh the small risks ok talk to me about the public health concerns when it comes to parents who don't vaccinate. well it's come to us and before that whole concept of herd immunity and we've almost a radical a lot of childhood diseases in the u.s. because we have such a high penetration or

a high percentage of people who get vaccinated and if you if you start losing that we're going to start seeing out breaks like we've seen in california of preventable diseases so not vaccinating can become a big public health problem so it is a concern do you think that diseases that have have been eradicated they may make their way back into mainstream if this trend picks up any more than it already has without a doubt you know there's some parts of the world where you know terrorist groups are preventing vaccination because they feel it's the western influence and we're starting to see things like smallpox smallpox outbreaks so absolutely this could become a problem ok dr reddy talk to me about those parents who they have a fear that there is going to be an impact cognitively on their child perhaps a link to autism for vaccination what would you say to them you know if they if they're coming to you with these concerns what options do they have parents to come

to those concerns and i think you have to have a good discussion with your health care provider whom i hope they would trust if you can't trust your physician you need to get a new physician but i think you have a discussion with them and you know all of us in medicine are pretty much going to say the benefits outweigh the risk and there really has been no proven link between vaccination and autism ok well can a doctor dr reddy kemah doctor refuse to treat a patient who opts out of vaccinating. we can't say we we're not going to treat someone are you going to limit their visits because if they're not if they're going to bring a disease to your office you're going to be worried about your other patients so if you have enough that reason you actually can say you know i think this is not going to work for me i'll take care of you until you find another physician and we call it dismissing the patient but that is possible ok. dr reddy we have to leave it there thank you so much for speaking with me that was dr sujata ready from atlanta thank you and now to ohio will county jails in the state or imprisoning people for

not paying fines and tickets this is according to the a.c.l.u. now many of those behind bars simply can't afford those fines and did not receive the hearings beforehand to determine if they were able to pay now the practice of jailing people for debts has been previously world unconstitutional so now the heils state supreme court is getting involved will this issue be settled once and for all will r.t.s. marina porton has more. a midwestern u.s. state. internationally recognized for being the battleground we're on there because next president is decided let's talk about the importance of ohio and in the battle for ohio as distinct eighteen electoral votes mean so much almost a lot of attention ohio ohio. we're probably going to decide the next president of united states for the past thirty six years no candidate has entered the white house without winning this swing state while ohio undoubtedly wields an enormous

influence in the arena of u.s. presidential politics the state is currently garnering headlines for its presence specifically the medieval type punishment being imposed on countless citizen who are drowning in debt according to a report released by the a.c.l.u. of ohio thousands of citizens are being locked behind bars because they are too poor to pay their debt and we saw some really troubling numbers one case that we looked at out of man field ohio there was a gentleman his crime against the community was he let his dog walk in his mobile home park without a leash he was fined thirty dollars and he ended up being found in contempt of court and was sent to jail for not paying for a thirty dollars fifty five year old jack dolly was incarcerated three times for failing to pay nine hundred dollars in fines every ninety days you had

a jail date. and if you weren't working well you're going to jail that prison violate the u.s. and ohio constitutions according to the a.c.l.u. most of the defendants weren't given hearing before being jailed for outstanding fines if the court had taken any time to ask whether or not they could afford to pay that they would see that these were people who just simply cannot pay they were individuals who are homeless many have and were. for months if not years people who are disabled people who are taking care of disabled family members these are people who are working and just don't feel like spending the money these are people who literally have no money people like dante stiles who is unemployed and says he often has to choose between feeding his two children or paying his fine i promise they'll back and forth back and forth in court battle for a constant zero ten days here fifteen days here and while the cash strapped citizens are incarcerated in gutters prisons. there fines keep growing like credit

card interest it's described as a vicious circle it was seven hundred thirty six thirty seven dollars ok well at the eleven days when i went back to court at the court costs and pan and now the public defended it went up an extra two hundred dollars more than one point eight million ohioans reportedly live in poverty and i want to get it behind me dolly lost his job last year after missing work for a ten day sentence in debtors prison i had just started the job i was probably there not quite a month. i was expecting a paycheck so i'd gone in early to get a paycheck so i could go in and pay on my flying and upon my release i was terminated from my job dollie has received just fifty dollars credit for each of the sixteen days he was illegally in prison most. like styles have nots and the state reviewer for predicting america's president has garnered a new reputation for how it punishes the poor marina fortnight an artsy ohio. well

