in a moment we'll talk to jeffrey toobin, but first dr. phil mcgraw. i spoke to him earlier. dr. phil, does it make any sense to you at all that amazon would be selling a guide for pedophiles? >> well, it doesn't make any sense other than the fact that, i guess under the first amendment people can write whatever they want to write. but i would think with a private business you have the opportunity to make a decision as to what you want to do. and this is a despicable crime. and for someone to write a book that says i want to tell you how to do this in a way that if and when you get caught you won't get such harsh sentences, i mean, that's offensive to the sensibilities of even the most casual observer. this does not even make common sense. >> and also, amazon, they don't put out porn on their site, they won't sell pornography, so they do make choices about what books they want to sell. i don't quite get why they would want to sell this book. >> i don't either, because they're not imposing a consistent standard. as you say, they won't sell porn. and their defense is, we sell a lot

it could happen. >> jeffrey toobin, cornell belcher, erick erickson, thank you. >>> and promises to cutederal budget deficit, tonight on "parker/spitzer," eliot spitzer asked rand paul to be specific about cuts he's going to propose. >> my answer to the question is that nothing is off limits. >> well, then let's -- >> let me finish. the other thing is, is that we will look at each individual program and do a step process to this. we will say, can it be downsized? can it be privatized? can it be eliminated? or can we not look at this program at all, because it's too important that it can't be cut. so we will look at this in a step-wise fashion and we will look at everything within the budget and we will make those determinations. but i'm not prepared to look at all thousand different categories and tell you what we'll cut about each one, other than i'm serious about doing this and i will introduce a budget and we'll be happy to come on back in january if you want to go through each individual item. but it's impossible to go through each individual item of the budget and tell you exactly

a short time ago i spoke to erick erickson, jeffrey toobin and cornell belcher. >> on the one hand he's saying he's learned the past lessons of oversight committees and is not going to be issuing subpoena after subpoena after subpoena, as was done after clinton lost in the midterms in '94, '95. he's quoted as saying, i want seven hearings a week times 40 weeks. >> it depends what he's investigating. he issued a report earlier this week, i want to investigate homeland security, i want to investigate whether the stimulus is working, this is entirely appropriate stuff and i think it's good for congress to investigate. >> there's an important role and reason there's oversight. >> absolutely. the problem is he is also given signals he's going to indulge these crazy right wing obsessions like the new black panther party, a.c.o.r.n., which is nonsense. >> you have no concerns for republicans who have been elected by talking about financial issues and focusing on jobs and the economy, it's not going to seem like a distraction, focusing on a.c.o.r.n., for instance? >> that's the balance, and tha

senior legal analyst, jeffrey toobin. and eric erikkson, retired lawyer.ou think this is governmental overreach? >> i think so. i suspect if this went to court you'd probably have a number of judges saying -- yes, they can do it. but even if they can under the constitution doesn't necessarily mean they should. plenty of other countries have worse threats like israel that don't go through something like this. the more i've read about these machines, my wife's family has a ridiculously high rate of cancer. i don't want to subject my children to a radioactive scanner much less an molestation by a tsa person. >> i flew this weekend and everybody was nice but it felt incredibly intrusive. i had a patdown because i left my wallet in my pants and it's pretty rigorous. >> it is but remember, detroit, christmas day. the al qaeda bomber had a bomb in his underwear. this is not a frivolous concern by tsa. and the law, at least so far, is very clear that you have a choice. you go through the scanner. you go through the patdown or you don't fly, period. >> you basicall

job, it's up to you to decide what you think but our gets have strong opinions, joining us now jeffrey toobin, former federal prosecutor, peter bergen and former commander of the "uss cole," which was bombed in the yemen port, 17 u.s. sailors were killed and 40 others were injured. he joins us on the phone. some of the bombing suspects are being held at gitmo, by the way. was it a miscarriage of justice? >> i think it's important to remember. ghailani himself is not going anywhere. he's looking at 20 years, probably life in prison, so it's not like this guy is walking out the door. however, this is an extremely disappointing verdict for the obama administration, and it's a reminder that when you go to civilian courts to these federal district courts you don't get a guaranteed result. juries are unpredictable and this judge excluded some evidence which happens and there was almost an acquittal here. >> was this a complete mischarge of justice? >> i don't think it was a miss charge of justice, i think what you're seeing is a president and an attorney general that attempted to guide a case, thei

with me is cnn's senior legal analyst jeffrey toobin and daphna.ed about this case as a big huge test case not for guantanamo detainees in general but for the 9/11 co-conspirat s co-conspirators. with we keep the plan to try them in civilian courts? do we have to say no way? >> i think their plan is barely alive and and it will depend on individual defendants. there will have to be some trials before military tribun tribunals. no jurisdiction is going to accept a khalid sheikh mohammed trial given the magnitude of that case. but it's important that galani was convicted and is going to prison for 20 years to life. this isn't like the result was an accused terrorist walking the streets, but it certainly was not a triumph for the prosecutors. >> maybe justice is in the eye of the beholder saying this case should put to rest any unfounded fears that our justice system cannot conduct fair, safe, and effective cases. the 284 acquittals and see just the opposite. this is lindsey graham of south carolina. we're at war with al qaeda. members of the associat

joining us now, noah feldman, law school professor and the author of "spocorpions" and jeffrey toobin>> we spoke with john yoo, the justice official in the george w. bush administration saying this evidence would have been admissible even if it was torture, derived from torture, or even if it was admissible in military tribunals. let me pose to you, professor, the evidence in the ghalani case suppressed in judge caplan, the trial just ended leading to a conviction on one count and an acquittal in 284 counts. would that be admit in a military tribunal. >> possible. exactly what he did to ghalani to find out the information that led to evidence against him. if it constituted torture, it would be excluded in the military tribunal under the rules that are presently in place. if it were pushy, coercive without being torture, it's possible it might have been admitted. >> the reason we don't know what they did is that the federal government did not know what they did is because it was from coercivend. right? oh. >> what they did was outside of the bounds. they didn't do what they did do exac

i've audited courses, for example, in the supreme court where the only book assigned is jeffrey toobin's left wing version of supreme court, recent supreme court history. this is a violation of academic standards and academic freedom, but there's no -- the university as an institution is pretty unaccountable. both on the financial side, but especially on the curriculum. the curriculum side. i wrote a book called one party classroom. which is just a review of over 150 syllabuses at 12 major universities. at the university of santa cruz it's described in the exact words. the goal is to learn how to organization a revolution. it explains the revolution is anti-capitalist. a proper academic course would examine the proposition, first of all, that a democratic society where you can vote people in and out of power needs a revolution. or that a revolution might be a good idea considering the bloody failures of revolutions throughout the 19th and 20th century. and it would present texts on presumably on both sides of controversial issues as to whether capitalism as a bad or good system, given al