that's the john ensign scandal. in both of those cases the number two house republican eric cantor says essentially pray for r for their families. let the constituents decide their fate. who am i to say? fast forward to today. the day after democrat congressman anthony weiner of new york acknowledges his own indiscretions. they amount to sending compromising pictures of himself to women on the internet and engaging in sexually explicit chats with women online and lying to cover it up. yes, he definitely lied as far as we know there was no actual physical adultery nor is there political hypocrisy here. antmy weiner has never campaigned on the basis of his superior family values and other people having bad ones. he's never demanded anybody resign for having had an afare or having some sort of online indiscretion. so, congressman cantor what should happen to any weiner? what should happen to congressman anthony weiner? should we pray for his family? is this not for us to say? >> i think it is up to congressman weiner a

revisiting different versions of this same story whether it's with eric massa or christopher lee or john ensign or john edwards, there just seems to be a circuit of really bad behavior among people who hold the public trust. >> and abuse of fame, abuse of power, and, again, abuse of that trust. gwen: maybe we'll figure out by this time next week whether he withstood the spotlight when the house returns to town. meanwhile, the nation's multiple military engagements are increasingly a source of frustration these days at the white house, at nato, on capitol hill and even at the pentagon. outgoing defense secretary robert gates declared in a farewell speech delivered in brussels today, that the u.s. is bearing too much of the burden in too many places. >> future us political leaders, those for whom the cold war was not the formative experience that it was for me, may not consider the return on america's investment at nato worth the cost. gwen: that cost, for american troops and taxpayers, is playing out in libya and iraq and afghanistan. and polls show americans are losing patience. but is there an

>> john ensign resigned. i'm not going to get -- >> was he a creep prior to his resignation? >> i have no idea about whether or not he was a creep or not, but the man resigned and he did the honorable thing, and the reality is that i think anthony wiener should do the same. i mean, what's the solution? you've got nancy pelosi and my counterpart at the dnc basically being -- my counterpart is silent. nancy pelosi wants an investigation. why do we need to spend taxpayer dollars on investigating whether or not the guy is a liar or whether or not he's fit for public office? the man should resign and we should move on and put someone else there that's fit to serve. >> mr. priebus, thank you very much for joining us this afternoon. >> thank you, martin. appreciate it. >>> coming up, congressman anthony wiener. enough said. >>> and violence spreads throughout the arab world. we go live to a region embroiled in chaos. next. an accident doesn't have to slow you down. introducing better car replacement, available only from liberty mutual insurance. if your car is totaled, we give you t

when you had john ensign, he was caught in the steamy sex tyrst and then tried to cover it up with campaignsign. he was around for four years. john boehner. people forget the story about boehner. this is a guy who helped -- who helped cover up the mark foley story where foley was basically soliciting sex with young male pages. so i think it's wrong for us to say let's throw him under the bus. look, we need courageous. progressives need courageous people with conviction. he's one of them. >> okay. >> this is the time to stand behind him. >> bill press, your thoughts. should he resign? >> i'm going to stand with mike. i'll stand with al sharpton. man, this really pisses me off. as a democrat i think we're better than they are, a lot better. mike mentioned david vitter and john ensign and everything. when a democrat does this it makes us all look bad and it really makes me very, very angry. also as a progressive i think anthony weiner was one of my heroes, one of the best fighters we had out there on the cable shows and the floor of the house. for him to let us down like this is, i mean, just

he has since been reelected and republican john ensign of nevada remained in the senate for more thanr after he was caught allegedly paying off the family of his mistress. ensign only resigned last month, scott, when an ethics investigation report was about to be made public. >> pelley: nancy, help us understand why congressman weiner matters. >> scott, he holds kind of a unique position in the democratic caucus. the president has a lot of critics on the right but wynner is one of his most outspoken critics on the left. wherever liberals feel that the president is straying too far from their principles in the pursuit of compromise. it's unclear how well he's going to be able to perform that role now, a role even the president has said is very important. >> pelley: nancy, thank you. dominique strauss-kahn got quite a reception outside of court in new york today. (chanting "shame on you") >> pelley: the former head of the international monetary fund listened to chants of "shame on you" from more than 100 hotel workers. strauss-kahn had just pleaded not guilty to charges he sexually assa

