Crazy? Or Crazy Like A Fox?

What Bill Clinton's Odd Denial of Previous Day's Comment ("They Played the Race Card On Me") May Be About....Because He Surely Did Say It

Here are Chris Matthews and Chuck Todd talking about on Pennsylvania primary day:



MSNBC's pundits have a habit of bending over backwards to give the Clintons every benefit of doubt (or ignore the obvious entirely), and Chuck Todd doesn't break with that tradition.

Let's look at the story as it unfolded on Monday.



CNN reports:

Former President Bill Clinton denied Tuesday he had accused Senator Barack Obama's campaign of "playing the race card" during an interview Monday.

Bill Clinton is facing tough questions Tuesday over an interview with a Delaware radio station.

A recording of the former president making the comment is posted on the WHYY Web site.

It says he made the comment in a telephone interview with the Philadelphia public radio station Monday night.

Clinton was asked whether his remarks comparing Obama's strong showing in South Carolina to that of Jesse Jackson in 1988 had been a mistake given their impact on his wife Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign.

"No, I think that they played the race card on me," said Clinton, "and we now know from memos from the campaign and everything that they planned to do it all along."

"We were talking about South Carolina political history and this was used out of context and twisted for political purposes by the Obama campaign to try to breed resentment elsewhere. And you know, do I regret saying it? No. Do I regret that it was used that way? I certainly do. But you really got to go some to try to portray me as a racist."

After the phone interview, a stray comment of his on the issue was also recorded before he hung up: "I don't think I should take any s*** from anybody on that, do you?"

But outside a Pittsburgh campaign event Tuesday, a reporter asked Clinton what he had meant "when you said the Obama campaign was playing the race card on you?"

Clinton responded: "When did I say that and to whom did I say that?"



"You have mischaracterized it to get another cheap story to divert the American people from the real urgent issues before us, and I choose not to play your games today," Clinton added.

"I said what I said -- you can go back and look at the interview, and if you will be real honest you will also report what the question was and what the answer was. But I'm not helping you."

Clinton did not respond when asked what he meant when he charged that the Obama campaign had a memo in which they said they had planned to play the race card.

Meanwhile, at a Pittsburgh press availability on Tuesday, Obama was asked about Clinton's charge that his campaign had drawn up plans to use "the race card."

"Hold on a second,'' he said. "So former President Clinton dismissed my victory in South Carolina as being similar to Jesse Jackson and he is suggesting that somehow I had something to do with it?"



"You better ask him what he meant by that. I have no idea what he meant. These were words that came out of his mouth. Not words that came out of mine.''

Clinton commented just before the South Carolina primary that "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here."

Question for Bill Clinton: Is your knowledge of these memos (the "memos from the campaign and everything" that you spoke about with Susan Phillips in the WHYY interview that you claim "show that they planned to do it all along") connected to the break-in of Obama campaign offices in Allentown on April 19, 2008, where laptops and cell phones were stolen?

The memo on the subject of race from Amaya Smith, S. Carolina press secretary for Obama for America lists news accounts of events during the campaign, and nothing else.

Chris Matthews! Making News!!

Yawn

The Examiner reports:

Chris Matthews had barely finished praising his colleagues at the 10th anniversary party for his “Hardball” show Thursday night in Washington, D.C. when his remarks turned political and pointed, even suggesting that the Bush administration had "finally been caught in their criminality."

In front of an audience that included such notables as Alan Greenspan, Rep. Patrick Kennedy and Sen. Ted Kennedy, Matthews began his remarks by declaring that he wanted to "make some news" and he certainly didn't disappoint. After praising the drafters of the First Amendment for allowing him to make a living, he outlined what he said was the fundamental difference between the Bush and Clinton administrations.

The Clinton camp, he said, never put pressure on his bosses to silence him.

“Not so this crowd,” he added, explaining that Bush White House officials -- especially those from Vice President Cheney's office -- called MSNBC brass to complain about the content of his show and attempted to influence its editorial content. "They will not silence me!" Matthews declared.

This is no *new news flash*. We learned this soon during the Scooter Libby trial when, on February 7, 2007, Tim Russert was on the witness stand:

2:29 p.m.: All morning, we listened to audio tapes of Scooter Libby's grand jury testimony. Along with yesterday, that makes eight hours of tapes in all. Toward the end of this droning saga, the courtroom gallery was becoming rather sparsely populated.

But now these tapes are, mercifully, over. We've had our lunch break, and the judge and jury are seated. And for some reason, the courtroom is packed. Some reporters can't even get in. Why?

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald steps up to the podium. "The government calls Tim Russert," he says.

And there's the man, walking to the witness stand. Or rather, limping to it. Russert is on crutches—the result of a broken ankle. He takes his seat, spells out his name, and describes his job: host of Meet the Press and Washington bureau chief for NBC News.

Fitzgerald launches into questions about a July 2003 phone call Russert received from Scooter Libby. Russert tells us that Libby called him to complain about something Chris Matthews said on his TV show, Hardball. Libby was "agitated," and his voice was "very firm and direct," Russert recounts.

"What the hell's going on with Hardball?" he asked Russert. "Damn it, I'm tired of hearing my name over and over again."

Fitzgerald asks if Russert had ever before, or since, received a call like that from a vice president's chief of staff. Russert says he has not. The call was really just a "viewer complaint." Besides, there was nothing Russert could do about Hardball, since it wasn't his show. He suggested other NBC people that Libby could complain to. And that was the end of the conversation.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say that Chris Matthews was out hawking another book....Wait a minute, that's exactly what's going on!

Chris Matthews has written another book, is making the talk show rounds, and is trying to appeal to the left for sales before he crawls back to the right and starts sucking up again so that he can get interviews with them during the election season.

"They've finally been caught in their criminality," Matthews continued, although he did not specify the exact criminal behavior to which he referred. He then drew an obvious Bush-Nixon parallel by saying, “Spiro Agnew was not an American hero."

Matthews left the throng of Washington A-listers with a parting shot at Cheney: “God help us if we had Cheney during the Cuban missile crisis. We’d all be under a parking lot.”

Following his remarks, a few network insiders and party goers wondered what kind of effect Matthews' sharp criticism of the White House would have on Tuesday's Republican debate in Dearborn, Michigan, which Matthews co-moderates alongside CNBC's Maria Bartiromo.

"I find it hard to believe that Republican candidates will feel as if they're being given a fair shot at Tuesday's debate given the partisan pot-shots lobbed by Matthews this evening," said one attendee.

When reached, the White House declined to comment and NBC refused requests to release video of the event. The event included such NBC/MSNBC brass as NBC Senior Vice President Phil Griffin (the former "Hardball" executive producer called "Hardball" the "best show on cable television"), "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert, "Today" show executive producer Jim Bell, NBC News Specials Executive Producer Phil Alongi, "Meet the Press" Executive Producer Betsy Fischer, NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell, MSNBC Vice President Tammy Haddad, "Hardball" correspondent David Shuster and Vice President for MSNBC Prime-Time Programming Bill Wolff.

On a side note: Matthews was overheard discussing his Tuesday appearance on "The Daily Show," which featured a heated exchange with host Jon Stewart. According to one source, Matthews was steadfast in his belief that the debate left Stewart crestfallen, and Matthews victorious.

I like to think that venues such as this one on Jon Stewart, where Matthews can't control the conversation, is causing Matthews some introspection into just how responsible he's been for the mess that is the Bush-Cheney administration, by giving Republicans an easy ride these last six years. But then I realize that he said nothing of substance at his book party, and we have no way of knowing which criminality Matthews thinks the administration has been caught in.

Melanie Morgan, Living Proof of the Need for the Return of the Fairness Doctrine

Bubbleheaded, 'hit and run' artist Melanie Morgan

Keith Olbermann's pick for Worst Person in the World, August 15, 2007

Keith Olbermann's pick for Worst Person in the World, August 17, 2007

Hardball with Chris Matthews, Part 1, August 17, 2007

Hardball with Chris Matthews, Part 2, August 17, 2007

Unable to stay on point and debate an issue, Morgan (predictably) shifted to the rightwing talk radio personalities' modus operandi: Changing the subject with an ad hominem attack. Out of nowhere, she accused Chris Matthews of "having a gleam" in his eye and a "great time trying to make Dick Cheney look like a hypocrite." Irrelevant, but surprisingly, Chris Matthews fell for it. He allowed himself to be distracted by her taunt and got defensive. By the end of the segment, Matthews was justifying himself to Morgan with "I hate this war, it's left me very sad."

It was a truly pathetic display.

Women's Health Care Sliding Back To The Middle Ages

No matter what they call themselves, 'pro-lifers' are misogynists.

On Hardball with Chris Matthews:

On the same day as this MSNBC broadcast of Chris Matthews' Hardball, MSNBC reports:

In a survey published this year in The New England Journal of Medicine, 63 percent of doctors said it is acceptable to tell patients they have moral objections to treatments, and 18 percent felt no obligation to refer patients elsewhere.

Lori Boyer couldn't stop trembling as she sat on the examining table, hugging her hospital gown around her. Her mind was reeling. She'd been raped hours earlier by a man she knew — a man who had assured Boyer, 35, that he only wanted to hang out at his place and talk. Instead, he had thrown her onto his bed and assaulted her. "I'm done with you," he'd tonelessly told her afterward. Boyer had grabbed her clothes and dashed for her car in the freezing predawn darkness. Yet she'd had the clarity to drive straight to the nearest emergency room — Good Samaritan Hospital in Lebanon, Pennsylvania — to ask for a rape kit and talk to a sexual assault counselor. Bruised and in pain, she grimaced through the pelvic exam. Now, as Boyer watched Martin Gish, M.D., jot some final notes into her chart, she thought of something the rape counselor had mentioned earlier.

"I'll need the morning-after pill," she told him.

Dr. Gish looked up. He was a trim, middle-aged man with graying hair and, Boyer thought, an aloof manner. "No," Boyer says he replied abruptly. "I can't do that." He turned back to his writing.

