and personhood usa has basically bullied them and threatened them with losing their seats if they don t get in line and vote with these bills. are we getting into a totally polarized political world where if you are a republican say you re a moderate republican. a center right republican. you just like lower taxes, less government. you don t want to do any of this stuff. you want to leave it alone. reo v. made is fine with you. do you get pressured people show up at your office and say we re going to primary you, buddy? what s going on here? i can t answer that. all i can say is we are polarized in terms of elected officials. but the american people are not polarized in this. you have two-thirds of voters who say we need to protect roe v. wade. 90% of americans oppose something as strict as you have in north dakota. there is a lot of consensus among people. it s just some extremists worried about even more extreme folks challenging them on the right. despite what s been coming ou
a legal term of art. state police power. as distinct. the federal government has no police powers. it s the state that has the police power to regulate these kind of things. that s his point. howard, same question. we were talking about it before. what happens if the federal government says, you can t have social security. you can t have inheritance rights. all these things. you can t have spousal privileges under the tax law. isn t the federal government then regulating marriage as the justice is saying? well, if they the reason why currently married couples in states that allow same-sex marriage have a skim milk marriage, to quote justice ginsberg, is that because of the way marriage is defined in doma, for the purposes of this law, it says, it s a marriage of a man and a woman, that means that those people can t get those benefits. but if you if you get rid of that portion of it, and if you start giving federal benefits all for the full pan pli of federal benefits to same-se
no precedence, nothing to bind the other states. i guess horace greeley will be right again. go west young man and young woman. thank you, pete williams. thank you, howard fineman. coming up, the man who shocked america in 2004 when he announced he was gay or is gay. and resigning as governor of new jersey. jim mcgreevey were faced with the same situation today would our greater acceptance of gay rights, would he still feel he had to resign? we re going to get into all those questions. no more law. personal stuff coming up here. also, why would the republican governor of north dakota sign the most restrictive anti-abortion measure ever if he knows it will never survive a court challenge? because it s all about keeping the gop s right wing base quite happy no matter how flawed the legislation is. have you heard about the government s secret plan to use obama care to register more democrats? neither has anyone else except a republican congressman from louisiana. when a politici
these bills. are we getting into a totally polarized political world where if you are a republican say you re a moderate republican. a center right republican. you just like lower taxes, less government. you don t want to do any of this stuff. you want to leave it alone. reo v. made is fine with you. do you get pressured people show up at your office and say we re going to primary you, buddy? what s going on here? i can t answer that. all i can say is we are polarized in terms of elected officials. but the american people are not polarized in this. you have two-thirds of voters who say we need to protect roe v. wade. 90% of americans oppose something as strict as you have in north dakota. there is a lot of consensus among people. it s just some extremists worried about even more extreme folks challenging them on the right. despite what s been coming out of washington in terms of republicans looking inward and trying to reach out to women and figuring out why they did so poorly wi
they have rich cream marriages whereas people who are same-sex couples in other states don t get any of those benefits. yeah. pete i think that opens up an attack in favor of trying to declare a nationwide constitutional right to marriage. what do you think about that, pete? reporter: i think that s an excellent point. and i think that s exactly why justice kennedy doesn t want to go there. because if they do go, as some justices today indicated that they were willing to say that the federal government can t make these distinctions, well, if the federal government can t make these distinctions between same sex and opposite sex couples, then how could the states? i think justice kennedy frankly isn t ready to go there. one other point that he made today, the remember who s defending doma. it s the house republicans. the obama administration has decided the law s unconstitutional. so their lawyer here today, paul clement, was defending it. he reminded the court of why congress