Guests: Penn Jillette, Horace Cooper, Flavia Colgan, Karen Russell
ANNOUNCER: Now on MSNBC, politics to pop, news to buzz. This week’s headlines.
The Bush garden. The odds of terror. And California dreaming. This is SATURDAY FINAL with Lawrence O’Donnell.
LAWRENCE O’DONNELL, HOST: And welcome to SATURDAY FINAL. I am Lawrence O’Donnell. Let’s go straight to the joke of the week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, “TONIGHT SHOW”)
JAY LENO, HOST, “TONIGHT SHOW”: Military said that Saddam is running out of places to hide. Let’s just hope he doesn’t hide with his weapons of mass destruction. Man, we’ll never find him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O’DONNELL: Well, Flavia Colgan, Democratic analyst. That joke seems to go right to the heart of where things stand on Iraq, doesn’t it?
FLAVIA COLGAN, POLITICAL ANALYST: Sure. And I think Washington is running out of people to accept blame for the faulty intelligence in the State of the Union address.
O’DONNELL: Yes, just...
COLGAN: Pretty much everyone has accepted responsibility at this point.
O’DONNELL: We have with us this week Horace Cooper, who is the-
Horace, you are a columnist for GOPUSA.com and a reliable Republican defender of this president. How do things stand now in Iraq? Saddam Hussein’s daughters have now been found outside the country, the sons are gone. Saddam is still hiding, weapons of mass destruction still hiding. The 16 words, the president has now taken responsibility for. Where are we now?
HORACE COOPER, GOPUSA.COM: Well, a lot of progress has been made, frankly. A lot of the infrastructure is being improved, a lot of changes are being made as far as moving them toward a democracy. And a lot of headway, apparently, is occurring on demonstrating that the ongoing weapons campaign on the part of Saddam Hussein, information is being found. There are a lot of credible arguments and materials being gathered and presented, put together, and it appears that at some point in the future, all of that is going to be revealed. And it will very likely justify and demonstrate that, in fact, all of the claims and concerns that led to the invasion were justified.
O’DONNELL: OK, the president has had a news conference this week. Let’s take a look at what he had to say about the 16 words in the State of the Union address that’s become so controversial. Let’s listen to the president.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I take personal responsibility for everything I say, of course. Absolutely. I also take responsibility for making decisions on war and peace. And I analyzed a thorough body of intelligence, good, solid, sound intelligence that led me to come to the conclusion that it was necessary to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O’DONNELL: Karen Russell coming to us from Seattle, reliable knee-jerk liberal. Finally, the president of the United States taking responsibility for 16 words that he spoke. Does that put an end to it?
KAREN RUSSELL, POLITICAL ACTIVIST: It doesn’t put an end to it. I’m just surprised that Karl Rove let him out and doesn’t have him in front of a backdrop that says “Bush good, war good, economy better.”
O’DONNELL: All right. Let’s take a look. Let’s get up on the screen now the exact chart of the way the blame has flowed here. I think the first person-do we have it-yes-George Tenet, director of the CIA, took the blame on July 11, Friday, July 11. That was our big story coming on Saturday, July 12. A week later we had Robert Joseph take the blame, National Security Council assistant. Then you had Stephen Hadley, another National Security Council assistant taking the blame. Then finally, this week, President Bush.
You see a question mark there beside Condoleezza Rice, Penn Jillette coming to us from Las Vegas, because Condi Rice has not said a word about it other than to help focus the blame on other people. You’re coming to us as the Cato Institute, libertarian Cato Institute’s H.L. Mencken research fellow when you are not busy on the stage at the Rio-is it in Vegas?
PENN JILLETTE, CATO INSTITUTE RESEARCH FELLOW: Yes, at the Rio...
O’DONNELL: ... at the Rio, “Penn & Teller,” what? Five nights a week, seven nights a week?
JILLETTE: Six nights a week. If you’re here, we’re here.
O’DONNELL: OK. The 16 words, Penn.
JILLETTE: The 16 words, what he said...
O’DONNELL: In 16 words or less you have to respond, that’s all.
JILLETTE: What about the other sentence where he says he takes full responsibility for war and peace? He’s not supposed to do that. It’s in the Constitution, it says there is going to be other people involved, like I don’t know, the American people. Isn’t that kind of a dictator kind of sentence? I mean, I am not the big Democrat here, but that seems kind of creepy to just say, I take full responsibility. He’s not supposed to. There’s supposed to be a division of power there.
O’DONNELL: Horace? Your man is taking too much responsibility here.
Go ahead, Horace.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: Wait a second.
O’DONNELL: Go ahead, Horace.
COOPER: From the very beginning, President Jefferson had to dispatch the Navy to fight the Barbary pirates off the coast of Africa. It’s just ridiculous to say that that the president is not the person who is primarily responsible for the defense of our country. And what happens here is that the...
