>> clock is ticking. >> the subpoenas are coming down in a matter of days. >> those subpoenas had a february 3rd return date. >> it's a lot to handle. >> the documents are going to tell the story. >> and then the big, very big question is why. >> i think the truth needs to come out. >> we still do not have the answer. >> that's what the citizens of new jersey deserve. the answers to these questions. in a unanimous vote today the new jersey state assembly and senate voted to merge the two legislative investigations in the george washington bridge scandal. the newly authorized special joint committee, which consists of eight democrats and four republicans, reissued the 20 subpoenas that the state assembly had previously issued. here is senate majority leader loretta weinberg, co-chair of the super committee, on the next steps for that investigation. >> depending on what we see in these documents as they're reviewed, those are the next -- that's the next important step. and i would hope as we subpoena the people who are behind writing those documents that they will be forthcoming so that we can get on with the work of this committee and really find out, particularly the george washington bridge issue, the big unanswered question is who told bridget kelly to do it? >> despite the unanimous vote to authorize the super committee by both state chambers, some new jersey republicans are expressing their concerns about the committee, having twice as many democrats as republicans. assembly deputy republican leader anthony bucco said today, "the imbalance of the committee raises questions about how the process will work and its fairness." as the investigations have expanded, the editorial board of the "new jersey star ledger," which endorsed governor christie's re-election bid just three months ago, published an editorial over the weekend titled "christie should quit gop governors organization," writing, "didn't christie just say in his inaugural address that he felt a solemn obligation to work every day night and day to make new jersey be all that they can be?" christie is now fending off two major investigations. several members of his senior staff have received subpoenas. federal prosecutors are also investigating the lieutenant governor and hurricane sandy relief effort is a mess. christie will have to present a budget next month. can christie really claim that he is doing his best to solve these problems while he is traveling out of state? what happened to the solemn obligation to put new jersey first? joining me now is new jersey assembly majority leader louis greenwald, who is a member of the new supercommittee. first of all, i'm wondering what your reaction is to that editorial about chris christie should give up that republican governors association. >> lawrence, you know, it's not for me to comment on what the governor should be doing. i'm not a member of the republican party. i'm certainly not a republican governor around the country. i think his focus should be on, as he has said, he was going to launch his own investigation into the executive branch as to how deep this abuse of power went. we have not heard one follow-up from that investigation that he was going to launch himself since he stated at his press conference over a week ago. but i truly think that his focus should be in getting to the bottom of really what is the root of the abuse of power that caused him to terminate his deputy chief of staff and to ask the head of his re-election campaign who he was bringing with him to the rga to step down as well. >> what is your reaction to comments by some republicans saying that you democrats are overrepresented on this investigative committee? >> you know, i really wish that the republicans were kind of joining with us in this -- in what is a really very important step to keep the level of the integrity of the investigation at an all-time high and to really go along the lines of finding who knew what and when did they know it. really, where did this idea about the lanes around the george washington bridge, the allegations of a study that we know now did not exist, where did it begin, who was behind it. and really again who knew what and when did they know it. that's where the focus of this investigation should be. as to the number of members on the committee, we were just re-elected in november, an overwhelming democratic majority in the legislature. the group that started the inquiry into this investigation was really the leadership and the assembly democratic -- the house of the people and the general assembly. we took the hardest hit when we joined the committees. we lost three of our democratic members when we pared the committee down and moved it to a joint senate and assembly committee. i think really much like the allegations and the criticisms against your station, msnbc, i think it's what people say when they don't want to focus on the hard truth. and really where the focus needs to be now is not an emotional reaction but really a very detailed and focused inquiry into what took place here, what transpired here, why were these decisions made and who made them and really caused such hardship for the state of new jersey and put us in the national limelight in a very negative way. >> you know, i just want to point out that it is very difficult in legislative committees to usually reflect with exact precision the balance of the parties within the committee. for example, at 8-4 that means that the democrats have 66% of the committee when the democrats actually are 60% of the legislature. if you just switched that to 7-5, then the democrats would actually be somewhat underrepresented on a committee in which they are the majority in the bodies. but i want to go to something that ms. weinberg said when she said that the big question, the obvious, most important question is who told bridget kelly to do what she did. does that mean that bridget kelly on the face of the evidence as we see it now is