mary beth norton is a history professor with cornell university. a lot of your work focuses on -- a lot of your teaching focuses on pre-colonial and colonial women. you've written a lot about it. what interests you in this subject? >> well, for one thing, very few people really think about women in the colonial period very much. or if they do they think of them just as -- i don't know -- houseworkers, workers around the house. they don't think of their potential public roles. one of the things i'm very interested in, in the 17th century, is women who actually take prominent public roles in the colonies because there are some, and in the 18th century i'm interested in -- i did a whole book on women in the revolution. i'm interested in the -- how women perceive their relationship to the public realm, how men see women in the public realm in the run-up to the revolution and during the revolution. >> what would be some of the early examples of women in the public realm prior to the revolution? >> prior to the revolution, one of the most interesting exa

. >> for 26 years lake county juvenile judge mary beth bonaventura has been making tough decisions to get kids like aaron back into track. >> they're coming back into the community. i want to do everything i can do first before i send them to the -- d.o.c., or department of corrections. >> because of aaron's age, his long history with the juvenile system, and the fact that he's still on probation for attempted car theft and battery, the stakes are much higher this time. aaron has already been warned that the prosecutor's office is looking at waiving him to the adult system. >> i've got a bad record. so i'll probably beg please don't let take my life away from me. to me that's taking my life away. that will be three adult felonies instead of just one. i have three pending. >> aaron admits he has an unquenchable thirst for taking cars that aren't his own. his other vice, playing escape artist. >> my staff called me to let me know that he was trying to be a trickster and had a detention officer bring him up sunday night for the release for the weekenders. and our intake officer elizabeth

at the tennessee prison for women, we found that meeting personal needs had led to a dilemma for mary beth. >> listen. they have me a sexual toy. >> what? >> look, it says that they found a glove in two trash cans and a tampon. >> what were you making? >> they're trying to say i had a dildo. >> sexual activity of any sort is against prison rules. and even though she's allowed to have the individual items she was caught with, she was written up for how they were assembled, or at least partially assembled. >> i'm pleading not guilty because they have no evidence. when they found it, it was not intact, okay? >> what was you going to do with it? >> everything that they have is things that i was allowed to have. >> but she did tell us that if she were going to make what she's accused of making, she has a good idea of how to do it. >> you have to have your marker to make it hard and you have to put your pads over it to protect it. >> as mary beth began her how-to description, all i could think about is human nature and how when left without normal resources, want or need or desire will lead you

. >> 30 miles south of chicago mary beth presides over a numbing juvenile docket. 30,000 cases in 2008 alone. it's her job to make sure the kids that come to this detention center and court complex leave here and forget there's an option of graduating to the adult prison system. >> i think some children are born into a situation that's a bad one. in some neighborhoods it's like do unto others before they do it to you. for those of us not raised in those types of neighborhoods it is difficult to understand. sometimes it's just the survival. they have to perpetrate before they're perpetrated against. >> for years msnbc has been documenting the tragic stories that unfold in america's juvenile justice system. with extraordinary access from the indiana supreme court, we're about to go inside a world where cameras are by law forbidden to go. >> you guys are the world's dumbest criminals -- >> 40 vehicles. we got it all together. they've been doing this over a three-month period. two of them ransacked the cars and broke in. two are each on the street corner watching to make sure the police do

. >> reporter: mary beth has already battled cancer and she battled the heat when she was left without power. it's against the backdrop of disconnect that bge asked the service commission for a rate increase. >> we're going to let the psc decide whether the performance was good, bad or needs improvement. but apart from that the instructure is the infrastructure. >> and the infrastructure is what the increase is about. in a regular bill 70 pays for energy, 29 for taxes and about 100 go to shareholders. >> people have the misconception that we have a lot of money sitting on that we can just take to ourselves. >> find the funds from within your company. >> reporter: and from their perspective, do a better chance to earn your part. jacobs says csc should make bge -- but there are customers who understand bge's need to pay for upgrades. >> if they upgrade it and we get the delivery the way we need it i'm happy. all i want is my service. >> reporter: bge points out this is the only the second time 20 years it's asked for an increase in infrastructure. >> a lot is money we've already spent th

