host: we are talking to abderrahim foukara from al jazeera. jimmy is on the phone. caller: i have a concern about hypocrisy. barack obama goes abroad and talks about democracy. i find it fascinating because you do not have democracy in the united states. there is an issue in terms of the treatment of african american people in america. i wonder why al jazeera does not deal with the injustices for african-americans in the united states. guest: there is the issue of hypocrisy in the issue of what al jazeera covers in the united states. as far as democracy is concerned, i'm speaking as a non-americans living in the united states. the american political system is an amazing political system treat it is capable of redress corrections. it has checks and balances, freedom of speech, the first amendment. it is obviously not the perfect political system. it does have its failings. we, in the arab world, clearly have a big deficit -- a big democratic deficit. while there is some hypocrisy in the u.s. president going to preach democracy in the middle east while there are probl

host: our guest is the washington bureau chief for al jazeera arabic, abderrahim foukara. he also worked for wgbh in boston. thought want to share with you one of the many editorials. this one is from "the wall street journal. a one of the points is that hanging over all of this, the question of iran and how to deal with it. then this point that if mr. obama is serious about stopping to iran, he has to do a couple of steps that i outlined. guest: the issue of iran is interesting. the way that the president handled it in his speech yesterday -- obviously, it caused some waves in the arab and muslim world. there are basically two trends, if you will, in the middle east about the issue of iran there are people who see iran's attempts to acquire a nuclear capability as potentially leading to iran acquiring a nuclear weapon. they're very nervous about that. a nuclear iran, they feel, will definitely destabilize the middle east. that school of thought exists more in the official circles in the middle east, in egypt and saudi arabia, some of the gulf countries. among the populace

abderrahim foukara will be joining us to give his perspective. amy walter is joining us from the hot line offices. the headline is "state to get a disputed $700 million." >> this long-running battle between south carolina's republican governor and the republican-controlled legislature is finally over. mark sanford had refused -- he argued that it would actually devalue the dollar and run up a deficit in the state. he had refused to implement the legislature's plan. they argued it was to fill gaps in the education funding for the state. the supreme court weighed in yesterday saying that the legislature, not the governor, is the one with the purse strings. the legislature wants to spend the money. it is their right to do that. the governor must help them do that. in other words, he cannot block them from doing this. in some ways, it was a blow to mark sanford, who had made this a very big cause. he even embroiled his attorney general, who is also seeking the governor's seat in 2010. mark sanford is not seeking reelection. the question is what impac

and abderrahim foukara is going to be joining us as well from algeciras arabic -- from al jazeera arabic. john mercurialo, the battle lins are drawn in the democratic primary. guest: polls show the race is tightening. there is a new poll out this morning showing that one of the candidates, a state senator, is now in the lead. two of the three candidates are running -- one of them, former dnc chairman terry mcauliffe, is bringing in some big guns in the final days, big guns from outside virginia, to make his case. bill clinton is returning to virginia this weekend to campaign for mcauliffe. he will attend a fund-raiser at mcauliffe's house in mclean, virginia. it is at least the third visit that clinton has made on behalf of mcauliffe in this race. also yesterday, and this is interesting, mcauliffe announced the support of montana governor bryan schweitzer, who also -- announcing the support, schweitzer made clear he is supporting mcauliffe because they are friends. he is doing it on a personal level, not as chairman of the rg&e a. regardless, it is not entirely clear how many -- of the r