both parties signed off on it, passed into law. it wouldn t be a law if the house republicans hadn t passed it. part of what s strange is that woodward is playing two roles. the reporter who reports in his book on the exchange and how the sequester came about being and then in this op ed is this analyst shaming obama for not leading in some vague way that would defense congressional republicans to solve the deficit problem, and it s sort of bizarre to go on both sides of that at the same time. can we take half a step back and remember that the week before this happened he was on fox news, and he was scolding karl rove, and then i saw plenty of reports that said the liberal bob woodward, right, and then this op ed comes out, and it almost it read like somebody picked up the phone and called them and, you know, walked them through the talking points, and he bought in and wrote this piece. i think in terms of the to richard s point, this dynamic of what s actually take the seque
gave up on gun control for a long, long time. even barney frank said let s not let s not crash our ship against this particular rock. so there s a long, long, long way to go. it s a little like the sequester too. you ve just got a lot of people many there who, for whom the national mood is irrelevant. colin, i want to ask you, in terms of this issue being something that voters go to the polls on, i mean, how optimistic are you about someone s position on gun control, gun safety laws being an issue in 2014. i think if you call these things gun control measures, a term that the nra has successfully tainted and not supported by the average american public, if you remove that vagueness and i mean, i work on gun control every day, and i don t know what you mean when you say do you support gun control? when you break these issues down to specifics like should we do background checks on all gun sales, should we sell 100 round
fill the bill ghana s peter turkson and there is also speculation about at least five latin american candidates, three of whom come from brazil. joining us now on pope watch from washington is msnbc contributor washington post columnist and senior fellow of governance studies at the brookings institute, the very accomplished and very wonderful e.j. deon. e.j., it s great to have you on the show. great to be with you. i love your prayerful beginning of this show. it was very appropriate to both the conclave and the sequester. well, yes. we re trying to tie it all up with a bow. even at the start of the show. e.j., i just read some stats that i think are actually pretty compelling as far as the face the face of the faith, if you will, in the 21st century. as someone who follows the vatican and the goings on m vatican very closely, i wonder what you think the likelihood is that the cardinals will choose someone who is not from europe to be the head of the church? i have to say i
people, so you that may be your impression of what happened, but i talked to other people. well, then you should represent that in your piece. but, rick, this is also, again if you were a journalist and trying to talk about the woodward has said i think it s important to pinpoint where this idea came from because the country is going to feel a lot of economic pain, and we have to understand whose idea it was in the first place. the sequester was a stop gap measure that nobody liked that republicans voted for. part of the reason we re not coming to the table is because we don t really see cuts are cuts are cuts. i will pair phrase conservative blogger who is on ben dom mick who is on with ezra cline on the last word on monday, and he says the problem with that you have an assumption of confidence on the part of conservatives. of the conservative base republicans as a whole. when it comes time to negotiate with the white house that
seemed fairly benign. bob woodward is saying he felt threatened about it. he felt threatened. gene sperling is about this high, and he starts out he starts out he starts out right. he starts out his threatening e-mail by apologizing profusely. and saying my bad. not very good a threat. i have been on the receiving end of threatening phone calls from various white houses. they don t sound like that. they don t say my bad. the biggest problem for bob woodward, and obviously he has a great body of work behind him, and that brings him a lot of respect, but he is making himself look foolish. he is hyping up this e-mail, which hurts his credibility. he has got the wrong end of the stick about the sequester. the sequester wasn t the goal of the policy. it was a means to an end. he should be able to figure that out. on top of that, he, of all people, as meticulous as he is, should know that the phrase moving the goal posts was exactly how the republican leadership characteriz