>>> if there's one thing senior judge mary beth bonaventura has learned in her 26 years in juvenile justicehat there's never a playbook when parents and kids face off in court. >> you can sentence someone to death. you can sentence someone for life imprisonment. but to try to figure out how to put a family back together in about 30 minutes after you read the report of a certain pattern of behavior that has probably gone on for years is a very tricky thing to do, very important thing to do, and wow, the impact we can have if we get it right. >> kymyada is charged with running away, and although she's told the judge her side of the story, her mother has yet to establish why she turned her daughter over to the police. >> she chose to go and be with her god mother. >> okay. so she didn't leave the house without your permission, did she? >> no, she didn't. because i gave her an option. i said you abide by the rules, or you can go. >> and at some point, you called the police and reported her as a runaway. >> she didn't call, she didn't check in. she didn't do anything. so the same pattern with me

his attorney will fight to see that morris gets what he wants, to be released home but it is judge mary bethentura who ultimately gets to decide morris' fate. >> sir, i think i understand your testimony to be because morris is not as available or participating with these services to the extent that you think appropriate, that he should just remain lock the up? >> well, i'm basing that upon him running away from home. his mother not knowing where he is. and she was having a hard time controlling him and reasoning with him. he has failed a couple of drug tests. morris has told me on several occasions that whatever i do it's not going to work. >> so you had previously recommended that he undergo anger management and you recommended family counseling and counseling services. why don't we let it work itself through some more. let this counseling before we say the answer is to keep him locked up. >> that would be fine but morris has tended to befriend some young men, one for instance who was shot the other day in a drive-by shooting. young people he's been associating with. i believe it's safer fo

. >> mary beth davis will be the first here to try it out.klahoma state veterinarian student lost the use of her legs in a car accident two years ago. >> i am really anticipating getting to work with it. i don't think it hit me yet that i am going to get to do that. but, yeah. not nervous. really excited. >> 2,600 steps. >> reporter: at the heart of this all, a sense that it is helping those who can't help themselves by simply overcoming the impossible. one step at a time. >> medical miracle. really, it's unbelievable. >> the steps that just the whole medical world is taking right now is just amazing. no pun intended there, the steps. this costs $130,000. the company hopes to sell them for $50,000 to $75,000 in a couple years, 2014. contingent on whether insurance will reimburse and pick up the tab. >> hopefully they will. give people their life and legs back. we'll be back, i should say, with more right after this. back. we'll be back, i should say, with more right after this. [ female announcer ] with swiffer wet cleaning better doesn't hav

hood and her fellow activist mary beth brangan believe wireless smart meters emit harmful electromagnetica contention that has spurred a major debate and studies to back up both sides. hood and brangan took up the fight against the smart meters, and started printing signs and petitions for several reasons. >> pg&e decided to do a wireless version, and they didn't need to be wireless. they could have been hard-wired. >> people have reported seizures, they've reported migraines, they have had trouble sleeping, heart problems, arrhythmias, a lot of symptoms from difficulties with smart meters. >> this was just pushed on our communities without any sort of input or education or anything. and it was all of a sudden, you're going to get smart meters, whether you like it or not. >> reporter: they weren't alone. environmentalists and others in several parts of the country have taken up the anti-smart- meter cause, as utilities spend $29 billion to upgrade their networks and install the new meters. hood lobbied the fairfax town council, and after several meetings, the council decided to ban the sm

. >> mary beth from the washington post. thank you for your talk. since 2006 the number of cocaine users declined by 39%. what part of that is due to government efforts? an epidemic sort of crested and people started to quit because they realize how awful it was. how much of that was due to government efforts? >> if i really knew the exact specific answer to that i would become a highly paid consultant in csis in the future so i think it is two parts. one is clearly reducing supply is incredibly helpful to reducing demand in the united states and when the product is more difficult to obtain that is important. isn't just in colombia but at our border and a number of other shipment points. the second thing that i think is really important has been the educational efforts that are often not getting the credit for helping reduce that level of consumption here in the united states. .. but if you were to ask me like which actually have the most impact and is it the government, i just, i wouldn't have that answer. >> in the center. >> speaking of your rema

bethe stok. titnehe t o afhemibe tke ead acll of phlebitis while you're standing in the cr and waiting. and clearly his thinking, this is the greatest hail maryss all time. if heca smhow broker a dl in mdlhyll th of cer atte ill t trick plus. but the clock runs out on him. >> well, as you can tell from a commentor, this sjs eremrryfcad io rey didn't care what reviewers have to say abou this book, although they've bee enormously aor ulllm m li t fr eot le i pwoh re tee,try i he end is greatly taken with a chacter whom i suspect most people herwho ven'adh l d gew t a tnd thooltw. ddel daughter who wa a friend of almost everybody who mattered in wahngon, . sa ya ak raano r u a hgeo whatever she damn well pleases to people. and so i talked about richardson fore, who is you w,a omyespec, mes hereeda tory gel thud ern hi c ended o pursue the president takes. and instead it turns out and i suspt this isholl d,trsoada eterdik rem rte i ine would hve ever been anything today with that kind of criminal recor having engaged in behavior we now view as much, much, much re ses. t hsiiln source or longworth? >> longworth. >> mrs. longworth says to them at a