JILLETTE: Primarily? Primarily I am OK with. He said, totally.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: The entire world’s intelligence reports revealed that Saddam Hussein was engaged in a very, very dangerous planning of-a gathering of these weapons of mass destruction. He has had a history of using them, and the idea that that is not a legitimate basis for the president to decide that Saddam Hussein had to be removed when Saddam Hussein himself had within his own power the ability to make himself no longer that threat, but he refused.
JILLETTE: If the entire world agrees, why couldn’t Congress agree and the American people and the whole U.N.? If the entire world agrees, it becomes very, very simple.
COOPER: Well, as it happened, as it happened we had more than a dozen United Nations resolutions agreeing...
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: We had...
JILLETTE: ... he could have talked to some other people. Primary control I am fine with. It is just complete control that bothers me. That’s a little bit of a difference that I think is huge.
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: ... a little bit of separation of powers there. OK, let’s hold it right there. We have some pictures of what Saddam Hussein might look like now. We are trying to help in the search for Saddam. If we can get them up there. Everybody...
JILLETTE: Put a hat. I want to see a hat.
O’DONNELL: Yeah, well, they say he might also be appearing in Arab dress, and it seems like if this guy want to...
JILLETTE: Do you mean a drag?
O’DONNELL: No, no. You know, those...
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: ...those big veils and all that staff.
JILLETTE: He could be wearing a sombrero, too.
O’DONNELL: How are they ever going to find this guy, Flavia, if he really just wants to stay disguised? This is starting to seem impossible.
COLGAN: Well, we’re on the hunt. And I think one of the problems, too, is that we have to discover who is it that we are fighting over there. Because the deaths of Saddam’s sons has not stopped the killing of our soldiers. Is it Shiite extremists? Are they remnants of al Qaeda? Are these Saddam sympathizers? And are more people going to come forward and potentially give tips?
I think the fact that we did award the $30 million to the tipster is a positive, because a lot of Iraqi people didn’t think that would in fact happen. So that might inspire more people to come forward, but I think the only person who is going to have information are those that are very close to his inner circle. I am surprised that they did not want to talk to his daughters at all in terms of, you know, where he may be or if they have any insight into the people that were in his inner circle, where they might be.
O’DONNELL: Speaking of his daughters, let’s get a clip of them. I think we’re ready to go to the daughters right now. Hear what they did have to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Loving. He has a big heart. Loves his daughters, sons, grandchildren. He was very good father.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O’DONNELL: Penn, I think they are talking about Lauren Green (ph) on “Bonanza.”
RUSSELL: Daddy’s little girl.
O’DONNELL: Karen, you are daddy’s little girl.
RUSSELL: I am.
O’DONNELL: So come on, it’s daughters who love their dad. You understand that, don’t you?
RUSSELL: Yes, we have a blind eye, you know. I guess it’s, you know, the family that slays together, stays together.
O’DONNELL: All right, well, let’s-let’s-take a look...
RUSSELL: Kind of like “The Godfather,” you know, like...
COLGAN: Lawrence, Lawrence!
O’DONNELL: Go ahead, Flavia.
COLGAN: Has she forgotten that this is the same man who lured her and her husband and her sister and her husband back to the country only to have them assassinated?
O’DONNELL: Well, that depends on how much she would...
COLGAN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) mass graves? I mean, she has a heart of gold. This woman is more forgiving than Mother Teresa.
O’DONNELL: I think it tells you how much she loved her husband, the one who Saddam killed.
Now, let’s go to Bush’s-let’s go to Bush’s approval ratings that are now, let’s see. He has got a 56 percent approval rating and he’s got a disapprove of 38, which is still pretty strong. That’s about as good as it normally gets.
RUSSELL: I want to know...
O’DONNELL: Go ahead, Karen.
RUSSELL: I want to know who is judging Bush. Is Paula Abdul the only person who is judging Bush on his performance?
O’DONNELL: Well, you know, 56 is down dramatically from where it was. But now let’s take a look at what the support is for the Iraqi war. It’s still pretty high; 69 percent are saying we should have taken the action. Only 27 percent, which on this panel is let’s see, Penn Jillette, Karen Russell, Flavia, were you for or against going in there?
COLGAN: I was in favor given the intelligence that I was told.
O’DONNELL: Here you go. OK. And Horace, you are with it all the way, aren’t you, Horace.
COOPER: Which is suspect at this point.
O’DONNELL: All right, but let’s look...
COOPER: I just want to make a quick point.
O’DONNELL: Go ahead, Horace, go ahead.
COOPER: At this point in the Clinton administration’s term, he was at about a four or five points lower than that, and in fact, he had gotten down to below 40 percent heading into the election in 1996.
