so many acting cabinet members? absolutely not. they re not seen up on capitol hill. you re not going to invest a lot of time and experience or effort trying to work out a relationship with somebody who may be gone tomorrow. and who is sitting there at the whim of the president. we have hearings and we have confirmations for a reason. and to be acting, i think, just diminishes the authority of these people. government is not as well run. you don t have good people coming. there are all sorts of reaso reasons. either name the right person or name the acting person, but don t leave it in don t leave people in limbo. it cuts their legs off. david, good to see you. especially in the new year, happy new year. thank you. weeks after the bomb shell announcement that the president is withdrawing troops from syria, his national security adviser seems to be pumping the brakes. where does the administration really stand?
right now priority has to be to protect the investigation. number of pieces of legislation pending in the house. that will protect mr. mueller from being removed by the president of the united states. so that investigation can continue so i think we can t ju jump ahead. obviously that statement by mr. cohen is a game changer in that it s a statement from co-defendant or co-conspirator saying the president directed this criminal wrongdoing. very serious. it is serious. the fact you say you know it hasn t crossed the impeachment threshold for you yet. is that for purely political reaso reasons? is there concern of impeachment. just stir up the base. do you prefer and think it will be effective to pith and use what nancy pelosi said. culture corruption. if that were out there, is that more effective than impeachment. i don t know if it s a question of being more effective. the removal of a president of
criminal violation of campaign finance law, and then displaying his lack of knowledge about how the law applies to his client s conduct. let me read to you the bit from the fec, talking about disclosing loans. it says, if any person, including a relative or friend of the candidate gives or loans the candidate money for the purpose of influencing any election for federal office, the funds are considered a contribution. so from that specific definition, would this be covered as something that would be or should have been disclosed? it most certainly should have been disclosed, for a couple of reaso reasons. number one, it was a payment for the purpose of influence an election. the trump campaign was required to disclose that. michael cohen also made an illegally large in-kind contribution the minute he tapped into his home equity line of credit for $130,000 that he used to pay stormy daniels. and i think there are additional
objects. that s right. one of the fascinating things about empathy is, first of all, when you talk about the extreme of a lack of empathy, a psychopath, somebody like ted bundy comes to mind. what seems to be going on, and again, we re just starting to crack the surface of this, but it s intriguing that there seem to be circuits in the brain that are really involved and are understanding other people s pain and identifying and resonating with it. if that connection to other people s feelings are missing, and you put that together with somebody who has, various reaso reasons, you get somebody who maybe can understand other people s feelings but doesn t have that connection. one of the reasons we learn not to hurt other people and to empathize is that we, to some extent, feel their pain, and that s abversive.
young people had to buy insurance who weren t going to use healthcare. if you pull that out, you pull the income out of people who weren t going to use a lot. the tent pole comes out. i agree with that. dana: the bill is unpopular for a lot of reaso reasons. we will play a sound bite from last night. the church is in a position to promote unpopular concept. the been a of contraception. you are right on target. a tough battle because of that. the opponents have chosen an issue we know we re not popular on. we have to be vigorous insisting that this is not about contraception.