Boyer stared in disbelief. No? She tried vainly to hold back tears as she reasoned with the doctor: She was midcycle, putting her in danger of getting pregnant. Emergency contraception is most effective within a short time frame, ideally 72 hours. If he wasn't willing to write an EC prescription, she'd be glad to see a different doctor. Dr. Gish simply shook his head. "It's against my religion," he said, according to Boyer. (When contacted, the doctor declined to comment for this article.)

Boyer left the emergency room empty-handed. "I was so vulnerable," she says. "I felt victimized all over again. First the rape, and then the doctor making me feel powerless." Later that day, her rape counselor found Boyer a physician who would prescribe her EC. But Boyer remained haunted by the ER doctor's refusal — so profoundly, she hasn't been to see a gynecologist in the two and a half years since. "I haven't gotten the nerve up to go, for fear of being judged again," she says.

Doctors refusing treatment
Even under less dire circumstances than Boyer's, it's not always easy talking to your doctor about sex. Whether you're asking about birth control, STDs or infertility, these discussions can be tinged with self-consciousness, even embarrassment. Now imagine those same conversations, but supercharged by the anxiety that your doctor might respond with moral condemnation — and actually refuse your requests.

That's exactly what's happening in medical offices and hospitals around the country: Catholic and conservative Christian health care providers are denying women a range of standard, legal medical care. Planned Parenthood M.D.s report patients coming to them because other gynecologists would not dole out birth control prescriptions or abortion referrals. Infertility clinics have turned away lesbians and unmarried women; anesthesiologists and obstetricians are refusing to do sterilizations; Catholic hospitals have delayed ending doomed pregnancies because abortions are only allowed to save the life of the mother. In a survey published this year in The New England Journal of Medicine, 63 percent of doctors said it is acceptable to tell patients they have moral objections to treatments, and 18 percent felt no obligation to refer patients elsewhere. And in a recent SELF.com poll, nearly 1 in 20 respondents said their doctors had refused to treat them for moral, ethical or religious reasons. "It's obscene," says Jamie D. Brooks, a former staff attorney for the National Health Law Program who continues to work on projects with the Los Angeles advocacy group. "Doctors swear an oath to serve their patients. But instead, they are allowing their religious beliefs to compromise patient care. And too often, the victims of this practice are women."

Compared with the highly publicized issue of pharmacists who refuse to dispense birth control and emergency contraception, physician refusals are a little-discussed topic. Patients denied treatment rarely complain — the situation tends to feel so humiliatingly personal. And when patients do make noise, the case is usually resolved quietly. "The whole situation was traumatizing and embarrassing, and I just wanted to put it behind me," Boyer says. She came forward only after a local newspaper reported an almost identical story: In July 2006, retail clerk Tara Harnish visited the same ER after being sexually assaulted by a stranger, was examined by the same Dr. Gish — and when her mother called Dr. Gish's office the next day to get EC for Harnish, she was refused. "Then I knew it wasn't just me, that this was a larger problem and it could happen to anybody," Boyer says.

Harnish, 21, was shocked by the way the doctor treated her. "He seemed more concerned with saving the (potential) pregnancy than he was with my health," she says. "He turned me away when I needed medical help. That's not what a doctor is supposed to do." Harnish was too shaken by her rape to pursue the matter; her mother called Harnish's gynecologist for a prescription. Then she called the newspaper. Despite the attention the story attracted, Dr. Gish continues to work at Good Samaritan Hospital. Spokesman Bill Carpenter will only say that "the issue has been resolved internally, and we're going to move forward."

In many cases, women don't even know a doctor is withholding treatment. Boyer and Harnish, for example, wouldn't have realized they'd been denied care if they'd been among the estimated one in three women who don't know about EC. In the New England Journal of Medicine survey, 8 percent of physicians said they felt no obligation to present all options to their patients. "When you see a doctor, you presume you're getting all the information you need to make a decision," notes Jill Morrison, senior counsel for health and reproductive rights at the National Women's Law Center in Washington, D.C. "Especially in a crisis situation, like a rape, you often don't think to question your care. But unfortunately, now we can't even trust doctors to tell us what we need to know."

An ethical dilemma
To many doctors, however, the issue represents a genuine ethical dilemma. "The physician's number-one creed is 'First, do no harm,' " says Sandy Christiansen, M.D., an ob/gyn in Frederick, Maryland, who is active in the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, a 16,000-member group for health care professionals based in Bristol, Tennessee. "I know that life begins at conception, and that each person has inherent value. That includes the life of the unborn." Dr. Christiansen says she will not give abortion referrals, opposes EC and, while she has prescribed birth control, is reconsidering the morality of that position. "Doctors are people, too," she adds. "We have to be able to leave the hospital and live with ourselves. If you feel in your heart an action would cause harm to somebody — born or unborn — it's legitimate to decline to participate."

The American Medical Association in Chicago, the nation's largest physician group, effectively agrees with her; its policy allows a doctor to decline a procedure if it conflicts with her moral ideology. The law also favors medical professionals. In 1973, following Roe v. Wade, Congress passed the so-called Church Amendment, allowing federally funded health care providers to refuse to do abortions. In the years since, 46 states have adopted their own abortion refusal clauses — or, as proponents call them, conscience clauses — allowing doctors to opt out. Now many states have gone further. Sixteen legislatures have given doctors the right to refuse to perform sterilizations; eight states say doctors don't have to prescribe contraception. "This is about the rights of the individual, about our constitutional right to freedom of religion," says Frank Manion, an attorney with the American Center for Law and Justice, a legal group in Washington, D.C. Founded by minister Pat Robertson, the organization has represented health care providers and lobbied for laws that protect them. "We're not trying to deny anybody access to treatment," Manion adds. "We're saying, 'Don't make your choice my choice.' "

When Elizabeth Dotts walked into her new doctor's office for a gynecologic exam and checkup, she didn't realize she was treading into the front lines of a culture war. "I was just going for my annual visit, nothing out of the ordinary," says the 26-year-old YWCA grant coordinator. Dotts, who was single, had recently moved to Birmingham, Alabama, and was seeing an M.D. recommended by a coworker. The visit was unremarkable until she asked for a refill of her birth control prescription. That's when the doctor informed her that he was Catholic and the pills were against his religion.

"The look he gave me actually made me feel ashamed," Dotts says. "Like I had this wild and crazy sex life. Like he was trying to protect me from myself." Her bewilderment quickly turned to anger — "I thought, 'Wait, what in the world? Where am I?' " — especially when she remembered that her insurance covered only one annual gynecology checkup. Dotts, who'd majored in religion in college, got tough with the doctor.

"I'm glad for you that you're faithful," she told him. "But don't push it on me. I'm here for my treatment, and I expect you to give it to me." Five minutes of verbal sparring later, the doctor relented with a six-month prescription — but only after Dotts told him she had been put on the Pill to relieve menstrual cramping, not to prevent pregnancy. Dotts grabbed the prescription and left, resolving to find herself a new gynecologist. "Before, walking into a doctor's office, I assumed we were on the same side," she says. "I don't make that assumption now. I ask a million questions and advocate for myself."

Bills to protect patients
This tug-of-war between physicians and patients is playing out in state legislatures, where a handful of bills aim to protect women. A Pennsylvania proposal, for example, would compel ER doctors to provide rape victims with information about emergency contraception and to dispense it on request — a law already on the books in California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio and Washington. A federal version of the bill is under consideration by a House subcommittee.

But such efforts have been more than matched by those of conscience-clause activists. Since 2005, 27 states introduced bills to widen refusal clauses. Four states are considering granting carte blanche refusal rights — much like the law adopted by Mississippi in 2004, which allows any health care provider to refuse practically anything on moral grounds. "It's written so broadly, there's virtually no protection for patients," says Adam Sonfield, senior public policy associate for the Washington, D.C., office of the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-health research group. Sonfield notes that many refusal clauses do not require providers to warn women about restrictions on services or to refer them elsewhere. "You have to balance doctors' rights with their responsibilities to patients, employers and communities," he adds. "Doctors shouldn't be forced to provide services, but they can't just abandon patients."

In theory, the laws aren't aimed solely at women's health — a bill in New Jersey lists eye doctors and prosthetics technicians as examples of providers who'd be allowed to refuse care based on their beliefs. But Morrison warns women not to be fooled. "I ask you, what belief would keep someone from fitting a patient with a prosthetic limb?" she asks. "What they're really after is limiting access to women's health care. Reproductive health is seen as something other than regular health care" — not a straightforward matter of treating and healing, but something laden with morality — "and if you treat it that way, it becomes something providers can say yes or no to." Men, for the most part, escape such scrutiny: It's pretty hard to imagine someone being made to feel he's going straight to hell for choosing to take Viagra or get a vasectomy. And if women come to fear their doctors' judgments, a new set of problems can develop. "Then you have women who don't communicate with their doctors or avoid getting care," Morrison warns. "Any way you look at it, it's dangerous for women."

Complaint filed, but case closed
The stakes were high for Realtor Cheryl Bray when she visited a physician in Encinitas, California, two and a half years ago. Though she was there for a routine physical, the reason for the exam was anything but routine: Then a single 41-year-old, Bray had decided to adopt a baby in Mexico and needed to prove to authorities there that she was healthy. "I was under a tight deadline," Bray remembers; she had been matched with a birth mother who was less than two months from delivering. Bray had already passed a daunting number of tests — having her taxes certified, multiple background checks, home inspections by a social worker, psychological evaluations. When she showed up at the office of Fred Salley, M.D., a new doctor a friend had recommended, she was looking forward to crossing another task off her list. Instead, 10 minutes into the appointment, Dr. Salley asked, "So, your husband is in agreement with your decision to adopt?"

"I'm not married," Bray told him.

"You're not?" He calmly put down his pen. "Then I'm not comfortable continuing this exam."

Bray says she tried to reason with Dr. Salley but received only an offer for a referral at some future date. Dr. Salley disputes this, telling SELF that he offered to send Bray to another doctor in his group that day. "My decision to refer Ms. Bray was not because she was unmarried; rather, it was based on my moral belief that a child should have two parental units," he adds. "Such religious beliefs are a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States."