(CROSSTALK)
JILLETTE: OK, I didn’t know that. If we are comparing him to Clinton, he’s doing fine. If that’s where the bar is, he’s doing great. As long as you are comparing him to other presidents we have had recently, other Democrats, Republicans, they’re all the same. They all suck. That’s why we couldn’t decide between the two. People were voting against somebody. They weren’t voting for. No one thought he was good. They were just voting against Gore. Compare him to Clinton, sure, he’s fabulous. Compare him to a human being, I don’t know.
O’DONNELL: All right. That’s going to have to-that’s going to have to...
COOPER: I’m not sure I can argue with that.
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: Horace, Horace, give me 15 seconds on that, then we are going to go to Liberia Go ahead, Horace.
COOPER: I was going to say, I’m not sure I want to argue with that. Are you saying Clinton and Gore aren’t humans? I’m pretty much willing to agree with you there.
JILLETTE: OK.
O’DONNELL: Karen Russell, we are on the verge, or in the doorstep of Liberia now. We have Senator John Warner who had a meeting with the Defense Department yesterday saying he is extremely unsatisfied with the administration’s explanation as to why we are going there. He doesn’t oppose it. He just is saying they haven’t told me what the mission is. They haven’t told me what it is they expect to accomplish there. What should the mission be? What do you think we can accomplish in Liberia?
RUSSELL: Well, you know, Charles Taylor has just said he is going to leave on August 11. And I think it is just crazy that these war mongers, we want to go to war against the axis of evil in Iraq, in Iran, but when it comes to helping out black people, suddenly we don’t have enough troops. It’s the right humanitarian thing to do. And if Bush is going to keep talking about the mass graves and talking about Rwanda as a way of justifying the war in Iraq, then we have to stop the genocide in Liberia, and we also should talk about what’s going on in Korea, with the millions and millions and millions of people starving there.
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: Let me hear from Horace Cooper on this quickly.
COOPER: I just want to put a little context here. The president has committed to around 3,000 troops going in under certain conditions. But now, we had actual genocide during the Clinton administration in Rwanda, and I just want to understand how it is that America’s first black president never got around to stopping the multi-hundred thousand genocide.
O’DONNELL: We are going to hold right there, and we will be back on SATURDAY FINAL right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O’DONNELL: And we are back on SATURDAY FINAL. OK, time for an audience quiz. Now you’ve been listening to our four talking heads for that first segment. Of the five people on the show right now, including me, how many of us are over six feet tall? E-mail your answer right now to saturdayfinal@msnbc.com.
Hey, I don’t want any reactions out of you panelists, I don’t want any clues as to who-as to who is what here. OK, and the winner-we’ll get the winner announced by the end of the show. How many, how many of the talking heads you see here plus me are over six feet tall?
Now, to the 9/11 report on-the terrorism report that was released this week. There is of course the classified section, panel, about what Saudi Arabia’s involvement was in the 9/11 attacks. All of that is completely, absolutely, totally secret and you can never know it if you don’t read your newspaper today. Every newspaper in America has the classified section. “New York Times” has it word for word.
Horace, how nuts is this that the Bush administration classified a piece of the report that anybody could have told you “The New York Times,” “L.A. Times” and everyone was going to have by this Saturday, as they do?
COOPER: Actually, they don’t have it. They have a lot of the information. They have got a lot of the context and a lot of the subtext of it. But what they don’t have are the sources, methods and techniques that were used to obtain the information that this report...
O’DONNELL: Horace, they are quoting from it. They’ve got the report in quotation marks.
COOPER: As I said, they have a lot of the contexts and subtexts. But the reason that we classify information is precisely so that we have the ability to continue to obtain this type of information, and we can’t obtain it if people understand that maybe the Saddam Hussein daughters gave this information, or that information. You’ve got to be able to get the information so that we can have the security that we need.
RUSSELL: The security to protect the Saudis.
O’DONNELL: Karen, go ahead. Karen Russell.
COLGAN: Or we keep it, or we keep it classified so that we don’t have to admit to embarrassing lapses in intelligence. I mean, the Bush administration has an obsession with secrecy. They wanted to keep the energy report secret. But Lawrence, you predicted on this program last week ...
O’DONNELL: I’m so good at this, aren’t I?
COLGAN: ... this section-but you did. You said this section was going to come out in drips and drabs and it was going to be all over the newspapers and why would the administration not just come out and share it now. Suddenly, it’s the greatest disinfectant. And members of the Intelligence Committee have been saying all week that they have seen the section and there’s no reason for it not to be public.
O’DONNELL: Karen Russell, Karen Russell, go ahead, let me hear from Karen Russell, go ahead.
