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armed services committee, loretta sanchez and white house correspondent at the huffington post, sam stein. congresswoman, let me start with you. you sit on the house armed services committee. just days ago, secretary of defense chuck hagel said he thought bowe bergdahl according to his doctors was not ready to leave germany. he, of course, in the last 48 hours, has arrived in the united states. we just heard the admitting physicians and psychologists say he exhibited good deportment and they are pleased with his physical state. from your perspective, was there some mixed communication coming from the white house or coming from this administration on bowe bergdahl's health? >> oh, i don't believe so. you know, one never knows with a patient how quickly they are going to be recovering, especially the mental anguish of going for five years and being held in the dark in a shark-like cage as mentioned to his doctors in germany. so the fact of the matter is that he hopefully, what this might be a sign of, is that he's actually going to get better in a quicker amount of time than one would imagi

in washington senior political editor and xous correspondent pour the "huffington post" sam stein. hi, thomas. >> thomas, too. >> so joyful. >> i go on vacation tonight. >> that's what it is. >> what do we have going on? >> we have a lot going on, a lot of news out there. >> absolutely. chocked full. i wish we had seven hours. >> no. >> this is what my grandma would say when somebody is trying to put ten pounds of sugar in a five-pound bag. she would be talking about dresses women shouldn't be wearing. anyway, a lot going on. >> under the cover of the night the u.s. military captures a key figure on the u.s. attack on benghazi ending a two-year manhunt. if the white house knew where he was, some are asking what took so lopg to get him. >>> hillary clinton's book tower/presidential campaign continues. she's still answering questions about benghazi. she's saying her congressional testimony was a product of the fog of war. the fog of war? i thought they held that on capitol hill. surprising polls shows her approval ratings continuing to drop. she's in the mid 40s. the book tour not wh

certainly, somebody like marco rubio and, sam stein, you have to look at every race.he was out there, arguably, much more conservative than cantor's district. you read on twitter, guys, it's about knocking on doors, it's about serving your districts, being in your district, let this be a cautionary tale. >> yes, joe, sort of talked about this in the last hour and i agree with it, it's that you have to have sincerity and belief in yourics. s. eric cantor was for a variation of the dream act. he continued to say that immigration reform was alive. but then he would go around his district and call himself the most anti-immigration in the race. and a lot of the voters thought that was a big problem for him. >> we've got peter king on in just a second. this is a sign for potentially trouble for republicans and democrats, how so? >> it's trouble for both parties. washington out of touch. washington has never been more out of touch than the rest of america than they are out. it's the republican party. it's the democratic party. people look at washington. you can look at the n

john heilemann, eugene robinson, sam stein still with us. council on foreign relations richard haass who you saw interviewing hillary clinton there. and moderator of "meet the press," david gregory. thank you both for joining us this hour. i'm going to give a big recap of the big story. >> might be fitting. >> what i'm thinking. exactly. it is awful. in many ways, there are no longer separate conflicts in iraq and syria. you heard hillary clinton talking about this. rather one sweeping insurgency ripping through the region. the group at the center of the fighting is taking aim at baghdad. and this week, the weak centralized government there is struggling to keep it together. the thousands of shiites are vowing to fight back setting the stage for a civil war split along religious lines. shiite volunteers would fill the vacuum left by the iraqi armed forces. many of whom dropped their weapons and scattered. several soldiers in the capital are now wearing street clothes under their uniforms to make for a quick escape. the u.s. spent at least $2

joining us now, sam stein, political reporter for "huffington post." m, thank you for being here. >> thank you for saying "young guns." >> young guns! >> i'm worried about your throat. >> tomorrow i'll sound like a smoker. i did not expect when going back through, i did a sort of historical retrench on eric cantor's record. i didn't expect to find the only consistent through line was this rebranding stuff. he obviously thought that was key to his success and his leadership in the party. what do you think the actual impact of that was. >> you missed one, you missed the cut and grow rebrand that they did -- >> was that you cut -- oh, no, there was you cut and cut and grow, two different ones. >> he was a constant schemer and it served him well. he was the heir apparent to john boehner, perhaps knocking boehner out of the way. but when you change that much, obviously, it becomes tough to define who exactly you are. and i think what it ended up also doing was painting him as this constant schemer and not a serious ideological conservative and i think that o

sam stein and e.j. die on, thanks for your time. >> thank you. >> after the break, is rand paul a new advocate for voting rights? rand paul would very much like for you to think that he is. yale professor discusses the push to give former felons a chance in the voting booth. that is coming up next on "now." ♪ cut! [bell rings] this...is jane. her long day on set starts with shoulder pain... ...and a choice take 6 tylenol in a day which is 2 aleve for... ...all day relief. hmm. [bell ring] "roll sound!" "action!" but we're not in the business of naming names. the volkswagen passat is heads above the competition, the fact is, it comes standard with an engine that's been called the benchmark of its class. really, guys, i thought... it also has more rear legroom than other midsize sedans. and the volkswagen passat has a lower starting price than... much better. vo: hurry in and lease the 2014 passat s for $199 a month. visit vwdealer.com today. >>> can giving felons a second chance give republicans a better