Bray sobbed in her parked car for another 45 minutes before she could collect herself for the drive home. "I had a lot of pent-up emotions," she remembers. "When you are going through an adoption, you have to prove that you are a fit parent at every stage. I really felt put through the ringer, and the doctor compounded that feeling."

Bray managed to get an appointment with another physician about a month later and was approved for the adoption two weeks before her daughter, Paolina, was born. But she remained furious enough that she filed a complaint against Dr. Salley with the Medical Board of California — and then was shocked when, in April 2006, the board closed the case without taking any action. When she complained to Dr. Salley's employer, a clinic official wrote back that "based on personally held conscience and moral principles" her doctor had been within his rights to refuse her as a patient. "Apparently," she says, "it's OK to discriminate against somebody, as long as it's for religious reasons."

Providers often prevail
It's true that several lawsuits have favored health providers who refuse services based on their principles. In a 2002 wrongful-termination case in Riverside County, California, for example, a born-again Christian nurse was fired for refusing to give out emergency contraception — but she was vindicated when the jury agreed that her rights had been violated, awarding her $19,000 in back pay and $28,000 for emotional distress. And in a recent case in San Diego, an appeals court ruled against 35-year-old Guadalupe Benitez. Hoping to start a family with her lesbian partner, Benitez received fertility treatments for nearly a year at North Coast Women's Care Medical Group in Encinitas. But when drugs and home inseminations failed, two doctors and a nurse all bowed out of doing an intrauterine insemination, saying their religion would not allow it.

Their reasoning is in dispute: Benitez has claimed both doctors told her they objected to her sexual orientation. Carlo Coppo, a lawyer for the doctors, says they refused because she was unmarried. Benitez, who went on to have three children with the help of another clinic, has appealed to the California Supreme Court and is awaiting its decision.

Her attorney, Jennifer C. Pizer of Lambda Legal in Los Angeles, says she's heard from numerous lesbians denied access to fertility treatments. "Reproductive medicine has given human beings choices that didn't exist in previous generations, but the rules about how we exercise those choices should be the same for all groups of people," she argues. Allowing doctors to refer a patient to someone else, she adds, is the equivalent of a restaurant telling a black person, "Go next door. We don't serve your kind here."

In the end, the women in all of the incidents above were able to get the treatment they wanted, even if they had to go elsewhere. So one could see doctor refusals as a mere inconvenience. "In 99.9 percent of these cases, the patients walk away with what they came for, and everyone's satisfied," Manion asserts. "I know there's the horror story of the lonely person in the middle of nowhere who meets one of my clients. But those cases are so rare." Access to reproductive health care, however, is already a challenge in some areas. "Out here, it's a very real issue," says Stacey Anderson of Planned Parenthood of Montana in Helena. "We have some really gigantic counties where if you're refused a service by a primary care physician or a gynecologist, you might have to drive two, three hours to find another."

Moreover, you don't need to be in a rural area to have limited access, points out attorney Brooks; all you need to be is poor. "Lower-income people who are refused health care are trapped," Brooks says. "They can't pay out of pocket for these services. And they may not have transportation to go elsewhere. So they really don't have options."

What's best for the patient
If there's one thing both sides can agree on, it's this: In an emergency, doctors need to put aside personal beliefs to do what's best for the patient. But in a world guided by religious directives, even this can be a slippery proposition.

Ob/gyn Wayne Goldner, M.D., learned this lesson a few years back when a patient named Kathleen Hutchins came to his office in Manchester, New Hampshire. She was only 14 weeks pregnant, but her water had broken. Dr. Goldner delivered the bad news: Because there wasn't enough amniotic fluid left and it was too early for the fetus to survive on its own, the pregnancy was hopeless. Hutchins would likely miscarry in a matter of weeks. But in the meanwhile, she stood at risk for serious infection, which could lead to infertility or death. Dr. Goldner says his devastated patient chose to get an abortion at local Elliot Hospital. But there was a problem. Elliot had recently merged with nearby Catholic Medical Center — and as a result, the hospital forbade abortions.

"I was told I could not admit her unless there was a risk to her life," Dr. Goldner remembers. "They said, 'Why don't you wait until she has an infection or she gets a fever?' They were asking me to do something other than the standard of care. They wanted me to put her health in jeopardy." He tried admitting Hutchins elsewhere, only to discover that the nearest abortion provider was nearly 80 miles away in Lebanon, New Hampshire — and that she had no car. Ultimately, Dr. Goldner paid a taxi to drive her the hour and a half to the procedure. (The hospital merger has since dissolved, and Elliot is secular once again.)

"Unfortunately, her story is the tip of the iceberg," Dr. Goldner says. Since the early 1990s, hospitals have been steadily consolidating operations to save money; so many secular community hospitals have been bought up that, today, nearly one in five hospital beds is in a religiously owned institution, according to the nonprofit group MergerWatch in New York City.

What is standard of care?
Every Catholic hospital is bound by the ethical directives of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which forbid abortion and sterilization (unless they are lifesaving), in vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, some prenatal genetic testing, all artificial forms of birth control and the use of condoms for HIV prevention. Baptist and Seventh Day Adventist hospitals may also restrict abortions. Which means that if your local hospital has been taken over — or if you're ever rushed to the nearest hospital in an emergency — you could be in for a surprise at the services you can't get.

You wouldn't necessarily know a hospital's affiliation upon your arrival. "The name of the hospital may not change after a merger, even if its philosophy has," Morrison notes. "The community is often in the dark that changes have taken place at all." The burden to know falls entirely on the patient, who can either search the Catholic Health Association's directory of member hospitals (at CHAUSA.org) or ask her doctor outright. Either way, says Morrison, "it requires you to be an extremely educated consumer."

Family physician Debra Stulberg, M.D., was completing her residency in 2004 when West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, Illinois, was acquired by the large Catholic system Resurrection Health Care. "They assured us that patient care would be unaffected," Dr. Stulberg says. "But then I got to see the reality." The doctor was struck by the hoops women had to jump through to get basic care. "One of my patients was a mother of four who had wanted a tubal ligation at delivery but was turned down," she says. "When I saw her not long afterward, she was pregnant with unwanted twins."

And in emergency scenarios, Dr. Stulberg says, the newly merged hospital did not offer standard-of-care treatments. In one case that made the local paper, a patient came in with an ectopic pregnancy: an embryo had implanted in her fallopian tube. Such an embryo has zero chance of survival and is a serious threat to the mother, as its growth can rupture the tube. The more invasive way to treat an ectopic is to surgically remove the tube. An alternative, generally less risky way is to administer methotrexate, a drug also used for cancer. It dissolves the pregnancy but spares the tube, preserving the women's fertility. "The doctor thought the noninvasive treatment was best," Dr. Stulberg recounts. But Catholic directives specify that even in an ectopic pregnancy, doctors cannot perform "a direct abortion" — which, the on-call ob/gyn reasoned, would nix the drug option. (Surgery, on the other hand, could be considered a lifesaving measure that indirectly kills the embryo, and may be permitted.) The doctor didn't wait to take it up with the hospital's ethical committee; she told the patient to check out and head to another ER. (Citing patient confidentiality, West Suburban declined to comment, confirming only that as a Catholic hospital, it adheres to religious directives "in every instance.")

Turns out, the definition of emergency depends on whom you ask. Dr. Christiansen, the pro-life ob/gyn, says she would not object to either method of ending an ectopic pregnancy. "I do feel that the one indication for abortion is to save the mother's life — that's clear in my mind," she says. "But the reality is, the vast majority of abortions are elective. There are very, very few instances where the mother's life is truly in jeopardy." She can recall having seen only one such situation: During Dr. Christiansen's residency, a patient in the second trimester of pregnancy had a detached placenta; the attending physician performed an abortion to save the woman from bleeding to death. "That was a legitimate situation," Dr. Christiansen says. But in general, "it's a pure judgment call. A doctor would have to be in the situation and decide whether it constitutes a life-threatening emergency or not."

Raise your hand if you'd like to be the test case.

The state of doctor refusals
Physicians anywhere can deny you care. But some states back up M.D.s with specific laws allowing them to do so, says Elizabeth Nash, public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute research group. Whose side is your state on?

States that allow doctors to refuse care:

Contraception
AR, CO, FL, IL, ME, MS, TN, WA
Abortion
Every state has a law except AL, NH, VT, WV.
Sterilization
AR, GA, ID, IL, KS, KY, MD, MA, MS, MT, NJ, PA, RI, WA, WV, WI

States that allow hospitals to refuse care:

Contraception
All hospitals
IL, MS, WA
Private hospitals only
AR, CO, ME, MA, NJ, TN

Abortion
All hospitals
AZ, AR, CO, DE, FL, GA, HI, ID, KS, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MS, MO, NE, NM, NC, ND, OH, SD, TN, VA, WA, WI
Private hospitals only
AK, IL, IN, IA, MN, MT, NV, NJ, OK, OR, PA, SC, TX, UT, WY
Religious hospitals only
CA

Sterilization
All hospitals
AR, GA, ID, IL, KS, MD, MS, NM, WA, WV, WI
Private hospitals only
MA, MT, NJ, PA

States considering new laws
Lawmakers in Missouri, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Vermont are considering sweeping bills that would allow medical professionals to refuse to provide any service they object to.

I Want To See The Documents From the 80s, Under Reagan & Casey

CIA to Release Documents on Decades-Old Misdeeds

This sure gets my antennae up and vibrating.

On 'Take Out The Trash'-Friday, CIA director General Michael V. Hayden (former head of the NSA who carried out Bush's warrantless wiretapping and who knows how many other secret surveillance programs against Americans and democracy) announced that, not today, but next week, the most secretive administration in our nation's history is directing the CIA to hold a document dump from the agency's deepest, darkest archive vaults.

What is Bush-Cheney up to?

Is it something that they've already done, or is this something they hope will distract our attention next week when the documents hit the fan? Or in their ongoing war with the CIA, is the CIA about to clue us in on more Bush-Cheney 'misdeeds,' about which Bush-Cheney hopes to defend as "nothing much compared to the Kennedy administration"?