RUSSELL: You know, we need to talk about our relationship with the Saudis. I mean if we went to Iraq to root out al Qaeda, maybe we should have started with the Saudis. And you know, they don’t have a really terrific human rights record. Women aren’t allowed to drive there, they are not allowed to travel without the permission of a guardian. They can’t vote, there’s no women in the government. They have to wear veils. So, you know, there’s a lot of terrible things going on in Saudi Arabia. I wish-we need to hold them accountable.
O’DONNELL: Penn Jillette. Horace, hold a minute. Penn Jillette, it looks to me like we now classify material in these kinds of reports so that “The New York Time” can sell newspapers. And you start to think, are they all stock holders in “The New York Times” down there in the administration?
JILLETTE: There’s no understanding for up here in the Marsha Brady box. I have no idea why they do anything.
O’DONNELL: Horace, when you read what’s in the press today, you have two people who could possibly be on the Saudi government payroll who were then funneling money to two of the actual hijackers on September 11. That’s pretty heavy stuff.
COOPER: You know what, I’ll tell you what’s heavy stuff. Heavy stuff is 3,000 people died because we’ve completely and totally decapitated our intelligence ability with nonsense statements like (UNINTELLIGIBLE) likes the best disinfectant. You have to get down and dirty with a lot of nasty people, and you have got to be secretive about it, or people die. That’s the reality. You don’t let out the sources that...
(CROSSTALK)
JILLETTE: Well, you’re blaming 9/11 on freedom of speech, freedom of information?
COOPER: Yes, I am, to some degree.
JILLETTE: I just want to make that clear. Now that you’ve said that, I’m done.
COLGAN: What we should do, is continue funding our homeland security efforts and we should have more human intelligence on the ground. More people who speak the languages.
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: Wait a second, wait a second. We are running an FBI that has agents in Arizona who are trying to tell us that these nuts were taken flying lessons and nobody was willing to listen. Our intelligence systems could not have worked worse. All right, hold on one second.
Let’s go to the two big reversals of the week. The big one was the reversal on the running a futures market on terrorism. And then also, Penn, your favorite subject, big reversal on sky marshals. They were going to cut back for budget reasons the number of sky marshals flying in those planes. That became public. Immediately they had to put them back. Isn’t that the way the homeland security budget is always going to work, the second it leaks that they are going to cut back on any of this security, they are going to have to immediately reverse it?
JILLETTE: It’s a ratchet system. Once they’ve gotten more power over people, once they’ve gotten less freedom, it never goes the other way. It’s so hard to do that. People are really afraid. You know, it used to be live free or die. And now it’s like we want to be safe every way possible, even if it’s just window dressing.
The sky marshals aren’t going to help at all. The only thing that would have helped 9/11 is having people be able to be free and have the people on the planes have some sort of arms with them. Yes, I would like people to be able to fly with anything with them that they want.
O’DONNELL: Hey, Horace, do you have a quick defense on the Bush administration trying to run a futures market on terrorism?
COOPER: I’ve got no defense of the futures market idea. I do have a defense of the concept that you need to have people who are able to kibitz a little bit about what they think might be a potential possibility and what might not be. The whole idea that...
O’DONNELL: All right...
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: All right, hold it right there, panel. You are watching SATURDAY FINAL right here on MSNBC. We’ll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O’DONNELL: And welcome back to SATURDAY FINAL. It’s time to go to the panel for this week’s winners and losers. Penn Jillette, you are up first, go ahead. Winners and losers.
JILLETTE: The winners would be flash mobbing, random mobbing, smart mobbing. There’s this great thing happening on the Internet where people get together, type e-mail messages, use this communication to bring strangers together to like get 1,500 people to show up at like 4:37 in Grand Central Station, yell something random like “Hi, Bob,” and then disappear. It’s a beautiful sense of the world coming together with performance art, just to show that we’re now communicating with strangers. It’s a great thing.
Losers is the thought police. This guy, this scum bag, Brian Dalton (ph), who was a convicted child pornographer, had written this stuff on his computer that he was sending to no one that no one saw that the police found, and busted him for that. And he pled guilty with a bad attorney. And now they’re going to let that appeal and maybe we’ll have a little bit of freedom for what’s going on in your head. Obviously, there’s no excuse for kiddie porn. But if you’re just thinking it and you are not doing anything and not hurting anyone, that shouldn’t be a crime.
O’DONNELL: OK, Horace Cooper, go ahead. Your winner and loser of the week.
COOPER: OK, I’m frightened by those two winners and losers, but first...
JILLETTE: What’s wrong with flash mobbing? What’s wrong with that?
You kill joy! You buzz kill!
COOPER: ...or kiddie porn in your head.
JILLETTE: OK, that’s a whole different thing. (UNINTELLIGIBLE). But flash mobbing, no.
