the focus was on the 7.5 million affordable care act enrollees and the transition in the leadership for health and human services. and then on call for the voting national action network. and with the situation with the ukraine escalating, the president got back on the line with vladimir putin for a, quote, frank and direct communication for activities. and yesterday, he kem rated boston marathon bombings. and the president is about to announce two new executive actions on job training initiatives. joining me now is time editor-at-large and political editor mark halperin and huffington post, and katty kay. the president is running late. so we re going to tap dance for as long as we need to, mark. executive action, this is promised to be the year of action but it could just be the year of executive actions. peter baker had a fairly moderate expectation of what it was. wrote day in and day out the president with the grand asp asp priorations finds himself signing orders and
0 well the supreme court takes up same-sex marriage, it s also decision time for republicans. paul ryan or rand paul? pick your poison, gop, it s tuesday, march 26th and this is now. i m joy reed in for alex wagner, joining me today, senior fellow at the center on budget and policy priorities and msnbc contributor, jared bernstein and new york magazine and lee gallagher. the supreme court finished hearing arguments on the constitutionality of proposition 8, california s same-sex marriage ban. a decision which could lead to marriage rights being grantsed to same-sex couples in all 50 states. the fundamental question before the court today and tomorrow when it hears the arguments on the 1996 defense of marriage act, is whether government can deny benefits to gay people to include the benefits conferred by marriage that are currently granted to straight people. before today s arguments, both supporters and opponents of marriage equality rallied outside the court. but the country s evo
the u.s. military is fighting a psychological war within its own ranks. the apparent murder-suicide of a ft. hood soldier and his wife is the latest in a string of 14 confirmed suicides and six more suspected suicides at the military camp where the disturbing trend has never been higher. nationwide the number of soldiers taking their own lives have increased steadily over the past five years. the national average is 11 suicides per 100,000 people. the rate among the armed forces is higher. last year averaged 12 out of 100 troops. paul reagan now works with the vanderbilt school of medicine and joins us to talk about this. these are men and women who faced death in the face of war. now they come back home to live their lives from your perspective, as someone who served in the military, what s going on right now?
especially when a lot of people would say the community colleges have been undervalued in the past. that s right. what they re being viewed at, and you heard this conversation yesterday. when we had the meeting of business leaders. he calls this economic recovery board. the community colleges in each community can serve as your job retraining centers. it s the fastest way to go and get a skill that you may not need. you don t need the extra degree. people are hesitant to take on the extra debt that would mean to get a full degree. but this is the fastest way if somebody in their 50s needs to learn a specific computer skill, the community college is the best place to do that. that s the motivation here. clearly there s a job retraining issue that is going on with the unemployed and underemployed. it s not like you want to build news centers. so the white house is hoping, though, by obviously hosting this event, they have a goal of 2020. explain that to all of us. what it
clear and made a mad bash back inside. yesterday they got within 500 feet but forced to turn back because of dangerous gas levels and fears of possibly another explosion. one of two injured miners who survived has been released by the hospital. the ap reports he s not talking to anyone this morning. give us a sense of how optimistic they are as they get set to go back into the mine and look for the four missing mine re rers. reporter: they are still hopeful. keep in mind we re at hour 6 since the fatal blast in naoma, west virginia. these men should have made it by this point to the long wall. section 22, this is this 2,000 foot stretch of wall deep inside this coal mine where the rescue teams believe three of the four missing miners are located and also where they ve been honing in on this rescue chamber. as everyone been repeating, if there s any hope of survival, they have to have made their way through to the chamber. once they establish the fate of the four missing min