The NYTimes reports:

The Central Intelligence Agency will make public next week a collection of long-secret documents compiled in 1974 that detail domestic spying, assassination plots and other C.I.A. misdeeds in the 1960s and early 1970s, the agency’s director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, said yesterday.

In an address to a group of historians who have long pressed for greater disclosure of C.I.A. archives, General Hayden described the documents, known as the “family jewels,” as “a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency.” He also directed the release of 11,000 pages of cold-war documents on the Soviet Union and China, which were handed out on compact discs at the meeting, in Chantilly, Va.

In a defense of openness unusual in an administration that has vigorously defended government secrecy, General Hayden said that when government withholds information, myth and misinformation often “fill the vacuum like a gas.” He noted a European Parliament report of 1,245 secret C.I.A. flights over Europe, a number interpreted in some news articles as the number of cases of “extraordinary rendition,” in which terrorism suspects were flown to prison in other countries.

In fact, General Hayden said, the agency has detained fewer than 100 people in its secret overseas detention program since the 2001 terrorist attacks. He said the questioning of those detainees, which in some cases has involved harsh physical treatment, had produced valuable information, contributing to more than 8,000 intelligence reports.

“C.I.A. recognizes the very real benefits that flow from greater public understanding of our work,” General Hayden said at yesterday’s meeting, a gathering of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. But he also complained about “an instinct among some in the media today to take a few pieces of information, which may or may not be accurate, and run with them to the darkest corner of the room.”

Though the 1974 documents will not be released until Monday at the earliest, a research group in Washington posted related documents on the Web yesterday, including a 1975 Justice Department summary of domestic break-ins and wiretaps by the C.I.A. that may have violated American law. Also included were transcripts of three conversations in which President Gerald R. Ford was informed by aides of those activities by the agency.

In one of the conversations, Henry A. Kissinger, then serving as both secretary of state and national security adviser, denounced the efforts of William E. Colby, director of central intelligence, to push an aggressive investigation of the agency’s past transgressions.

Mr. Kissinger said the accusations then appearing daily about agency misconduct were “worse than in the days of McCarthy,” and expressed concern that they would intimidate C.I.A. officers, so that “you’ll end up with an agency that does only reporting and not operations.”

“What Colby has done is a disgrace,” Mr. Kissinger said, according to the transcript, posted along with the others by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (nsarchive.org).

“Should we suspend him?” Mr. Ford asked.

“No,” Mr. Kissinger replied, “but after the investigation is over you could move him and put in someone of towering integrity.”

A year later, Mr. Ford replaced Mr. Colby as director with George Bush.

In the 33 years since the nearly 700 pages of “family jewel” documents were compiled at the orders of Mr. Colby’s predecessor, James R. Schlesinger, much of their content has become known through leaks, testimony or partial disclosure. Most notably, the documents were described by government officials to Seymour M. Hersh, who reported on them in articles in The New York Times beginning on Dec. 22, 1974. The first article described “a massive, illegal domestic intelligence operation” that had produced C.I.A. files on some 10,000 Americans.

But the documents’ release next week may offer new details of a period of aggressive, and sometimes illegal, C.I.A. activities, directed particularly at American journalists who published leaked government secrets and activists who opposed the Vietnam War. The release also appears to signify a shift in attitude at the agency in the year that it has been led by General Hayden, a history buff who holds two degrees in the field from Duquesne University, where he wrote a thesis on the Marshall Plan.

Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, which obtains and publishes collections of once-secret government records, said the step announced yesterday might be the most important since at least 1998, when George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, reversed a decision to release information on cold-war covert actions. “Applause is due,” Mr. Blanton said.

But Mr. Blanton took issue with General Hayden’s assurance that the current C.I.A. was utterly different from the pre-1975 institution. “There are uncanny parallels,” he said, “between events today and the stories in the family jewels about warrantless wiretapping and concern about violation of the kidnapping laws.”

The six-page 1975 Justice Department summary, of C.I.A. actions that some officers of the agency had reported as possible illegalities, included the 1963 wiretapping of two newspaper columnists, Robert Allen and Paul Scott, who had written a column including “certain national security information.”

The document said those wiretaps had been approved after “discussions” with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara. A C.I.A. report described them as “very productive,” picking up calls of 12 senators and 6 members of the House, among others.

On Hardball with Chris Matthews, Matthews talks about the upcoming CIA document dump with former CIA operative Bob Baer, former chief of CIA operations in Europe Tyler Drumheller, and National Security Archive director Thomas Blanton:

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Later in the program, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., joined Chris Matthews and had this to say about reports that the CIA secrets' dump will include documentation of his father's involvement in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro:

Conservatives Crawl Out To Host 'Pity Parties' For Scooter Libby

If it works, and conventional wisdom says it will (Libby will get a presidential pardon), what's the secret to Libby's (and Bush's, Cheney's and GOPer's) success?


The secret is that they clean up well.

The greatest con jobs start with a good haircut and a well-tailored suit. If the political con artist can get somebody else who cleans up just as well to vouch for him (even if both are strangers to the victim), they are well over the biggest hurdle to making a sale. And if one or both of the politicians con artists has an ichthus (fish symbol) on the back of his car (or slips a shibboleth into the sales pitch), they've got a supporter for life, no matter what they do.

This is why Bush still has an approval rating in the high 20s-low 30s, and why Republicans still get votes and elected: Their supporters only look at the surface, listen to the carefully crafted rhetoric and presume meanings not intended. Supporters hear an endorsement by someone in the media and believe that if someone famous, popular in their "culture," a Pat Buchanan (or David Gergen or Ed Rogers or Fred Barnes or Mary Matalin or any other face that has been "media-tested") says "he's really a good guy," "a devoted public servant," a brush with the law must be some mistake. Or "political" (by "them damned liberals") because "he would never do anything wrong or illegal," "knowingly." Even if he's caught dead to rights.

Albert Brooks never said truer words:

It's human nature, to some extent, to think that criminals have to look, well, like criminals.

Whenever some heinous crime has been committed and the police make an arrest (like this latest case in Michigan where Stephen Grant has been arrested for strangling his wife and dismembering her body), the media shoves a microphone into the faces of the perpetrators' neighbors, friends and family. Their comments are remarkably similar, with them invariably being shocked by the arrest because the guy was "so nice," "quiet," "friendly and polite," "helpful" - Grant's sister said he was, "the most docile person I saw my whole life."

We heard the jury's spokesman, Denis Collins, practically apologize for convicting Libby. There was a "tremendous amount of sympathy" for Libby, and some believed he was being made a "fall guy" by his White House superiors:

Some jurors wondered why Libby was being singled out, Collins said. Other Bush administration officials had disclosed CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity to reporters as part of an effort to discredit her husband, Joseph Wilson, and his criticism of the case for war in Iraq. Yet those other officials never faced criminal charges.

"It was said a number of times: What are we doing with this guy? Where's [White House political aide Karl] Rove, where are these other guys?" Libby, Collins said, "was the fall guy."

Another one of the jurors was on Hardball today, and she said flat out that she wouldn't want to see Libby go to prison, because "he seems like such a nice man." She was the juror that cried when the verdict was read, because she felt bad for Libby, and his wife. [Kate O'Beirne appeared on the program, too, making a galling case for a presidential pardon.]

I'm reminded of something Paula Poundstone said when Dick Cheney shot his friend, Harry Whittington, in the face while they were quail hunting:

What is it about these people, Republicans, that the victims are moved to apologize to them?

At Townhall.com, Pat Buchanan writes:

The conviction of Scooter Libby on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice is first of all a human tragedy.

A man who served his country at the highest level, who sat in every morning at the senior staff meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, has been dishonored and disgraced, and will be disbarred. Unless his conviction is overturned, or he is pardoned, Libby will go to prison. His life will end with an obituary that declares in its headline and lead paragraph that he was a convicted Dick Cheney aide.

"A human tragedy"?

Is he kidding with this hyperbole?

Pat Buchanan and all of the Republicans who fanned out across the media today to spin the Libby convictions as "no big deal," and deserving of a pardon, need to be reminded that the only reason that Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, Dan Bartlett, Ari Fleischer, Mary Matalin, Karen Hughes, Bob Novak, Richard Armitage, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush aren't facing criminal charges of treason and conspiracy to commit treason is because Scooter Libby obstructed Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation. THAT'S why Libby was prosecuted, and a jury determined that Libby was guilty of both the perjury and the obstruction of justice.

If Libby is pardoned, if he doesn't get some serious prison time, we'll need to stop pretending that the U.S. is a nation of laws, or that we even bother to attempt equal justice under the law. We have it completely backwards in this country - if anybody shouldn't be eligible for a presidential pardon, it should be those at the highest echelons of government. They're the role models.

If Libby is pardoned, we might as well hang the democracy up and anoint Bush-Cheney, Royal for life, because if there aren't serious penalties leveled against Libby, there will be nothing preventing a President from breaking the law and subverting the Constitution.

Speaking of the Constitution, I'm not a great proponent of amending it, but I could get behind an amendment that would prohibit a President from pardoning anyone in his or her administration for actions performed in the service of the President. Or anyone outside of the administration who committed a crime that benefitted the President or his/her political party.

Hold Onto The Top of Your Head . . . .

. . . . As Kate O'Beirne lays out the Conservatives' case for a presidential pardon for Scooter Libby on Hardball.

It's not only enough to make your head spin, it might actually explode.

To Chris Matthews' credit, he was more proactive in challenging O'Beirne's fantasies of this case and the laws governing it, than I've ever seen him do with her. Matthews has plenty of "making it up to the American people" to do, but today was a worthwhile effort. However, I'm still waiting for the day when, in the spirit of full disclosure, Matthews informs his audience of O'Beirne's husband's role in the disaster that is the war in Iraq. Kate O'Beirne has a direct and significant interest in making sure that this story remains buried.