israel has a quote unquote terrorist state as a matter of fact there are a series of senators led by john ensign republican from nevada and georgia the new republican from florida who are have officially asked state department states and secretary of state hillary clinton to be clear of an israel and a terrorist state on the other hand the foreign relations committee for the western hemisphere led by one republican republican representative called karni mack is also asking for venezuela to be the clear a terrorist back what does that mean though declaring a terrorist state in what way then what we see the u.s. taking action on this where it tried to manipulate a great change there in venezuela. well i believe from latin america from argentina to be exact that what we are seeing the generalized rejean change promoted by the united states britain france and even israel behind the scenes in north africa and the middle east as a whole will now be coming very likely to latin america so i would not be surprised to see a wave of u.s. promoted regime change in various countries in latin america from the

and congress is full of all these people who the republicans have always stuck up for you know john ensign didn't leave until he was you know which within twenty four hours of having to testify under oath and you know newt gingrich is is still around i mean is running for president for goodness sake after you know. after cheating on every single one of us who are yeah except for the except for you know if we differ yeah you divorces his first wife who was also his high school geometry teacher which is a little strange when she got cancer divorced his second wife when she. says he's i think it was or something something like that and now his third wife is going to go to jones with tiffany's i mean. nobody nobody in the republican party is saying that there's something wrong with what what's the deal why is it that the republicans stick up for their people the democrats don't. i don't know i think it's not that i think that the democrats need to bring up dinner more than they're bringing them up they need to ask the republicans why it's ok for better to remain in the senate when he actually

tell him that he needs to leave the night so why is it that when republicans like david vitter john ensign christopher lee mark sanford newt gingrich you get the point why is it that when these guys step in it republican leadership says it's up to the constituents. but when a democrat gets in trouble they pounce and ask for an immediate resignation you know look this is really pathetic what he did it's no question about that he apparently showed his writings previous to the to the world but it's out now. hours . and barney frank who didn't leave after after sex scandals i think that he probably should resign but that's not anthony weiner's thing to do that's not what he said type of person he is taking into account what had a person he is this is what he should say he said yes i sent those pictures it's not illegal and guess what i'm going to be sending more so you better get used to it i'm staying around i'm owning this that's that's at least the first half of that is what he should this day want obviously it's a case then all of the cover it's this is just like just like watergate and ju

when you've got republican leaders like governor mark sanford of south carolina or nevada senator john ensign admitting to extramarital affairs and staying in office questionable use of private funds or state money in the case of sanford, doesn't the gop with all its talk of family values risk looking like a bunch of hypocrites? >> look, i mean, is anyone happy to see all that have happened? no. it's not good. but listen, we have our thoughts with their families and they themselves. >> if you're going to talk the talk, walk the walk and say they should step down. >> again, in the sin stance of the people in south carolina and nevada it is up to them. >> joining me now "the washington post" columnist and msnbc political analyst eugene robinson, and also howard fineman. thank you goth for joining me tonight. eugene we see that consistency is very hard to come back in reaction to these things. this one seems purely partisan. i can't remember a single republican saying that vitter should resign. even saying that ensign should resign before he revined as well as all these other republican skand za

most of the time they resign immediately or in some cases like john ensign, they resign sooner or later. but weiner's faux pas has cast the democrats. here's the thing. he was also the front run forethe new york mayor's race in 2013. now the question is will he be allowed in the front door. >> governor schwarzenegger had his problems, but he doesn't have to worry about re-election. maybe he does. but an amazing story. larry, thank you very much for joining us today. >>> coming up next at 6:00 after nearly a decade together, san francisco couple is facing the future apart. what's behind the fed's decision to deport one of the men? whether there be an intervention in time?e and we'll have a look at the show stealer coming up next. >>> a san francisco man is facing possible deportation to australia leaving his american spouse behind. there are usually some immigration options for a head i don't sexual couple to can floor, but it's a lot different for same-sex marriages. some say the defense of marriage act is the reason. >> we're very nervous at will point in time. it's very hard because w

