chris hayes

"Vulnerable Democrats are begging donors for cash -- $2,400 at a time, while their colleagues are sitting on millions of dollars they could unleash with a pen stroke." So wrote Erica Payne of the Agenda Project, pointing out that the control of the entire House could be in the hands of a few Democrats in safe seats.That's just one of the problems with a severely dysfunctional election system overly dependent on private cash, notes Chris Hayes of The Nation, who joins Payne and Laura for a discussion of the campaign season thus far, and the potential for a little bit of money to go a long way in the right place. According to Stephen F. Cohen, half of Russia looks back to Josef Stalin as a great leader and the other half as a genocidal murderer. This disconnect, and a longing for a stronger, secure state, can be seen in public debate over a memorial to the victims of the gulags, where more people died than in Hitler's death camps. Cohen tells the story of the victims and their struggle to reenter society in his new book, The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag After Stalin. Born of more than 30 years of research and personal experience, the book is a memoir as well as a history, and Cohen joins Laura in studio to discuss it, and the ongoing struggle to reconcile that period in Russian history. Last week, The Nation uncovered evidence that Lou Dobbs, famed immigrant basher, had in fact employed undocumented immigrants on his estates. Dobbs' daughter is a championship equestrian, and Isabel Macdonald, the reporter for the magazine, spoke to several men who said they cared for horses owned by Dobbs while they were working in the country without authorization. Betsy Reed, executive editor of The Nation, stopped by the GRITtv studio to give us her thoughts on the controversy.

Rand Paul took over the headlines and the blog- and twitospheres in the days after last week's primary elections; the "libertarian" son of former Presidential candidate Ron Paul's controversial comments about the Civil Rights act touching off controversy and leading him to cancel his Meet the Press appearance. But what's the real story here? Is it Paul's beliefs, or is it that he just states them more honestly than most conservatives--or politicians on either side of the aisle? What does Rand Paul teach us about the problems with our government right now? Chris Hayes, Washington editor of The Nation, notes that Rand Paul simply articulates clearly what elites in both parties have been saying for a while now: let us regulate ourselves, and when things go wrong, it's nobody's fault. Hayes joins us in studio with actor and comedian John Fugelsang to discuss Paul, financial regulation, the BP disaster, and more.

The progressive community is at each other's throats over the health care bill: some say kill it and start over, others say pass it now and fix it later. Without a public option, Medicare buy-in, or other cost-controlling measures, and with Stupak and Nelson holding women's rights for ransom, is there anything good left in this bill? We ask Chris Hayes, Washington editor for The Nation, Lizz Winstead, host and producer of Shoot the Messenger, and Miriam Yeung of Women of Color United for Health Care what's in, what's out, and what the best course of action is now for progressives who want to see real reform.

Hope. It was the word for the Obama campaign, epitomized by the famous Shepard Fairey poster, with eyes uplifted, bright primary colors declaring that Americans believed in something good again. Last year on election day, we discussed the election and the future of America; hoping for an Obama victory and with it some restoration of the things we'd lost under Bush. This year, we look back with some of our guests from that day on what they said then and what they think now. Chris Hayes of The Nation remembers the feeling of social solidarity from the Obama campaign, hundreds of thousands of people coming together to work for a common cause, while Danny Schechter of MediaChannel and NewsDissector points out that Obama had plenty of support from Wall St. as well as Main St. Air America's Ron Reagan wonders why Maine managed to expand its rights to medical marijuana while closing off rights to same-sex couples, and Esther Armah of WBAI notes that Obama's election maintains its symbolic importance, even if dealing with the reality is somewhat more complicated.