. >> reporter: robert jones is vice president of the keystone excel project. he says the past spills were all minor and extraordinary safety systems will be in place to prevent any large spill from ever happening. >> there's 16,000 sensors on the pipeline. those sensors send data via satellite every five seconds. we have a back-up satellite and we have back-up land line. so we have to make sure those signals are always going back to the control center. if there is a pressure drop, the sensors pick that up and automatically shut down the pipeline. >> reporter: jones says there's nothing special about the oil either. >> the oil we move is a natural product. the oil that comes out of the sands has to match the specification of this natural product. the same oil that the industry has been moving for decades, the same oil that goes through pooip lines through nebraska for decades. >> reporter: in august anti-pipeline activists staged a two-week long protest at the white house hoping to persuade the administration to reject the permit request. about a thousand peopl

. >> i'm joined now by robert train, washington bureau chief, and david corn, washington bureau chief for mother jonessnbc political analyst. gentlemen, good morning. >> robert, give us the lay of the land. how important is the abortion issue to 2012, and for whom? >> i'm not sure it's important for 2012 in general but very important to the republican primary, probably one and the same. the reason why is because, look, at the end of the day what you're talking to are very conservative primary voters in three battleground states from a primary perspective. south carolina, new hampshire and iowa. and so when you're speaking to that specific constituency, you have to speak to certain things that are important to them. abortion is the number one issue. very strong. number two is the gay marriage issue. so, you know, it's speaking that language and talking to people that they want to hear about. >> well, i'm wondering, david, as he said, it's not just abortion. it's gay marriage. and i'm wondering, do you think republicans risk -- run the risk of sort of muddling the waters when they're focusing a lot of a

happened today joining me now to talk about this more is robert dreyfus independent journalist and contributing editor at the nation magazine in the jones magazine as well as national affairs correspondent for rolling stone magazine and from new york a real good senior staff attorney for the center for constitutional rights robert maria welcome great to have you both with us thank you. robert l. ike he was a prominent al qaeda figure he was also a u.s. citizens so is this some kind of victory other words terror or whole new chapter in the war on terror actually i thought the administration stopped using the phrase war on terror when they have but i don't know if it's a new chapter it's an endless book if it's a new chapter i mean this has been going on for ten years now i thought maybe it would start to move our blood lust would be satisfied with the killing of bin laden but it hasn't been and if you look at what the obama administration is doing now they're building bases in the indian ocean they're they're creating drone programs for all over the horn of africa in the arabian peninsula the guy the general who's in charge of africa in

not sufficient to warrant an exemption from generally applicable tax laws, as in bob jones, or -- chief justice roberts: on the other hand, the -- the belief of the catholic church that priests should be male only -- you do defer to that, even if the lutherans say, look, our dispute resolution belief is just as important to a lutheran as the all-male clergy is to a catholic. kruger: yes. but that's because the balance of relative public and private interests is different in each case. justice kagan: do you believe, ms. kruger, that a church has a right that's grounded in the free exercise clause and/or the establishment clause to institutional autonomy with respect to its employees? kruger: we don't see that line of church autonomy principles in the religion clause jurisprudence as such. we see it as a question of freedom of association. we think that this case is perhaps one of the cases -- justice kagan: so, this is to go back to justice scalia's question, because i too find that amazing, that you think that the free -- neither the free exercise clause nor the establishment clause has anything to say

jones magazine took viewer questions and spoke about voter apathy, voter reg renne registration. he has a newly released memoir, "here comes trouble: stories from my life." >> host: michael moore, how did you meet robert kennedy? >> guest: just a couple blocks from here at the nation's capitol in the capitol building. my mother had brought us down here on vacation. i was 11 years old, the summer after 5th grade, and my mother, she -- kids went north to the lake, you know? you know, did fun -- go to scout camp and things like that. our mom wanted to take us down to washington, d.c. every other summer because she so believed in this country and just everything about it, and she loved history. we read the documents of the founding fathers in the summer, and we traveled through the smithsonian institute, and going to all the different museums here, and every time we came here, we had to go and meet our senator from michigan or two senators, and our congressman, and on this particular day, we're in the capitol building. i don't know, i started looking at all these statues in the hall there and reading all the inscriptions, and i got separated from my mom and my sisters and my cousin, pat, and what felt lik