O’DONNELL: Go ahead, Horace.
COOPER: The economy. The market is up big. The growth in the economy...
O’DONNELL: So is unemployment.
COOPER: Unemployment is going better, and as Ronald Reagan would say, you haven’t seen nothing yet.
Loser, I would tell you this week, is Saudi Arabia. We’ve got a 50-year long relationship with them, and if we were to ever declassify some of the intelligence materials, we would see what great things that they did to help us during the international threat that the Soviet empire once posed. But now, we have recent history, and that is coloring a lot of the impression that people are having. So, they’re the loser of this week.
O’DONNELL: OK, Flavia Colgan, your winner and loser.
COLGAN: My winner this week is Jay Leno for landing a huge interview that’s bound to get lots of ratings. Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to go on Wednesday night and tell America whether he is going to in fact run for governor in California or not.
JILLETTE: Who cares?
COLGAN: I think it’s a big win for the Terminator as well, because regardless of what he says, he’s getting tons of publicity for his movie, which can never be bad.
The loser for the week...
JILLETTE: It is a bad movie. It’s a really bad movie.
COOPER: Come on, it’s “T3.”
(CROSSTALK)
COLGAN: The loser for the week are working men and women. For the sixth months in a row, the Department of Labor told us that our nation is hemorrhaging jobs, 44,000 in the month of July. And so many Americans are frustrated with the, you know, workplace opportunities. Over half a million of them have stopped working-looking for work all together.
O’DONNELL: OK, we got it. Karen Russell, your winner and loser of the week.
RUSSELL: The winner of the week has got to be Philis Baumgartner (ph) who is that hot Austrian extreme sport guy, who flew across the English channel. That was fantastic.
O’DONNELL: I think we have a shot of that. Or there it is, there is our shot of it. Yeah, what a nut. OK. And your loser?
RUSSELL: My loser of the week has got to be Donna Walker, who is the woman who played that cruel hoax on those parents, who said that she was their long lost child. And also, the cops who failed to tell the police-the father right before the press conference that they thought it was a hoax.
O’DONNELL: OK. I actually have a winner this week. I don’t usually have a winner, but this week I have a winner. And we are going to go to a piece of tape right now to show you who that winner is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JILLETTE: It’s not happening. It’s a guy taking a whole phony idea, getting a few strippers in and having them talk about it, and they shot this little bogus video.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O’DONNELL: That was Penn Jillette talking about the fake hunting Bambi thing that was going on in Vegas, in his backyard. He actually did the homework of looking in his backyard, discovering the whole thing was a fraud, and he was the first to announce it to the nation. And he was right.
JILLETTE: It’s a shame you needed a magician to tell America that, isn’t it?
O’DONNELL: We’re going to hold it right there. We will be right back with SATURDAY FINAL. More right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O’DONNELL: Welcome back to SATURDAY FINAL. Now it’s time for California recall. OK, panel. This is going to be quick. Yes or no prediction. Will Arnold Schwarzenegger run? Let’s start with Flavia. Will Arnold Schwarzenegger announce on Wednesday on “Jay Leno Show” that he will run? Yes or no?
COLGAN: I think-no.
O’DONNELL: OK. Penn Jillette, will he run?
JILLETTE: I don’t care.
O’DONNELL: Yes or no is the name of this game.
JILLETTE: I don’t care.
O’DONNELL: Yes or no, Penn Jillette.
JILLETTE: Yes, I don’t care.
O’DONNELL: OK.
JILLETTE: No, I will not tell you.
O’DONNELL: OK. So you would be a voter who would stay at home when that time arrives?
JILLETTE: Listen. I will not going to Democratic or Republican no matter what anyway. I will not ...
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: Karen Russell, give us your prediction on Arnold, yes or no.
RUSSELL: No, he won’t do this to his family.
O’DONNELL: Horace, what do you think, yes or no?
COOPER: No, he is not going to run.
O’DONNELL: OK. I’m with Horace. I’m with-he’s not going to do it. Jay Leno is not where you announce political candidacies.
Now, this brings us to my candidacy. My possible candidacy. Penn, you are going to be shocked. I am up to 27 pledges for signatures. Horace, as you know, I need 65 signatures, plus 3,500 bucks to get on the California ballot. Penn has said he will pay the $3,500 if I get the 65 signatures. I’ve got another week left.
RUSSELL: I’m betting you get more votes than Gray Davis.
O’DONNELL: All right. Well, what I need are pledges from people in my neighborhood. Santa Monica, West Side ...
JILLETTE: I’ll take that bet. Horace, how much?
O’DONNELL: ... to get-we’re not betting on this right now. We are just ...
COLGAN: This isn’t the terror market.
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: Send us an e-mail at saturdayfinal@msnbc.com, and you’ll get the host of this show on the ballot.