probably the most valuable source you could have at that committee and therefore is she the one most likely to be offered immunity? >> lawrence, to be honest with you, all 20 subpoenas that went out were not a critique on anyone's involvement, guilt or innocence in this. it is a discovery tool that we are using to gather information. i think it's premature to say who is going to be the, quote unquote, star witness in this. i think what you will find as the discovery comes and is returned to the investigatory committee, that we may find things that we did not expect. and that's in any discovery process. so our goal really is -- the reason why we made the decision to go out and hire the counsel that we did and richard and his firm is because of their expertise. reed's background, mr. char's background as a u.s. attorney himself, his involvement in these types of investigations and really to take his advice as to who should be subpoenaed and quite honestly the order in which they should come in to testify. that's really where we are now. there's really a very unique period in this investigation, i think, where it's going to appear that there's a lull. but the reality is we're in the process of gathering information. and i think rushing through this, not to put you in this category but to meet the press's demands for this or the public's demand for this, to really read the last chapter of the story is not going to be providing really true justice to the people that are involved. i've said time and time again, i think this needs to be a very deliberate, methodical approach and that's why we're going to be following the advice of counsel step by step to make sure that the integrity of this investigation is upheld. i just want to go back to your comments about the numbers on the committee again. in my mind it's a distraction from really what is the purpose here. the purpose is to find out who knew what. get that discovery information in. and to your point, switching one member or the other switches the balance of the legislature. we're talking about a difference between a 60% makeup or a 66% makeup. where the focus of this investigation this really be not on members of the legislature who are not involved in the decision-making process but who made these decisions at the port authority and why. was the executive branch involved beyond bridget kelly and if they were why. and really i think that is where the focus of the investigation should be. >> new jersey assembly majority leader louis greenwald, thank you very much for joining us tonight. >> thanks for having me again. >> also joining us now, former vermont governor howard dean. former head of the democratic national committee. former governor dean, tell us about these governor associations, the democratic governor association, the republican governor association. what is it like for chris christie to be president of that association with these kinds of investigations on his back? >> it is a problem. he's got to go all over the country raising money and recruiting candidates and shoring up the candidates he already has. so it's a big time commitment. interestingly enough, i was actually chair of both the dga and eventually the ng -- the national governors, actually first. the nga, while it's more prestigious, is not nearly as time-consuming. it's a very partisan job, and on chris christie's shoulders rests the maintenance of the democratic -- of the republican governors trying to keep their majority. >> going to something that assemblyman greenwald just said about chris christie promising in his press conference to be conducting his own hands-on investigation within his governor's office, we haven't heard a word about it since, and we see him flying around the country for the republican governors association. isn't that the kind of thing that new jersey voters may be considering as we watch his popularity decline in the polls in that state? >> yeah. although to be honest with you there's always some complaint about governors going out of state, usually from the opposition. i certainly had that when i was in vermont. and the voters don't get upset about that. frankly the biggest damage that he's got is this assembly investigation is going to be bad. but i can't wait to find out what's going on with the hoboken money. i mean, that really is a federal crime. if he did in fact send his lieutenant governor to threaten the mayor of hoboken and withhold sandy aid, he may not finish his term. >> that brings up something he said in his press conference where he was asked about would he comply with subpoenas? this is really important. let's listen to this. >> if you were to get a subpoena for whatever reason, what would you do? >> i'm not going to speculate on that. >> of all the things to not answer, will you comply with subpoenas, if there's a subpoena that he gets either from the investigative committee or from the u.s. attorney that he fights and tries not to comply with, isn't that pretty much the end for him politically? at that point isn't it impossible for him to go out with the governors association or any kind of -- >> it makes it very, very difficult. i mean, he's really between a rock and a hard place. if he says yes to the subpoena that means they can rummage around in executive privileged files. if he says no to the subpoena then it looks like he's hiding something and most new jerseyans think that is the case whether it's true or not. this is a very difficult question. i actually think he gave the right answer. there is no good answer. to say yes or no without talking to your lawyer, even though he is one, would be a mistake. >> former governor howard dean, thank you very much for joining us tonight. >> thanks, lawrence. >> coming up, the president has announced his theme for tomorrow night's state of the union address. and what hillary clinton actually said today about running for president. and in the "rewrite" tonight the author of last week's most ridiculous republican sound bite had a very different position on health insurance mandates about birth control just a few years ago. 