good morning that's journalist not letting anything get in your way to bring it home to the american people. hello i'm tom hartman at washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture with neil gorsuch on the supreme court and some more liberal justices looking to retire is america on the verge of sliding into theocracy alas the reverend barry lynn in just a moment and the trumpet ministration has just put the drinking water for one out

of three americans at risk we'll talk about how internet's lone liberal rumble with horace cooper and charles. donald trump i want to build a wall on the mexican border but under his watch the constitutional wall that is supposed to separate church and state is crumbling and crumbling fast this week the u.s. supreme court took action on three very significant cases that have america's commitment to secular government very very worried for more on those three cases i'm joined now by reverend barry lynn executive director of americans united for separation of church and state reverend lynn welcome back it's nice to be here great to have you with us so on monday the court said that if the government is going to pay to resurface the playground of a public school they have to do it for a church school that's right what is wrong with this picture what's wrong with this

picture is never before has the united states supreme court said that churches can actually get money from the government and it's worth. literally never before not like this because it later as you know i mean this is a. you buy that tires the scrap tires you use them on your playground you prove that you spend it and then the government in this case of the state of missouri gives you the money now we don't do things that way there are things that we can pay for in this country and we can pay for public schools we can pay for flag days and fireworks and all kinds of holiday celebration but we can't pay for religion but now we've started on a very dangerous slope in which we decide that because the church is an able or unwilling usually unwilling to do something that allegedly is safe for children that it's put right on the playgrounds instead of the playground or the things

people like you and i probably. i mean that if that's us. of course it has no religious significance and it can be funded and it's even worse because this state was one of thirty nine states that has a very important provision that is not in the federal constitution and that is a guarantee that no money shall ever be used from the public treasury of those states to provide any help to a ministry to a mission to a church this school trinity lutheran church own to the school coals the school a mission of the church and nevertheless now says what we need it for the safety of our children question if it's so important to keep children safe and i think it is in a church why didn't they find

a way to do this themselves instead of getting into some kind of a lottery program in the state of missouri well it seems to me that this is the proverbial nose under the camel's nose under the edge of the tent you know this absolutely no gorsuch from everything i'm reading and i'd love your take on this. we've had republicans have a long history of and some democrats for that matter of you know waving the flag of religion as a as a political tool to bring the rubes in the true believers and i don't i shouldn't say rubes i mean you know just people who genuinely you know their faith is the center of their life right. but typically they're cynics the people doing this they're the politicians who are using religion for political purposes everything i can see about you know gorsuch he's actually a true believer which makes me even more concerned about his position on the supreme court and some of the things he has said and done up to this point that we might have a real genuine theocratic idealogue on the supreme court i think there's

a lot of evidence that he has always been a theological theocrat and one who loves to. pli religious tests to any public policy matter he certainly on the tenth circuit court of appeals had no sympathy for any claims that people were harmed by that they were forced to pay for someone else's religious ideas back that in the time he was on the federal circuit court of appeals there he was a leading proponent of the theory in hobby lobby that even a for profit company can exercise religion and in that case refuse to cover contraceptives for their women employees so he has a long history here he was always a nice fellow i remember you and i talking about of the democrats say well he's a nice guy and i'm sure he didn't kick his dogs and syria didn't eat chicken heads but the point is that those aren't the qualifications you have to have a passion for understanding what the constitution is it's not there to protect

giving money to people who already have a lot of money it's not there to help religious majority it's here to help people who otherwise don't have political power so of course there's a christian majority in almost every state at least at this moment but you have to help minorities there's a dizzying level of religious freedom in this country for christians to do pretty much anything they want when it comes to minority religions or not and. it looks like they're in an even worse disbandment on the united states supreme court on this to primm court decision but that was. they said this is not press but don't extrapolate from this anything else this is you know this is not you know an edifice upon which you can build a you know a whole new theocracy this is just about this school one off now you know what they

said that about bush v gore everybody was like oh good we're relieved and then the supreme court has i think quoted of three times a voice recorder or cited for sure at least three times. what does what is the why did they say this is only limited to the case at hand and what does that mean legally and what does that mean practically i suspect there's three different answers well it's in a footnote so that ought to tell you something footnotes generally it's a footnote that even the chief justice didn't agree with and in several other and the footnote says this is only about a playground this is only about the resurfacing of a playground now that's ridiculous supreme court decisions are not just about one tiny little thing what this does is sends a signal and it sends a signal to all kinds of other courts around the country no matter what state constitutions might say no matter how much they want to preserve the rights of conscience including the pocketbooks of conscientious people who don't want to give