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Mary Matalin: "It's Not Russert Who Hates Chris Matthews . . . . It's ME Who Hates Matthews"

If Patrick Fitzgerald is on the up-and-up, he'd put this witch on the stand under oath.

And Dick Cheney, too.

Cheney's mouthpiece Mary Matalin is still spreading the lie that Valerie Plame wasn't a covered CIA agent. [See transcript of Patrick Fitzgerald's press conference of 10/28/05, "...she was a CIA officer from January 1st, 2002, forward. I will confirm that her association with the CIA was classified at that time through July 2003...]

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After Matalin hung up, Imus spoke with Kelly O'Donnell of MSNBC News about Scooter Libby's trial:

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Matalin was *vexed* about what she heard. She called back into the show:

UPDATE:

Howard Fineman, you'll pardon the expression, weighs in:

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Matalin's style (dogged determination in demanding to have the last word stand as the position of record, no matter how false) is the formula for the Bush-Cheney offensive in getting their agenda realized.

Why wasn't Cheney questioned under oath? Why isn't he being called as a witness for the prosecution?

This case has all of the appearance of a dog-and-pony show run by a prosecutor who cast with his net too narrowly. For whatever reason.

Everyone involved will walk or be pardoned without the American people ever knowing the full extent of the conspiracy to commit this nation to a drastic shift in foreign and military policy, and chronic state of war.

John Edwards on Hardball

John Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, with Chris Matthews on Hardball College Tour:

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Transcript:

CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST: Hi. I‘m Chris Matthews, live from the southern part of heaven, the University of North Carolina, home of the Tarheels here in Chapel Hill with the HARDBALL College Tour. Our guest tonight, North Carolina senator and 2004 Democratic nominee for vice president, John Edwards.

MATTHEWS: Well, I‘ve been a Tarheel born and a Tarheel bred and when I‘m dead, I‘ll be a Tarheel dead. Is that tough enough? Is this tough state or what?

JOHN EDWARDS (D), FMR. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We‘re tough in North Carolina.

MATTHEWS: This is the greatest place. I went to grad school here, Senator, for one year. It‘s the southern part of heaven. It‘s as great as it ever was. It was the greatest comeback. I‘ve been sick for two weeks. I‘ll tell you more about that. It‘s so great to be back and to be back in heaven here. It‘s the best place.

J. EDWARDS: Thank you. Glad to have you back. Welcome back.

MATTHEWS: Thank you. Thank you, Senator.

Let me talk—but we‘re going to have a tough—this is HARDBALL, by the way, I‘m not here to be...

J. EDWARDS: I understand that.

MATTHEWS: This is...

J. EDWARDS: You may not remember this. I‘ve done this a time or two with you.

MATTHEWS: This isn‘t “Success” magazine here, you know.

J. EDWARDS: I understand.

MATTHEWS: Not that anybody has ever heard of “Success” magazine anymore.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about this thing today. The president of the United States put out the word that after all the work that went into the Iraq Study Commission, he‘s not going to have a change or an alteration in policy until come next year, sometime early next year. He‘s put it off again.

Our people just figured out—the American people ought to know this

we‘ve lost 34 men since the Baker Commission came out with its report.

What do you think of this foot dragging? What do you think of this war?

J. EDWARDS: I think the war is a mess. The Iraq Study Group report makes that very clear. It‘s a very sobering indictment of what‘s happening in Iraq right now, and the desperate need to change policy.

And it‘s amazing to me and completely unacceptable that the president of the United States, after having led us there and help create this mess along with the help of others, is not taking responsibility in changing course.

MATTHEWS: What do you make of the job we‘ve got now? The Sunnis—

57 people were killed today in Baghdad—you read about it.

J. EDWARDS: Yes.

MATTHEWS: They were killed by a Sunni suicide bomber. We could‘ve been there with 10 million troops, that guy would have done that.

J. EDWARDS: Absolutely.

MATTHEWS: That‘s what they do. If somebody had come to this country in the middle of our lousy Civil War that we went through here, if some Iraqi had shown up with a bunch of people and said we are going to referee the American Civil War, I don‘t know what—I guess we all would have killed them.

But the question is, what are we doing trying to referee a civil war?

J. EDWARDS: Well, that‘s exactly what we‘re doing right now, and the one thing that the Study Group report makes clear which should have been clear a very long time ago is the fighting between Sunni and Shia, the sectarian violence that‘s going on in Iraq, the tribal wars that have gone on there for centuries, the idea that we can fix this with a military intervention is absolute nonsense and we should have known that from the very beginning.

The only solution is a political solution which is—in reconciliation, which is very, very difficult now.

MATTHEWS: Well, the “USA Today” poll came out today—I‘m sure you saw it on the cover of “USA Today,” a Gallup poll—one if five Americans -- this is how bad we are right now—trust the president of the United States, George W. Bush, to do the right thing in Iraq. Right now, one in five. Are you one of them? Do you trust him?

J. EDWARDS: I am—I am—I do not trust him. I‘m not one of the one in five. But I have to say...

(APPLAUSE)

J. EDWARDS: I think that skepticism and cynicism is well-deserved. I think the president has shown a complete inability to change, a complete incompetence in the management of the war in Iraq. And when it‘s clear that things aren‘t going well and that there‘s a huge civil war going on in Iraq and all this sectarian violence is going on, he has, until very recently, continued to stay the course.

And now he tells us it‘s going to be January before he takes any different course? It‘s just not acceptable. It‘s not leadership. That‘s not what America needs.

MATTHEWS: A scary thing came out the other day. Talabani, the president of Iraq, said—and he‘s usually one of our best buddies over there.

J. EDWARDS: Yes, he is. He is.

MATTHEWS: He‘s a Kurd. He likes us, like most Kurds do. He said we are building an Iraqi army which is packed with Shia militia people, all part of it. It‘s like picking up a police force with bad guys off the street. We picked the wrong people.

And then he said if you put American soldiers on top of these guys, embed them with these guys, it will be even worse. You‘ll have Americans joining in militia actions—you know, death squads.

J. EDWARDS: Well, it‘s part of the entire problem that we have in Iraq. The allegiance is to Shia, Sunni, Kurd. The allegiance is to the tribe. The allegiance is not to Iraq and to a national government and that‘s what we are seeing every single day with the Sunni insurgents, with the Shia militia and with the Kurds, who I think, ultimately, would like to see themselves be independent.

MATTHEWS: How many more months of this would you support if you were president now? I know it‘s—you haven‘t announced yet, formally, but with two more years of this administration, should we spend the whole next two years grinding this thing down to its inevitable conclusion and have a couple thousand more American guys killed, another 100,000 Iraqis?

J. EDWARDS: Well, we‘ve got to change and we ought to change dramatically. I mean, I have been saying that for a year or more, that we ought to have a significant drawdown of American presence there to send the signal that we are not going to be there forever and we‘re not there for oil. The president of the United States needs to say that very directly, because the rest of the world does not believe it. They don‘t believe it.

MATTHEWS: He‘s saying the opposite. He‘s talking about permanent bases over there.

J. EDWARDS: That‘s right, and he‘s wrong about that. We have to say the opposite, which is what the Baker Study Group said, we‘re not going to have permanent bases in Iraq and we‘ve got to start pulling our troops out.

MATTHEWS: We‘ve got 140,000 people over there now. How many would you withdraw fairly quickly?

J. EDWARDS: Forty to fifty thousand.

MATTHEWS: And then what would be the rest of the deployment. What would be the role?

J. EDWARDS: Then the responsibility is to do everything we can. I do think the embedding is a good idea, to do as much as we can to get the Iraqis trained. The danger, of course, is when you—the very reasons you just described—when you embed American soldiers into these Iraqi forces, they are extraordinarily at risk. They‘re already at risk and that‘s going to increase the risk for them.

MATTHEWS: Well, yes, but...

J. EDWARDS: But...

MATTHEWS: ... what happens if we reduce our complement of troops, as you recommend, and we‘re in a weakened deployment over there and a bunch of these guys, these militias, the Shia militiamen, grab a couple of our guys because they‘re out there all alone in some God awful unit made up of militia people?

They‘re grabbed, they‘re captive, they‘re torturing them, and you‘re president of the United States, what do you do then? We can‘t protect our own troops if we let them scatter.

MATTHEWS: But all of this, Chris, is dependent on—anything we do militarily should be dependent on the Iraqis actually taking serious steps toward reconciliation.

MATTHEWS: Would you risk the life of an American soldier in some Iraqi unit, let him under some Iraqi officer out in the middle of nowhere where they can pull the guy out of the unit and torture him to death?

J. EDWARDS: I would never put him under the control of an Iraqi officer. Absolutely not.

MATTHEWS: So you‘re talking about American soldiers embedded in units that are directed by American forces?

J. EDWARDS: And we—we, as Baker said and the Study Group said in their report, we need to have people in these groups in order to be able to get them trained as best we can. Now, having said all that, if we don‘t see substantial movement on the political front, we should not continue to support what‘s happening there.

MATTHEWS: What‘s the lesson over there? Did we—did we—I know you have been very direct just saying it, you, among a lot of senators in both parties supporting this war was a mistake.

(CROSSTALK)

J. EDWARDS: I said I was wrong. I said I was wrong.

MATTHEWS: You said something very interesting in that article. In the lead, you said there was a political agenda here. It wasn‘t just WMD. What was that? What was the president up to here with going to war in Iraq?

J. EDWARDS: It‘s impossible for me to know. I think he had an agenda against Saddam Hussein from the moment he stepped into office.

MATTHEWS: Was it a daddy thing?

J. EDWARDS: It could be. I think—I can‘t get inside his mind, but it‘s possible.

MATTHEWS: He never told us that.

J. EDWARDS: No, of course he didn‘t tell us. No, he said this was all about the war on terrorism, central to the war on terrorism. He took a place that was not central to the war on terrorism and made it central to the war on terrorism.

MATTHEWS: You‘re a student of American life. You‘re very in active in politics, very successful. Do you think that it‘s scary that a president of the United States of limited ability was able to take this country and create a firestorm of almost messianic nuttiness about the fact of the French are no good, we‘re going to have freedom fries. The Dixie Chicks are no good. He created a national attitude of you have to be for me, or you‘re bad. Did that scare you a little?