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>> well, i think he's becoming typical. and that's really the problem. the entitlement of the silicon valley millionaires and billionaires is really beginning to get out of hand. george orwell, one of my personal heroes, would have had a word for this. he would have called it "disgusting." and i think we would call this orwellian, to have somebody like tom perkins, who's been very successful. he has started and funded a lot of good companies. but for him to be sitting on his yacht or in his mansion and really enjoying a tax rate that is as low on people of his income that it's been in 50 years or more and to compare himself to the victims of nazism. it's beyond satire, really. >> it really is. richard wolffe, one of the things about it, though, is what perkins was saying, most of that thinking, possibly not the nazi parallel, but most of that thinking is shared by most of the republicans who will be sitting in that room listening to president obama's state of the union address. >> well, certainly the element that this crowd, the job creators, that they should be getting even more favorable treatment, that part of it is very widespread in terms of republican thinking. and the notion as well implicit in all of this is that somehow this president is leading the pitchfork brigade. i mean, there are so many worse things you could call the group of ultra wealthy people who have done so well over many decades now than the 1%. if this is what demonization looks and sounds like, then these people need to get out more because that's not what this president has been doing. and the minor barbs, the discussion about inequality, does not equate to being victimized in any sense of the word that rational people would understand it. >> michael, the job creators are consumers. if you begin where the economy begins, which is with demand. you can't -- you can't hire someone to do a job that does not provide a good or a service that is in demand by a population that can afford it, which is an argument that the president has been trying to make on things like, for example, minimum wage, which can increase affordability and consumer demand and extensions on emergency unemployment insurance. >> well, that's absolutely right. we all know that the real problem that we've had in this economy really since before 2008 has been a lack of aggregate demand. you know, president obama has a lot of progressive models to draw from to talk about this. francis perkins, who is the creator of social security, told congress when it was debating whether to start this program, that it was going to increase the velocity of money, that it was going to put money in the hands of people who would spend it. she understood it. so we got social security. lyndon johnson 50 years ago in his state of the union message talked about millions of americans living on the outskirts of hope, and what he was going to do for them. he was going to improve health care for the elderly. he was going to build schools and hospitals and libraries and homes. and he called on his congress to do more of that in the coming year than they had ever done before. and i think that's the model that president obama has to draw from when he's talking about how he's going to spur demand in this economy and get it moving again. >> richard wolffe, what does the president have to say tomorrow night to a national audience that knows that there's a republican house of representatives out there that's trying to stop everything that president obama wants to do? >> here's the hard thing at this point. he's got to strike some kind of overarching values proposition. some goal that encaptures this vision of a fairer society somewhere with this opportunity. and at the same time he has the granular level of detail that could actually become real. and the truth is that never mind the income inequality, the gap between the rhetoric and what this president can actually do gets wider and wider with each passing year of this presidency. so that's the hard thing for him tomorrow. >> richard wolffe and michael hiltzik, thank you both for joining me tonight. >> thanks, lawrence. >> my pleasure. coming up -- what hillary clinton had to say about running for president today. and in the "rewrite," mike "libido" huckabee, apparently he was for the libido before he was against it. that's in the "rewrite." i don't just make things for a living i take pride in them. so when my moderate to severe chronic plaque psoriasis was also on display, i'd had it. i finally had a serious talk with my dermatologist. this time, he prescribed humira-adalimumab. humira helps to clear the surface of my skin by actually working inside my body. in clinical trials, most adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis saw 75% skin clearance. and the majority of people were clear or almost clear in just 4 months. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal events, such as infections, lymphoma, or other types of cancer have happened. blood, liver and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure have occurred. before starting humira, your doctor should test you for tb. ask your doctor if you live in or have been to a region where certain fungal infections are common. tell your doctor if you have had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have symptoms such as fever, fatigue, cough, or sores. you should not start humira if you have any kind of infection. make the most of every moment. ask your dermatologist about humira, today. clearer skin is possible. i would be neglect if i didn't ask the what are your plans for 2016? [ applause ] >> oh. >> sorry. you know i had to ask that. >> yeah, you did. you did. i understand. and i have to say, i don't know. not a very satisfactory answer, i know. >> that