Now, Karen Russell, give us the Kobe round-up for the week. You are here, of course, as Kobe’s most attractive defender on network television. Go ahead.
RUSSELL: Thank you very much.
O’DONNELL: What do we have here? We have some weird 911 calls from Kobe’s house, which I can’t make any sense of during the course of this year. And then the big development of the week that is the notion that-is the notion that the woman in the case possibly agreed to some form of contact with Kobe but not the big thing. And it seems to come down to, if that’s the actual version of the case that is going to be played out in court, it seems to come down to, does Kobe understand that no means no.
RUSSELL: Yes. And we get into, he said-she said. I mean, the prosecutor said that he has some physical evidence. And both sides will present experts who will say, you know, that evidence proves that it was consensual or wasn’t consensual. And so what is really troubling here is based on her assertion alone, that she said no and with drew consent, she can send Kobe Bryant to jail for ...
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: Well, wait a minute.
RUSSELL: ... the rest of his life.
O’DONNELL: Karen, I am expecting you, as a proud feminist, to defend to the death the exacting principle of no means no whenever no is spoken at any point in the process. Right?
RUSSELL: No means no in a personal context. But the law is not good at ferreting out the truth in a situation like this when it’s a he said-she said. And so ...
O’DONNELL: So you’re saying if that she said no, then he’s different definitely guilty. Right? You are saying that no mean no no matter where you are. Whether during sex, whether it is joining a health club, or a whether it is a the Jesus freak at the Starbucks. If you say no, it mean no.
Karen, does no mean no?
RUSSELL: I’m saying the way the law is-can potentially work in
this case is she said, if she says I said no and with drew consent, and the
physical evidence can go either way and they’ll have experts saying either
way, she can send him to jail based on her withdrawn consent. And that is
...
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: OK. Flavia, is that fair? Does no mean no in the strictest sense?
COLGAN: Absolutely. Look, everyone is talking about, was she invited up to the room? Did she go up there to deliver something? I don’t care.
O’DONNELL: Horace, quickly. We’re getting out of this segment.
COLGAN: No means no, period.
O’DONNELL: Horace, does no mean no in this case?
COOPER: I thought that was the law already so I’m confused that people are saying that this is some new thing.
JILLETTE: Hey, we agree, Horace.
O’DONNELL: All right, let’s go to the president in the Rose Garden right now. We got a little clip.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: I am mindful that we’re all sinners. And I caution those who may try to take the speck out of their neighbor’s eye when they have a log in their own.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O’DONNELL: Penn, I’m having trouble with this concept of a log in the eye. But we’re all sinners. And what he’s talking about is-what is becoming the hot issue in this presidential campaign which can only get hotter is this issue of gay marriage. It’s a problem for the Democrats because they try to appeal to that side of the party. Republicans have not so much of a problem with it. Where are you on it, Penn?
JILLETTE: Well, I don’t know. I’m from New England. I don’t know how-who you’re spending your life with or who you’re having sex with is anyone’s business, specially the government’s. It seems like there should be no government intervention in marriage whatsoever. If I want to spend my life with someone, I can announce it to my friends, I can announce it in the paper, I can announce it to the person I want to spend my life with. Why is the government involved at all and why is it anyone’s business who is sleeping with whomever?
O’DONNELL: Horace Cooper, why is the government involved in marriage at all?
COOPER: Well, I was working with him when he said that it wasn’t any of our business. But, this is precisely what the problem is. This movement is, we wish to have the government formally accord this relationship and make it the equivalent of these other relationships.
JILLETTE: Right. So why don’t you take out the other kind of marriage, too? Would you be with me on that?
COOPER: No I wouldn’t be with you on that.
JILLETTE: Why does the government have to have anything to do with it? Why is it government’s business who you are spending the night with.
RUSSELL: Because there are rights and privileges. We don’t need to talk about this as gay marriage. We need to talk about this as a gay civil union. It is about ...
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: Well, Karen-just a second. Hold it. What many in the gay community are asking for is, in fact, precisely gay marriage recognized as the equivalence of any other kind of marriage. And there are some who will settle for civil union and there are some who want gay marriage.
RUSSELL: Well, I want gay people to be able to make future-decisions about their future. I want them to be able to plan for their future.
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: You want them to have marriage, civil union, or nothing?
RUSSELL: I want them to have civil union.
O’DONNELL: I am not-you know what, I’m with Penn. I don’t care.
If they want marriage, you know.
O’DONNELL: All right. Flavia Colgan, go ahead.
COLGAN: This is what I think. That we’re all entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And I would question any heterosexual who would say that they believe that they can pursue happiness if they are told as a person they love they’re not allowed to marry. And I think Karen brings up ...