the united states dumping tens of billions of dollars into reconstruction efforts in afghanistan more so than any other effort in u.s. history just who's making sure that all that money is getting to where it's supposed to go well this is been one of the toughest jobs of the ongoing conflict garnering serious concerns with a blank check given to rebuilding the country as americans transition our control of security operations to the afghans this job become even harder well special inspector general for afghanistan reconstruction john soco discussed the transition facing afghanistan as the americans leave and some of the most worrying trends he sees in the way of u.s. taxpayer dollars are used to the country america lopez was on hand and she joined me earlier in studio to tell me what's being said about these reports that u.s. money to afghanistan is ending up in the wrong hands while of the what the special inspector general says to that is that there is

a lot of truth to what is being said there and what he was specifically referring to was the contractors so right now our money shifting away from what we were spending on troops and things like that and it's actually going into these reconstruction efforts we have these contractors right now. in fiscal year two thousand and twelve for instance we awarded nine thousand seven hundred thirty three contracts now the problem is that those contracts aren't just for our primary contractors they're for subcontractors and we might be able to guarantee our primary contractors are the ones that are not dealing with insurgents for instance and possibly giving that money away to insurgents we have a lot of things that guarantee that but we don't have any guarantees that those contractors who are sub contracting work out are actually not giving the money to insurgents and american enemies essentially well it sounds like government policy for these contractors factors then of the certainly so what type of auditing system

do we currently have in place to put it check in a balance and where this money is going to. we're getting well the d.o.d. has india is something that we've been talking about quite a lot on this program and it actually has section eight forty one and what that says is that it is a contract that actually as i was talking about forces contractors to disclose where that money is going and to sign on to something that says that they are not going to actually use that money to go to anything that is anti american activities so that's one thing to notice is that this inspector general report was very critical of the fact that contract doesn't go for far enough now one interesting point to note about this contract is that it happens for everything that is over one hundred thousand dollars now the problem with that is is that seven thousand seven hundred thirty of those nine thousand seven hundred thirty three contracts so eighty percent essentially was under one hundred thousand dollars so they don't have to abide so essentially by the contract the regulations and the stringent kind

of policies that the u.s. has in place for the other contractors that they give more money to it sounds like a lot of issues are at play here ok back and so this new report that was made public last week this watchdog group it's tracking u.s. spending in afghanistan it skeptical that the coalition forces actually met that number that three hundred fifty thousand plus number of afghan security forces that they're supposed to leave in place what does the inspector general of have to say about this the inspector general and this audit specifically was very very critical of what was what with those numbers were so let's go over those numbers enlisting and training there was supposed to be a total of three hundred fifty two thousand afghan security personnel forces by october of two thousand and twelve but as john soco actually said and i have a quick clip to play it he said that those numbers are wildly inaccurate and here's why. we also have concerns about the accuracy of those numbers the defense

department told us that there is no way for them to validate the. personnel numbers these are often derived from reports prepared by hand by afghan troops it is hard to know if the afghan army and police are ready if we don't know how many there are so as you just heard him say the problem is that we cannot collect the data in order to be able to be sure because there is no uniform method in order to collect that just to be able to determine and also all to add on top of that the the kind of qualifications for what they're considering to be trained is folly so they're saying that anyone that is recruited is trained so those numbers are very very unbalanced at the moment megane a lot of information we're running out of time. we construction effort specifically how has the united states you know how is that money going towards the

reconstruction effort if you could break that down for me ok the biggest problem the general says to american the american mission in afghanistan right now is the fact that afghanistan is not making enough revenue right now afghanistan is bringing in two billion dollars in revenue the problem is that in order to be able to maintain the roads the bridges the hospitals that they are we are building they have to make between eight and ten billion dollars in revenue that's something that they're not going to make right now and that is very hard to see them make in the future so our reconstruction efforts are very questionable at this point does the special inspector think that the money has been well spent at this point he's questioning really over the sustainability of this project he's saying that right now just to give you some reference where you have spent five hundred fifty billion dollars in afghanistan so it's hard to say that all of that money has been well spent and though his problem is the biggest question of the reconstruction efforts

in afghanistan right now is did the people want it they need it and a lot of those things those questions were not asked before we went into afghanistan and they're certainly not being asked right now so the problem is that there is just so much money that we are flooding into this country and very little that is actually being accomplished right now and another point that i would like to make is that the annual. amount as i was saying of afghan income for a personal afghan a person they're making five hundred forty dollars annually and that is so much information we have to leave it there thank you so much for joining me that was our correspondent. well some groups are liking facebook right now the company finds itself in hot water as several progressive groups are planning on boycotting facebook by yanking their paid advertisements for at least two weeks now the reason being a series of ads funded by facebook's political lobbying group forward u.s. backing to senators in part due to their support of expanded drilling in alaska and

