get on it. this is hurting our national security. is that good enough? i think the pez has taken strong leadership on this issue. i m urging secretary hagel to do the same. the secretary hagel said he wants to remove from the chain of command, the ability to overturn the a verdict. we would like to add to that the ability of a commander to decide whether or not to go to a trial. if those two things can be moved to the judicial system, so a trained military prosecutor can make that judgment about whether a case can go to trial, i think that s going to begin to solve the problem that if you have 26,000 assaults a year and only 3,000 reported, you have a large structural problem. and i think this is what the victims have asked for. they want to feel that they have an opportunity, a chance for justice. and i think if you no longer have to report to your chain of command, you ll have more reporting, which means more investigations, more prosecutions, more trials and ultimately, more convi
and i hope that the commitments there, i certainly saw it in secretary hagel when i worked for him. and it just will take some time. if the military commanders all see sexism and sexual slurs and that kind of behavior as the same, as offensive as racism, maybe the attitudes will change. maybe it will take an attitude change to really end the problem. so in addition to mending the system, we need to end the problem, m problem, nip it in the bud, sexual harassment, all of those cases need to be addressed. monica, thank you very much. and we ll be right back.
dr. larry norton at memorial sloan-kettering. attack the problem of sexual assault in the military as a top priority, not a side issue. not only is it a crime, not only is it shameful and disgraceful, but it also is going to make and has made our military less effective than it can be. and as such, it is dangerous to our national security. so this is not a sideshow. this is not sort of a second-order problem that we re experiencing. this goes to the heart and the core of who we are. and how effective we re going to be. joining me now is monica medina, former special assistant to the secretary of defense. monica, thanks so much for being with us you were at the pentagon working for leon panetta and briefly working for chuck hagel as well. do the secretaries of defense realize how important this is. now that women on the hill have
when voters vote for somebody like him. they want to know the steering wheel if you go a little bit to the left, the government is the guy they voted for. they don t want to be told, you got no control over things. that big bullying government is coming at you no matter who you vote for. i think that s a bigger problem. chris matthews, thank you. joining us for our daily fix, chris cillizza, msnbc contributor and managing editor of postpolitics.com and nbc capitol hill correspondent luke russert. you re up there where the hearing is going on and it s been contentious since early this morning. quite contentious, when the hearing started, some folks thought there would be sort of bipartisan aim at mr. miller from republicans and democrats. and that s how it did start. but dave camp, the chairman of the house ways and means committee aggressively going after miller. asking when did you know about these types of allegations or improper things going on within the irs? he answered back i
and the answer is, well why didn t you tell us about that. he sort of dodged that question. that s something that republicans really harpooned him on time and time again. another thing i found interesting, andrea, republicans really made an effort to try to tie the irs to the white house. dave camp bringing up the national organization for marriage. how is that document of their tax returns, how is that released? where did that come from? miller said he was not aware about that. that he read it from media reports, a lot of instances where that occurred. because that happened, you sort of saw this bipartisan spirit going into the hearing dissipate. then andrew crowley. joseph crowley became the good soldier, trying to defend the obama administration saying look this is much more about an institutional problem we have here at the irs that s gone on through folks appointed by republicans and democrats. we need to fix the system as a whole. and that sort of where the agreement would come f