was hillary clinton earlier today speaking to the national automobile dealers association meeting in new orleans. she shared with her audience what she called her proudest moment serving in president obama's cabinet. >> i had several, but i'll mention one that is well known to everybody. and that was being in the room making the analysis, making the recommendation that the president should send the s.e.a.l.s in after bin laden. >> and when asked about her biggest regret, hillary clinton said this -- >> you know, my biggest, you know, regret is what happened in benghazi. it was a terrible tragedy, losing four americans, two diplomats, and now it's public, so i can say two cia operatives. and it illustrated one of the biggest problems that i faced as secretary of state. we have a lot of dangerous locations where we send not our military but our civilians. >> that calm response comes almost exactly one year since hillary clinton said this in a congressional hearing. >> with all due respect, the fact is we had four dead americans. was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some americans? what difference at this point does it make? it is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, senator. >> senator rand paul showed this weekend that republicans will not limit their attacks on presidential candidate hillary clinton to how she handled the incident in benghazi. >> well, you know, the democrats, one of their big issues is they have concocted and say republicans are committing a war on women. one of the workplace laws and rules that i think are good is that bosses shouldn't prey on young interns in their office. and i think really the media seems to be -- have given president clinton a pass on this. >> right. but is it something that hillary clinton should be judged on if she were a candidate in 2016? >> no, i'm not saying that. this is with regard to the clintons. and sometimes it's hard to separate one from the other. >> joining me now, msnbc's joy reid and the "washington post's" nia-malika henderson. joy, bill clinton is back, but not in the way he wants to be back. >> no. i mean, i think it's amazing. i think it might be the definition of the war on women to reduce hillary clinton to the wife of the cheating ex-president. and i think to try to make her answer for bill clinton. it negates all of her separate accomplishments, all of which, by the way, are fair game in a presidential election. this woman, in addition to being the first lady during the whole impeachment and monica lewinskygate thing has also been a united states senator in her own right. in the clip you just played she's within been our secretary of state, held important positions and done substantial things whether you agree with them or not. litigate that. i think it's the cheapest of cheap shots to try to go after bill clinton but the purpose of it obviously is to try to dissuade hillary clinton from using the war on women language against whoever her opponent is going to be. >> we saw a lot of possible hillary talking points, presidential campaign talking points there. first of all, trying to get some share of the bin laden credit. and then finding a way to talk about benghazi in which she does express regret about, it her biggest regret. obviously, she's going to have to find ways to talk about benghazi. but i want to play something she said to the automobile dealers association about driving a consider. let's listen for this. >> the last time i actually drove a car myself was 1996. and i remember it very well. and unfortunately, so does the secret service. which is why i haven't driven since then. >> nia, if you're trying to make people think you're in touch with their lives and how it's going out in and, you know, things like the price at the pump, i think you want to get rid of that "i haven't driven a car since 1996" line. >> you know, probably not the best talk point. but i will give credit to hillary clinton for doing this, for being honest about who she is. i mean, oftentimes you do have politicians who are millionaires or they've been in public office for many years and they do try almost too hard to relate to the struggles of everyday americans. and hillary clinton has done that before. when she campaigned in 2008, she would go to gas stations. there was an incident when she went, she was trying to get coffee for a guy who she was sort of on the stump with and she didn't really know how to work the coffee machine. of course the most famous example being george bush with the scanner in the grocery store. so in that way i think it's good that she's being authentic to who she is. but again, not the best way to connect with the average joe. and also i think it also highlights how long she has been in public office. and this is something that's going to be hammered constantly as republicans try to figure out how to run against her. i was only a panel with newt gingrich and he was recalling she was a goldwater girl and he was doing it in sort of a smirky way and essentially suggesting this is a woman who is part of the past and not necessarily when you look at presidential campaigns it's necessarily all about the future. i think that's a way republicans are going to try to brave her. >> "the new york times" magazine piece, "planet hillary," has a very big description of how clinton world works. it's one of the things that hillary's going to have to contend with, is there are an awful lot of authorities on clinton world, james carville and others, who say these things about it that don't make it sound very pleasant inside there. you know, james carville says that it's like an onion and the safest place to exist is the third or fourth layer. i don't know what he's trying to say there. another aide says working with the clintons is like staying in hotel california, you can check out but you can never leave. another person compared it to prison. "not everyone can adjust to life on the outside." i think tell that