that contentious keystone pipeline now one and celebrates republican senator lindsey graham of south carolina for criticizing the president's position on that keystone pipeline and the other puts the spotlight on alaskan democrat mark baggage highlighting his support for the additional drilling in the arctic national wildlife reserve and a launch last last month forward u.s. is focused on immigration now so far what does this have to do with drilling now critics say that the ads are a possible strategic move on behalf of immigration reform benefiting two senators that may face some political blowback if they vote yes on immigration progressive groups are buying it now a host of these groups including move on to work democracy for america progressives united credo action have all come together and we'll keep you updated as the story progresses when it comes to the u.s. economy the usual numbers worried about are the monthly jobs report or maybe the

nation's g.d.p. but how about the different number that involves the health of certain consumers well residents an honest with more un trips to the golden arches. place insight is a service that quantifies the physical world by mapping the relationship between people and places they measure trends in how many people go where basically and they just issued their q one two thousand and thirteen report which takes a look at the top businesses in the u.s. one of the things they track is what businesses are the most visited so can you

guess which business was the most visited business in the u.s. so far this year remember we're talking about america and americans so it might come as no surprise to many of you that the most visited business so far this year in the u.s. is makes donald that's right nearly half of americans aged fourteen and older visited making these golden arches in march of this year alone according to the report. walmart subway burger king and starbucks to round out the top five in that order is the fact that almost half of americans went to mcdonald's in march of this year surprise anyone it might surprise me a new yorker who is surrounded by gluten free hipsters and millennial who wear months i'm told t. shirts ironically it might surprise one of the thousands of people who embrace the rapidly growing slow food movement it might surprise our first lady who's let's move movement centers on raising healthier and more health conscious children. it

might surprise anyone with bothered to look at the ingredients of the chicken nuggets because once you find out that a mc nuggets contains among many other thing sure sherie butyl had to acquire or t.v. h q a form of butane as in a lighter fluid you probably wouldn't want to eat it because ingesting just five grams of that can be fatal and it might surprise anyone with read the ingredients of the mcdonald's burger and found that the list includes artificial fertilisers and ammonium chloride which is also found in fireworks among many other things. was the fact that half of america went to mass donald last month might surprise anyone with conscientious about the food they put into their bodies but it probably doesn't surprise most people on the planet because despite the proliferation of more and better nutritional information available in our society as golden arches

still represent america now mcdonald's is fast it's easy and it's there in fact the only place in the lower forty eight that is more than one hundred miles from a mcdonald's is a barren plain in south dakota so congratulations america despite your first ladies best efforts you still have earned your reputation of being a country tonight let's talk about that by following me on twitter as the resident . well here in r t we talk about drones a lot drones are often used as instruments of death and destruction from signature strikes abroad to surveillance here at home as we discussed yesterday drone strikes have radicalized communities in yemen to a degree that al qaida never could and of course the criticism from human rights advocates the world over there is one drone we may all agree with the beer dropping

. yes that's right the drone that doesn't drop bombs it drops beer so have you ever been sitting at a concert in really craved a cold beer well who wants to leave the concert and just go stand in a long line well this one's for you the up be copy music festival in south africa is planning on offering concert goers the option of remotely ordering brews and the beer we deliver things to a drone so how would this work anyway will as seen here beer equipment drones would swoop down and deliver the beer be a parachute to an order and customer now these bare drones are hand guided for a nail but will operate on a g.p.s. grid and the near future looks like drones can drop everything mail from beer to bombs very versatile piece of equipment there but who will service fees and who will really fly them so you have to wonder if the right customer is going to get the beer that they paid for and you want to open

a beer that's just fallen from the sky when he's baritones find their groove with concert goers i guess only time will tell but if it cuts down on waiting times in the beer line i'm all for it well that's going to do it for nail for more on the stories we've covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america check out our website at r t dot com slash usa you also follow me on twitter it underscored j underscore howell for now have a great night. good

afternoon to welcome to prime interest i'm terry and boring here in washington d.c. here's the stories that we're tracking today. the u.s. will pay china ahead of veterans and medicare recipients that's what house speaker boehner said yesterday pushing a new bill that would help prevent a u.s. debt default but president obama doesn't agree with the reasoning that any of the fall on promise is not just on debt repayment hurts u.s. credibility he said american families do not get to choose which bills to pay and which ones not to pay but don't tell that to the two hundred thousands to defaulters the job not to pay their mortgages in two thousand and eight and two are approaching the three year anniversary of god and only a third of the bill has been implemented yesterday at the house services financial .