money to churches take a new look at that position because we have decided that in this case it's ok my justice brier wrote a separate opinion and he said this is like a fire it is like a fire department a police protection but it's not it's got nothing no similarity to it. police departments are there you know if there's a shooter or the terrorist comes into a school that's an unplanned event nobody thinks that's going to happen a fire burns down a school of course the fire department's going to come but this is a conscious decision do we or do we not change the surface of the playground in which children might fall from the jungle gym there's no connection between this and justice briar's analogy it was an embarrassingly bad day to pay for it could

that footnote have been put there as basically a negotiation i mean i can imagine you know gorsuch or or john roberts saying well you know we want to have this decision and you know lana kagan or bader ginsburg say and waited out that's unconstitutional and they say well what about if we just limit it to the case of and will that get your vote well won't get my vote but i won't get a strong opposition so i don't like that i think that's the kind of deal that he's quite comfortable with and in fact willing to kagan did join. the the decision so i mean if that was as. goal he succeeded at his cheating him. on monday the court also agreed to hear the cake case this is masterpiece cake shop versus colorado civil rights commission why what is the significance of this case and why is this one particularly given the gore such is now on the court and you know we've got a five vote majority there why is this so potentially dangerous i think it's very

dangerous because this is an idea where a person who calls himself a cake artist cake artist says i have a free speech right to bake a cake or not make a cake if i don't want to make it for a gay couple it wasn't actually for a wedding it was to celebrate a wedding that occurred a couple of days before in a different state but he said my religious beliefs are marriage one man and one woman not two men. now this is the same guy that during depositions actually said he had once bake the cake for a wedding of two dogs i would say very concerned of a very that it is very concerned about it i mean it's really and it's an insult and it's one of the reasons that this is very controversial in the world of civil liberties but i think you ought to be able to challenge. not the truth or falsity of a religious belief but the sincerity of the claim that's being made because frankly in. a great. disconnection against.

but that the. contraceptives for stomach two decades for the sort of i got on this high or did they go in and out of high horse and then. they also allowed people to engage in retirement programs with the company that included some of the same companies that made the contraceptives and they of course they bought a huge amount of stuff from china for their hobby lobby stores and china has a essentially a forced abortion policy which nobody supports in the united states not no one is who is genuinely pro-choice thinks it's ok to say what one kid and that's the limit you're over but so hot august in a politically supported oh yeah i see is rampant there on steroids finally the.

muslim man. you know the supreme court said ok fine you can you can ban some of these people we're going to put a little qualifier in here i believe the qualifier was in the original executive order it wasn't or ordered the court add that because the court added that they're they're writing the law and i don't know where in the constitution it says that the supreme court i've read article three. doesn't it doesn't say they couldn't write laws now and it's not even it's not clear what's going to happen we filed. a letter along with muslim advocates in the southern poverty law center today insisting that the trump administration explain what its policy was going to be we think that this is going to be a normally hurtful for refugees from these six or seven countries as well as for tourists and this decision doesn't portend well for the future either because frankly if you agree as if you agree as many of these justices will with the right wing groups that support this ban. then you say just because the president called

it a muslim banner just because the president said when he was running for office you know it's so hard to tell the difference between muslims and terrorists this is the kind of rhetoric that should be used to explain what this ban is all about and but there are people i've been debating over the last couple of days who say not anything the president said that's not part of the factual record yeah yeah i saw it go to its barry lynn thanks to much for thank you very much coming up rand paul may have just revealed what republicans are really think about single payer health care and it's nuts more on that in tonight's long low rumble with horace cooper and you're also right after the break.

i think the average viewer just after watching a couple of segments understands that we're telling stories there are critics can't tell and you know why because their advertisers won't let them. in order to create change you have to be honest you have to tell the truth parties able to do that every story is built on going after the back story to what's really happening out there to the american what's happening when a corporation makes a pharmaceutical chills people when a company in the environmental business ends up polluting a river that causes cancer and other illnesses they put all the health risk all the dangers out to the american public those are stories that we tell every week and you know what they're working.

but. they did accept it. so when you want to present. to the right person this is what the. people. in the state.