to george stephanopoulos. joy reid, that army of quotable people from inside putin world is just going to be constantly floating around her. >> exactly. and the biggest risk for hillary clinton as nia-malika was alluding to, was this sense of do you want to take a trip back to the land of bill and hillary clinton, do you want to go back to the '90s. reminding people about monica, reminding people about the sort of strange world of the clintons is really the best the republicans have got right now. unless they want to actually, i don't know, debate her record or something crazy like that. they're going to try to litigate the whole idea of the clintons. the danger of that, though, is a lot of the voters who are going to be looking at the republican versus the democrat, if hillary is the candidate in 2016, aren't going to necessarily remember the '90s other than they had a really great economy. so when you just sort of put the clintons out there, even if you put impeachment out there, people will generally remember that as overreach by republicans, not as something that the clintons really -- that bill clinton really deserved, sort of a level the republicans were willing to go to try to take him down. so there's a double-edged sword to reminding people about that. and by the way, i think for a woman running for president having stature, having been in public life and in huge top positions for a long time isn't necessarily a bad calling card. >> nia-malika henderson, thank you very much for joining me tonight. and joy reid. thank you very much for joining me tonight on the day that the greatest network president in the business announced that you are taking over the 2:00 p.m. hour on this network. >> thank you so much, lawrence. yes, i'm very excited. my goal is to get into the "last word" montage, the opening montage, like every night. >> oh, you're going to be there. tamron hall, who's in the 2:00 p.m. hour now, is moving up to 11:00 a.m. and we will be watching you at 2:00 p.m. and yes, you're going to be in the open. get used to it. thank you both. >> congratulations, joy. >> thanks, nia. thanks, lawrence. >> fantastic. thank you both very much for joining me tonight. thank you. coming up -- it turns out mike huckabee was for birth control before he was against it. and later, who is the real leader of the american jewish community? hint. his first name is barak. hey guys! sorry we're late. did you run into traffic? no, just had to stop by the house to grab a few things. you stopped by the house? uh-huh. yea. alright, whenever you get your stuff, run upstairs, get cleaned up for dinner. you leave the house in good shape? yea. yea, of course. ♪ [ sportscaster talking on tv ] last-second field go-- yea, sure ya did. 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[ male announcer ] ask your doctor today if eliquis is right for you. mike huckabee was the author of the republican sound bite of the week last week. >> if the democrats want to insult the women of america by making them believe that they are helpless without uncle sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it. >> reaction from supporters of the affordable care act was predictable. >> he must have missed whatever classes they were giving on how to talk to women. but i think at the end of the day what's more important, lawrence, is not what he said but is the fact that what he believes. and that is that women don't deserve access to birth control. >> and republicans distanced themselves from huckabee. here's reince priebus talking today with chuck todd. >> let me ask you about mike huckabee. in your comments afterwards you told one reporter you thought they were kind of goofy, he had a much more formal statement which i read. it sounded to me like a rebuke. so i ask you, were you offering a mild rebuke of governor huckabee's choice of words? >> sure. i mean, yes. i was. >> mike huckabee's fox news colleague greta van susteren said, "i like governor huckabee, but the words he chose to make his point are insulting to women." but huckabee's friends, who objected to his language, did not object to his factual error. uncle sugar, by which he means the u.s. government, does not provide prescription each month for birth control. it simply requires under the affordable care act that health insurance policies cover birth control. that is what mike huckabee is opposed to. mandating that health insurance policies cover birth control. it sounds like he really doesn't like birth control, but it's very clear that he hates health care mandates, especially the mandate that health insurance policies cover birth control. he just hates it. and he hates it because it is based on the belief that women cannot control their libido without the help of the government. why else would obamacare mandate that health insurance policies cover birth control? there's just no other reason that fox news preacher mike huckabee can think of. but he didn't say anything about anyone's libido when he was governor of arkansas in 2005 and the legislature passed a bill that landed on his desk for his signature with the title "the equity in prescription insurance and contraceptive coverage act." the bill said, "every health benefit policy that is delivered, issued, executed, or renewed in this state or approved for issuance or renewal in this state shall provide coverage for prescribed drugs or devices approved by the fda for use as a contraceptive." and what did governor mike huckabee do when that bill landed on his desk? there's no suspense left here, right? i mean, why else would we be talking about it? that's right. mike huckabee signed the bill that mandated that arkansas health insurance policies must provide coverage for birth control. and he signed that bill in 2005, toward the end of his governorship, when he was being very careful about what he was signing because he was planning on running for president. and uncle mike's health insurance mandate, forcing