justice department was so eager to take on this case when so recently it dropped the case from john ensign, the senator from nevada who lied to the fec about a $96,000 severance payment made to a former mistress. so there's really something incomprehensible about the strategy at the department of justice. >> al derschowiz, greg craig, the attorney for edward, goes along for what you said, an unprecedented prosecution, an unprecedented civil case. no one should have known or should have known or could have been expected to know that these payments would be treated as campaign contributions. is it as clear cut as that? do you think? >> i think he's right. craig is a great, great lawyer. edwards is lucky to have him. this is a criminal statute. you have to read them narrowly. you can't be create in the criminal law. it has to be clear -- thomas jefferson once said the criminal law has to be so clear that you can understand it if you read it while running. now, you read the statute and it just doesn't seem to cover this conduct. and creativity has no role in the justice system. i would hope gr

john ensign was the republican who had to resign recently. you look at the mark foley, the congressman from florida, where republicans just got a deal because he wouldn't leave. >> the question is, are you disgraced. can you function, can you do your job? the thing is when you have three top political leaders in your party going, you know what, leave? that just makes it really difficult to do your job. you can get shunned, you know. and put it in one, and it gets out of the headlines. i never see it getting to the press. >> i have to run. is he done? >> no, i think he's done. political life, still to be determined. >> we shall see. you saw the look on his face. i looked at you as you looked close. these guys are going to be back in a few minutes. >>> how about what is going on here. >> >> we can't wait, right. >> breaking news i want to talk about. you sat down with -- >> oh, yes, actually i caught up with him along the campaign, so it was a running/walking thing. >> we'll talk about that in a minute. >>> up next, the president is calling it

you have john ensign. you have david vitter, phone records but no photos.ave you bill clinton but very, very -- explicit evidence in the special prosecutor's report. i mean, politicians decide which way they are going to go. >> this is why people don't like politicians. rolling disclosure. i want everybody to learn that phrase. rolling disclosure means you release the information when it is convenient to you. in this case, when you had no choice. >> it is all that politicians have, that's why people are disillusioned. you can't trust any of them. you lie, you pretend you have a happy married life. that's why they don't have credibility on this or anything else. >> thank you. up next, republicans in the house of representatives want to cut food aid to school kids thp. that will go over well. >>> academy award winner jeff bridges. why does my favorite actor have to come on a show like this. i can't wait to meet him. we were actually thinking, maybe... we're going to hike up here, so we'll catch up with you guys. [ indistinct talking and laughter ] whew! i thi

if you think about it, no one asked for david vitter's resignation or john ensign's resignation even ave gone on to be expelled by his colleagues. >> none of the fellow senators asked for vitter to resign or ensign. >> not a single one. >> and this is the first time nancy pelosi has asked for somebody to step down. >> that's right. financial scandals don't seem to bring about nearly the same reaction. nancy pelosi never asked for congressman charlie rangel to resign. swooef seen numerous members manage to stave off these kind of efforts. i think part of it for anthony weiner is, he didn't have any friend in congress. he hadn't built the goodwill that say charlie rangel had over four 40 years in congress. >> do you agree with that that if weiner had been in the senate it would be a different story? >> you know, i think the best way to say it is that every situation is different that. might sound like a cop krout but it happens to be crew. i'll tell you with larry craig i spent some time in idaho following the story and trying to figure out exactly what went on. and at the time i covere

senator john ensign republican of nevada. big family values guys. admits in june 2009 to cheating on his wife with a married staffer who is married to another one of his staffers who both happen to be long time family friends of his. nearly two years later he announces he would be resigning but only because it seems he would be thrown out of the senate. a special con sell report paints him as pursuing the affair against the stated wishes of the woman whoes purr soog it. the woman and her husband are subordinate and her family isu/x 100% financially dependent on them. he is not paying for sex directly like the others, but the coercion and bugs of power more than makes up for it on the creepy scale. the prosecutablity here of course is quite evident in the special counsel's report the reform for campaign finance and criminal investigation and the fact that the senate ethics committee was considering expelling him about five seconds before he quit. a week after the senator ensign scandal was first revealed, south carolina governor mark sanford, another