as center republicans gondor intense public pressure over this ghastly health care bill they're revealing a lot about their worldview and how completely insane it is let's rubble. with a friend tonight's a long low rumble our horoscope are with the national center for public policy research and charles our economist and president of the market institute thank you both for being with me thank you great to have you back ok during an interview on c.n.n. last night kentucky senator rand paul accidentally admitted the logic behind single payer health care bigger the insurance pool will lower the costs but when pressed on that point he said single payer leads to a. socialism that outer failure or at least a. every look at that is way low but this was one of the most rich resource

countries in all the world the average person there lost twenty pounds last year not from choice and you said the figure the group the lower the cost of health i'm taking is your are now and i was talking about exactly what i was to a voluntary bridge not a not not to log in so is that what you guys really think i mean you know out of the thirty six most developed countries in the world thirty five payer systems canada. virtually every major european country to coast to reka what's wrong with the us well in most of them have people fly from there to here to get our state of the art health care the fact is that no single payer system is like you a lawyer or an idolater is more americans leave this country for health care than foreigners come to this country for health care then he said that what he said is most of those countries have people he didn't say most of the people in those countries in fact that's the big problem that's why it's the gulag because the few

who who can escape come here and get our state of the art benefits it's not everyone that's able to do that but we're not talking about wealthy saudis here we're talking about average americans why do you guys not want average americans to have access well that's the free healthcare wealthy saudis are coming here to get our health care i want everybody to have great health care but the fact is a government straw man the government you're never you're going to drown so my argument let's single payer is cheaper as rand paul pointed out is single payer let's talk we are spending twice as much as any country in the world let's talk about the story that is all over the london papers about this couple whose baby was born with some premature serious illnesses and the national health system told them we're going to have to let the child die you know and they want to know and don't want to come to america you know arguing by.

the group they're going to supreme court and they said you can take your child. to get health care. for the neighborhood of seventeen thousand americans died this year in our country because they lacked access to health care because they didn't have insurance you're going to try and argue a couple in a baby in england that's b.s. the reality is that we're paying around eight a little over eight thousand dollars per person for health for health insurance in the states and the most expensive other country in the world is around five even to the left i think that they can put something on paper and that creates access not the access is now created england it is run by a conservative government france is run by a conservative country sweden now has a conservative arm look at the way that all you single you hear hey for that health care in those countries you pay for it with time you add to the profits for for for

i will always have an raaf and multi millionaires and billionaires are the health insurance i'm sorry because profit is the way innovation comes to every day so you don't always know what to do you know what you're arguing for and what i want to erode your crap to decide who makes the profit i'm arguing for a doctor and a patient to make that decision to get that's why argue that i don't care enough to know when i do i have no know if i get it i had surgery a couple years ago when i was on a health insurance policy my doctor had to call the insurance company before he could get permission to do the surgery and so you know to your point now you what i told the governor i said we have a banker in the middle no i don't how do you all are going to load the whole issue of postal worker equivalent and have that person decide whether your life saving care is going to be allowed i would rather have it when i first of all that's not how it works and you know that's not what is how and where i experience there are glad nobody had skin machines in canada per capita than there are. here

and a cat scan in canada cost around three hundred eighty dollars and here costs around sixty and you can actually shop there is a city on. on the street that i grew up and neither of you have answered my original question we know that single payer is more efficient it's more cost effective and the only people who get hurt by it are the billionaires like stephen j. hemsley who runs up who heads up united health care or the multi-millionaires who run at these other these bank stars who throw an enormous amount of money as you know ours to work in this town why they are the second largest lobby they own more republican politicians than any other industry why don't you take this up with all of the democrats who rammed through this corporate is styled obamacare that rammed through today we're am to show they aired rammed it through i've always enjoyed it is it always they tell a year if single parents do hearings if single parents as great as you say how come you don't come on your show every night and talk about how awful obamacare is you know what because you like increment was would much rather have single payer if you

are sure that i would much rather have it the republicans would not go i would much rather have i would much rather have the freedom of being able to change jobs and not worry about losing my health insurance i'd much rather have the freedom of being able to go off and start a new business and i don't need all i know that my daughter is it i'm not going to be dead that's when you're you don't have those freedoms but hope that's why you're here gradually in toronto i realize the need to in the know you're there i got raper equals access but look tom where people where innovation is happening and where access is increasing in healthcare in the us is where the free market exists you can go to a place in charlottesville virginia today and get a surgery that cost twenty percent of what you're going to pay at the nonprofit hospital down the street the fact that you probably didn't go to a clinic like that means that the surgery you got a few years ago more than likely cost the whole system more than it should but the free market in health care is currently driving down the cost and it's not just in virginia there's places in florida and oklahoma and california fornia there's places all over the country and it's starting to grow the way to ruin that increase

