jared bernstein, phillip rucker, and matt welch.ith you, jared, because i read something you wrote i think it was last week. you write a lot. but you wrote -- >> i write the same thing a lot of times. >> you basically talked about the fact that what we are seeing now are chickens coming home to roost in a nasty, dirty seeds of gerrymandering that were, you know, sewn over the past 20 years, that's what we're reaping right now. expand on that. >> well, this is key to my study of dysfunctionology. which i encourage all of us to really dig into. because we've got to get to the bottom of why politics are so dysfunctional. it's really not a partisan call at all. one of the reasons is gerrymandering. when districts are so safe for their members the leadership has far less control. one of the reasons why john boehner looks like such a feckless leader right now because of so many members in gerrymandered districts. you have to peel the onion back further and ask why so much gerrymandering? one of the reasons appears to be that courts are no

matt welch is joining us. let's start with the president's push.ple who see those images are not going to be moved to back this military strike? >> we've already seen video images of people suffering under chemical gas attacks. i think the issue is how much and how credible is the evidence linking this to assad directly? there's an interesting op ed today in today's "new york times" by alan grayson. and he said he has no real way of assessing the quality of the evidence -- both the public evidence and the background evidence that he's unable to share with other people. he's calling for the administration to do a better job of saying where the sources of the information -- he says the evidence is not persuasive. he needs to be able to check it more. so video is not enough. >> and that's the problem. the intelligence community will say, we have intelligence. then the next question is, as representative grayson said is, okay, share the intelligence with us. and they say something like, oh, we can't because we'd betray sources and methods. >> the troub

matt welch, editor and chief of "reason."a". diane brady, senior editor at "bloomberg businessweek," and lisa cooke, assistant professor of economic and economic relations at michigan state university. thanks to all of you for being here. let me start, gordon, why does this make sense financially to send the chickens around the world? >> this doesn't make sense financially, for the reasons you mentioned. and i think what's happening here is essentially these four facilities in china are going to be buying some american chicken. but they're also going to be buying chinese birds that are smuggled through the back door. and if you want to hear about what's happening in the chinese food chain, you just do not like this story. look, you know, chinese chickens are raised in millions, literally, millions of farms across china. including, you know, in my parents' hometown. this is not a good story, because there is no control over this. and those are going to end up in the united states. because this is china, which has really very l

i want to bring in matt welch, bob herbert, a distinguished senior fellow and former columnist at "the new york times." lots to get to. start with guns because harry reid yesterday said point-blank, i just don't have the votes on background checks. then you have ron barber, one of the victims of the shooting in tucson. he's proposing the bill to increase public awareness about mental health. anything get done on that? >> the only thing that can possibly get done with gun control in this country on the national level is something having to do with background checks. that's about the only area that's broadly popular among the public. it's really difficult on the details of it. who exactly does it cover. which sales does it cover. in this particular case sh you have to according to the current law, but involuntarily committed or declareded unfit by some kind of body to have your mental issues declared disqualifying, so i think maybe people will look at expanding what that is. that's a lot more difficult in practice to do than just waving your hand and making it so. >> the president sort o

that more and more americans -- this is part of the book that i cowrote with my colleague, matt we will. welchsince 1970, fewer and pure people identify as either republican or democrat. we have a plurality of people who consider themselves independent. voters need to shake themselves free of easy tribal aaffiliation with one party or the other where their votes get taken for granted. and i think it's always a good sign when you see candidates being primaried in their own districts, including, and that's happening again here, where several high- -- you know, well-known senators are being primaried, either by tea party candidates or other people. that's always a good sign. host: there is this from gary who says, "it is not our problem. let's get that into people's heads. time for america to look forward and fix our own problems. enough is enough." and senator rand paul says, "the war in syria has no clear national security connection to the u.s. and victory by either side will not necessarily bring into power people friendly to the u.s." guest: well, yeah, i mean, this is another issue. and i a