this is all in response to the growing presence of russian personnel in ukraine s crimea reign. hundreds of gunman surround ukraine s military base in crimea and we re seeing armored vehicles and mounted machine guns. the gunman are unidentified for the most part, but many of their vehicles have russian license plates. their demand, that ukrainian troops disarm and the russian parliament just yesterday unanimously approved vladimir putin s request for military intervention. the response in ukraine was swift and concerning. its prime minister calling president putin s actions a declaration of war against ukraine. meanwhile, in crimea, which is predominantliety ethithnically russian, protesters took to the street. it all comes, of course, in the wake of president obama s friday warning that a russian military intervention of any kind in ukraine could constitute a violation of territorial sovereignty and would carry significant consequences. on saturday, president obama followed
0 popular culture having a clash with politics. by this i mean duck dynasty. this week we learned you can judge a book by its cover. gq. why are you setting people up to try to take them down? there s a new level of bullying on the part of these militant activist groups. the notion this is an argument or debate about free speech is ridiculous. the point here is he s a bigot on many levels. my guess is something people will be talking about over the holidays and more than obamacare. all right. here s your christmas week forecast. we ve got two big debates going on about american values. and who are we really as a country? first traditional values or straight up bigotry. as if comments in gq weren t enough there s new video of phil robertson s bashing gay people more than two years ago. women with women, men with men, they committed indecent acts with one another, and they received in themselves the due penalty for their perversions. they re full of murder, envy,
0 this week because their head start program was closed down. mother who is now have to divert money that they didn t have to finding daycare so they can go to work. mimy my view of this is biased because i live in the washington, d.c., area, seeing the trickle-down is incredible. people in new york may not know about it. in d.c., for some of us it s great, there s no question, but at the same time, my neighbors are staying home. my neighbors are federal government workers. and then the collateral consequences of the businesses that rely upon government workerses, we re trying to see the economy hit this last point. this point about your neighbors being federal government workers, raul, the other piece of it is that for these congressmen, for these senators, but particularly for the members of the house, their constituents are federal government workers. we took a look at there s a group of people who are the we re calling them the reasonable republicans, 20 or so of them, if boe
0 a whole lot more than you might think. we begin on the front lines of voter suppression, with multiple developments across the country, not the least of which is the attorney general of the united states eric holder suing the state of texas, two states suing the federal government back, and a prominent republican lambasting the republican governor of north carolina over that state s brand new voting requirements. today the justice department announced plans to file a new lawsuit against the state of texas over its voter i.d. law and intervene as a party in another case involving texas redistricting. attorney general holder said he will not allow the prime court s recent decision to be interpreted as open season for states to pursue measures that suppress voting rights. we will keep fighting aggressively to prevent voter disenfranchisement. we re determined to use all available authorities including remaining sections of the voting rights act. this represents the department of late
0 discriminatory. but that was set aside when the supreme court gutted a key section of the voting rights act leaving texas governor rick perry at liberty to implement the strict photo i.d. law. with today s action, attorney general holder is fighting back under another section of the voting rights act which still stands. meanwhile, states of arizona and kansas are suing the federal government to allow those states to go ahead with their plans to demand proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. they ve been stopped from doing so by another supreme court ruling, though in that same ruling the court did say that states could sue the federal government over the issue. which is what they announced they re doing today. georgia and alabama are also affected by that same supreme court ruling, so today alone, voting rights in five states are in direct play because of various lawsuits, and that s not all. today brought an absolutely remarkable moment in a state that has become the fron