clinton had sex with an intern in the white house, newt gingrich had an affair with a staffer, john ensign having an affair with the wife of his top aide. wasn't all that worse? yet, the media made anthony weiner into public pervert number one? >> at the time it was. just even in the last month you had arnold schwarzenegger and john edwards in the weeks before this scandal broke. i do think the reason it stayed in the news wasn't just the lies, although that did make a certain grudge match element to this, it was the pictures, the constant steady stream of photographs that were so grim and embarrassing and odd and awkward that kept it in the news. politicians should have to hold themselves to a higher standard. this new era is going to force a new accountability, whether they like it or not. folks are going to keep getting knocked out of office. chris lee was just the appetizer. this is the first main event. >> he was the congressman who resigned after sending a shirtless photo to a woman on craigslist. that seems mild in comparison. >> if you're going to get into trouble on this front, ma

so instead of talking about john ensign or larry craig or mark sanford, now, you know you got one of their own who has shown monumentally dumb behavior. i think people are not rushing to weiner's defense because they're not sure this is over. washington is alive with rumors today that there are more photos coming out, more explicit photos coming out. if that happens, he's a dead duck. and then there is this congressional hearing too. and the ethics investigation, did he use government property, computer, office, we don't know that yet. so i don't think we have seen the end of the story. >> you laid it out for us. with all that then on the table, are the democrats better with or without him at this moment? >> they're better without him. clearly he's an albatross that republicans can hang around their neck. keep in mind, democrats hope to take back the house or at least pick up some seats this year. that's going to be hard to happen when you have -- you have democrats running in districts that are much tougher than anthony weiner's district. he's going to be linked to them. republicans

they are involved again with john ensign. explain why that is with the justice department? >> it is under the criminal division of the justice department. their job is to look at public officials, by and large, and threw out long going -- wrong doing. the steven's case was less than their finest moment. even though they got the conviction, they did some things that were questionable. at the end of the day, while mr. stevens may have done some things he should not have been doing, the department has to be held to a higher standard in terms of how they prosecute. >> the judge of the time ordered a study done on what happened. did they ever published that study? >> i have to go back and look. i think that review is starting to wane. >> april 1, 2009. this is your report on ted stevens pierre >> last fall, the 40-year political career of senator ted stevens ended in disgrace. but today, attorney general eric holder pull the plug on the case, saying evidence was withheld and it was in the interest of justice to dismiss the indictment and not proceed with a new trial. >> the jury

. >>> is what anthony did worse than what john ensign did? it took him two years to resign.f the things that enable those legislator to hang original despite these kinds of charges is that correct they didn't have to deal with the new york press corps. if you lay low and you issue a statement of contrition, the story will eventually fade. that doesn't happen in new york. >> the only difference i will say about these situations is that at least with respect to weiner, some of these women did not ask for weiner to sthend salacious material to them. and they may have been under age. that is a fundamental distinction. the behavior was so outside the norm. not that the other two didn't do the right thing. from a practical standpoint, i think the democrats had a had just won a special election in new york, who felt like they had momentum on medicare and putting republicans on defense on some of their budget initiatives, felt like that completely ground to a halt and they couldn't wait to get him out of the way. >> howard, let me end with you. time runs short. you refer what peter

whether it's john ensign republican, whether it's mark foley, republican, whether it's mark sanford, republican, whenever these elected officials put themselves in the position where a private citizen that they're sending these images to, having an affair with, set themselves up to be blackmailed where they say, i know you don't want to lose your job and i have these pictures and i think you should vote this way on the farm bill instead of the other way. i don't like these people put themselves into compromising positions. and as far as i can tell, there are more republicans in the last few years that have been nailed than democrats. this is not a bipartisan position -- i mean, this is a bipartisan position -- >> i was going to say, it is a bipartisan position you're articulating. if you're setting that bar, you say you're not doing it because you wadon't want to be the morality police. but blackmail, which is what the fbi used for investigating every public official up and down, but put that aside. do you think members of congress want to embrace that because my suspicious is it's n

