Romney advisor opens old wounds

>>> as i have said here before, the number one reason to vote for president has always been and always will be you are voting for the person who will choose the next supreme court justices . the most important appointed jobs that exist in government. and arguably, at many points in our history, the most important jobs in our government. we've seen what kind of supreme court justices president obama has selected. but who would a president romney send to the supreme court ?

>> mitt romney would make the court even more hostile to the rights of ordinary americans.

>> now, let me note that the key thing the president is going to do is going to be would the longest legacy, appointing supreme court and justices throughout the system. as many as half of the justices in the next four years will be appointed by the next president.

>> who has mitt romney helped chosen to help pick the nominees for the court.

>> judge bourque decided to join my campaign team. i wish he was already on the supreme court .

>> a legal activist so extreme his own supreme court nomination was rejected by a bipartisan coalition 25 years ago in the senate. robert bork defended poll taxes and literacy tests for voters. and he called the civil rights act unsurpassed. he believes that politicians should be able to outlaw birth control . he believes that the first amendment shouldn't apply to literature, art or science. bork believes that the constitution's promise of equal protection doesn't apply to women. that a corporation can tell female employees to be sterilized or be fired.

>> joining me now for an exclusive interview is maryland state senator, jamie ras can, author of the new report, borking america. what it will mean for the supreme court and american justice . constitutional law professor at american university and a senior fellow at people for the american way , the organization that produced that video that we just saw. jamie , i am shocked. i thought i knew the robert bork history, the rough outlines of it. i had no idea that he was in favor of literacy tests for voters. in favor of outlawing, believes that the government can outlaw birth control . i'm looking at what i learned in your video. here's the one, i can't even fathom this. the first amendment should not apply to literature or art. we've seen people try to have the first amendment, you know, overruled in literature and art. he's saying it should not apply to science. what does he even mean by the first amendment should not apply to science?

>> lawrence, the position he took on that was that the first amendment is only about the core of political speech and this is a position as far as i can tell that he held for decades. recently, he's been saying that although he doesn't think in principal it applies to art and literature and comedy and so on, it's too divas a practical matter to disentangle what's political and what's not. he seems to have let that drop by the wayside a little bit. in order to write this report, i went back and read everything that robert bork has written for publication, all of the books, the on eds. this was ex cruise shating duty, i've got to tell you. it's shocking the things that he stands for. what's more shocking is that mitt romney presumably having researched this would go ahead and appoint him as his key constitutional adviser.

>> you say that robert bork , he was a former federal judge at one point, right?

>> sure. he was on the d.c. circuit .

>> the circuit, right. right below the supreme court . he ruled that a corporation can tell its female employees to be sterilized or fired?

>> well, what happened was, there was a company that had a lot of lead in the air. and the secretary of labor said that under osha, the company essentially had to fix the workplace. the company said they wanted to fix the workers and they said to the women workers, either you get sterilized or you've got to leave the job. bork agreed with the company and disagreed and overruled the secretary of labor in that case. there was an interesting report done in 1987 by public citizen scrutinizing the record of the judge on the circuit and found something interesting. in close cases where the court was split, whenever the government was in litigation with the corporation, bork decided with the corporation 100% of the time. when there was a split decision and the government was being sued by workers or by consumers or by individual citizens, he sided with the government. so corporations over government, government over people. that pretty much synopsizes the bork rule.

>> back in 1987 , people from the american way produced this video, also produced another video about robert bork to show you how long he's been scaring people. we're going to look at this one. this was narrated by gregory peck .

>> robert bork could have the last word on your rights as citizens. but the senate has the last word on him. please urge your senators to vote against the bork nomination because if robert bork wins a seat on the supreme court , it will be for life. his life and yours.

>> as we know, bork did not win the seat on the court. but now mitt romney seems to want to shape the supreme court if he's president in the image of a robert bork .

>> the stunning thing is that bork faced rejection by the u.s. senate on a bipartisan vote of 58-42. in bork 's radical move to the right in the primaries to head off the attack from santorum and bachmann. he decided to support bork . he can't drop him now because the right wing will explode over it. when the american public, especially women, face robert bork as the person who will be hand picking supreme court justices and federal judges , the public is going to rebel about it. i mean, his views about women are absolutely retrograde.

>> maryland state senator and constitutional law professor. jamie rascan. i thought i knew everything about him. i do not. thank you for joining us.

>> pleasure is mine.

>>> how mitt romney is repudiating what one of his coveted endorsers said about the president, ted nugent . actually, romney is not repudiating ted nugent at all. he's lying about how he got the endorsement.

>>> later, mitt romney still has to make a big decision about whether he's going to appear on saturday night live. we're going to show you the comedic abilities much mitt