sam stein?g what it's like where you have to sing and do everything in addition to acting. is that difficult? >> julie andrews didn't think so. >> it's not a musical in its -- in a traditional sense. it's very much a song about the making of an album, so people don't spontaneously break into song. >> it's not like there's awkward singing and stuff like that. >> why did we bring him along to this interview? >> go ahead, john. >> this feels like it's a movie that has a lot of big hollywood stars in it but also a real indie feel to it. there's an interesting thing going on between the wattage of celebrities and the downscale vibe of the whole thing. >> i think that's what john has done so brilliantly really is essentially anybody who goes to big mainstream films will probably feel like they're watching a small, independent movie and people who love small, independent movie will feel like they're watching a small studio picture. >> you can watch "begin again" in select theaters today. james corden,

joining me now is political editor and white house correspondent at the huffington post, sam stein andr democratic congressman from pennsylvania and veteran of the iraq war, patrick murphy. the president said at one point we've got to change the way the va does business and has clearly decided this is a management issue and brought in a business heavy. do you think he'll get resistance from republicans in congress? >> not on the restructuring element of it. i think republicans are very committed to loosening the bureaucratic red tape to allowing more flexibility to fire people to reorganize. the question that will confront president obama and democrats in congress, will they supplement that with more resources. the senate bill dedicates more resources to building va hospitals and hiring more doctors and sort of meeting the demands with supply. i'm not sure republicans are going to meet them there, although bills from house and senate are going to go to conference. what sort of underscores the commitment to this, he's leading rob nabors at the va for the time being, that suggests he's v

in washington senior political editor and xous correspondent pour the "huffington post" sam stein.thomas. >> thomas, too. >> so joyful. >> i go

senior political editor and white house correspondent for "the huffington post" sam stein.osh. we held you over just for a couple of minutes because of something you said right after we went off the air. this, you say, is the most successful terrorist operation in history, and talk about the gains they have made in iraq. stung figures you gave us. >> yes, joe. isis now controls a territory larger than the country of jordan. there are six, 7 million people living in that territory. that alone makes them incredibly successful. they control borders between iraq and syria and one border post between iraq and jordan and 17 miles off saudi arabia. no terrorist group, not even al qaeda has held this much territory and been able to govern. they are not simply blowing stuff up and killing people, they are actually governing. this is the scale of the problem that iraq faces and if the rest of the world says, it's their problem, not ours, we have another thing coming. a group this successful they will not confine themselves to iraq for very long. >> bobby, you're exactly right. when w

and in washington senior political editor for "the huffington post," sam stein. ng? >> good. >> do you know all your continents? >> i've studied up. i took some notes. >> okay. remember antarctica. it's the tricky one. >> yeah. always gets me. >> all right. harold ford jr. explain this to me if you will. we are all confused. we want to know what happened. what happened inside the white house? >> i listened to you guys this morning. i listened to nicole. it's hard to imagine. you would have to think there was some vetting and they still got in. and you have to hope that maybe there wasn't. the situation when the president traveled to afghanistan, there was an inadvertent mention of the station chief there. perhaps there was some mistake here. >> i want to show this picture again. because you brought up nicole which reminds me they knew everything about this guy before he walked through the white house gates. if he were one of 400 at an east room reception, they would know that this guy had e-mailed was in contact with the taliban, tweeted the taliban. said god woul

from "the huffington post," sam stein. and then in washington the washington anchor for bbc world news america katty kay. along with willie, joe, and me. joe, the shock waves continued throughout the day. i saw you on "hardball" with chris matthews and michael steele yesterday. this cantor story, i mean, it's really caused quite an effect across both parties, actually. >> yeah, i said last night and it just came to me. this is one of the biggest upsets since douglas beat tyson in japan. >> that's big. >> willie geist, it may have said more about the fact that cantor was more mike tyson on a very, very down decade and maybe buster doesn't make it for very long. but i think it maybe had to do more with the weaknesses of one than the other. but you had this dave brat who had what it took to pull off the stunning upset. you remember that one? you remember that fight? that was a massive upset. >> do i? i think it was 42-1 that buster douglas would win and he did win. i think like mike tyson, eric cantor took some things for gra

joining me now is political editor and white house correspondent at the huffington post, sam stein, and from capitol hill, dan gross. dan, let me start with you. you're on the hill. are we going to see anything happen other than the series of now predictable outraged tweets from lawmakers? >> yeah, we are. because now the outrage tweets and the out rage in general is coming from the american public. richard martinez, the father of the victim -- one of the victims of now two school shootings ago in isla vista, california, had it exactly right. this problem is happening because of craven, irresponsible politicians, as he put it, rightly, and the influence of the corporate gun lobby. and the american public is starting to figure that out and the american public is starting to express its route rage. we have hundreds of activists around the country meeting with lawmakers, demanding the change in our country that's too long overdue. >> sam, you know, you're standing on the front north lawn of the white house. we know where we were as a country after sandy hook, and is where we are now. do yo

here's sam stein from "huff po."have not seen one gop statement in opposition to obama's enda executive order news." >> you don't see the pushback from the republicans because they are realizing that this is actually popular, even in their own party when they denied gay rights groups who are republican from speaking at events. they've gotten pushback particularly from the libertarian wing of the party. >> and it's not just -- it's not just the popularity. it's actually a -- it's actually something -- it's one thing to say, well, we're not getting pushback and we can all kind of do this and go around. i think there's good polling to support that people believe in nondiscrimination and you can actually go on offense on something like this. >> yeah, you know, i mean, look, there's still all the house republicans who are refusing to vote on this though ten of their senate -- >> they should be put on the spot about that as opposed to letting it just die. >> i think the new line is going to be about the religious exemption