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: So, OK. Wait, wait, wait. Here is the question.
COLGAN: If you spend your life with someone ...
O’DONNELL: Hold it. Flavia, hold it. Flavia, the candidates are now being forced to choose between being in favor of gay marriage, being in favor of civil union, or being in favor of no such privileges for gay people. Which one of those three do you support?
COLGAN: I would be in favor of civil unions because I understand that marriage has both a legal, as well as a religious, connotation. And I do respect ...
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: But, opposed to gay marriage?
COLGAN: Yes. Because I respect private religious institution’s ability to define marriage based as they see fit based on their faith and their scripture, and I think that marriage carries with it both a religious, as well as legal connotation.
O’DONNELL: OK. Horace ...
JILLETTE: But is shouldn’t be legal ...
O’DONNELL: Horace Cooper-let me get Horace Cooper on this. Let me get him in here. Horace, you know the three options. Which ones do you favor?
COOPER: I’m not in favor of any of the thing I’ve heard described. I’m fundamentally in disagreement with this principal that everybody is able to do whatever they want to and it’s OK. If you want your brother or you want your sister, it is not legal and it shouldn’t be legal. And the government does have the right to be able to interfere. If you want your mother or you want your dad. You shouldn’t have that right, and the government has the right to interfere.
JILLETTE: And what. What can the government interfere on? They can describe who ...
COOPER: There is no unlimited principle that whatever you want and
...
JILLETTE: Of course not. No someone saying that. But, why is the government involved in marriage? Why does the government care who you are going to spend the night with?
COOPER: I am trying to answer this. The government has a responsibility to perpetuate the existence of the society. And they create and support the institution constitution called marriage, which is the way that ...
(CROSSTALK)
COLGAN: In the 1950’s, it was illegal for blacks and whites to marry.
O’DONNELL: OK. We’re going to hold it right there. We are going to hold it and break this subject right there. This will be with us all the way through the campaign, the gay marriage question. So we will be coming back to it.
Straight ahead, you can watch the panel get really ticked off here on SATURDAY FINAL. Come back with us after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O’DONNELL: Welcome back to SATURDAY FINAL. That was John Kerry riding a Harley Davidson. Hey, we have a winner on the audience quiz which is how many of us here on show are over six feet tall? Craig Monett has e-mailed the correction answer which is four out of five. Now, we are not going to tell who the one is, but if anyone can guess that before the end of the show, you will, like Craig, win, listen to this, Penn, two tickets to see Penn and Teller at the Rio. That’s what the surprise is for the quiz. Don’t you wish I checked with you before we did the quiz?
JILLETTE: I sure do, yes.
O’DONNELL: But you got two tickets.
JILLETTE: Sure, I’ll get two tickets.
O’DONNELL: Whenever Craig shows up in Vegas. OK.
Now it’s time for the panel to get really ticked off. They will tell us what is really ticking them off this week. The panel will then have a minute or so to argue with them about that. And when you get into this segment, panelists, as you know, you must use the television phrase, I am ticked off instead of that other phrase that you use the rest of the week. Let’s start with Karen Russell. Go ahead.
RUSSELL: I am ticked off about George Bush’s month-long let them eat cake while I pretend to be a ranch hand vacation.
O’DONNELL: Oh, yes. OK. So-I’m sorry, I shouldn’t respond that the president deserve a vacation. We’ve got one minute for the panel to respond to George Bush according to Karen Russell, should not be allowed to have a vacation like every other president in history during August. You must have something to say about that.
RUSSELL: For a whole month.
JILLETTE: Any government official who takes time off is OK with me.
If they would just take off 12 months a year, I would be even happier.
COOPER: I might be able to agree with you on that, too.
O’DONNELL: All right, Horace, go ahead. Horace-Horace, give me your Penn thoughts.
COOPER: Every president has taken time off. Am I ticked off? I am ticked off about the fact that so-called liberal Democrat, John Edwards, hasn’t yet given us an explanation for why he has failed to pay his taxes on his Georgetown mansion to the city that he wants to grant statehood status to.
O’DONNELL: OK. Anybody want time to defend John Edwards on being a tax cheat in Washington D.C.?
RUSSELL: Well ...
O’DONNELL: Go ahead, Karen.
RUSSELL: Well, he said-it was a clerical error. And the people who worked on his behalf made a mistake.
JILLETTE: The little people weren’t able to get around to it.
O’DONNELL: All right. All right. Let’s go to Flavia. What has got you ticked off, Flavia?
COLGAN: What has me really ticked off this week is that two parents from my home state of Pennsylvania allowed their 10-year-old daughter to be baby sat by a man who was convicted of molesting her two years ago. And unfortunately, the poor girl was victimized yet again by him. This is just outrageous.