J. EDWARDS: I think the lesson is there‘s a depth, a maturity, an experience, the ability to exercise good judgment that‘s required of the president of the United States that ought to be on the forefront of any decision that a voter makes in 2008.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: I‘ll come back and bet you on yourself, buddy, when we get back.

J. EDWARDS: Absolutely.

MATTHEWS: Let me ask the audience, how many people here believe that the United States would be better off, after all the interesting points made here, to just leave, get out of Iraq?

(APPLAUSE)

MATTHEWS: How many say we should keep a large deployment of troops over there through the next two years?

OK, we‘re going to come right back and talk to John Edwards, the senator from this state who wants to run for president, I‘m told, and is up against some very big people like Barack Obama—did I say that right—and Hillary Rodham Clinton, although now it‘s Hillary Clinton. Anyway, we‘ll be back to talk about how he takes on the big boys. He‘s doing number two in the polls right now.

You‘re watching the HARDBALL college tour live in Chapel Hill.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTHEWS: Look, you were mentioning in the first block about the president and the fact that he‘s had a hard time, he‘s gotten stuck in Iraq. And a lot of people believe—I‘m one of them—that he didn‘t prepare himself for the office well enough, he didn‘t have an instinct for foreign affairs, even a curiosity.

So I‘m going to be a little tough with you right now. OK? You ready?

J. EDWARDS: You mean, unlike usual?

MATTHEWS: Unlike usual.

When the president was running, George W. Bush, he didn‘t have any foreign affairs background and a Boston reporter named Mandy Heller (ph) asked him to name the head of government of four countries. And they were somewhat obscure countries: South Korea, Chechnya, Pakistan—I forget the other one. And he only got one right.

And that‘s what I got right at the time, too because I was—I mean, guessing that the head of South Korea‘s name is Lee is probably a pretty good bet, which is like Smith in England, you know.

So I‘m going to ask you some easy ones, I think. But they may be hard. And if you want to pass on them, you can do that.

Who‘s the prime minister of Canada?

J. EDWARDS: The prime minister of Canada is Harper, I believe.

MATTHEWS: Very good.

Who‘s the president of Mexico?

J. EDWARDS: He‘s the new president, he‘s Calderon.

MATTHEWS: Great. Great. And who is the...

J. EDWARDS: This is not—this is ridiculous.

But go ahead.

MATTHEWS: No, no, no. It‘s not ridiculous. Who‘s the president of South Africa?

J. EDWARDS: I don‘t know the answer to that.

MATTHEWS: OK.

Who‘s the president of Iraq? The president?

J. EDWARDS: The president is Talabani, who I met before he became president, as a matter of fact.

MATTHEWS: The president of South Africa is Thabo Mbeki.

J. EDWARDS: There we go.

MATTHEWS: OK. Let‘s see. The chancellor of Germany?

J. EDWARDS: The chancellor of Germany is—I just met with her—

Merkel.

MATTHEWS: Who don‘t you know here?

J. EDWARDS: Keep going.

CROWD: (APPLAUSE)

MATTHEWS: Let‘s try—really very obscure? Italy.

J. EDWARDS: Italy is...

MATTHEWS: Was Berlusconi.

J. EDWARDS: ... Prodi—Pradi (ph). I‘m not sure I can say it right.

MATTHEWS: Is that right?

CROWD: Yes.

J. EDWARDS: They‘re going to say yes no matter what.

MATTHEWS: I‘m going to go back in my box because Harper is pretty obscure. What‘s his first name?

J. EDWARDS: I don‘t know.

MATTHEWS: Steven Harper.

What party is he?

J. EDWARDS: Don‘t know that, either.

MATTHEWS: He‘s Tories, conservative.

What about Calderon? You think he‘s—he‘s a conservative?

J. EDWARDS: Calderon is a conservative.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: ... despite all this anti-American feeling in the world, and yet, it‘s not about ideology. A lot of these countries are electing relatively conservative leaders, Germany, Canada...

J. EDWARDS: They‘re more conservative.

MATTHEWS: ... Mexico. And why do you think we‘re still hated around the world?

J. EDWARDS: Why do I think America‘s still hated?

MATTHEWS: Yes. We are.

J. EDWARDS: Because I think that over the last six years, the Bush administration has shown a fundamental misunderstanding of what it takes to lead. I think to lead you have to have more than power. You need power.

MATTHEWS: right.

J. EDWARDS: You need to be strong militarily, economically, et cetera.

But I think you also have to show that you have the moral authority to lead. Countries have to naturally want to come to you. In order for that to be true, you have to sometimes act in things that are outside your own strategic self-interest, things like the genocide in Sudan.

MATTHEWS: You—when President Bush ran for office, he said something that grabbed me. He said, I think we need to be a little more humble in our foreign policy. Do you think 9/11, as horrible as it was, screwed up our value system about humility in the world, whether we‘re the boss of the world?

J. EDWARDS: No. I think George Bush screwed up our value system.

CROWD: (APPLAUSE)

MATTHEWS: You think—I was asking the audience earlier what‘s the biggest weakness—see, every presidential election seems to be about solving a current problem.

J. EDWARDS: Yes.

MATTHEWS: With Ike he was the clean—he cleaned up after Truman.

Kennedy was the young guy coming in. Reagan‘s strength.

This time around, what is it—what is the ingredient people are looking for in the new leader that‘s missing clearly now to most people?

What‘s the key, missing factor that they‘re looking for in a president?

J. EDWARDS: Optimism and the character and strength and vision for what the world and America needs from us.

MATTHEWS: So it‘s optimism?

J. EDWARDS: I think optimism is a component of it. I don‘t think it‘s the only thing. I think depth and maturity, which I spoke about earlier, are also critical.

MATTHEWS: Do you think...

J. EDWARDS: I think it‘s really important—if I can say one last thing about this.

MATTHEWS: Sure.

J. EDWARDS: I think it‘s very important for anybody who‘s considering running for president, instead of thinking about being a candidate to think about actually occupying the Oval Office, the difficult decisions that would need to be made, and how they would go about making those decisions and believing that they have the judgment to make them.

MATTHEWS: And you‘ve got it?

J. EDWARDS: That‘s something I‘m getting—that I‘m in the process of deciding right now.

MATTHEWS: But a preliminary decision would...

J. EDWARDS: Do I think I have the qualities to be president? Yes, I do. I think the question is—that‘s not the question, though. The question for me personally, is whether this—is this the best place for me to serve? Because I want to spend the rest of my life serving, and the question is, is the best place to do it?

MATTHEWS: So you think there are a number of people that are qualified to be president?

J. EDWARDS: Qualified on paper, yes.

MATTHEWS: And instinct and values?

J. EDWARDS: That remains to be seen. I think it‘s not—I think you have to, particularly if you haven‘t been through this in a national campaign before, I think that there‘s some very good people who are considering running. I personally think it would be good for us if they all ran so that we have as many good choices as we can have.

MATTHEWS: But you‘ve been to the Super Bowl before, unlike Obama and unlike Hillary. So you‘ve got that edge on them.

J. EDWARDS: Well, I don‘t know if it‘s an edge. But I think I understand.

MATTHEWS: But you said running before gives you an advantage.

J. EDWARDS: No, you said that, I didn‘t say that. I said running before makes you focus on something different. Instead of focusing on how crowds respond to you and what everybody seems to love you. That‘s not the test for being president. The test for being president is are you the best person to occupy the Oval Office and be the leader of the free world? Because literally the future of the world is at stake here. This is not about popularity and excitement.

MATTHEWS: Yes, I know, the trouble is that some people say yes to that when they‘re wrong.

J. EDWARDS: That‘s true. But ultimately the candidates don‘t decide, the American people decide.

MATTHEWS: We‘ll be right back with John Edwards and the competition he‘s facing as he apparently runs for president. Elizabeth Edwards is going to be here with the HARDBALL College Tour from Chapel Hill.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

J. EDWARDS: So you have problems with not enough food, with the HIV/AIDS, with not enough medicine? Are there many orphans? Why so many orphans?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Rebel activities.

J. EDWARDS: What happens with the orphans? Who takes care of them?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: Well. We‘re back at Chapel Hill. We have a student with a question for John Edwards.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senator, I wanted to know what message you think it sends to a child from a low-income home to see so many candidates spending hundreds of millions of dollars on their campaign? Does he think he can run even though his family might not be in a high financial situation?

J. EDWARDS: The answer to your question, is it sends exactly the wrong message and it‘s one of the reasons that we need to solve this problem, not the only reason. We spend so much money on political campaigns and we raise money from lots of interest groups and a lot of people don‘t feel like they are participating in this democracy as a result. I think the answer to this is to publicly finance our campaigns.

MATTHEWS: Is McCain-Feingold a failure?

J. EDWARDS: Yes.

MATTHEWS: Thank you. That‘s making news.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi, senator. Two years ago, we heard about your idea of the two Americas and your ambition to bridge the two. Today, Senator Barack Obama has the audacity to hope for a better American dream for its citizens. Frankly, how is your vision of the American dream different from that of Barack Obama‘s? What separates between you two?

J. EDWARDS: Well, I don‘t know the extent to which our vision is different. I don‘t know enough about what he Senator Obama is saying. I think that when he talks about hope, hope is something that I myself talked about a great deal when I was running for president and for vice president, restoring hope. Hope is on the way with was one of the phrases that I used. So in terms of the substance of what he wants to do, I don‘t know whether he believes as I do that the most important responsibility of the next president is to restore America‘s leadership in the world, to address big moral issues in the world like global poverty, AIDS, genocide. And what we need to do here at home. I just honestly don‘t know enough about where he stands on those things, although I‘m sure if he runs for president, he‘ll tell us.

MATTHEWS: Do you think he has gotten too much hype, press hype? I mean, the press went nuts over him up in New Hampshire this weekend. Do you think that was overdone?

