joining me now is the host of "up," steven kornacki, and from baltimore the senior editor at the new republic, alec mcgillis, who takes a look at christie's career in a formidably awesome new piece in the new issue. al alec, a pleasure to have you on the show today. what a piece of investigative journalism. an insane amount of research went into this. steven kornacki, who has as you know has a very long institutional memory with all things new jersey, he and i were talking about this before the segment began. it really does put together all these disparate stories we've heard about chris christie into one broad narrative and you know this better than all of us, it is a searing indictment of chris christie as a public official. let's start first with his qualifications to be u.s. -- to be the new jersey attorney general. they were scant to say the least, were they not? >> they were very scant. they became even more scant in perspective and context after 9/11. you have to remember, he was nominated by bush the day before 9/11. he got the official nomination. 9/11 happens and now we're