O’DONNELL: OK. I don’t think you’re going to get any-I predict no opposition on the panel for that one. Anybody? Anybody want to raise a hand? OK. We will go straight, then, to Penn Jillette. Mr. Ticked Off for what has him exceptionally ticked off this week.
JILLETTE: I am ticked off, sir, that the government is getting involved in anti-spam. Now, I hate spam. I do not need a mortgage and I do not need any enlargement. I need none of the stuff (UNINTELLIGIBLE) is selling. I do not like it. I loathe it.
But the government, getting their noses in there and saying, we’ll protect you from your-this irritation, is insane. It’s a technological solution. I get 350 wanted e-mails a day and I get no spam. I use white lists. You can also use some computation going back that foils computers and costs them more money. The solutions have to be technological.
Don’t let the government sneak in and use their despicable ways to say, OK, you’ll get no spam. We’ll have more of our noses into the ISPs. So, I want no legislation about spam. That’s what I’m ticked off about.
O’DONNELL: All right. I think we’ve got it. And you actually have used up all the time left in the segment. So even though there might be some disagreement ...
(CROSSTALK)
JILLETTE: So what’s wrong with flash mobbing, Horace? What’s wrong with that?
O’DONNELL: When we come back ...
COOPER: I was going to ask about it
O’DONNELL: ... the stories we are not talking about. Right here.
MSNBC.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ARIEL SHARON, PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: I listen to your statement on this subject and assured you, Mr. President, that I would address them-the security...
Staple.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They are stuck.
SHARON: As you can see-we need your help.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O’DONNELL: And we’re back on SATURDAY FINAL, final segment on what we’re not talking about enough. Flavia Colgan, give us-complete the sentence, why aren’t we talking about ...
COLGAN: Why aren’t we talking about that for the first time in 10 years the cases of AIDS and HIV is up, which is a complete reversal of all the progress we’ve made in the last 10 years. Although there’s been tremendous progress in really allowing people to live longer and healthier lives, the epidemic is still real and thousands of people are dying.
O’DONNELL: OK. We got it.
COLGAN: We need to take this and ...
O’DONNELL: We are running out of time. Karen Russell, why aren’t we talking about...
RUSSELL: Why aren’t we talking about the Bush administration and Congress gutting veterans’ benefits?
COOPER: Because they’re not.
RUSSELL: Because they are. The Bush administration asked the V.A. to stop advertising what benefits are available. They’ve cut the funding for veterans-the V.A. by $25 billion. Veterans now have to pay $250 before they can get into the system. They’re on the verge of laying off 20,000 V.A. nurses. And, you know, it’s patriotic to have a flag, but to not take care of the veterans, I think it’s really hypocritical and shameful.
O’DONNELL: All right. Horace Cooper, why aren’t we talking about ...
COOPER: Why aren’t we talk about what is actually being found in terms of weapons of mass destruction and evidence in Iraq. Some testimony has been provided to the intelligence community ...
O’DONNELL: Can you give me a list?
RUSSELL: Because there’s nothing.
O’DONNELL: Horace, what’s been found?
COOPER: Why haven’t “The New York Times” and the “Wall Street Journal” ...
(CROSSTALK)
O’DONNELL: I am prepared to talk about it right now for 10 seconds.
COOPER: There are increasing amount of evidence and discussions, I’m hearing from people on the street, people are talking about it all over the place and on the air ...
JILLETTE: People on the street?
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: ...except on the air about much of the progress that’s being made.
O’DONNELL: Come back last week and we’ll do a whole segment on it.
It will probably take us a minute. Penn, why aren’t we talking about ...
JILLETTE: Why aren’t we talking about the Catholic Church? You know, the pope comes out ...
O’DONNELL: Because we talked about it last week. That’s one reason.
JILLETTE: The pope comes out against gay marriage. Doesn’t anybody point out that he seems to only be in favor of gay sex if it’s with priests and people who are underage and outside of wedlock?
COLGAN: Oh, that’s horrible.
COLGAN: And I was with you last week, but...
(CROSSTALK)
RUSSELL: I couldn’t agree more.
JILLETTE: As long as it is right, they’re cool with it.
O’DONNELL: All right, we’re going to have to wrap it up right there.
That’s all the time we have for this week. We’re going to thank our panel;
Penn Jillette, Flavia Colgan, Karen Russell, and Horace Cooper.
JILLETTE: What’s wrong with flash mobbing, Horace? What’s wrong with it?
O’DONNELL: There is nothing wrong with it. Not a thing. But, up next up-this is more important-next on MSNBC, “NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORER,” “Inside the Tornado.” I am staying right here in the studio to watch that. Don’t anybody miss it.
I am Lawrence O’Donnell. See you next week on SATURDAY FINAL. Same time. Same place.
END
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