J. EDWARDS: No, I think it‘s—listen, he‘s an exciting, charismatic guy and I think he would add something to the race if he decided to run for president. And then the real test, as those of us who‘ve been through enough.

MATTHEWS: How do you break into that interesting bout that they‘re developing between Hillary and—give us another question for the senator. The slogan out there is “Don‘t tell mama, I‘m for Obama.”

J. EDWARDS: I thought you were going to let them ask questions.

MATTHEWS: The reason is, I was waiting for the next person to get ready, senator. But if you‘re going to get snippy.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, Senator Edwards. If hypothetically you were to be running for president, what would you say to critics who think that you don‘t have enough governing experience on a national scale?

J. EDWARDS: I would say that I should be tested on that. I think that anybody who is considering voting for me ought to hear me talk about what I think needs done in America, what I think America needs to be doing in the world and they ought to listen to both the depth and the substance of what I‘m saying and decide whether they believe I have both the personal qualities and the vision, the substantive vision for America and the rest f the world, that the president of the United States needs. If I run for president, I‘m prepared to be tested on that.

MATTHEWS: Any thoughts on that?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I guess I was getting at more on was kind of the foreign policy aspect. As a senator for two years, did you have enough experience in the foreign policy realm to kind of comfort the American people at a time where foreign policy is really at the forefront?

J. EDWARDS: It‘s a really good question, an important question.

I think that the answer is, first of all, I was in the Senate six years, not two years. No, it‘s OK.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Communications major, sorry.

J. EDWARDS: You know, some of the rest of us make mistakes like that, too. I was there for six years and then subsequent to the presidential campaign in 2004, my time has been spent, a big chunk of it, has been doing work overseas. The home audience just saw me traveling through Uganda, I‘ve been doing humanitarian work. I spent time speaking in the Middle East, speaking in the Middle East, in India, in Asia, in Europe, speaking, meeting with leaders. And I think that has been enormously valuable in terms of adding to the depth and maturity of my view about what‘s happening in the world.

MATTHEWS: OK, we‘ll be right back with more questions for Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, possibly running for president.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. The College Tour is here in Chapel Hill, the southern part of heaven. I love this place. I went to grad school here, but our special guest is Senator John Edwards.

You live around here, right?

J. EDWARDS: I do, not far from here.

MATTHEWS: It‘s so great. You know, I want to ask you about poverty in America and what strikes me, not just the real destitute cases, but the towns in America, the town like you grew up in. You travel across the Midwest of the United States, you go through places like Spencerville, Ohio, Michigan City, Indiana and nothing is left but the Blockbuster and maybe a diner.

J. EDWARDS: Right. Right.

MATTHEWS: They‘re deindustrialized, nobody‘s got a job, the kids leave. Is this Wal-Mart doing this? Who‘s doing this? There‘s no downtowns. There‘s no gift shop. All this stuff is now at Wal-Marts now. Is—I know I‘m feeding you here, but I really want to know. Are you ready to say that Wal-Mart has hurt America?

J. EDWARDS: I think the honest answer to that question—I know what

the best answer politically to say. I think the honest answer is, it‘s complicated. I think Wal-Mart does something good. They provide low cost goods to people who badly need them. That‘s a good thing.

MATTHEWS: Right.

J. EDWARDS: There are others like Costco who do the same thing and they pay their employees well and they give health care coverage. I think what my concern is about Wal-Mart, and a lot of people‘s concern is, what they do to the kind of communities you are talking about; and secondly, that so many of their employees and their children are dependent on taxpayer money to get the health care that they need or to get any kind of peace in life.

MATTHEWS: How does that work?

J. EDWARDS: Well, basically, they‘re dependent on Medicaid.

MATTHEWS: So they impoverish themselves.

J. EDWARDS: Almost have the children of Wal-Mart employees get their health care from Medicaid. Taxpayers, the American people, are paying for that. And they shouldn‘t be subsidizing—you know, there are some very well to do people who own a lot of Wal-Mart stock, the people who started Wal-Mart, and that‘s part of the American story. There‘s nothing wrong with that, but they shouldn‘t be doing on the backs of taxpayers.

MATTHEWS: Well, let‘s talk about the big—labor is big behind you, I hear. You have got a lot of support among labor organizations, right? You‘re solid with them?

J. EDWARDS: For what?

MATTHEWS: For running for president. Nevada, SEIU, Unite, you‘ve got a lot of support in labor, right?

J. EDWARDS: I‘ve done a lot of work with labor because what they are doing is trying to strengthen the middle class in this country.

MATTHEWS: Well, let me ask you about the prominent American. Back in the ‘50s, ‘60s, when I grew up, you could quit high school or leave high school and get a job. You could work at a Bud plant, a big aerospace plant, and you could make enough money to raise a middle class family. You‘d have a car, a TV, you‘d have a vacation. Your wife, if she didn‘t want to work, she didn‘t have to work. It was a different world.

Now we can go to an emporia, emporiums, big stores like Wal-Mart, they have got everything. They‘ve got all the khaki pants in different sizes. They‘ve got every kind of style. They got Nautica. They got everything right, but the price we pay is there isn‘t a job for that guy coming out of high school. And what about that tradeoff?

Labor says let‘s go back so a guy comes out of high school with a pretty good technical ability and can himself or herself a job and work in industry. Can we bring back American industry as labor says they want to do?

J. EDWARDS: We can grow and strengthen the middle class and one of the components of that is—I‘ll give you one example. We have 50 million service economy workers, people who work in hotels and hospitals and home health care workers—those kind of workers, who if they are a member of a union, they earn middle class wages, they‘ve got pension protection, they have health care.

If they don‘t, they, for the most part, earn close to the poverty level or below the poverty level. So their right to organize is important. There are probably going to be 10 million more of those jobs over the course of the next decade.

MATTHEWS: Are you for the card check?

J. EDWARDS: I am for the card check.

MATTHEWS: You think that‘s fair to be able to have four people from a labor union, big people come up to a little person and say you‘re going to vote for the union, aren‘t you? You‘re going to vote for the union, aren‘t you?

Today the law says you have to have a big meeting and everybody has to be there to vote for the union. You‘re saying—the card check says all you need is 51 percent of the people to be individually talked into signing a card and you think that‘s OK.

J. EDWARDS: I think it‘s democracy. I do.

MATTHEWS: But not having an election?

J. EDWARDS: It‘s democracy because what happens is the way the system has been loaded up is the employers bring in these union busters who are exerts at busting the union. They sometimes violate the law. The way the enforcement works is almost nonexistent. Three or four years down the road there‘s a slap on the wrist.

All I want is I want to see a level playing field. If employees want to join a union, democratically they ought to be able to do that. If they don‘t, they can choose not to.

MATTHEWS: OK, the average person is working at the mill, they‘re working on the job and they‘re on the machine, and four guys come up to them, big guys, they go up and say sign this card, we want to start a union here. And that little person goes I‘d rather not. You‘d rather not? Isn‘t that kind of intimidating for a person?

J. EDWARDS: But why would you assume it‘s the fellow employees who are going to intimidate...

MATTHEWS: Because it‘s the outside labor organizations.

J. EDWARDS: ... them instead of the guy who‘s writing their check?

MATTHEWS: Because if they international union guys come in. I‘m asking you a question. Do you think that shows independence our your part, or the fact that you‘re in bed with labor.

J. EDWARDS: I think it shows that I am a complete believer in workers having a voice and being able to collectively bargain. I don‘t think we have a problem in America with big, multinational corporations being able to have their voice heard. Their voice is heard loud and clear.

MATTHEWS: OK, thank you.

Up next, we‘re going to be joined by another famous UNC grad, Elizabeth Edwards—she‘s sitting over here—and more questions from the audience as the HARDBALL College Tour continues in Chapel Hill.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTHEWS: Welcome to the HARDBALL college tour live from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, home of Senator John Edwards. He‘s here with us right now.

And when he was a law student here at Chapel Hill, UNC Chapel Hill, he met another law student named Elizabeth Anania. And they were married in 1977.

Let‘s have a Tarheels welcome for Elizabeth Edwards.

CROWD: (APPLAUSE)

MATTHEWS: Hello.

You look Catholic. You know that?

E. EDWARDS, WIFE OF JOHN EDWARDS: Well, that‘s the Italian, I think.

MATTHEWS: I know, it‘s the Italian in you.

E. EDWARDS: Anania. And I brought you...

MATTHEWS: What‘s this?

E. EDWARDS: ... a “Go ‘Heels” button.

MATTHEWS: “Go ‘Heels”. Thank you.

CROWD: (APPLAUSE)

MATTHEWS: And Elizabeth, being very academic, I want you to start off by explaining to the American people why the people of North Carolina, especially the old brigades, were named the Tarheels? What it about?

E. EDWARDS: Well, I mean, there‘s a lot—actually there‘s more than one story. There‘s the story you told about the—about walking through the Great Dismal Swamp and getting tar on their feet. There‘s others that they were fighting so hard and they wouldn‘t—they would not give up, so they stuck to the ground as if they had tar on their feet, which I like. I like that determination.

CROWD: (APPLAUSE)

MATTHEWS: The second‘s much more of a build-up. Not that you have to build-up to North Carolina.

So you‘re back here. You‘re living here again, the state where you were elected to the Senate from. And you‘ve written a book. You put together this great book about a people‘s home.

And you‘ve been through so much.

E. EDWARDS: We‘ve been through a lot.

MATTHEWS: You‘re amazing. And you were diagnosed with breast cancer right at the end of the last campaign. But here you go. You‘re smiling.

E. EDWARDS: And you‘ve been through a lot and you‘re smiling too.

MATTHEWS: But I‘m just introducing this. This is easy.

This is easy. I‘m just introducing the act.

So you want him to run for president?

E. EDWARDS: He gets my vote if he does. I mean, he‘s...

CROWD: (LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS: So it‘s like the union checkoff, you know, just sign the card and that means...

E. EDWARDS: That‘s right. He got me alone, arguing to me, yes.

J. EDWARDS: Only a recent development, by the way.

MATTHEWS: A recent development.