the size of government so you're bragging that there's a place that reduces the cost by twenty percent. when are you waiting for an example are going to get out of your life every you does it by eighty percent you're only going to pay twenty percent of what you're paying your nonprofit hospital ok great i'm sure our single payer system would love to be able to pay those bills that again has nothing to do with how the bills are paid you know ever nothing to bills makes the rule me private sector let's you and i do that and your idea you know made a rule i don't make the rules or ensure. the freedom i want. in the god. but honest to god process repealing president obama was clean water bill which protected two million miles as you know. but that's probably in a patient's decision and potentially threatens drinking water for one hundred seventeen million americans one in three of us in this proof of some things are

best not left to the free market to decide the so called free market the market prioritizes profit not health or safety by the way home from the sustainable business council found that eighty percent of small business owners support the clean water rule the national wildlife foundation's found eighty three percent of hunters and fifty fishers support that rule the most important thing from that whole set up was what was not in it and that's the fact that obama's rules were never implemented the courts put a stay on them because they don't know what's going to happen they know exactly how it's going to affect in the arbor that he ranters have opposed it most of these rules in forty five c.f.r. eighty five thirty three forty four most of them were aggregations of previous rules this you know some things were added to it but this was not this is not like some brand new thing because i said to the source to support me up in a complaint to the circuit courts and also explain that to why some. baker's dozen of attorney generals across the state across the nation all have come out against

whoa this and come out against this regulatory understand oh i don't want to do the theory that what you say is private sector they would like to have state control this they are going to give that flexibility or you have to take an example to everybody every state under it and under president trump's rollback they're still going to have state control he's going back to these twenty fifteen rules that you just said you support he's not going pass that he's not going to twenty fourteen twenty thirteen twenty twelve no twenty fifteen the the end exactly right the republican governors and attorney generals who are opposing this are without exception republicans who are taking money from polluting industries period it's. ok i can tell you i've already am wars' out yet rick scott yet another that i am it is there are just medicare fraud in the history of the united states so that political one of us well no he wanted me to nor heard of money from polluters florida particularly the most environmentally conscious states in the country of

the states that are run by republicans florida is an example where that just isn't true and the truth is absolute they are just like to set their own rule or florida has a long history of of massive destruction the environment the everglades down there are you kidding the damage that's been done to the everglades particularly since the job i wish we let me try this again when you democrats ran florida they did all these bad things but that's now rick got the medicare quota. and yeah i'm telling you one hundred percent of the people of these of these governors and a.g.'s who oppose this are to know him well and when you told us what you told us was that one hundred seventy million people had their have their water quality at stake when that is going to do we in totally not true they aren't going to have these policies rolled back no policy is going to change tomorrow we're going to go back to the twenty fifteen policy which is in place today and what is going to change is that the farmers and ranchers who are standing to lose money or make money are going to

actually know what is going to change in the middle of the ministries and mining companies and other big polluters and this was yesterday don't go across that are as critical as you were saying it's not but if it was as critical as you say why not in two thousand i mean ten instead of taking over the health care industry why didn't he put into law this rule instead of trying to do it administratively because within late because his term because president obama had seventy four days where he had a veto proof he had seventy four days so so he had to got three guy thousand to ask you know to wait thirty nine thirty or forty really good and consequential he had to wait until two thousand knowing the four to late two thousand and fifteen to. still and he wasn't he was unable to pass that when. i was great thank you and that's the way it is tonight and don't forget democracy is not a spectator sport get out there get active tag your.

in case you're new to the game this. economy is built around quick. confirmation. if. it's. ever been done before. your. basically everything that you think you know about the society broken. always going to be somebody else one step ahead of the game. we should not be. normalizing mylo

. we don't need people that think like this on our planet. this is an incredibly tense situation. all the world's and all the news companies merely players but what kind of parties are in t. america playing r.t. america offers more artsy american personal. in many ways a news landscape is just like the field of real news big news good actors bad actors and in the end you could never know you're on. the market all the world's a stage all the world's a stage all the world's a stage and we are definitely a player.