influence the outcome of a medicare billing plan in addition to helping several of his girlfriends allegedly get vitas. melgen, who was also indicted was seen here earlier this morning in court and we re still waiting for menendez. thank you. let me bring in msnbc s bengie sarlan and ryan grimm of the huffington post. thanks for being with me. ryan, let s talk about these charges. clearly very serious charges against this very influential senator in washington. right. and, you know, there aren t a lot of rules left you know about what politicians can and can t do but one thing you know, one thing they can t do is take large gifts or significant amounts of money and then and then take specific action to benefit an individual person and so you know without saying whether or not he s innocent or guilty of these charges, if you take somebody like melgen a guy
bribing you with the gift for in return these benefits. things like helping with the visa processing for this donor s girlfriends, according to prosecutors or medicare policy also explicitly mentioned. if the defense is i m just helping my friend menendez is going to have his lawyers will have to explain and deal with these charges about things that he did in office allegedly in exchange. and by the way, just helping my friend who happened to be in serious trouble with the government over his medicare billing. the government says in the indictment here that the eye doctor who was also indicted on these corruption charges was basically taking a single vile that s to be used for eye treatments, giving it to three patients and billing medicare for three separate vials so that s a pretty serious problem that the senator was trying to fix. pete williams and ari melber thanks so much for being with me this morning. appreciate it. new firestorms surrounding the religious freedom bills f
who needed specific action taken. he wanted the secretary of health and human services to say that he was not ripping off medicare. he was being accused of ripping off medicare. he gave all sorts of gifts to to menendez. menendez went to harry reid and menendez and harry reid went together to sebelius to try to intervene in this case. now, sebelius told them look this is out of my hands. the medicare investigators are going to go about their business, and if they find that he s committed fraud, they are going to go forward with that. there were a couple other cases where menendez intervened. now, menendez will say that he was doing this on behalf of not exactly a constituent but a fellow american. he was doing this in the service of justice, but the fact that he took so many gifts, you know a hotel suite in paris, you know trips to the caribbean, et cetera makes it look like a quid pro quo and that s that s something that is still forbidden in american politics. yeah and bengie t
fighting for third. in the 19th debate of the season and the last before florida votes next tuesday, the front-runners tangled over investments and campaign rhetoric. much more in fair game. a day after the captain admitted that he made a mistake and wrecked the ship, $14,000 is being offered to the passengers. but this ordeal is far from over. a 16th body was recovered on tuesday while another 16 passengers are still missing. the rescue operations chief says crews are trying to open up new passages so rescuers can access more areas. a surreal experience to be condemned to die. those were the ominous words of joshua komisarjevsky before a judge sentenced him to death less than two hours ago. he was convicted in october for brutally raping and killing three people and dr. william petit managed to escape from the basement. he said, i miss my entire family. i had 26 years with jennifer, 17 with haley and 11 with michaela. we were robbed of this for what? money. we will hear
obamacare. and do you want the absolutely best car, you get the smartest people together in a room and tell them to design it, but this is what you get. and what if governments designed our cars, do you think we d have air conditioning or a car that went fast? i don t think so. now, some people say, health care is different, you could live without a car, but everyone needs health care. so, government must make sure everyone s insured. and that sounds kind, but a result of that kindness is that customers don t care what their health care costs. like wise, do you want one of these scooters or do you want its much more expensive $3,000 cousin, the power wheelchair? who wouldn t want one of those when they re free under medicare, just like the