What do you think—what—did you learn anything running for president or is it just a big rush?

J. EDWARDS: Me?

MATTHEWS: Yes.

J. EDWARDS: I learned a lot.

MATTHEWS: I mean, when you go around and shake ten thousand hands and smile ten million times, do your cheeks hurt? Do you mentally from that?

J. EDWARDS: No. I think what you gain from the experience is a better understanding about what really matters. It‘s not—you know, the first time I ran for president I spent an awful lot—this is the truth—an awful lot of time worrying about how good a candidate I was, was I making a good speech or was I—it‘s just not what about I think about these days.

I think that anybody who‘s seriously thinking—my advice to anyone who‘s considering running—ought to be thinking about the job they want to do as president.

MATTHEWS: Did you enjoy running for V.P.?

I don‘t think you did.

J. EDWARDS: No. No. No, I wasn‘t crazy about it.

MATTHEWS: Is there something about the phrase “vice president” that doesn‘t turn you on?

J. EDWARDS: No. There‘s something about not being able just freely say exactly what you think.

MATTHEWS: Were you on a short leash?

J. EDWARDS: Anybody is, running for vice president. Your job, basically, is to advocate for the presidential candidate. People vote for presidential candidates...

MATTHEWS: Were you well used by John Kerry?

J. EDWARDS: I‘ll ask—I‘m not—I‘ll let you guys talk about that.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: I want to fight here.

What did you think of hi joke about—if you flunk out of school, you don‘t do too well, you‘re not too smart, you get us stuck in Iraq. And it got turned around.

What did you make of that?

J. EDWARDS: I think he just made a mistake.

MATTHEWS: What was he saying?

J. EDWARDS: I think he was trying to say, you better stay...

E. EDWARDS: Don‘t go there.

CROWD: (APPLAUSE)

MATTHEWS: No, no. Come on.

J. EDWARDS: ... not the first time.

MATTHEWS: I‘ll tell you one thing. I could tell there was a fight coming because Hillary dumped on him, McCain dumped on him, nobody cut him an inch. He just screwed up a joke. He‘s not a comedian, OK?

J. EDWARDS: Exactly.

MATTHEWS: He‘s just not a comedian.

J. EDWARDS: Too big a deal was made of it.

E. EDWARDS: There are not that many politicians who are actually very good at jokes. John spoke one time and I said I wouldn‘t even go because it was—he was supposed to be funny and I didn‘t think he could carry it off.

CROWD: (LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS: I love it. You‘re great. Behind every great man, there‘s a woman trying to kill him.

CROWD: (LAUGHTER)

E. EDWARDS: He has great characteristics.

MATTHEWS: What is it? Does she do this? Does she bust your balls like this when you come home? When you get (INAUDIBLE), does she do that?

CROWD: (APPLAUSE)

E. EDWARDS: My children are watching this.

CROWD: (LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS: What‘s this with the equal marriages? Why do people marry their equals? It used to be different? What happened to the Stepford wives, the good old days? What happened?

CROWD: (BOOING)

MATTHEWS: Oh, how P.C. How—why don‘t you hiss?

Oh, thank you. Finally, the freaking hiss. I needed it. It was the hiss. I needed that.

E. EDWARDS: You know have to know how smart his wife is in order to...

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you this. This is...

J. EDWARDS: He immediately got...

MATTHEWS: ... because you know—because Senator—Senator—

Senator Edwards was really—I thought I‘d try to get him at an angle here. He said that, having ran, it‘s like the Super Bowl, they usually win, the team that‘s been there before, or the Final Four, in the case of the UNC, which is always in the Final Four.

CROWD: (APPLAUSE)

MATTHEWS: You‘ve been there before. You have an edge over Mrs.

Obama. Do you have an edge, Mr. Clinton, the first spouse? Do you have an edge over these guys? I‘m mean, you‘ve been there as a candidate‘s wife, you‘ve been there as a candidate.

Can you roll into New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, Iowa with some edge?

E. EDWARDS: What I have in those places is not an edge. I think that there are, among the potential spouses this time, I mean, these are fabulous people with enormous skills. I have a lot of friends. I mean, I don‘t go in and...

MATTHEWS: Well, they won‘t be friends.

E. EDWARDS: I beg your pardon?

MATTHEWS: Once the campaign gets going.

E. EDWARDS: No. No, I mean—actually, I had a good relationship, I think, through most of the campaign with the other spouses. But no, I mean, in Iowa, in New Hampshire, in South Carolina, in Nevada, in those—

I have a lot of friends in those. If John decides to do this, I‘m going—

I won‘t be walking into a room full of strangers.

MATTHEWS: Has Hillary ever called you back after you said you had made happier choices than she has and you have a more joyous life than she does because of the choices she made? Meaning, she let Bill mess around?

E. EDWARDS: Is that what I meant?

No...

MATTHEWS: Isn‘t that what you meant?

E. EDWARDS: That was completely taken out of context.

MATTHEWS: What was the context?

E. EDWARDS: I had said that the choices I had made—I worked as a lawyer for 17 years, and now I get a lot of intellectual simulation from the conversations about policy that I got from work before, I know get from conversations....

MATTHEWS: But he has not caused any trouble.

E. EDWARDS: No, he hasn‘t.

MATTHEWS: So what did you mean when you said—what did you mean by Hillary having made bad choices?

E. EDWARDS: I wasn‘t. I was talking about my choices making me happier.

MATTHEWS: So I‘m been unfair?

E. EDWARDS: Well, and unfair to both of us, honestly.

MATTHEWS: Because that wasn‘t...

(CROSSTALK)

E. EDWARDS: I have nothing bad to say about her.

MATTHEWS: On reflection. Do you think—do you think...

J. EDWARDS: It is HARDBALL, remember.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

E. EDWARDS: I want to point out that although we love the men‘s Tarheels, the women‘s Tarheels are also No. 2 in the country in basketball.

(APPLAUSE)

E. EDWARDS: And the women‘s soccer team just won the national championship. The women‘s soccer team won the national...

MATTHEWS: And Mia Hamm is from here.

E. EDWARDS: Yes, she is.

J. EDWARDS: Oh, yes.

MATTHEWS: Mia Hamm is from here.

Look, you‘ve held up the cause of women‘s opportunity and equality.

So why don‘t you run for president?

(APPLAUSE)

E. EDWARDS: I was president of my junior class in high school.

People do nothing but complain to you. I‘m through.

MATTHEWS: You‘re too nice. I can‘t play HARDBALL with you.

We‘ll be right back with Elizabeth and John Edwards, John and Elizabeth from Memorial Hall of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTHEWS: We are back with Senator John and Elizabeth Edwards here in North Carolina, at the University of North Carolina.

Senator, you just got back from Uganda. What was that like?

J. EDWARDS: It‘s a terrible tragedy, a humanitarian crisis that the world is not paying any attention to. I went there with the International Rescue Committee. There has been a civil war going on for about 20 years now, and there are over a million displaced people in northern Uganda, been herded into camps, terrible living conditions. Children are being abducted by the rebel army, turned into soldiers and sex slaves, and this is a place where America can make a real difference if we got involved.

MATTHEWS: I was just thinking of the movie I saw on Franklin (ph)

Street here last night, “Blood Diamond.”

J. EDWARDS: It‘s heart breaking. Uganda, the genocide in Darfur, there are so many places that America could make such a difference. And I think in a process restore the way the world should look at it.

MATTHEWS: How do we go in, militarily or any other way, without shooting people and having them hate us for having come in, like we did back with—when we got involved in Mogadishu?

J. EDWARDS: We don‘t need to. For example, in Darfur, which is the place that has been most discussed, probably putting American troops on the ground would be damaging. But right now, there are about 7,000 African Union troops that are completely incapable of creating stability. So we have got to get another force on the ground. We just have to carefully select where that force comes from.

MATTHEWS: Will they accept white people from outside getting involved? Seriously?

J. EDWARDS: That‘s the issue. It would be a real problem probably.

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about something very personal here. You lost a son, Wade.

E. EDWARDS: We did.

MATTHEWS: And there is a memorial to him. Catherine?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE. EDWARDS: Yes?

MATTHEWS: Stand up, tell us about that out there. She is sitting on a chair that‘s...

E. EDWARDS: They redid this beautiful auditorium, Memorial Auditorium, and asked alumni if they wanted to contribute. And Wade, who died at 16, loved the University of North Carolina, and so we thought one thing we wanted to do was contribute to the refurbishment of this hall, in which we graduated from law school, and also leave a chair in his name. And so Catherine is sitting in Wade‘s chair.

MATTHEWS: What do you have—I remember my family, we lost a kid, a young kid, what do you tell a mother who loses a son?

E. EDWARDS: Each day, you get more used to the loss, but you can‘t—you can‘t reassure them that it is going to be better, some day where all of a sudden you‘re going to be back to the person you were, because of course you won‘t. But you know, the things you do, like memorializing them in places that they loved, is therapeutic.

I mean, when I think of Catherine sitting in that chair, it makes me happy. It makes me sad that he‘s not here, but that makes me happy, because he has a permanent place.

MATTHEWS: Senator, how much has the loss of Wade given you a kind of moral—I don‘t mean messianic like President Bush, OK? I‘m not saying something strange here. But how much of it drives you to try to be a bigger success, a bigger person?

J. EDWARDS: I think that like anybody, it‘s not like we are special. Other people who have lost children, it makes you think about what you are doing and makes you probably more interested in serving than you might have been before, but I don‘t think we‘re the exception in that regard. I think most people are like that.

MATTHEWS: They want to make life count for more.

J. EDWARDS: They want to feel like they‘ve done something important. I mean, when I die, I want to feel like Wade‘s death and his life helped me realize this. I want to feel like I‘ve done everything I can to serve, whatever that turns out to be.

MATTHEWS: I sympathize so much with you, Senator. Thank you.

J. EDWARDS: Thank you.

MATTHEWS: Elizabeth, you are great.

E. EDWARDS: Thank you.

MATTHEWS: You‘re always great. Thank you very much. John and Elizabeth, great people.

But Presidential?

,