weapons in time of war. this is of great consequence to israel, to jordan, to turkey, to the region, and to all of us who care about enforcing the international norm with respect to chemical weapons. and that i understand. the president has made the decision, he has made the decision that he believes we need to take a military strike. but the military understands that whether that happens this week or next week is not going to make the difference with respect to sending the message. the message remains the same, and it s a message, i might add, that any president of the united states and any congress ought to seek to enforce. use of chemical weapons is unacceptable. and we cannot, cannot stand by and allow that to happen and create an impunity for its use. that would be the end of the chemical weapons norm, and that s why the president has made the decision.
the parliament decided that there would be no vote of confidence for the prime minister to take part in any of these kind of military strikes and therefore the british have said they will not take part in military action. and, honestly, you know, you cannot overstate what a shock that is because for the last 30 years at least the british have been side-by-side with the americans every time there s been either a major or even a limited strike in this regard. so this is a big shock, particularly after the prime minister and his own foreign secretary, william hague, were very, very vocal about the need to punish this, that the world cannot stand by, even that morning when they were being voted down just before there was very strong tweeting coming out of the prime minister s office to the extent that they should go ahead and do something. by contrast, presumably the president had a slightly different conversation with his french counterpart, francois hollande who says he will,
we simply cannot stand by and watch one group be targeted for du jour discrimination. we have opposed du jour discrimination from our founding and this is no different. that is the naacp president ben jealous on msnbc s rachel maddow last night. the resolution passed by its board of directors now identifies same-sex marriage as a civil right. so now what? joining us to further this conversation is leon russell and pastor delmon coates. gentlemen, great to have you both with us. mr. russell, the decision to support marriage equality just came after president obama voiced his support. did his announcement influence
to invalidate prop a. we fought it in north carolina most recently. with that it became clear we might be fighting a tidal wave, and we thought it was important, the board in their deliberation thought it was important to come out clearly for the entire country, to make it clear that we will fight these efforts wherever they pop up. simply cannot stand by and watch one group be targeted for d du jour discrimination. we have opposed du jour discrimination from our founding, and this is no different. the reality is the right wing in this country is really seeking to put hatred in the constitution, and we simply can t stand by, no matter who the group is. and again, we had taken a noble stand in several states, but it was time to take it for the
around them and get to the affected area has made it very difficult but we re going to do it. we are working on it as we re talking right now. i got people working on it. you already have people in japan. what is it like for those aid workers? well, it s it breaks their heart. they have been up there and seen people without electricity and food and cold. this is a modern industrialized nation and to see this nation brought to its knees, it just breaks your heart. but, at the same time, your heart is broken, but you want to do something. we just cannot stand by. we have to do something. that is why we got the plane and why we are air-lifting and we are going to do all we can as long as we have the resources, we re going to keep helping japan and if we have to next week, we will send another plane just like this and bring more material. the people of japan, especially there in the north, they are without electricity. they don t have enough blankets. the shelters that they are in, m