david vitter, john ensign, i even said on the 6:00 show before i moved to this time slot i thought charlie rangel should resign. you can't cheat on your taxes and hold credibility in my opinion. so this isn't about going out and getting anthony weiner. weiner has been a staunch supporter for democrats and fighters for the left. it's a sad, sad story. joining me tonight on the panel is joan walsh, editor at large for salon.com. sally kohn, founder of movement vision.org and nationally syndicated talk show host bill press. joan, we'll start with you tonight. thanks for joining us. the "new york times" is reporting that weiner told nancy pelosi he would not resign only 15 minutes before his press conference. do you think weiner will ever resign? is this just part of his overall plan that he will never give in? what do you think? >> i don't know. you know, i don't think that's clear yet. he obviously tried to dig his heels in and say it wasn't him. he tried that strategy. he lied. i agree with you, ed. the lying is what disturbs me. he implicated a lot of us. i gave him the benefit of the doub

you mentioned john ensign, you mentioned chris lee.d of going after people on the other side. is that the reason you decided not to post the photos? >> i have information -- people who come to me from information know that if they went to abc, cbs, nbc, "new york times," they have a proclivity to present a more liberal slant of things. so people come to me because they know i can get out stories that if it were republican, it would have come out in the main stream media. so, if people start sending me profoundly offensive things and corruption that comes from the democratic -- republican party. i'm bipartisan in terms of reporting corruption. >> so you would post both. >> of course. >> i want to ask you -- we mentioned shirley sherrod. the site posted that video. there's discussion of how the video was ed sited. >> yes. >> you've waited on it. you're facing a multimillion dollar defamation -- >> it's not a $13 million. that's not true. >> it's a multimillion dollar suit. >> they didn't state the amount of money. >> you nfr apologize to

. >> and senator john ensign, a republican from nevada, resigned under his own dark ethical cloud after staffer by paying off her husband. >> i want to tell you, detroit, that you done set me up for a comeback. >> reporter: thousands of text messages between kwame kilpatrick and a married city official led to a four-months sentence and resignation from the former mayor of detroit. still the list of survivors isn't short, either. >> to my wife and my family, i apologize for what i have caused. >> reporter: senator larry craig was at least able to fin out his term after allegedly trying to solicit sex in an airport bathroom. >> so the bottom line is this. i've been unfaithful to my wife. >> reporter: south carolina governor mar sanford stayed alive, even after going awol for a week and admitting to an affair with a woman in argentina. >> i did not have sexual relations with that woman. >> and then of course bill clinton, the ultimate survivor, despite an impeachment vote by the house, the president weathered perhaps the most famous sex scandal. clinton officiated weiner's wedding. >> rand

senator john ensign waited years to resign after admitting an affair with a staffer and larry craig served out his term after soliciting an undercover police officer. they didn't go quickly, so why should congressman weiner? >> two wrongs don't make a right. i'm not defending those folks. i'm the chairman of the republican national committee now, not years ago. i think nancy pelosi should go. it took chris lee about 30 seconds to resign a couple months ago. i think nancy pelosi and debbie wasserman-schultz ought to do the right thing and ask this fellow to leave office and put someone else that there that's more fitting to serve this country. >> congressman weiner has a sharp tongue. he has certainly criticized republicans, gone on the attack against republicans on the other side of the aisle in the past. is there any level of satisfaction among those in the party that he's finally getting his comeuppance? >> no. i mean, certainly not from me, meredith. i don't operate that way. i'm not -- this has nothing to do with vindication or payback. this has to do with leadership in a democratic pa

ensign moment and it was utterly not true. the same documents that she was looking at, the same scientists who worked on that document said as john said it's exact the opposite. the majority of the oil is there. only a portion of it is gone. but what the obama administration wanted to do is just get this problem out of the way. and this is not to say that there weren't thousands of government employees that worked very hard to address this disaster, because there were. the problem, the overarching problem that the obama station faced with this disaster was basically the more that president obama's name was linked to it, the lower his poll numbers fell and he had a lot of other things to do. he was trying to pass health care. he had two wars that he was fighting. he had a long list of stuff. he had a recalcitrant congress. and he wanted to get it out of the way. and they did that with 2 million gallons of dispersant and they did that with a long history of limitingle actual real numbers for the numbers coming out of the well and they did it by telling us the oil was gone before it was. the combination of the obama administration f