insurance companies to cover birth control, was not hidden in some big hunk of legislation about something else. it was a bill that was entitled "the equity in prescription insurance and contraceptive coverage act." just like the obama version of that mandate. it includes an exemption for religious employers. but the obama version of that exemption exempts many more kinds of religious employers than uncle mike's very narrow exemption. uncle mike actually signed a birth control mandate into law that subjected many more categories of religious employers to that mandate than the much more carefully crafted mandate in obamacare. mike huckabee signed a birth control mandate into law five years before president obama signed one into law in the affordable care act. but that didn't prevent mike huckabee from pretending he would never do such a thing while uttering the single most ludicrous and to some most offensive thing said about that policy idea. >> if the democrats want to insult the women of america by making them believe that they are helpless without uncle sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it. >> like mitt romney before him, mike huckabee proves once again that being a republican means never having to say you're sorry about attacking president obama for a health care policy that you signed into law yourself. 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[ applause ] >> that was president obama last year getting a warm welcome at the jerusalem international convention center. that was no surprise to peter beinart, whose recent article is provocatively entitled "the only leader who speaks for american jews on iran is barack obama." the article's subtitle asks this question -- "most american jews support obama's policies on iran. so in whose name are their so-called leaders sabotaging his nuclear diplomacy?" in truth, says the article, "the only person who can legitimately claim to speak for american jews on the subject of iran is the very guy american jewish leaders oppose, barack obama. look at the evidence. in 2012 mitt romney slammed obama for not supporting tougher sanctions against iran and for not more explicitly pledging that if sanctions failed to curb tern's nuclear program the u.s. will attack. in so doing romney road tested the critique leveled by benjamin netanyahu and many american jewish leaders. the result, obama won 69% of the jewish vote. jewish voters preferred obama to romney on iran by a margin of 58% to 26%." joining me now, peter beinart, senior columnist for israel's "haaretz" newspaper and a contributing editor for "national journal" and "the atlantic." peter, you got my attention with that headline. >> thanks. you know, i wrote this column because of my distress really. i speak as someone who is a very committed member of the american jewish community. and the american jewish leadership has gone all in on pushing sanctions legislation that barack obama and even america's intelligence agencies say would wreck the chances of a diplomatic deal. that would be bad enough on its own merits. and yet the press often covers it as if these are the representatives of the american jewish community when all the polling suggests and the 2012 election suggests in fact that american jews support barack obama's iran policy and that you have a group of american jewish leaders who don't represent american jews whatsoever in the agenda that they're pushing in washington. >> but peter, they would argue that their concern is not moment to moment support or popularity i think in the american community but more what they see as the needed -- the necessary position for preserving -- >> the american jewish organizational leadership proposes is that basically since iran is a completely irrational regime that you can't deal with it in the kind of normal diplomatic give and take that these negotiations would see and that in fact you have to kind of dictate to it in a sanctions legislation as we've done. but actually the israeli leadership and the american intelligence leadership say that iran's regime, although absolutely brutal, absolutely despotic, actually has a history of making fairly rational calculations about its own interests. and that's why i think that this push for sanctions is ultimately bad for america's security, bad for israel's security, and it frustrates me that it's done in the name of american jews when in fact american jews have shown again and again that they don't support it. >> peter, what is at stake in your view in this vote in the congress about the possible sanctions bill? >> i think what's at stake is the possibility of a diplomatic deal with iran and the end of america's 30-year cold war with iran. a cold war that has been tremendously damaging to the entire middle east. if you look at the horror that is taking place in syria, one of the drivers of that horror is the cold war that is occurring between the united states and some of our sunni allies and iran on the other hand. we know from our cold war with the soviet union that cold wars have horrific collateral damage across the world, and we're seeing that in syria today. it would be barack obama's greatest international achievement if he could come to terms with iran, stop it from having a nuclear weapon, and end this cold war. and i would just hate to see the idea that the american jewish organizational leadership is making that harder. >> peter beinart, author of one of the most important pieces. tomorrow night, watch state of the union coverage beginning at 9:00 p.m. don't mess with bill. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. we'll get to the latest on the chris christie george washington bridge scandal in just a minute. he said the president stands guilty today of predatory behavior with former white house intern monica lewinsky. he described clinton as, quote, someone who takes advantage of a young girl in his office and asks how it squares with the democratic charge what it's the